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Since we're finally getting some refutations to Self-Driving Hype, let me drop some quotes here: “I tell adult audiences not to expect it in their lifetimes. A

Since we're finally getting some refutations to Self-Driving Hype, let me drop some quotes here: “I tell adult audiences not to expect it in their lifetimes. And I say the same thing to students” "Merely dealing with lighting conditions, weather conditions, and traffic conditions is immensely complicated. The software requirements are extremely daunting. Nobody even has the ability to verify and validate the software. I estimate that the challenge of fully automated cars is 10 orders of magnitude more complicated than [fully automated] commercial aviation." - Steve Shladover, transportation researcher at the University of California, Berkeley http://www.automobilemag.com/news/the-hurdles-facing-autonomous-vehicles/ http://www.automobilemag.com/news/the-hurdles-facing-autonom... "With autonomous cars, you see these videos from Google and Uber showing a car driving around, but people have not taken it past 80 percent. It's one of those problems where it's easy to get to the first 80 percent, but it's incredibly difficult to solve the last 20 percent. If you have a good GPS, nicely marked roads like in California, and nice weather without snow or rain, it's actually not that hard. But guess what? To solve the real problem, for you or me to buy a car that can drive autonomously from point A to point B—it's not even close. There are fundamental problems that need to be solved." - Herman Herman, director of the Carnegie-Mellon University Robotics Institute https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/d7y49y/robotics-lab-uber-gutted-says-driving-cars-are-not-even-close-carnegie-mellon-nrec https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/d7y49y/robotics-l... "While I enthusiastically support the research, development, and testing of self-driving cars, as human limitations and the propensity for distraction are real threats on the road, I am decidedly less optimistic about what I perceive to be a rush to field systems that are absolutely not ready for widespread deployment, and certainly not ready for humans to be completely taken out of the driver’s seat." - Mary Cummings, director of the Humans and Autonomy Laboratory at Duke https://www.commerce.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/c85cb4ef-8d7f-40fb-968c-c476c5220a3c/8BC0CC7E137483CEFD0C928ECB14E74E.cummings-senate-testimony-2016.pdf https://www.commerce.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/c85cb4ef... [pdf] All quotes pulled from this article (which is really quite good and you should read it in full): https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/10/self-driving-cars-how-badly-is-the-technology-hyped.html https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/10/self-driving-cars-ho...

ghaff 9y ago
There's quite a bit of research on the Duke site around, among other things, issues with inattentiveness when supervising automated systems. https://hal.pratt.duke.edu/publications https://hal.pratt.duke.edu/publications I saw Cummings speak on a panel a couple years back. She talked about automation in aircraft (she's a former Navy fighter pilot) and she made the comment that humans don't handle boredom well.
redler 9y ago
The easy part is relatively easy, but it's hard to conceive how the hard part will be solved. Just driving around New York City for a while makes me think that generalized autonomous driving, as a problem, is essentially "solving" strong AI. Consider the case of approaching a complex intersection during rush hour. There's a traffic cop in the intersection waving his hands around. You reach the intersection, the light is green, you want to proceed straight, but cars are blocking the way because they're backed up into the intersection on the cross street. The cop points directly at you, making eye contact, blows a whistle, and shouts at you, pointing and yelling "right right right". You're uncertain whether he means you should try to weave around the blocking cars, but he blows the whistle again and it becomes clear he is telling you you cannot go straight, and you must divert and make a right turn right at the intersection. He gestures again, indicating that he wants you to turn into the nearest lane on the cross street, then points to the car behind you and indicates that it should also turn, but into the center lane. You nod, and he looks away to another car. This happened. So a self-driving car would presumably have to understand and interpret shouted commands, realize that they are the one being shouted at by someone with the right authority, recognize gestures, somehow be able to engage in the equivalent of recognized eye contact, be able to make an OK gesture, and have some sort of theory-of-mind about the traffic cop as well as the drivers of other cars. Not easy.
- archagon 9y ago
  Even worse: I've been on several mountain roads with stretches of one-way traffic, where either an officer has to signal a switch in lane direction every few minutes (which might not be clear otherwise, especially around a bend), or cars have to occasionally reverse to let opposing traffic through. Don't think I'll ever be letting an AI do that!

ghaff 9y ago

There's quite a bit of research on the Duke site around, among other things, issues with inattentiveness when supervising automated systems. https://hal.pratt.duke.edu/publications https://hal.pratt.duke.edu/publications I saw Cummings speak on a panel a couple years back. She talked about automation in aircraft (she's a former Navy fighter pilot) and she made the comment that humans don't handle boredom well.

redler 9y ago

The easy part is relatively easy, but it's hard to conceive how the hard part will be solved. Just driving around New York City for a while makes me think that generalized autonomous driving, as a problem, is essentially "solving" strong AI. Consider the case of approaching a complex intersection during rush hour. There's a traffic cop in the intersection waving his hands around. You reach the intersection, the light is green, you want to proceed straight, but cars are blocking the way because they're backed up into the intersection on the cross street. The cop points directly at you, making eye contact, blows a whistle, and shouts at you, pointing and yelling "right right right". You're uncertain whether he means you should try to weave around the blocking cars, but he blows the whistle again and it becomes clear he is telling you you cannot go straight, and you must divert and make a right turn right at the intersection. He gestures again, indicating that he wants you to turn into the nearest lane on the cross street, then points to the car behind you and indicates that it should also turn, but into the center lane. You nod, and he looks away to another car. This happened. So a self-driving car would presumably have to understand and interpret shouted commands, realize that they are the one being shouted at by someone with the right authority, recognize gestures, somehow be able to engage in the equivalent of recognized eye contact, be able to make an OK gesture, and have some sort of theory-of-mind about the traffic cop as well as the drivers of other cars. Not easy.

archagon 9y ago
Even worse: I've been on several mountain roads with stretches of one-way traffic, where either an officer has to signal a switch in lane direction every few minutes (which might not be clear otherwise, especially around a bend), or cars have to occasionally reverse to let opposing traffic through. Don't think I'll ever be letting an AI do that!