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GM's Cruise alleged to rely on human operators to achieve "autonomous" driving

nytimes.com

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Re: GM's Cruise alleged to rely on human operators to achieve "autonomous" driving

#81

Post by haltist »

ra7 wrote: post #80
haltist wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seemed very certain that I was completely incorrect. My point is that you should consider that you might not have all the details and if you haven't actually worked at an AV company then you do not know what capabilities are granted to remote operators in emergency and non-emergency situations.

You are still incorrect and unable to prove anything you claimed. The burden of proof is on you when you confidently say they can "take over controls".

I wasn't proving anything. The fact is there are articles explaining that remote operators can take over the controls in an emergency situation and that's exactly what you were denying. In any case, this discussion has run its course. You can continue to believe autonomous cars can not be remotely controlled and I'll believe what I wrote since I'm pretty sure it's correct. Every AV company has emergency procedures for remote takeover and it makes sense that they would because current ML tools and techniques are not good enough for self-driving cars and other kinds of autonomous applications.

Re: GM's Cruise alleged to rely on human operators to achieve "autonomous" driving

#82

Post by ra7 »

haltist wrote: post #81
ra7 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are still incorrect and unable to prove anything you claimed. The burden of proof is on you when you confidently say they can "take over controls".

I wasn't proving anything. The fact is there are articles explaining that remote operators can take over the controls in an emergency situation and that's exactly what you were denying. In any case, this discussion has run its course. You can continue to believe autonomous cars can not be remotely controlled and I'll believe what I wrote since I'm pretty sure it's correct. Every AV company has emergency procedures fo…

Hmm, no. No article explains remote operator can take over controls. There's an important distinction between taking over and instructing a car what to do. You don't seem to get that.

> You can continue to believe autonomous cars can not be remotely controlled and I'll believe what I wrote since I'm pretty sure it's correct. Every AV company has emergency procedures for remote takeover

If your proof is "I believe these companies are lying" and nothing else, then this is not a discussion worth having.

Re: GM's Cruise alleged to rely on human operators to achieve "autonomous" driving

#83

Post by pests »

notahacker wrote: post #59
jonhohle wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? UAVs are piloted remotely, video games are played remotely with sub-100ms latency. Getting a remote driver connected might a while, but afterwards it seems like a mostly solved (in practice) problem.

UAVs don't have to deal with traffic (the thought of driving a vehicle with the latency and intermittent connectivity of my drone horrifies me) and when someone dies in a video game they respawn...

No lag compensation. Extremely server-authoritative.

Re: GM's Cruise alleged to rely on human operators to achieve "autonomous" driving

#84

Post by amluto »

phkahler wrote: post #70
kvogt wrote: post #60

Cruise CEO here. Some relevant context follows. Cruise AVs are being remotely assisted (RA) 2-4% of the time on average, in complex urban environments. This is low enough already that there isn’t a huge cost benefit to optimizing much further, especially given how useful it is to have humans review things in certain situations. The stat quoted by nyt is how frequently the AVs initiate an RA session. Of those, many ar…

>> Cruise AVs are being remotely assisted (RA) 2-4% of the time on average, in complex urban environments. This is low enough already that there isn’t a huge cost benefit to optimizing much further, especially given how useful it is to have humans review things in certain situations. Funny, since I thought full autonomy was the goal of the company. 2 percent human intervention isn't scalable.

Huh? 100% is scalable, and it’s the common case today. 2% scales just as linearly as 100% does.

Re: GM's Cruise alleged to rely on human operators to achieve "autonomous" driving

#85

Post by batmansmk »

cheriot wrote: post #55
batmansmk wrote: post #14

Having to be remotely operated every 2.5 to 5 miles seem to defeat most of the economics of self driving cars. Back of the napkin math, cars drive at an average of 18mph in cities, so every 10-20min. Let’s assume it takes over for 1min, and that you need remote drivers not too far for ping purposes, so at the same hourly rate. To guarantee you’ll be able to take over all demands immediately, due to the birthday parad…

Wages can fall off a cliff within modest distances. To use unemployment rate as a proxy for driver pay, Bakersfield, CA 7.5% and San Francisco, CA 3.5%. Go a little farther to Los Vegas 5.7% and one can avoid California's minimum wage.

The current taxi market is already structured that way: drivers in SF aren’t from SF. So no competitive advantage there, or not significant enough to change the game yet.

Re: GM's Cruise alleged to rely on human operators to achieve "autonomous" driving

#86

Post by MichaelTWorley »

kvogt wrote: post #60

Cruise CEO here. Some relevant context follows. Cruise AVs are being remotely assisted (RA) 2-4% of the time on average, in complex urban environments. This is low enough already that there isn’t a huge cost benefit to optimizing much further, especially given how useful it is to have humans review things in certain situations. The stat quoted by nyt is how frequently the AVs initiate an RA session. Of those, many ar…

Best wishes to you!

Re: GM's Cruise alleged to rely on human operators to achieve "autonomous" driving

#87

Post by tcoff91 »

amluto wrote: post #84
phkahler wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Cruise AVs are being remotely assisted (RA) 2-4% of the time on average, in complex urban environments. This is low enough already that there isn’t a huge cost benefit to optimizing much further, especially given how useful it is to have humans review things in certain situations. Funny, since I thought full autonomy was the goal of the company. 2 percent human intervention isn't scalable.

Huh? 100% is scalable, and it’s the common case today. 2% scales just as linearly as 100% does.

That 2% is not the person in the vehicle, it’s cruise employees. It doesn’t scale because it is paid employees intervening instead of the customer driving. It scales in comparison to ride sharing competition but not in terms of people owning the vehicles.

Re: GM's Cruise alleged to rely on human operators to achieve "autonomous" driving

#88

Post by bookofjoe »

I've said this here before and I will repeat it:

An overwhelming majority of Americans will choose 45,000 deaths in car crashes annually (last year's number) in human-driven cars over 450 deaths/year with all self-driving cars.

In the American (and probably ALL) mind(s), human agency trumps all.

Re: GM's Cruise alleged to rely on human operators to achieve "autonomous" driving

#89

Post by flandish »

kvogt wrote: post #60

Cruise CEO here. Some relevant context follows. Cruise AVs are being remotely assisted (RA) 2-4% of the time on average, in complex urban environments. This is low enough already that there isn’t a huge cost benefit to optimizing much further, especially given how useful it is to have humans review things in certain situations. The stat quoted by nyt is how frequently the AVs initiate an RA session. Of those, many ar…

So when low wage mechanical turk costs turn out cheaper than engineering to improve driverless vehs… this will just be another exploitative gig job for folks in remote locations?

I don’t trust proper attention will be given to improvements in tech once profit and roi is considered compared to human labor costs especially in lower wage nations.

Re: GM's Cruise alleged to rely on human operators to achieve "autonomous" driving

#90

Post by sroussey »

tcoff91 wrote: post #87
amluto wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? 100% is scalable, and it’s the common case today. 2% scales just as linearly as 100% does.

That 2% is not the person in the vehicle, it’s cruise employees. It doesn’t scale because it is paid employees intervening instead of the customer driving. It scales in comparison to ride sharing competition but not in terms of people owning the vehicles.

That 2% is much cheaper than going for five nines immediately. Nice bridge until then.
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