6 ms·

Why self-driving cars are not going to happen

16 points by z3t1 10y ago

kayman 10y ago
Very good points. Liability is an issue that has not been played out yet in any meaningful way. I think driving cars will happen soon simple because the ROI is too great to ignore. It doesn't have to happen on a grand scale. It could start with small things like pizza delivery or package delivery.
pretendscholar 10y ago
Its a trillion dollar industry it'll happen sooner or later.
- rustydev 10y ago
  by the same token ... it will put a lot of people out of work... expect civil unrest...
  - euyyn 10y ago
    Hey, no worries, the president-elect will negotiate the best deals with the robots.
stevenh 10y ago
Human drivers can feel safe around other cars because of mutually assured destruction. You are both afraid of dying if you make a significant mistake. Self-driving cars will never have this fear holding them back from making mistakes. You could argue there is actually an incentive to let them crash once in awhile, because the valuable real world data will be phoned home and used to improve the product for the small price of a human life. Once corruption sets in down the road, cars with autopilot capabilities will enable easy kidnapping and assassination. Simply activate backdoor remote piloting and crash the target's car (or the self-driving taxi they're in) into a tree at 70 mph, or lock the doors and drive to a pickup location to complete the kidnapping. Driving in a traditional car wouldn't protect the target, because a group with ubiquitous optional remote control over self-driving cars could also force surrounding cars to enter kamikaze mode and ram the target off the road. Governments will demand some kind of backdoor like this at some point, and then we have to trust they'll never abuse it (lol) and that no third parties will ever be able to hack it remotely. Even if you think the government is your friend, the first worm using a remote code execution exploit that hops from car to car via Bluetooth and activates its payload on a specific date will be able to kill tens of millions of people.
- nommm-nommm 10y ago
  I am a human driver. I do not feel safe around other cars.
  - snowwrestler 10y ago
    Here's the reality: people don't want self-driving cars. People want safer cars. Therefore, companies that want to sell self-driving cars are pitching them as safer. The fact of the matter, though, is that it remains to be seen whether self-driving cars are in fact safer. While a self-driving car will not suffer from some of the shortcomings of a human, like getting drunk or sleepy, it will suffer from other shortcomings that humans don't, like bugs and getting hacked. Ultimately the one thing we can trust about fellow humans in cars is that they want to survive their trip too. This is true with very few exceptions. The scary thing about self-driving cars is that they don't care if they survive.
    - ericnolte 10y ago
      For the record, I want a self-driving car and 9 out of 10 captchas confirm I am a human.
      - snowwrestler 10y ago
        Would you still want one if the data showed it was more dangerous than driving yourself around? We don't yet know if it will be, is my point. I realize that what I wrote above makes it look like I'm saying that no person wants a self-driving car at all. As you point out, that's not true. What I was trying to say is that, for most people, safety is a bigger consideration than self-driving capability. If a company said "our car drives itself but you're more likely to die in it," I doubt they would sell many.
        drchaos 10y ago
        > Would you still want one if the data showed it was more dangerous than driving yourself around? We don't yet know if it will be While we might not know yet whether self-driving cars are /already/ safer than human drivers, it is virtually impossible that they won't become much safer very quick. Simply because bugs in software can (and will) be fixed, each car gets an update, and the accident in question won't happen again, ever. Humans, on the other hand, cannot be updated easily, if at all.
xupybd 10y ago
It'll happen. It'll happen soon.
aroberge 10y ago
And this new article, about self-driving trucks next week in Ohio has been posted to HN http://www.cbsnews.com/news/self-driving-trucks-will-hit-the-road-in-ohio/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/self-driving-trucks-will-hit-the...
greenstonekid 10y ago
I would agree that the ability of computers to identify novel problems and hazards (such as a falling mattress) will continue to be inferior to that of humans for a long time. However identification of a novel problem and the anticipation that it will be a harzard in the near future is a trait that is only needed if your reaction time is too slow. A self driving cars reaction time will be fast enough that it doesn't need to anticipate anything. It will identify the the velocity of objects (it does not need to know what the object is) in front of it within in milliseconds of it becoming a harzard and decide on the correct corrective manouever to avoid it within milliseconds again.
- addicted 10y ago
  In addition even assuming that computers will not be as good at novel situations than humans (I don't agree with this, but I'll assume it for the purpose of this argument), we also need to assume that (damage prevented by himan's reactions to novel situations) > (damage caused by humans failing in non-novel situations), for the authors argument to work. I don't think this is evident st all, and if asked to pick, I would overwhelmingly favor the opposite. Further, for self driving cars, the moment something novel happens to them, it won't be novel to pretty much every self driving car running on the same software anymore (and assuming some basic data sharing between manufacturers, probably to all self driving cars). So a mattress falling is a novel situation for every driver the first time it happens to each individual driver. It's a novel situation for self driving cars only the first time it happens to any one of the self driving cars sharing the same model. The liability issue is not very useful. We would have to change laws slightly, but the insurance for self driving cars will be far more predictable, and the likes of Geico will probably give the owners of self driving cars better insurance than they would owners of human driven cars, because their safety record would be better. In fact, I bet if self driven cars come with the ability to also be driven by a human, once they're a little established, the ones that do have this feature will be far more expensive dive to insure than the ones that are purely self driven.
eutropia 10y ago
I feel like issue number one is being given the naturalistic fallacy treatment. If animals can react to falling objects, so can computer models. There's nothing magical about instincts.
srinikoganti 10y ago
Disappointed that this article even made it to hacker news. Problem#2: "Liability Issues" doesn't make sense. Geico, Allstate and other insurance companies can easily provide coverage. In fact the insurance gets easier with self-driving cars. Premium might go up or down based on the technology used. But coverage is very much doable. Driving is so monotonous,that it is a perfect "killer app" for computer vision and cognitive computing.
toss1 10y ago
As you're saying it can't be done, just don't get in the way of the guys actually getting it done. The mattress is a nice example of a novel problem, but a remote edge-case. Being safe from all badly secured loads is not a prerequesite for self-driving cars -- they merely need to be more safe on balance than the mass of human drivers before they start taking over. I suspect that even if self-driving-cars all did the worst possible thing and tailgated all badly secured loads, the overall safety improvement would still be a net positive. This prediction will suffer the same fate of other naysaying predictions by experts (never fly, never get to the moon, never know what a star is made of, etc., etc,., etc.....).
- BipolarElsa 10y ago
  > a remote edge-case Have you ever driven on the 405? Give me a break. We're far away (if at all) from true self-driving cars.
avmich 10y ago
The two reasons offered are the complexity of algorithms and the liability. I don't think these reasons are valid. For the complexity, I would be really surprised if self-driving car programmers wouldn't consider dangers from objects falling from other cars. In fact, this is relatively easy to consider. The other one is the liability. One explanation for ML software was that if "regular" software is about data and algorithm, the ML software is about data, model and algorithm. The idea is that algorithm in ML case is somewhat generic, and a lot of customization comes from learned model. In case of liability I think it's quite possible that a judge would make a decision basing on analysis of the model - if the model is "reasonable", then the decision based on that model could be too.
ericnolte 10y ago
Strong opinions and weak arguments.
cyborgx7 10y ago
Cute http://i.imgur.com/duI91L6.png http://i.imgur.com/duI91L6.png
rmrk 10y ago
Surely you are joking
FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago
This writer sure does have a high opinion of human cognition and hiw it applues to driving. In Los Angeles, I've seen people drive worse than trained monkeys. The problem with human drivers is that a lot of them maje idiotic mistakes a self-driving car wouldn't. Two weeks ago I saw a guy driving the wrong way down a one way street and he continued past me without realizing it.

