4 ms·

This scares the crap out of me. I know it's an unpopular opinion, but I hope the government regulates the hell out of self driving cars. I want really strong ro

by imh 10y ago

This scares the crap out of me. I know it's an unpopular opinion, but I hope the government regulates the hell out of self driving cars. I want really strong robustness of autonomous systems. The difference between working in 99.9% of conditions and 99.99999% is huge. I'd hate to see corners being cut in the race to get there first, and I fully expect that's what will happen.

helthanatos 10y ago
Ready for car hacking deaths? Get ready... Autonomous systems won't be good enough to detect threats and maneuver as well as attentive or lucky drivers for at least 5-10 years. I'm not sacrificing my steering for at least 12...
- mchahn 10y ago
  > Autonomous systems won't be good enough to detect threats That reminds me of the worry about hacking pacemakers. If someone wants to kill you there are much easier ways to do it. A rock to the head works well without much technology involved.
  - helthanatos 10y ago
    A rock to the head is easy to detect and prevent. There are witnesses. Pacemakers require people to get closer. An increase in computers has lead to an increase in hacks, following that logic, an increase in hackable vehicles will lead to an increase in vehicles being hacked. When people race to make something happen and omit security, it puts users at risk. Information: the part of my argument you quoted has to do with user intervention, such as when another vehicle comes out of nowhere and the system doesn't know how to respond.
mgraczyk 10y ago
100% - 99.9% is 1 in 1000 times. In how many of the last 1000 car rides did you have a fender bender or accident? That's 1-3 years depending on how often you drive. I'd say 99.9% would be very close to an improvement over the current situation. I would be more sympathetic to calls for strict regulation if the current situation weren't so alarmingly suboptimal.
- quonn 10y ago
  He said 'conditions' not number of rides. Why would the number of rides matter, especially independently of the length of each ride? The location, weather and traffic conditions should matter much more.
ghshephard 10y ago
Does it scare you more, or less, than normal humans driving cars? There is approximately 1 fatality per 100mm miles driven in the United States, resulting in about 30,000 fatalities/year. If Autonomous Vehicles could reduce that to, say, 15,000 fatalities, is there any value in saving 15,000 lives? Serious question - is it better, from an ethical perspective, to have 30,000 people die at the hands of humans, or 15,000 people die in autonomous accidents? Elon Musk is betting on #2 from an ethical perspective. I know a lot of people prefer #1.
- imh 10y ago
  To be clearer, it's not the concept of self driving cars itself that scares me. It's the aggressive timeline that sounds like it was dictated by marketing and strategic goals rather than technical feasibility and engineering estimates.
  - ghshephard 10y ago
    Technically, self-driving cars are about 1 year out from being better than human drivers under normal highway driving conditions. If they continue to follow that curve of progress, then by (my hand wavey estimates) 2018 you should see micro-mapped urban driving scenarios (similar to google car in the bay area) capable of responding to traffic lights, construction lights, 2019 you should should see exception based systems (Construction pylons, road flares), 2020 gets you responding to Traffic Police, hand waves, and 2021 fills in the gaps that I'm not thinking of. So, in theory, by end of 2021, within the Bay Area (at least South Bay - Think Mountain View/Cupertino Area), Ford should be able to start deploying on a Trial Basis, automated fleets of cars that will, more safely than humans, pick up and deliver people under good driving conditions, during the day, over very micromapped routes. Once they get that nailed, they should be able to start expanding to other neighborhoods in the Bay Area, until by 2028-2030, an automated car should be able to pick up and deliver you anywhere in the SFBAY area that has presumably been micromapped, while at the same time providing pretty decent highway automated driving experiences for good portions of California. Based on those lessons, (and probably in parallel with the California Experience) - other countries/states/cities will likewise be micro-mapping their road systems, and also creating "Automated Capable Areas" - that will, over time, merge - until eventually you should be able to get, over well known roads, in non-inclement weather conditions from pretty much anywhere in the United States to Any other area, more safely than you would with a human. My prediction is 2050 at the latest, and 2040 if there is aggressive investment. (The actual data probably lands somewhere between those two). Honestly, human drivers are so horrible, it's hard to believe that with just a few hundred billion dollars of investments over the next fifteen years, that we shouldn't be able to come up with something better.

