Can we have a less flamey discussion of self driving cars?

#1

Post by hefferbub » Sun, Jul 03, 2022, 3:03 PM UTC

I know that righteous indignation is the new national pastime, but I would find it a lot more interesting to hear a more nuanced discussion from this community on the topic of self-driving.

Some questions that come to mind:

- Would it contribute positively to our world if competent self driving existed?

- What are the various approaches to get from here to there, and what are their relative merits and risks?

- Assuming some approach showed promise, how should we expose it to real world conditions to allow for validation and ongoing improvement?

- Do the technically-savvy folks on this list think that a heuristic approach (i.e. a bunch of rules written by humans) could ever succeed at effective self driving in diverse conditions? Or is the machine learning + massive data approach more likely to solve it? Or do you consider it fundamentally unsolveable?

- What interesting moral and legal questions arise if effective self-driving becomes available?

- What might be the economic and environmental ramifications of a world with ubiquitous “robotaxis”?

Anyone care to pick one and take a swing at it?

Re: Can we have a less flamey discussion of self driving cars?

#2

Post by h2odragon » Sun, Jul 03, 2022, 3:10 PM UTC

We had all these discussion years ago. The flames are from the "consensus / conclusions" from those debates; people have Received Wisdom and must push it to others or defend it. Going back to first principles and asking "should we be doing this?" is gonna draw ire from all sides: you're implicitly questioning the conclusion people have already adopted and invested emotion into.

Here's one for "Legal questions": At what age can you send your child off unaccompanied in a robotaxi? And how far? If the child doesn't arrive is it parental neglect or should the taxi owners be held liable?

Re: Can we have a less flamey discussion of self driving cars?

#3

Post by nmca » Sun, Jul 03, 2022, 3:20 PM UTC

- Would it contribute positively to our world if competent self driving existed?

Yes, making things that people want (e.g. pay for) cheaper and better is good.

- What are the various approaches to get from here to there, and what are their relative merits and risks?

Offline deep learning. Merits: likely to work. Risks: crashes will occasionally happen.

- Assuming some approach showed promise, how should we expose it to real world conditions to allow for validation and ongoing improvement?

Gradual roll-out in initially in cities with simple conditions, then at higher volume, then in more complex conditions.

- Do the technically-savvy folks on this list think that a heuristic approach (i.e. a bunch of rules written by humans) could ever succeed at effective self driving in diverse conditions? Or is the machine learning + massive data approach more likely to solve it? Or do you consider it fundamentally unsolveable?

rules-based is not workable, ML will work.

- What interesting moral and legal questions arise if effective self-driving becomes available?

moral: none, legal: corporate liability for crashes seems pretty complex.

Re: Can we have a less flamey discussion of self driving cars?

#4

Post by slickdork » Sun, Jul 03, 2022, 3:21 PM UTC

AI/ML just isn't at a point yet where it can encounter something it's never seen and make a decision about it in a predictable way. Which is problematic with driving for two reasons.

1) crazy things happen on the road all the time, none of which are 100% predictable, since humans have free will. Sure, the majority of driving is very predicable, but it's that tiny fraction of clown cars that's a problem.

2) humans are bad in scenarios like the above. Imagine the car has been driving by itself for 200 miles. The human will probably start reading a book or looking a their phone. And then, dang, something happens that requires human intervention. But the human wasn't paying attention. so, there's a crash!

If we can solve the problem of AI being able to think for itself, rather than drawing conclusions based on past data sets, then 100% fully autonomous driving will exist. As will a completely society changing AI!

Re: Can we have a less flamey discussion of self driving cars?

#5

Post by haunter » Sun, Jul 03, 2022, 3:22 PM UTC

>I know that righteous indignation is the new national pastime

This is your very first sentence so probably no.

Re: Can we have a less flamey discussion of self driving cars?

#6

Post by fxtentacle » Sun, Jul 03, 2022, 3:22 PM UTC

The way I see it, there's very little negativity about Waymo.

All of the flame discussions are about Tesla FSD because there it's really more a matter of religion if you consider the name accurate or not.

Re: Can we have a less flamey discussion of self driving cars?

#7

Post by candiddevmike » Sun, Jul 03, 2022, 3:24 PM UTC

Until car companies can be sued into the ground for their self driving car killing someone, there won't be proper incentives in place to ensure the tech is safe and not a move fast and break things race between manufacturers that puts everyone at risk.

Re: Can we have a less flamey discussion of self driving cars?

#8

Post by Gordonjcp » Sun, Jul 03, 2022, 3:27 PM UTC

Okay, here's my opinion, for what it's worth:

1) I don't see how a self-driving car would make my life better

2) At present they cannot be safer than human drivers because they do not anticipate a developing situation and only react to them as they happen. Having been in a self-driving car it feels like being driven by a very tired or drunk and inexperienced driver.

3) From what I've seen they would improve road safety only in situations where human driving standards are extremely poor, with inadequately trained and experienced drivers - you just need to look at dashcam footage from the US to see this.

Re: Can we have a less flamey discussion of self driving cars?

#9

Post by Cupertino95014 » Sun, Jul 03, 2022, 3:28 PM UTC

Sometimes when people say "let's have a civil discussion" they're really saying "first, everyone agree with me -- then we'll discuss how to achieve my objectives."

I'm not saying that's what your post is. However, asking people to assume "competent self driving" could be likened to saying "suppose we had perpetual motion -- how would that change things?"

We have science fiction for that.

Re: Can we have a less flamey discussion of self driving cars?

#10

Post by jacamera » Sun, Jul 03, 2022, 3:28 PM UTC

I think righteous indignation is all but inevitable when you're sourcing hot takes on the internet. Your questions are interesting but one could write a dissertation on any one of them. Here on Hacker News you might have a higher chance of bumping into someone who has written such a dissertation and can link you to it, but there will still always be a ton of noise in the comments due to the very format of the forum. If you want to have a less flamey discussion of self-driving cars I think you should flesh out your ideas and questions in a well-researched and well-cited article and then post it here rather than trying to start such a broad discussion with such little context.