16 points by z3t1 10y ago

Very good points. Liability is an issue that has not been played out yet in any meaningful way. I think driving cars will happen soon simple because the ROI is too great to ignore. It doesn't have to happen on a grand scale. It could start with small things like pizza delivery or package delivery.

pretendscholar 10y ago

Its a trillion dollar industry it'll happen sooner or later.

rustydev 10y ago
by the same token ... it will put a lot of people out of work... expect civil unrest...
- euyyn 10y ago
  Hey, no worries, the president-elect will negotiate the best deals with the robots.

stevenh 10y ago

Human drivers can feel safe around other cars because of mutually assured destruction. You are both afraid of dying if you make a significant mistake. Self-driving cars will never have this fear holding them back from making mistakes. You could argue there is actually an incentive to let them crash once in awhile, because the valuable real world data will be phoned home and used to improve the product for the small price of a human life. Once corruption sets in down the road, cars with autopilot capabilities will enable easy kidnapping and assassination. Simply activate backdoor remote piloting and crash the target's car (or the self-driving taxi they're in) into a tree at 70 mph, or lock the doors and drive to a pickup location to complete the kidnapping. Driving in a traditional car wouldn't protect the target, because a group with ubiquitous optional remote control over self-driving cars could also force surrounding cars to enter kamikaze mode and ram the target off the road. Governments will demand some kind of backdoor like this at some point, and then we have to trust they'll never abuse it (lol) and that no third parties will ever be able to hack it remotely. Even if you think the government is your friend, the first worm using a remote code execution exploit that hops from car to car via Bluetooth and activates its payload on a specific date will be able to kill tens of millions of people.

nommm-nommm 10y ago
I am a human driver. I do not feel safe around other cars.
- snowwrestler 10y ago
  Here's the reality: people don't want self-driving cars. People want safer cars. Therefore, companies that want to sell self-driving cars are pitching them as safer. The fact of the matter, though, is that it remains to be seen whether self-driving cars are in fact safer. While a self-driving car will not suffer from some of the shortcomings of a human, like getting drunk or sleepy, it will suffer from other shortcomings that humans don't, like bugs and getting hacked. Ultimately the one thing we can trust about fellow humans in cars is that they want to survive their trip too. This is true with very few exceptions. The scary thing about self-driving cars is that they don't care if they survive.
  - ericnolte 10y ago
    For the record, I want a self-driving car and 9 out of 10 captchas confirm I am a human.
    - snowwrestler 10y ago
      Would you still want one if the data showed it was more dangerous than driving yourself around? We don't yet know if it will be, is my point. I realize that what I wrote above makes it look like I'm saying that no person wants a self-driving car at all. As you point out, that's not true. What I was trying to say is that, for most people, safety is a bigger consideration than self-driving capability. If a company said "our car drives itself but you're more likely to die in it," I doubt they would sell many.
      - drchaos 10y ago
        > Would you still want one if the data showed it was more dangerous than driving yourself around? We don't yet know if it will be While we might not know yet whether self-driving cars are /already/ safer than human drivers, it is virtually impossible that they won't become much safer very quick. Simply because bugs in software can (and will) be fixed, each car gets an update, and the accident in question won't happen again, ever. Humans, on the other hand, cannot be updated easily, if at all.

