12 ms·

Silicon Valley-Driven Hype for Self-Driving Cars

73 points by dbcooper 10y ago

studentrob 10y ago
I found this article to be on the mark. It's interesting that Google's project director estimates full autopilot will arrive between 3 and 30 years incrementally. Up to this point, most news and my friends seem to think it'll be here within 5 years.
- agildehaus 10y ago
  When Google says "incrementally" they mean where it will arrive, not level of autonomy. They'll be driving in sunny California long before snowy Minnesota.
  - studentrob 10y ago
    Right. We're on the same page.
  - dbcurtis 10y ago
    The idea of having a "summer car" and. "winter car" is pretty common in Minnesota. Summer car being a nice one, perhaps fun to drive, that gets stored in the winter so that "road cancer" doesn't eat the body. A "winter car" has a good heater, a good battery, and good tires.
aab0 10y ago
"Aware of the conventional wisdom that robotic cars are about to cause an epochal “disruption,” automakers are eager to demonstrate that they are fully engaged. A result has been a drumbeat of announcements auguring the imminent arrival of robotic cars, almost as though they were the next generation of iPhones. The breathless statements are especially beguiling for members of the public without the engineering background required to understand the challenges that remain. In other words, most people." I'm glad we have a "former technology reporter" to tell us this.
- rdtsc 10y ago
  This is strangely similar to "flying cars". Those have been "just around the corner" for, I don't know, the last 30 years probably, if not more.
Noseshine 10y ago
Related thread on the front page right now: "Simple questions to help reduce AI hype (smerity.com)" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12062294 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12062294 Excerpt: > ...good performance on a dataset also doesn't necessarily imply good performance in the real world. I'd wager that even trivial self-driving car models, given reasonable data, would be able to score in the high 90s if we decided on a reasonable notion of accuracy. The real stickler is the last few percent. When we make a mistake at high speed on a road, potentially under questionable conditions, the results can be disastrous. If the cost of a mistake is high, accuracy really doesn't mean anything, especially over a dataset that might not be representative in the first place.
- peteretep 10y ago
  > When we make a mistake at > high speed on a road, > potentially under > questionable conditions, the > results can be disastrous Given that that's no less true for humans, why do we require 100% accuracy from cars, rather than just "on average better than humans"?
rjdagost 10y ago
The thing that strikes me as more than a little off-key about the hive mind-like push for fully autonomous cars is that most drivers don't want them: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/techflash/2016/05/drivers-dont-want-self-driving-cars-uber-google.html http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/techflash/2016/... "...only 15 percent of respondents would want a fully self-driving vehicle as their next purchase. Meanwhile, 39 percent said they would prefer a vehicle that has some self-driving features. Nearly all respondents (95 percent) said they would want access to a steering wheel, gas and pedal controls even if a vehicle were self-driving, suggesting a wariness toward the technology. Brandon Schoettle, the study’s author, noted that public attitudes toward self-driving vehicles haven’t shifted much over the past couple of years, despite well-publicized developments in the space." This sort of reminds me of Google Glass- the tech early adopters were praising it highly and worked the hype up to a thick lather, but "normal" people wouldn't be caught dead using it and the product belly flopped badly. The entire exercise seems like the self driving technology is being built for its own sake, as though the coolness of the engineering challenge will stimulate sufficient demand to justify the endeavor.
- cylinder 10y ago
  That really means nothing. If you asked people "do you want a machine that dries your clothes" or "do you want a computer you carry in your pocket" a long time ago you probably would have received tepid interest.
  - pessimizer 10y ago
    That's completely untrue.
  - rjdagost 10y ago
    It most certainly doesn't mean nothing. It means that that there are significant trust issues that must be overcome before autonomous driving technology can get widespread acceptance. This is not a pure engineering problem that must be solved. Technologists can endlessly repeat "autonomous driving is inevitable" but that alone won't make it so.
jmspring 10y ago
