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If we had autonomous planes it wouldn't significantly reduce cost or increase usage. But there is a lot of investment in autonomous drones. Planes also have a

If we had autonomous planes it wouldn't significantly reduce cost or increase usage. But there is a lot of investment in autonomous drones. Planes also have a very high safety bar to begin with, which cars do not. Same thing about trains, there's very little value in doing so, and resistance in the form of unions in some locations. Some trains are fully automated though, here's an article with some more info: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/wnj75z/why-dont-we-have-driverless-trains-yet https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/wnj75z/why-dont-w... Frankly having some dude from Toyota, who don't seem to be very invested in this space, tell me he doesn't think it's going to work isn't very convincing. Chris Urmson saying it might take up to 30 years is far more convincing: http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/self-driving/google-selfdriving-car-will-be-ready-soon-for-some-in-decades-for-others http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/self... But that's 30 years for the entire planet, not until it works at all. WayMo is already letting people ride their cars in Phoenix - presumably one of the places with good weather and easy roads, so I think metro-level deployment in the next 4 years seems about right. [EDIT]: And on the topic of trains. The MTA in NYC can't even seem to handle basic technical projects, like upgrading signaling infrastructure, or just extending a rail line a few miles without spending billions of dollars, so there's probably a decent chance that some of these are not automated due to sheer incompetence.

ScottBurson 9y ago
Gill Pratt is not "some dude" -- he's a robotics researcher with a PhD from MIT, and was a DARPA program manager [0]. [0] http://corporatenews.pressroom.toyota.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=5423 http://corporatenews.pressroom.toyota.com/article_display.cf...
- Eridrus 9y ago
  To engage with the substance of his argument a bit more, his argument is that perfection is a long way away: > “Historically human beings have shown zero tolerance for injury or death caused by flaws in a machine,” Pratt said. “As wonderful as AI is, AI systems are inevitably flawed… We’re not even close to Level 5. It’ll take many years and many more miles, in simulated and real world testing, to achieve the perfection required for level 5 autonomy.” I can believe that, but I also disagree that we need to be there for it to be useful. Level 4 is enough for large scale deployments.
  - munin 9y ago
    Lots of people make this argument. I have a counter-argument: when a technology is convenient or appealing enough, people will overlook even very obvious safety/health problems. Consider texting while driving, drinking, smoking/vaping, even driving itself. Cognitively, we know that there are a bunch of things we do that are dangerous, but we do them anyway out of habit or convenience. The argument that assumes we demand "zero tolerance" seems to assume that every person is a run-5k-a-day, celery eating, take-the-bus, machine. That's far from the case. We do tons of things knowing they're bad and risky already. I think it's far more likely that there would be a three step process for this technology to be adopted: first it's early adopters and everyone else is like "whoa that's too far" (I think this has already happened), then people start to uneasily use it, and when it's good enough they realize "oh holy crap, the machine can drive while I watch Netflix! this is awesome" and then they'll use it constantly. Soon, it just blends into the background. Maybe it isn't 100% safe, but what is? I don't think you'll get the truth out of focus groups, either. Try to hold a focus group on self driving car adoption and 99% of the people will tell you "only when it's perfect." Probably if you ask the same focus group if they text/eat/put on makeup and drive, 99% of them would tell you "absolutely not" when I'm sure that 100% of them do. I think that once a somewhat good enough assist gets into peoples hands, it won't stop.
    - linkregister 9y ago
      For a real-life example, just look up "Tesla autopilot almost crash" on YouTube. There are plenty of people who let Autopilot drive when they really shouldn't.
skywhopper 9y ago
It's important to point out that the WayMo project in Phoenix is only barely getting started, only serves limited areas, at limited times, and presumably in limited weather conditions; and most importantly that there's still a human driver in the vehicle at all times. A full-scale metro-wide service would need to operate at all hours, in most any weather, and without a human driver. That's not happening within four years.
- joshuamorton 9y ago
  >WayMo project in Phoenix is only barely getting started, only serves limited areas, Sure but is this because of capability or number of vehicles? >at limited times, Sure, because drivers don't want to work late at night. >and presumably in limited weather conditions; Why's that? >and most importantly that there's still a human driver in the vehicle at all times. Sure, but this isn't due to capability, but for regulatory reasons. As far as I know, the firefly vehicles (the cute little bubble ones) don't have steering wheels, and were in use 3 years ago. This argument doesn't make sense to me.
  - upvotinglurker 9y ago
    >>and presumably in limited weather conditions; >Why's that? Because Phoenix has extremely low precipitation: http://www.usclimatedata.com/climate/phoenix/arizona/united-states/usaz0166 http://www.usclimatedata.com/climate/phoenix/arizona/united-...
gwbas1c 9y ago
With software, it's always easy to make something appear to work. All the corner cases make something take 10-100x longer than the functional prototype. This became painfully obvious with the article floating around where a car misread a stop sign with a small amount of marking as a 45MPH speed limit sign. It's pretty clear that if a car is mistaking a red sign for a white sign, we have a very long time to go before the car can safely drive itself without a human observer to intervene when needed. When it comes to automated driving, we need to keep our optimism in check and know that it can take decades before we have safe robotic taxis. They may become legal in countries with lower bars for safety before they are legal in the US. The big problem, I think, will be when the drunks get into accidents because they will turn on autonomous driving, and don't get pulled over. Instead, they won't be sober enough to observe and intervene when the car screws up.
- devmunchies 9y ago
  > a car misread a stop sign with a small amount of marking as a 45MPH speed limit sign That's what happens when the sign were made for humans. They should start putting QR codes under traffic signs, with the human sign as a fall back or as a second point of reference.
  - nayuki 9y ago
    How can you verify at a glance that the QR Code associated with a human-readable sign is correct?
    - Eridrus 9y ago
      Not that I think QR codes are a good idea, but why does this property matter? People can be dicks to each other in myriad ways, I don't find these arguments that you could trick self-driving cars super compelling.
    - devmunchies 9y ago
      I said this in my comment: "...with the human sign as a fall back or as a second point of reference." You wouldn't remove human sign identification from the algorithm, you just supplement it with the small QR code under the sign.
tyingq 9y ago
>some dude from Toyota, who don't seem to be very invested in this space, tell me he doesn't think it's going to work isn't very convincing Similarly, opinions from those heavily invested aren't convincing. Are there people with credible experience, but without bias either way, that are giving projections on when it might be viable?
- ghaff 9y ago
  John Leonard at MIT is one long-time (going back to 2007 DARPA challenge) researcher who is very skeptical. e.g. http://searchcio.techtarget.com/blog/TotalCIO/Driverless-cars-not-a-solved-problem-says-MIT-professor http://searchcio.techtarget.com/blog/TotalCIO/Driverless-car... "I think that driving exposes fundamental issues in intelligence, fundamental issues in how the brain works. And we might be a very long way away.”
  - Eridrus 9y ago
    I think his research area (SLAM) might blind him a bit to the engineering side of things. Simultaneous Localization and Mapping is great if it works, but for something with high enough value... you can just map it from the start, and it makes your problem much easier. Which seems to be the approach people are taking.
    - ghaff 9y ago
      Mapping does make things easier and it arguably jump-started the current wave of autonomous vehicle work. But then you have to move beyond a precise map of how the world is supposed to be to how the world actually is including all the unpredictable behaviors of humans in the space. Having listened to Leonard speak, his skepticism seems to mostly be around how you deal with all the things like left hand turns in busy traffic, police waving people around an accident, etc. that happen on a daily basis.
      - Eridrus 9y ago
        I think that for a large enough benefit we will adapt how we interact with these systems. Before automobiles it was normal for people to walk in the middle of the street, but we adapted (some would argue this was a bad thing ofc). I don't think it's a prerequisite for autonomous systems to be the same as humans, the benefit is just too large for us to wait.
Piskvorrr 9y ago
MTA has 100+ years of legacy track. Imagine trying to retrofit anything into a 100-year-old codebase. Ouch.
- cmurf 9y ago
  In effect, aviation and automobile infrastructures likewise have 100 year old code bases. And for cars, it varies by state (and county and city but mostly by state).
- dsfyu404ed 9y ago
  It's not uncommon to slap a DRO kit on a 100yo machine. 100yo bridges routinely get upgrades in surface coating and/or instrumentation/electronics.