by imh 10y ago

helthanatos 10y ago

Ready for car hacking deaths? Get ready... Autonomous systems won't be good enough to detect threats and maneuver as well as attentive or lucky drivers for at least 5-10 years. I'm not sacrificing my steering for at least 12...

mchahn 10y ago
> Autonomous systems won't be good enough to detect threats That reminds me of the worry about hacking pacemakers. If someone wants to kill you there are much easier ways to do it. A rock to the head works well without much technology involved.
- helthanatos 10y ago
  A rock to the head is easy to detect and prevent. There are witnesses. Pacemakers require people to get closer. An increase in computers has lead to an increase in hacks, following that logic, an increase in hackable vehicles will lead to an increase in vehicles being hacked. When people race to make something happen and omit security, it puts users at risk. Information: the part of my argument you quoted has to do with user intervention, such as when another vehicle comes out of nowhere and the system doesn't know how to respond.

mgraczyk 10y ago

100% - 99.9% is 1 in 1000 times. In how many of the last 1000 car rides did you have a fender bender or accident? That's 1-3 years depending on how often you drive. I'd say 99.9% would be very close to an improvement over the current situation. I would be more sympathetic to calls for strict regulation if the current situation weren't so alarmingly suboptimal.

quonn 10y ago
He said 'conditions' not number of rides. Why would the number of rides matter, especially independently of the length of each ride? The location, weather and traffic conditions should matter much more.

ghshephard 10y ago

Does it scare you more, or less, than normal humans driving cars? There is approximately 1 fatality per 100mm miles driven in the United States, resulting in about 30,000 fatalities/year. If Autonomous Vehicles could reduce that to, say, 15,000 fatalities, is there any value in saving 15,000 lives? Serious question - is it better, from an ethical perspective, to have 30,000 people die at the hands of humans, or 15,000 people die in autonomous accidents? Elon Musk is betting on #2 from an ethical perspective. I know a lot of people prefer #1.

imh 10y ago
To be clearer, it's not the concept of self driving cars itself that scares me. It's the aggressive timeline that sounds like it was dictated by marketing and strategic goals rather than technical feasibility and engineering estimates.
- ghshephard 10y ago
  Technically, self-driving cars are about 1 year out from being better than human drivers under normal highway driving conditions. If they continue to follow that curve of progress, then by (my hand wavey estimates) 2018 you should see micro-mapped urban driving scenarios (similar to google car in the bay area) capable of responding to traffic lights, construction lights, 2019 you should should see exception based systems (Construction pylons, road flares), 2020 gets you responding to Traffic Police, hand waves, and 2021 fills in the gaps that I'm not thinking of. So, in theory, by end of 2021, within the Bay Area (at least South Bay - Think Mountain View/Cupertino Area), Ford should be able to start deploying on a Trial Basis, automated fleets of cars that will, more safely than humans, pick up and deliver people under good driving conditions, during the day, over very micromapped routes. Once they get that nailed, they should be able to start expanding to other neighborhoods in the Bay Area, until by 2028-2030, an automated car should be able to pick up and deliver you anywhere in the SFBAY area that has presumably been micromapped, while at the same time providing pretty decent highway automated driving experiences for good portions of California. Based on those lessons, (and probably in parallel with the California Experience) - other countries/states/cities will likewise be micro-mapping their road systems, and also creating "Automated Capable Areas" - that will, over time, merge - until eventually you should be able to get, over well known roads, in non-inclement weather conditions from pretty much anywhere in the United States to Any other area, more safely than you would with a human. My prediction is 2050 at the latest, and 2040 if there is aggressive investment. (The actual data probably lands somewhere between those two). Honestly, human drivers are so horrible, it's hard to believe that with just a few hundred billion dollars of investments over the next fifteen years, that we shouldn't be able to come up with something better.