There was a recent story about a self-driving long haul trucking caravan across Europe touting the success of such. It was done in the spring and lots of high-fives around it...The route was in Sweden, Denmark, and Germany...aside from perpetual autobahn construction...each of those have very good roads and it was done in the spring. "Self driving cars" still can't distinguish all driving hazards. The recent Tesla fatality, many stories made it a point to point out the driver was watching a movie. So, let's move self driving cars to California roads. They will deal well with traffic in places like 880, etc. But, can they deal with poor road conditions, the overall shitty level of driver competence here, etc? I think that is many years off and not yet proven. Another area to consider - uptake in new cars. I just bought a 2016 Tacoma in the last year. These trucks are known for lasting decades. I don't commute. I don't see replacing it anytime soon, let alone, ever having a self driving car for taking me places in the back country/forrest roads/etc. It is hype and maybe it will happen for some fleet situations, but I don't see autonomous cars being the mainstay for private individuals in my lifetime.
- intopieces 10y ago
  Uptake in new cars will be a non-issue when Uber and Lyft make self-driving taxis. The movers in industries are never the end consumers, but the large corporations. Cities will replace HOV lanes with Autonomously Driven Vehicle lanes, and that will include the buses.
  - jmspring 10y ago
    I've seen lots of stories about "cities" and their plans. In the bay area, Morgan Hill to Mill Valley, keeping things to 101, are part of the same suburban gridlock. Do I see that area changing by "autonomously driven vehicle lanes"? No. And you are an idiot if you think it will happen. Why? HOV lanes aren't only used by long distance commuters. You aren't going to get HOV/Autonomous lanes through SF. Sorry, After the 89 quake they tore down freeway infrastructure. 880 -> Richmond-San Rafael, yeah no. Please provide me with a valid scenario where I can get from any of the bay area communities a commute over 30 miles where an autonomous vehicle would work. This is the norm. If you assume anything about future plans, you lose. Hwy 85 was supposed to help south bay commutes, 2 months after opening, it was still faster to go 17 -> 280 -> Page Mill to get to Stanford from Santa Cruz. Oh yeah, that was still in the 90s. I have no idea where you live, but, at least in the bay area, maybe you need a commute history lesson.
jbpetersen 10y ago
What surprises me is that last-mile and local transportation of non-living cargo hasn't gotten more attention. I can't wait to get cheap delivery from practically anywhere in town and nearly on demand.
cpprototypes 10y ago
Something that annoys me about all this self-driving focus is that they are not targeting the obvious low-hanging fruit: 1) Focus on perfecting low speed bumper-to-bumper traffic fully autonomous driving on freeways. 2) Focus on passing legislation to allow zero driver liability and awareness when using the low speed bumper-to-bumper traffic self-driving mode. The speeds are low and so the risk factor is reduced by orders of magnitude. Even if an accident happens, it won't be fatal because of the low speeds. And that should also help with the legislation issues. Also, this feature would be very popular. Imagine a commercial with typical bumper-to-bumper traffic. Then the camera zooms in and the driver is sleeping. When the car detects that bumper-to-bumper traffic is going to end soon, it triggers a loud alert which wakes the driver. And yet all the car companies are ignoring this. I remember reading about early lane keeping and automatic speed cruise control and it would not activate under slow speeds. I was incredulous when I read it. They made this not work for exactly the most useful scenario? I don't care about self-driving for road trips, they don't happen often. And door-to-door self driving is the ultimate goal, but it's going to take a long time to get there. But helping to alleviate the horrible bumper-to-bumper driving by allowing drivers to do something else can be done with current technology. The whole self-driving effort feels like no one has done any market research to see how to make it help with real world situations.
- omonra 10y ago
  Volvo XC90 has this feature. It's basically lane keeping with automatic cruise control that works between 0 mph and 30. It also requires you to keep hands on the wheel (that's not a problem, imho). The only drawback to me is that if the car stops completely, the autopilot shuts down and has to be manually restarted (click button) to resume.
  - peteretep 10y ago
    > It also requires you to keep > hands on the wheel (that's > not a problem, imho). That stops you from reclaiming the time, so is probably nowhere near as valuable/desirable as one that allows you to repost cat gifs.
- 10y ago
Animats 10y ago