xupybd 10y ago

It'll happen. It'll happen soon.

aroberge 10y ago

And this new article, about self-driving trucks next week in Ohio has been posted to HN http://www.cbsnews.com/news/self-driving-trucks-will-hit-the-road-in-ohio/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/self-driving-trucks-will-hit-the...

greenstonekid 10y ago

I would agree that the ability of computers to identify novel problems and hazards (such as a falling mattress) will continue to be inferior to that of humans for a long time. However identification of a novel problem and the anticipation that it will be a harzard in the near future is a trait that is only needed if your reaction time is too slow. A self driving cars reaction time will be fast enough that it doesn't need to anticipate anything. It will identify the the velocity of objects (it does not need to know what the object is) in front of it within in milliseconds of it becoming a harzard and decide on the correct corrective manouever to avoid it within milliseconds again.

addicted 10y ago
In addition even assuming that computers will not be as good at novel situations than humans (I don't agree with this, but I'll assume it for the purpose of this argument), we also need to assume that (damage prevented by himan's reactions to novel situations) > (damage caused by humans failing in non-novel situations), for the authors argument to work. I don't think this is evident st all, and if asked to pick, I would overwhelmingly favor the opposite. Further, for self driving cars, the moment something novel happens to them, it won't be novel to pretty much every self driving car running on the same software anymore (and assuming some basic data sharing between manufacturers, probably to all self driving cars). So a mattress falling is a novel situation for every driver the first time it happens to each individual driver. It's a novel situation for self driving cars only the first time it happens to any one of the self driving cars sharing the same model. The liability issue is not very useful. We would have to change laws slightly, but the insurance for self driving cars will be far more predictable, and the likes of Geico will probably give the owners of self driving cars better insurance than they would owners of human driven cars, because their safety record would be better. In fact, I bet if self driven cars come with the ability to also be driven by a human, once they're a little established, the ones that do have this feature will be far more expensive dive to insure than the ones that are purely self driven.

eutropia 10y ago

I feel like issue number one is being given the naturalistic fallacy treatment. If animals can react to falling objects, so can computer models. There's nothing magical about instincts.

srinikoganti 10y ago

Disappointed that this article even made it to hacker news. Problem#2: "Liability Issues" doesn't make sense. Geico, Allstate and other insurance companies can easily provide coverage. In fact the insurance gets easier with self-driving cars. Premium might go up or down based on the technology used. But coverage is very much doable. Driving is so monotonous,that it is a perfect "killer app" for computer vision and cognitive computing.

toss1 10y ago

As you're saying it can't be done, just don't get in the way of the guys actually getting it done. The mattress is a nice example of a novel problem, but a remote edge-case. Being safe from all badly secured loads is not a prerequesite for self-driving cars -- they merely need to be more safe on balance than the mass of human drivers before they start taking over. I suspect that even if self-driving-cars all did the worst possible thing and tailgated all badly secured loads, the overall safety improvement would still be a net positive. This prediction will suffer the same fate of other naysaying predictions by experts (never fly, never get to the moon, never know what a star is made of, etc., etc,., etc.....).

BipolarElsa 10y ago
> a remote edge-case Have you ever driven on the 405? Give me a break. We're far away (if at all) from true self-driving cars.

avmich 10y ago

The two reasons offered are the complexity of algorithms and the liability. I don't think these reasons are valid. For the complexity, I would be really surprised if self-driving car programmers wouldn't consider dangers from objects falling from other cars. In fact, this is relatively easy to consider. The other one is the liability. One explanation for ML software was that if "regular" software is about data and algorithm, the ML software is about data, model and algorithm. The idea is that algorithm in ML case is somewhat generic, and a lot of customization comes from learned model. In case of liability I think it's quite possible that a judge would make a decision basing on analysis of the model - if the model is "reasonable", then the decision based on that model could be too.

ericnolte 10y ago

Strong opinions and weak arguments.

cyborgx7 10y ago

Cute http://i.imgur.com/duI91L6.png http://i.imgur.com/duI91L6.png

rmrk 10y ago

Surely you are joking

FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago

This writer sure does have a high opinion of human cognition and hiw it applues to driving. In Los Angeles, I've seen people drive worse than trained monkeys. The problem with human drivers is that a lot of them maje idiotic mistakes a self-driving car wouldn't. Two weeks ago I saw a guy driving the wrong way down a one way street and he continued past me without realizing it.