ScottBurson 9y ago

Gill Pratt is not "some dude" -- he's a robotics researcher with a PhD from MIT, and was a DARPA program manager [0]. [0] http://corporatenews.pressroom.toyota.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=5423 http://corporatenews.pressroom.toyota.com/article_display.cf...

Eridrus 9y ago
To engage with the substance of his argument a bit more, his argument is that perfection is a long way away: > “Historically human beings have shown zero tolerance for injury or death caused by flaws in a machine,” Pratt said. “As wonderful as AI is, AI systems are inevitably flawed… We’re not even close to Level 5. It’ll take many years and many more miles, in simulated and real world testing, to achieve the perfection required for level 5 autonomy.” I can believe that, but I also disagree that we need to be there for it to be useful. Level 4 is enough for large scale deployments.
- munin 9y ago
  Lots of people make this argument. I have a counter-argument: when a technology is convenient or appealing enough, people will overlook even very obvious safety/health problems. Consider texting while driving, drinking, smoking/vaping, even driving itself. Cognitively, we know that there are a bunch of things we do that are dangerous, but we do them anyway out of habit or convenience. The argument that assumes we demand "zero tolerance" seems to assume that every person is a run-5k-a-day, celery eating, take-the-bus, machine. That's far from the case. We do tons of things knowing they're bad and risky already. I think it's far more likely that there would be a three step process for this technology to be adopted: first it's early adopters and everyone else is like "whoa that's too far" (I think this has already happened), then people start to uneasily use it, and when it's good enough they realize "oh holy crap, the machine can drive while I watch Netflix! this is awesome" and then they'll use it constantly. Soon, it just blends into the background. Maybe it isn't 100% safe, but what is? I don't think you'll get the truth out of focus groups, either. Try to hold a focus group on self driving car adoption and 99% of the people will tell you "only when it's perfect." Probably if you ask the same focus group if they text/eat/put on makeup and drive, 99% of them would tell you "absolutely not" when I'm sure that 100% of them do. I think that once a somewhat good enough assist gets into peoples hands, it won't stop.
  - linkregister 9y ago
    For a real-life example, just look up "Tesla autopilot almost crash" on YouTube. There are plenty of people who let Autopilot drive when they really shouldn't.