It's not Silicon Valley hype that's the problem. It's Tesla hype. Tesla's "autopilot" is way under-sensored. One TV camera, a bumper-level radar, and some ultrasonic range sensors. That's just not enough. (Tesla is supposedly adding more cameras in later models. They still need windshield-height radar.) It's also not clear how much redundancy Tesla has in the control system? Backup processors? Redundant steering motors? Redundant brake actuators. Google has all of those. Does Tesla? The Tesla crash and rollover on the Pennsylvania Turnpike is troublesome.[1] That's the situation Tesla's "autopilot" is supposed to handle. Here's the crash location - Penna Turnpike mile marker 160, eastbound.[2] Concrete center divider, metal guard rail on the right, clear pavement markings, summer driving conditions. There's no excuse for a crash in that situation. That may have been an outright system failure. NHTSA and the Pennsylvania State Police are investigating. Autopilot bug reports are written in customers blood. Musk seems to be in denial about that. Denial isn't going to work. Look how much trouble General Motors got into over ignition switches with weak detent springs.[3] Keyrings with too many keys could under some circumstances move the switch and turn off the vehicle. (It wasn't just loss of propulsion; power steering, power brakes, and airbag power were also lost.) GM has paid out $3 billion so far, recalled 800,000 cars, and fired 15 people. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/07/business/us-safety-agency-investigates-another-tesla-crash-involving-autopilot.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/07/business/us-safety-agency-... [2] https://goo.gl/maps/TfcuZR67oXr https://goo.gl/maps/TfcuZR67oXr [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_ignition_switch_recalls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_ignition_switch...
- aschobel 10y ago
  Tesla has now reviewed the logs and says that there’s “no data to suggest that Autopilot was engaged at the time of the incident." http://electrek.co/2016/07/06/tesla-model-x-rollover-accident-tesla-says-autopilot-not-engaged/ http://electrek.co/2016/07/06/tesla-model-x-rollover-acciden...
  - Animats 10y ago
    Tesla's response is evasive and designed to be misquoted as above. Here's their official statement: “We received an automated alert from this vehicle on July 1 indicating airbag deployment, but logs containing detailed information on the state of the vehicle controls at the time of the collision were never received. This is consistent with damage of the severity reported in the press, which can cause the antenna to fail. As we do with all crash events, we immediately reached out to the customer to confirm they were ok and offer support but were unable to reach him. We have since attempted to contact the customer three times by phone without success. Based on the information we have now, we have no reason to believe that Autopilot had anything to do with this accident.” Tesla has no idea if their autopilot was engaged. They lost communications during the crash, probably when the vehicle rolled over. The customer told the Penn. state trooper involved that they were on autopilot at the time.
henrik_w 10y ago
There is also the problem of analyzing why certain AI actions where taken when investigating accidents: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601860/if-a-driverless-car-goes-bad-we-may-never-know-why/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601860/if-a-driverless-ca...
studentrob 10y ago
I don't think Musk really understands the AI tech that he's managing. He thought Open AI would be the path to true AI, and he can't accept that a current flaw in Tesla's autopilot may be material to the company. Musk has done a ton of great stuff. To be better, he could use someone who he trusts and is an expert in the field, like LeCunn, to simmer Musk's expectations of AI. Right now he seems brimming with confidence about AI to the point he (1) is claiming we're already living in a simulated world, (2) has started his own true AI venture, and (3) is ignoring the relevance of his own product's failures. I can only imagine this is because he is surrounded by Yes men. I could be 100% wrong.
teslaberry 10y ago
NONSENSE. autonomous cars are all gps enabled tracking devices which record every move your vehicle makes on 3rd party servers which double as government spying devices. many people guard their privacy. it is enough that the computer and cell phone have made their impact. there are many people who simply want to preserve their privacy and freedom of movement . while i do not necessarily sympathize with this view, it is not deniable that the future of technology development implicates far greater social issues than the past of simple technologies which replaced hard labor in simple situations. a significant portion of people undersatnd these issues and that is why they are against self driving vehicles, NOT only because they want to drive their own vehicles. if we are going to look at the future of technology, we have to look at the future of our entire system of government and society. automated transportation is perhaps one of the most socially radical inventions of the first half the 21st century. 2nd only perhaps to quadcopter drones invading all technology applications.

