3 ms·

> People are way, way, WAY underestimating how long it will be before "self driving car picks you up, takes you to location". Thank you. This is a pet peeve of

by CPLX 10y ago

> People are way, way, WAY underestimating how long it will be before "self driving car picks you up, takes you to location". Thank you. This is a pet peeve of mine. Self driving cars do not exist, at all, yet, nor does anything that's really all that close but if you point that out on HN you'll be met with breathless disagreement. Even more relevant, there's literally nothing in the historical record to suggest that the real breakthroughs when they come will come from a company like Uber.

bhups 10y ago
> Even more relevant, there's literally nothing in the historical record to suggest that the real breakthroughs when they come will come from a company like Uber. Why not? The team at Uber that is working on this is largely comprised of researchers from Carnegie Mellon and former members of Google's driverless car team. Historical record suggests otherwise...
- CPLX 10y ago
  The fact that Uber has never, once, successfully created a motor vehicle, physical product, or applied artificial intelligence device, ever, of any kind, has to top the list. I mean they are competing against Apple and BMW, among many others, presumably, who have actually made a car, computer, or transportation device that worked. That notwithstanding, the burden of proof is in the other direction.
  - bhups 10y ago
    Sure, but the company is filled with ex-Apple/Google/etc folks that have worked on successfully creating motor vehicles, physical products, and applied artificial intelligence devices. Remember, a company is merely comprised of the people within it. If Uber has people that have joined from the kinds of companies that you mentioned, it becomes more and more indistinguishable from them.
    - CPLX 10y ago
      > Remember, a company is merely comprised of the people within it. Not really. Software companies are like that. They are the exception to the general rule that companies are composed of people plus things like factories, equipment, patents, trade secrets, inventory, real estate, global supply chains, and dealer networks for service and support. Making cars, even regular ones, is hard and Uber has never really done anything like it.
      - pfarnsworth 10y ago
        Uber isn't making cars, the CEO has made that explicitly clear. Uber has hired people who have built systems that enable a regular car to self-drive. I just don't understand where the disconnect is for you.
        CPLX 10y ago
        > Uber has hired people who have built systems that enable a regular car to self-drive. No they haven't. I know this because there aren't any cars in the world that can self-drive.
        pfarnsworth 10y ago
        Then you would be wrong. But it of course depends on what your definition of "self-drive" is. If you have an overly strict, ridiculously high standard for what a self-driving car is, then in your mind, you're right. But if you define what Tesla already has in production as a self-driving car, then you would be wrong.
  - robotresearcher 10y ago
    Not so long ago Uber had never once successfully provided a taxi ride, but they figured that out.
    - CPLX 10y ago
      Indeed. But somebody had.
- jonathankoren 10y ago
  There is a huge difference between the real world and a closed track. Brace yourselves. AI Winter Is Coming.
  - tim333 10y ago
    Feels more like AI spring than autumn to me.
  - marcusgarvey 10y ago
    >There is a huge difference between the real world and a closed track. Indeed. The unpredictable behavior of humans occupying the same environment is key. Remove this element and things get simpler (though not simple. And v2v comms might be required.) I suspect highways are the road infrastructure most akin to a closed track. Which is why the Otto acquisition is so interesting.
- bduerst 10y ago
  Historically they haven't done anything. OTTO was just 8 months old when it was acquired this week, and they had two blog posts - one saying they formed, one saying they're acquired.
tim333 10y ago
I thought the Google cars are fairly close? Edit: Figures from 2015 indicate human interventions to prevent an accident were about once per 74,000 miles or maybe slightly worse than humans but not that much. http://www.roboticstrends.com/article/google_self_driving_cars_still_need_human_intervention http://www.roboticstrends.com/article/google_self_driving_ca...
- gvb 10y ago
  For a very literal definition of close. The following is from 2014... it would be interesting to know how much progress they have made in how much detail their cars need to be successful. http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/05/all-the-world-a-track-the-trick-that-makes-googles-self-driving-cars-work/370871/ http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/05/all-th... The key to Google's success has been that these cars aren't forced to process an entire scene from scratch. Instead, their teams travel and map each road that the car will travel. And these are not any old maps. They are not even the rich, road-logic-filled maps of consumer-grade Google Maps. They're probably best thought of as ultra-precise digitizations of the physical world, all the way down to tiny details like the position and height of every single curb. A normal digital map would show a road intersection; these maps would have a precision measured in inches.
  - tim333 10y ago
    I guess you could get away with the detailed mapping for a taxi service in a limited area.
- stcredzero 10y ago
  I thought the Google cars are fairly close? The devil is truly in the details. You're covering 99.5% of all driving situations with 99.9% reliability? Well, then the remaining bit is going to be pretty devilishly hard! What do you do about cars that are stuck stationary on the the side of a bit of shoulder-less road? Here's what a human being does: They "sense" that something is up on the road ahead because the traffic patterns are different. They observe what the drivers ahead are doing, then start exercising caution concerning what's going on at the side of the road, maybe even to the point of hugging the other side of the lane out of caution. Are "driverless" cars doing this now? No. Are you going to have to develop human-equivalent AI to do that? No. But is taking things like this into account going to take a lot? Damn straight!

by CPLX 10y ago

bhups 10y ago

> Even more relevant, there's literally nothing in the historical record to suggest that the real breakthroughs when they come will come from a company like Uber. Why not? The team at Uber that is working on this is largely comprised of researchers from Carnegie Mellon and former members of Google's driverless car team. Historical record suggests otherwise...

