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Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

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Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#461

Post by threeseed »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #353
threeseed wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually think autonomous taxi services will be niche. Think about Uber cars today. Their entire value proposition centres around them breaking parking laws in order to pick you up. Now the liability for that behaviour is with the driver. In an autonomous car the liability would be Uber which is why they won't do it. An Uber that needs to look for parking in order to pick you up is never going to work in most busy…

You forgot one thing. Autonomous cars won't have the same algorithm as selfish humans to position themselves. A human will go to one of the busy places and will probably drive back to the original point of pickup. While a computer will be notified ( 1 car only parked on the busy place) and immediately replaced by a new available/nearby car. Making the process more efficient, more remote places will be handled faster.…

> And as always, if income > fine. They will just pay the fine

Up until the point they are banned.

Everyone, especially lawmakers, are pretty sick of tech companies breaking the law in order to be "disruptive". As we've seen recently with all of the e-scooter bans.

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#462

Post by tim333 »

nrp wrote: post #394
heavyset_go wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no evidence that automated driving systems are any safer than human drivers, or that they ever will be.

From Tesla's latest Vehicle Safety Report: > In the 4th quarter, we registered one accident for every 3.07 million miles driven in which drivers had Autopilot engaged. For those driving without Autopilot but with our active safety features, we registered one accident for every 2.10 million miles driven. For those driving without Autopilot and without our active safety features, we registered one accident for every 1.…

Autopilot tends to be engaged on freeways / motorways where accidents are much lower than driving through town. If you do the stats properly Tesla's autopilot is probably more crash prone than just having a human drive.

There were some stats that if you compare model S deaths to other luxury cars in the same price range they are about 3x higher for the S. Death rates in luxury cars are much lower than the average vehicle.

I think self driving tech will cut roads deaths eventually but it needs more work.

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#463

Post by threeseed »

dmortin wrote: post #158
lostlogin wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most of the value is in taxi services I’m imagining how gross a taxi would be that doesn’t have a driver to provide passengers a low level of behaviour moderation.

If the taxi is soiled then the next passenger indicates this via the app. The taxi is sent for cleaning and the previous passenger is charged for the cleaning. Also, there will be cameras inside in case it has to be proven who made the car dirty. If people have to pay the cleaning bill they will be careful not to make a mess.

This doesn't work for the most common issue with taxis: the smell.

And often that is the hardest thing to get rid of.

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#464

Post by MauranKilom »

einrealist wrote: post #257
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can't even bloody keep the yellow markings on the road visible, and "paint" is a technology we've had for thousands of years. Where in dog's name is the money for installing and maintaining all that smart infrastructure going to come from?

I am more fearful of trolls, tricking the technology. I doubt, that the software / hardware will have a common sense, like we humans have. Its this common sense that keeps us alive in unexpected scenarios, like when the paint on the road is missing.

You might want to consider https://xkcd.com/1958/.

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#465

Post by [deleted] »

_red wrote: post #271
jsolson wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may not be getting in that car, but I certainly will. After all, every driver on the road today is an incomprehensible black box where not only do we not know the parameters, we don't even know the function they're parameterizing. Every instance functions differently, and our testing procedures have woefully low coverage.

how do you see insurance working? why would drivers be responsible to have insurance when the car is completely controlled by bigcorp programmers?

[deleted]

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#466

Post by Slartie »

the-pigeon wrote: post #414
baybal2 wrote: post #109

I think he is the one and only sane C-level person in the industry, after hearing this. People claiming most of AI hype barely know what the "AI" people mention is. And people who go as far as drawing rosy pictures of human like general AI being your personal chauffeur are past ridiculous. The entire idea of human-like general AI for practical applications is like trying to make people using horses for transport in 2…

AI and autonomous vehicles don't relate. Driving a vehicle is not an AI problem and none of the serious autonomous vehicle teams are using AI. Unless you are using a super loose definition of AI that includes anything with an if statement.