73 points by dbcooper 10y ago

I found this article to be on the mark. It's interesting that Google's project director estimates full autopilot will arrive between 3 and 30 years incrementally. Up to this point, most news and my friends seem to think it'll be here within 5 years.

agildehaus 10y ago
When Google says "incrementally" they mean where it will arrive, not level of autonomy. They'll be driving in sunny California long before snowy Minnesota.
- studentrob 10y ago
  Right. We're on the same page.
- dbcurtis 10y ago
  The idea of having a "summer car" and. "winter car" is pretty common in Minnesota. Summer car being a nice one, perhaps fun to drive, that gets stored in the winter so that "road cancer" doesn't eat the body. A "winter car" has a good heater, a good battery, and good tires.

aab0 10y ago

"Aware of the conventional wisdom that robotic cars are about to cause an epochal “disruption,” automakers are eager to demonstrate that they are fully engaged. A result has been a drumbeat of announcements auguring the imminent arrival of robotic cars, almost as though they were the next generation of iPhones. The breathless statements are especially beguiling for members of the public without the engineering background required to understand the challenges that remain. In other words, most people." I'm glad we have a "former technology reporter" to tell us this.

rdtsc 10y ago
This is strangely similar to "flying cars". Those have been "just around the corner" for, I don't know, the last 30 years probably, if not more.

Noseshine 10y ago

Related thread on the front page right now: "Simple questions to help reduce AI hype (smerity.com)" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12062294 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12062294 Excerpt: > ...good performance on a dataset also doesn't necessarily imply good performance in the real world. I'd wager that even trivial self-driving car models, given reasonable data, would be able to score in the high 90s if we decided on a reasonable notion of accuracy. The real stickler is the last few percent. When we make a mistake at high speed on a road, potentially under questionable conditions, the results can be disastrous. If the cost of a mistake is high, accuracy really doesn't mean anything, especially over a dataset that might not be representative in the first place.

peteretep 10y ago
> When we make a mistake at > high speed on a road, > potentially under > questionable conditions, the > results can be disastrous Given that that's no less true for humans, why do we require 100% accuracy from cars, rather than just "on average better than humans"?

rjdagost 10y ago

The thing that strikes me as more than a little off-key about the hive mind-like push for fully autonomous cars is that most drivers don't want them: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/techflash/2016/05/drivers-dont-want-self-driving-cars-uber-google.html http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/techflash/2016/... "...only 15 percent of respondents would want a fully self-driving vehicle as their next purchase. Meanwhile, 39 percent said they would prefer a vehicle that has some self-driving features. Nearly all respondents (95 percent) said they would want access to a steering wheel, gas and pedal controls even if a vehicle were self-driving, suggesting a wariness toward the technology. Brandon Schoettle, the study’s author, noted that public attitudes toward self-driving vehicles haven’t shifted much over the past couple of years, despite well-publicized developments in the space." This sort of reminds me of Google Glass- the tech early adopters were praising it highly and worked the hype up to a thick lather, but "normal" people wouldn't be caught dead using it and the product belly flopped badly. The entire exercise seems like the self driving technology is being built for its own sake, as though the coolness of the engineering challenge will stimulate sufficient demand to justify the endeavor.

cylinder 10y ago
That really means nothing. If you asked people "do you want a machine that dries your clothes" or "do you want a computer you carry in your pocket" a long time ago you probably would have received tepid interest.
- pessimizer 10y ago
  That's completely untrue.
- rjdagost 10y ago
  It most certainly doesn't mean nothing. It means that that there are significant trust issues that must be overcome before autonomous driving technology can get widespread acceptance. This is not a pure engineering problem that must be solved. Technologists can endlessly repeat "autonomous driving is inevitable" but that alone won't make it so.

