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Unfortunately I think it's one of those things that is both inexcusable and guaranteed to happen. It absolutely makes sense to put a human in a car you're test

Unfortunately I think it's one of those things that is both inexcusable and guaranteed to happen. It absolutely makes sense to put a human in a car you're testing and don't have full confidence in yet but are sending into real traffic. Not doing so would be ludicrously negligent. However, humans simply don't maintain focus for a long period of time without some sort of extreme, years-long training. The ability of monks to concentrate on a single thought for hours is correctly seen as very, very difficult. There's no way any regular person could deal well with a scenario like "sometime in the next 8 hours, you may or may not need to smash this brake pedal with a second's notice, but other than that you have no task." That's one of the things that most worries me about "almost there" systems like Tesla's. That said, if you've decided to attempt this anyway, checking your phone is definitely not okay.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Rjevski 9y ago
However, if the car saw the pedestrian, even as a false positive (presumably from far enough away to have enough time to brake/avoid it), I think it should’ve alerted the driver. The driver would’ve most likely started paying attention and avoided the crash.
- dllthomas 9y ago
  > I think it should’ve alerted the driver. I like the idea, and if these pruned false positives are rare enough I think it would be a great safety measure - you could even have the driver verbally label things, which might have both training (in the AI sense) and awareness (for the humans) benefits (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing_and_calling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing_and_calling). Note that "rare enough" needn't be all that rare, just that if it is multiple every second or something it clearly wouldn't be practical.
  - mehrdadn 9y ago
    >> I think it should’ve alerted the driver. > I like the idea I'm not sure how well I would respond to a sudden alarm when everything has been deemed safe until a moment ago. I'd potentially need several seconds to figure out what is going on. I would hazard a guess that an approach that might be more fruitful be to have a meter that dynamically adjusts the "riskiness" of the situation between a yellow, orange, and red zone, so that the driver (a) has to pay attention constantly, (b) gets information constantly, and hence (c) has a better chance to react earlier. I know if I see a "danger meter" getting into the orange zone, I'm not going to wait until it goes into the red before I start paying attention.
    - dllthomas 9y ago
      "I like the idea" doesn't mean I will like any given implementation of the idea - I certainly agree that there's plenty of room to get the interface wrong. I want the driver paying attention constantly, but I want them paying attention to the environment, not a meter. A periodic "things are unusually interesting, what's going on?" query seems like a way to motivate that. But any actual attempt at a solution should be validated in testing...
SilasX 9y ago
I think there's some room for improvement though. Instead of "just one human in there", they could put them out in teams of two, and have periodic "awareness checks" that you have to respond to by pressing a driving-irrelevant button.
- blattimwind 9y ago
  Dead-man switches do not work.
  - SilasX 9y ago
    Don't work for what purpose, according to whom? Are you sure that applies here? What I suggested there isn't really a deadman's switch ("stop if no one is around to do task x"), but something to periodically, randomly check the driver's attentiveness, and can raise a red flag if they take too long to respond. A deadman's switch is different and enforces "do X if person Y stops doing this thing at this predictable interval" -- not what I was proposing.
    - blattimwind 9y ago
      Vigilance control. But even these fail with more experienced users, similar to how alarm clocks fail some people (they wake up just enough to get up and turn the alarm off, then continue sleeping).
      - SilasX 9y ago
        I was proposing it as a way to validate engagement by the testing teams, not the mass market.
        blattimwind 9y ago
        Like I said, these are especially hard to get right for frequent users, presumably your testing teams would log a lot of hours on these - just like train drivers, which have had this exact same problem.
Lionsion 9y ago
> However, humans simply don't maintain focus for a long period of time without some sort of extreme, years-long training. And anyone who's achieved this ability is unlikely to be willing to be hired as 1099 contractor for whatever low pay is being offered.
- Piskvorrr 9y ago
  Immaterial. "Let's keep killing bystanders, that's cheaper" is a good way to rouse a mob with torches and pitchforks; conversely, not very useful for getting the technology approved.
taneq 9y ago
GM SuperCruise uses a driver-facing camera to confirm that the driver does in fact have eyes on the road. Something like that would be trivial for Uber to add to its self-driving car fleet.
JorgeGT 9y ago
> but other than that you have no task. Then give them a task! Install a HUD drawing a box in real time with the classification of nearest detected object (bike, pedestrian, car, mailbox) and put buttons in the wheel for the driver to confirm/reject the classification. This way: a) you improve your machine learning b) driver has wheels on the road c) driver has hands on the wheel d) driver is focused on incoming objects