You are wrong. And the "serious autonomous teams" are also wrong in not using AI (which is mostly true AFAIK, as long as we don't call basic image recognition to already be "AI").

But that's just because the AI we currently have - basically idiot-savants made of silicon - is mostly useless to them, since the kind of AI they would need for actual, 100%, no-compromise level 5 self driving capabilities hasn't been invented yet, nor does anyone have a promising idea as to how to invent one.

I am pretty sure that the only way to actually reach this goal requires a full-blown AGI. Because what we call "driving" and what is often misunderstood as a rather mundane and repetitive mechanical operation of machinery governed by a few simple ground rules is actually an insanely complex task that requires several higher-level capabilities of the human intelligence: besides pattern recognition, quick evaluations of situations with an unbounded number of variables and application of knowledge and concepts to an unlimited number of ever-new traffic situations it requires foresight, communication (of the difficult nonverbal kind) and sometimes even carefully dosed brazenness - to know when rules should better be ignored or bent instead of followed.

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#467

Post by erikpukinskis »

joe_the_user wrote: post #390
simias wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think self-driving cars are like fusion reactors, they're perfectly possible on paper and, like, totally 15years away from now. I'm sure it'll be possible some day, but I'm not positive that it'll be possible in the general case before we reach the Singularity. And when we get there self-driving cars are going to be a small side-effect of this unprecedented revolution. I can't help to draw a parallel between these…

I think self-driving cars are like fusion reactors, they're perfectly possible on paper and, like, totally 15years away from now. There's a certain similarity but I don't know any paper that actually gives any assure that self-driving is going to ever be possible. The only theory is "we will prevent extraneous factors and then calculate".

I find these arguments—about how a certain thing is arguably “impossible”—to be the most tiresome arguments on HN.

Everything that is possible today... used to be “impossible”.

If something appears “impossible” to you... there’s no information there about whether it is possible.

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#468

Post by scarejunba »

spookthesunset wrote: post #295
Reason077 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those who think FSD can be solved by building special road infrastructure for self driving cars misunderstand the problem. Cars are already equipped with suites of sensors giving them far more complete information than any human can process. Cars can already react faster and hold lanes with more precision than humans can. What’s lacking is general intelligence. The ability to creatively respond to unexpected situatio…

And those unexpected situations are not edge cases either. Virtually every time you drive you’ll encounter a novel case that has never been seen before. Your human brain is good at improvising. Computers? Not so much...

My average drive distance is under 10 miles. The expected number of miles for Waymo to disengage once is over 3 orders of magnitude higher. I'd have to take 1000 trips before Waymo would have disengaged.

That does not jive with your numbers (1 disengage per trip, roughly 10 miles), unless you're saying that Waymo's numbers are juiced by few city miles?

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#469

Post by [deleted] »

tripa wrote: post #276
mavhc wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the point though, the Waymo car doesn't rely on gps, it's has HD maps on board. Plus is has dead reckoning because it's touching the ground, so it knows where it's moving.

Not sure I get your point. Having atom-resolution maps doesn't help a bit it you don't know where on it you are.

[deleted]

Re: Volkswagen exec admits full self-driving cars 'may never happen'

#470

Post by selectodude »

temporaryvector wrote: post #163
rapind wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet air travel is far safer than road travel and they embraced autopilot long ago. The problem with complete automation is how accidents are perceived. Probably a good thing considering how low the bar is right now for road safety. Being killed by a robot's mistake is perceived far worse than by human error. I think a middle ground like autopilot on the highway could significantly improve safety while still accom…

>The problem with complete automation is how accidents are perceived I don't think so. Airplane autopilot automates away the safe, boring parts of air travel, much like highway driving, so in that sense I agree with you. Truly autonomous landing is still a big deal, and planes that the benefit of ATC, and I don't think there are any planes that taxi or takeoff autonomously. Furthermore, accidents involving autopilot…

The first airplane that received CAT IIIc autoland certification was the Lockheed L-1011 Tristar back in 1970. It's far from a big deal 50 years later.
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