jmspring 10y ago

There was a recent story about a self-driving long haul trucking caravan across Europe touting the success of such. It was done in the spring and lots of high-fives around it...The route was in Sweden, Denmark, and Germany...aside from perpetual autobahn construction...each of those have very good roads and it was done in the spring. "Self driving cars" still can't distinguish all driving hazards. The recent Tesla fatality, many stories made it a point to point out the driver was watching a movie. So, let's move self driving cars to California roads. They will deal well with traffic in places like 880, etc. But, can they deal with poor road conditions, the overall shitty level of driver competence here, etc? I think that is many years off and not yet proven. Another area to consider - uptake in new cars. I just bought a 2016 Tacoma in the last year. These trucks are known for lasting decades. I don't commute. I don't see replacing it anytime soon, let alone, ever having a self driving car for taking me places in the back country/forrest roads/etc. It is hype and maybe it will happen for some fleet situations, but I don't see autonomous cars being the mainstay for private individuals in my lifetime.

intopieces 10y ago
Uptake in new cars will be a non-issue when Uber and Lyft make self-driving taxis. The movers in industries are never the end consumers, but the large corporations. Cities will replace HOV lanes with Autonomously Driven Vehicle lanes, and that will include the buses.
- jmspring 10y ago
  I've seen lots of stories about "cities" and their plans. In the bay area, Morgan Hill to Mill Valley, keeping things to 101, are part of the same suburban gridlock. Do I see that area changing by "autonomously driven vehicle lanes"? No. And you are an idiot if you think it will happen. Why? HOV lanes aren't only used by long distance commuters. You aren't going to get HOV/Autonomous lanes through SF. Sorry, After the 89 quake they tore down freeway infrastructure. 880 -> Richmond-San Rafael, yeah no. Please provide me with a valid scenario where I can get from any of the bay area communities a commute over 30 miles where an autonomous vehicle would work. This is the norm. If you assume anything about future plans, you lose. Hwy 85 was supposed to help south bay commutes, 2 months after opening, it was still faster to go 17 -> 280 -> Page Mill to get to Stanford from Santa Cruz. Oh yeah, that was still in the 90s. I have no idea where you live, but, at least in the bay area, maybe you need a commute history lesson.

jbpetersen 10y ago

What surprises me is that last-mile and local transportation of non-living cargo hasn't gotten more attention. I can't wait to get cheap delivery from practically anywhere in town and nearly on demand.

cpprototypes 10y ago

Something that annoys me about all this self-driving focus is that they are not targeting the obvious low-hanging fruit: 1) Focus on perfecting low speed bumper-to-bumper traffic fully autonomous driving on freeways. 2) Focus on passing legislation to allow zero driver liability and awareness when using the low speed bumper-to-bumper traffic self-driving mode. The speeds are low and so the risk factor is reduced by orders of magnitude. Even if an accident happens, it won't be fatal because of the low speeds. And that should also help with the legislation issues. Also, this feature would be very popular. Imagine a commercial with typical bumper-to-bumper traffic. Then the camera zooms in and the driver is sleeping. When the car detects that bumper-to-bumper traffic is going to end soon, it triggers a loud alert which wakes the driver. And yet all the car companies are ignoring this. I remember reading about early lane keeping and automatic speed cruise control and it would not activate under slow speeds. I was incredulous when I read it. They made this not work for exactly the most useful scenario? I don't care about self-driving for road trips, they don't happen often. And door-to-door self driving is the ultimate goal, but it's going to take a long time to get there. But helping to alleviate the horrible bumper-to-bumper driving by allowing drivers to do something else can be done with current technology. The whole self-driving effort feels like no one has done any market research to see how to make it help with real world situations.

omonra 10y ago
Volvo XC90 has this feature. It's basically lane keeping with automatic cruise control that works between 0 mph and 30. It also requires you to keep hands on the wheel (that's not a problem, imho). The only drawback to me is that if the car stops completely, the autopilot shuts down and has to be manually restarted (click button) to resume.
- peteretep 10y ago
  > It also requires you to keep > hands on the wheel (that's > not a problem, imho). That stops you from reclaiming the time, so is probably nowhere near as valuable/desirable as one that allows you to repost cat gifs.
10y ago