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

Rjevski 9y ago

However, if the car saw the pedestrian, even as a false positive (presumably from far enough away to have enough time to brake/avoid it), I think it should’ve alerted the driver. The driver would’ve most likely started paying attention and avoided the crash.

dllthomas 9y ago
> I think it should’ve alerted the driver. I like the idea, and if these pruned false positives are rare enough I think it would be a great safety measure - you could even have the driver verbally label things, which might have both training (in the AI sense) and awareness (for the humans) benefits (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing_and_calling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing_and_calling). Note that "rare enough" needn't be all that rare, just that if it is multiple every second or something it clearly wouldn't be practical.
- mehrdadn 9y ago
  >> I think it should’ve alerted the driver. > I like the idea I'm not sure how well I would respond to a sudden alarm when everything has been deemed safe until a moment ago. I'd potentially need several seconds to figure out what is going on. I would hazard a guess that an approach that might be more fruitful be to have a meter that dynamically adjusts the "riskiness" of the situation between a yellow, orange, and red zone, so that the driver (a) has to pay attention constantly, (b) gets information constantly, and hence (c) has a better chance to react earlier. I know if I see a "danger meter" getting into the orange zone, I'm not going to wait until it goes into the red before I start paying attention.
  - dllthomas 9y ago
    "I like the idea" doesn't mean I will like any given implementation of the idea - I certainly agree that there's plenty of room to get the interface wrong. I want the driver paying attention constantly, but I want them paying attention to the environment, not a meter. A periodic "things are unusually interesting, what's going on?" query seems like a way to motivate that. But any actual attempt at a solution should be validated in testing...

SilasX 9y ago

I think there's some room for improvement though. Instead of "just one human in there", they could put them out in teams of two, and have periodic "awareness checks" that you have to respond to by pressing a driving-irrelevant button.

blattimwind 9y ago
Dead-man switches do not work.
- SilasX 9y ago
  Don't work for what purpose, according to whom? Are you sure that applies here? What I suggested there isn't really a deadman's switch ("stop if no one is around to do task x"), but something to periodically, randomly check the driver's attentiveness, and can raise a red flag if they take too long to respond. A deadman's switch is different and enforces "do X if person Y stops doing this thing at this predictable interval" -- not what I was proposing.
  - blattimwind 9y ago
    Vigilance control. But even these fail with more experienced users, similar to how alarm clocks fail some people (they wake up just enough to get up and turn the alarm off, then continue sleeping).
    - SilasX 9y ago
      I was proposing it as a way to validate engagement by the testing teams, not the mass market.
      - blattimwind 9y ago
        Like I said, these are especially hard to get right for frequent users, presumably your testing teams would log a lot of hours on these - just like train drivers, which have had this exact same problem.

Lionsion 9y ago

> However, humans simply don't maintain focus for a long period of time without some sort of extreme, years-long training. And anyone who's achieved this ability is unlikely to be willing to be hired as 1099 contractor for whatever low pay is being offered.

Piskvorrr 9y ago
Immaterial. "Let's keep killing bystanders, that's cheaper" is a good way to rouse a mob with torches and pitchforks; conversely, not very useful for getting the technology approved.

taneq 9y ago

GM SuperCruise uses a driver-facing camera to confirm that the driver does in fact have eyes on the road. Something like that would be trivial for Uber to add to its self-driving car fleet.

JorgeGT 9y ago

> but other than that you have no task. Then give them a task! Install a HUD drawing a box in real time with the classification of nearest detected object (bike, pedestrian, car, mailbox) and put buttons in the wheel for the driver to confirm/reject the classification. This way: a) you improve your machine learning b) driver has wheels on the road c) driver has hands on the wheel d) driver is focused on incoming objects