skywhopper 9y ago

It's important to point out that the WayMo project in Phoenix is only barely getting started, only serves limited areas, at limited times, and presumably in limited weather conditions; and most importantly that there's still a human driver in the vehicle at all times. A full-scale metro-wide service would need to operate at all hours, in most any weather, and without a human driver. That's not happening within four years.

joshuamorton 9y ago
>WayMo project in Phoenix is only barely getting started, only serves limited areas, Sure but is this because of capability or number of vehicles? >at limited times, Sure, because drivers don't want to work late at night. >and presumably in limited weather conditions; Why's that? >and most importantly that there's still a human driver in the vehicle at all times. Sure, but this isn't due to capability, but for regulatory reasons. As far as I know, the firefly vehicles (the cute little bubble ones) don't have steering wheels, and were in use 3 years ago. This argument doesn't make sense to me.
- upvotinglurker 9y ago
  >>and presumably in limited weather conditions; >Why's that? Because Phoenix has extremely low precipitation: http://www.usclimatedata.com/climate/phoenix/arizona/united-states/usaz0166 http://www.usclimatedata.com/climate/phoenix/arizona/united-...

gwbas1c 9y ago

With software, it's always easy to make something appear to work. All the corner cases make something take 10-100x longer than the functional prototype. This became painfully obvious with the article floating around where a car misread a stop sign with a small amount of marking as a 45MPH speed limit sign. It's pretty clear that if a car is mistaking a red sign for a white sign, we have a very long time to go before the car can safely drive itself without a human observer to intervene when needed. When it comes to automated driving, we need to keep our optimism in check and know that it can take decades before we have safe robotic taxis. They may become legal in countries with lower bars for safety before they are legal in the US. The big problem, I think, will be when the drunks get into accidents because they will turn on autonomous driving, and don't get pulled over. Instead, they won't be sober enough to observe and intervene when the car screws up.

devmunchies 9y ago
> a car misread a stop sign with a small amount of marking as a 45MPH speed limit sign That's what happens when the sign were made for humans. They should start putting QR codes under traffic signs, with the human sign as a fall back or as a second point of reference.
- nayuki 9y ago
  How can you verify at a glance that the QR Code associated with a human-readable sign is correct?
  - Eridrus 9y ago
    Not that I think QR codes are a good idea, but why does this property matter? People can be dicks to each other in myriad ways, I don't find these arguments that you could trick self-driving cars super compelling.
  - devmunchies 9y ago
    I said this in my comment: "...with the human sign as a fall back or as a second point of reference." You wouldn't remove human sign identification from the algorithm, you just supplement it with the small QR code under the sign.

tyingq 9y ago

>some dude from Toyota, who don't seem to be very invested in this space, tell me he doesn't think it's going to work isn't very convincing Similarly, opinions from those heavily invested aren't convincing. Are there people with credible experience, but without bias either way, that are giving projections on when it might be viable?

ghaff 9y ago
John Leonard at MIT is one long-time (going back to 2007 DARPA challenge) researcher who is very skeptical. e.g. http://searchcio.techtarget.com/blog/TotalCIO/Driverless-cars-not-a-solved-problem-says-MIT-professor http://searchcio.techtarget.com/blog/TotalCIO/Driverless-car... "I think that driving exposes fundamental issues in intelligence, fundamental issues in how the brain works. And we might be a very long way away.”
- Eridrus 9y ago
  I think his research area (SLAM) might blind him a bit to the engineering side of things. Simultaneous Localization and Mapping is great if it works, but for something with high enough value... you can just map it from the start, and it makes your problem much easier. Which seems to be the approach people are taking.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    Mapping does make things easier and it arguably jump-started the current wave of autonomous vehicle work. But then you have to move beyond a precise map of how the world is supposed to be to how the world actually is including all the unpredictable behaviors of humans in the space. Having listened to Leonard speak, his skepticism seems to mostly be around how you deal with all the things like left hand turns in busy traffic, police waving people around an accident, etc. that happen on a daily basis.
    - Eridrus 9y ago
      I think that for a large enough benefit we will adapt how we interact with these systems. Before automobiles it was normal for people to walk in the middle of the street, but we adapted (some would argue this was a bad thing ofc). I don't think it's a prerequisite for autonomous systems to be the same as humans, the benefit is just too large for us to wait.

Piskvorrr 9y ago

MTA has 100+ years of legacy track. Imagine trying to retrofit anything into a 100-year-old codebase. Ouch.

cmurf 9y ago
In effect, aviation and automobile infrastructures likewise have 100 year old code bases. And for cars, it varies by state (and county and city but mostly by state).
dsfyu404ed 9y ago
It's not uncommon to slap a DRO kit on a 100yo machine. 100yo bridges routinely get upgrades in surface coating and/or instrumentation/electronics.