CPLX 10y ago
The fact that Uber has never, once, successfully created a motor vehicle, physical product, or applied artificial intelligence device, ever, of any kind, has to top the list. I mean they are competing against Apple and BMW, among many others, presumably, who have actually made a car, computer, or transportation device that worked. That notwithstanding, the burden of proof is in the other direction.
- bhups 10y ago
  Sure, but the company is filled with ex-Apple/Google/etc folks that have worked on successfully creating motor vehicles, physical products, and applied artificial intelligence devices. Remember, a company is merely comprised of the people within it. If Uber has people that have joined from the kinds of companies that you mentioned, it becomes more and more indistinguishable from them.
  - CPLX 10y ago
    > Remember, a company is merely comprised of the people within it. Not really. Software companies are like that. They are the exception to the general rule that companies are composed of people plus things like factories, equipment, patents, trade secrets, inventory, real estate, global supply chains, and dealer networks for service and support. Making cars, even regular ones, is hard and Uber has never really done anything like it.
    - pfarnsworth 10y ago
      Uber isn't making cars, the CEO has made that explicitly clear. Uber has hired people who have built systems that enable a regular car to self-drive. I just don't understand where the disconnect is for you.
      - CPLX 10y ago
        > Uber has hired people who have built systems that enable a regular car to self-drive. No they haven't. I know this because there aren't any cars in the world that can self-drive.
        pfarnsworth 10y ago
        Then you would be wrong. But it of course depends on what your definition of "self-drive" is. If you have an overly strict, ridiculously high standard for what a self-driving car is, then in your mind, you're right. But if you define what Tesla already has in production as a self-driving car, then you would be wrong.
- robotresearcher 10y ago
  Not so long ago Uber had never once successfully provided a taxi ride, but they figured that out.
  - CPLX 10y ago
    Indeed. But somebody had.
jonathankoren 10y ago
There is a huge difference between the real world and a closed track. Brace yourselves. AI Winter Is Coming.
- tim333 10y ago
  Feels more like AI spring than autumn to me.
- marcusgarvey 10y ago
  >There is a huge difference between the real world and a closed track. Indeed. The unpredictable behavior of humans occupying the same environment is key. Remove this element and things get simpler (though not simple. And v2v comms might be required.) I suspect highways are the road infrastructure most akin to a closed track. Which is why the Otto acquisition is so interesting.
bduerst 10y ago
Historically they haven't done anything. OTTO was just 8 months old when it was acquired this week, and they had two blog posts - one saying they formed, one saying they're acquired.

tim333 10y ago

I thought the Google cars are fairly close? Edit: Figures from 2015 indicate human interventions to prevent an accident were about once per 74,000 miles or maybe slightly worse than humans but not that much. http://www.roboticstrends.com/article/google_self_driving_cars_still_need_human_intervention http://www.roboticstrends.com/article/google_self_driving_ca...

gvb 10y ago
For a very literal definition of close. The following is from 2014... it would be interesting to know how much progress they have made in how much detail their cars need to be successful. http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/05/all-the-world-a-track-the-trick-that-makes-googles-self-driving-cars-work/370871/ http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/05/all-th... The key to Google's success has been that these cars aren't forced to process an entire scene from scratch. Instead, their teams travel and map each road that the car will travel. And these are not any old maps. They are not even the rich, road-logic-filled maps of consumer-grade Google Maps. They're probably best thought of as ultra-precise digitizations of the physical world, all the way down to tiny details like the position and height of every single curb. A normal digital map would show a road intersection; these maps would have a precision measured in inches.
- tim333 10y ago
  I guess you could get away with the detailed mapping for a taxi service in a limited area.
stcredzero 10y ago
I thought the Google cars are fairly close? The devil is truly in the details. You're covering 99.5% of all driving situations with 99.9% reliability? Well, then the remaining bit is going to be pretty devilishly hard! What do you do about cars that are stuck stationary on the the side of a bit of shoulder-less road? Here's what a human being does: They "sense" that something is up on the road ahead because the traffic patterns are different. They observe what the drivers ahead are doing, then start exercising caution concerning what's going on at the side of the road, maybe even to the point of hugging the other side of the lane out of caution. Are "driverless" cars doing this now? No. Are you going to have to develop human-equivalent AI to do that? No. But is taking things like this into account going to take a lot? Damn straight!