Animats 10y ago

It's not Silicon Valley hype that's the problem. It's Tesla hype. Tesla's "autopilot" is way under-sensored. One TV camera, a bumper-level radar, and some ultrasonic range sensors. That's just not enough. (Tesla is supposedly adding more cameras in later models. They still need windshield-height radar.) It's also not clear how much redundancy Tesla has in the control system? Backup processors? Redundant steering motors? Redundant brake actuators. Google has all of those. Does Tesla? The Tesla crash and rollover on the Pennsylvania Turnpike is troublesome.[1] That's the situation Tesla's "autopilot" is supposed to handle. Here's the crash location - Penna Turnpike mile marker 160, eastbound.[2] Concrete center divider, metal guard rail on the right, clear pavement markings, summer driving conditions. There's no excuse for a crash in that situation. That may have been an outright system failure. NHTSA and the Pennsylvania State Police are investigating. Autopilot bug reports are written in customers blood. Musk seems to be in denial about that. Denial isn't going to work. Look how much trouble General Motors got into over ignition switches with weak detent springs.[3] Keyrings with too many keys could under some circumstances move the switch and turn off the vehicle. (It wasn't just loss of propulsion; power steering, power brakes, and airbag power were also lost.) GM has paid out $3 billion so far, recalled 800,000 cars, and fired 15 people. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/07/business/us-safety-agency-investigates-another-tesla-crash-involving-autopilot.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/07/business/us-safety-agency-... [2] https://goo.gl/maps/TfcuZR67oXr https://goo.gl/maps/TfcuZR67oXr [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_ignition_switch_recalls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_ignition_switch...

aschobel 10y ago
Tesla has now reviewed the logs and says that there’s “no data to suggest that Autopilot was engaged at the time of the incident." http://electrek.co/2016/07/06/tesla-model-x-rollover-accident-tesla-says-autopilot-not-engaged/ http://electrek.co/2016/07/06/tesla-model-x-rollover-acciden...
- Animats 10y ago
  Tesla's response is evasive and designed to be misquoted as above. Here's their official statement: “We received an automated alert from this vehicle on July 1 indicating airbag deployment, but logs containing detailed information on the state of the vehicle controls at the time of the collision were never received. This is consistent with damage of the severity reported in the press, which can cause the antenna to fail. As we do with all crash events, we immediately reached out to the customer to confirm they were ok and offer support but were unable to reach him. We have since attempted to contact the customer three times by phone without success. Based on the information we have now, we have no reason to believe that Autopilot had anything to do with this accident.” Tesla has no idea if their autopilot was engaged. They lost communications during the crash, probably when the vehicle rolled over. The customer told the Penn. state trooper involved that they were on autopilot at the time.

henrik_w 10y ago

There is also the problem of analyzing why certain AI actions where taken when investigating accidents: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601860/if-a-driverless-car-goes-bad-we-may-never-know-why/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601860/if-a-driverless-ca...

studentrob 10y ago

I don't think Musk really understands the AI tech that he's managing. He thought Open AI would be the path to true AI, and he can't accept that a current flaw in Tesla's autopilot may be material to the company. Musk has done a ton of great stuff. To be better, he could use someone who he trusts and is an expert in the field, like LeCunn, to simmer Musk's expectations of AI. Right now he seems brimming with confidence about AI to the point he (1) is claiming we're already living in a simulated world, (2) has started his own true AI venture, and (3) is ignoring the relevance of his own product's failures. I can only imagine this is because he is surrounded by Yes men. I could be 100% wrong.

teslaberry 10y ago

NONSENSE. autonomous cars are all gps enabled tracking devices which record every move your vehicle makes on 3rd party servers which double as government spying devices. many people guard their privacy. it is enough that the computer and cell phone have made their impact. there are many people who simply want to preserve their privacy and freedom of movement . while i do not necessarily sympathize with this view, it is not deniable that the future of technology development implicates far greater social issues than the past of simple technologies which replaced hard labor in simple situations. a significant portion of people undersatnd these issues and that is why they are against self driving vehicles, NOT only because they want to drive their own vehicles. if we are going to look at the future of technology, we have to look at the future of our entire system of government and society. automated transportation is perhaps one of the most socially radical inventions of the first half the 21st century. 2nd only perhaps to quadcopter drones invading all technology applications.