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George Hotz is on a hacker crusade against the ‘scam’ of self-driving cars
- aurizon 8y agoSour grapes? I recall when push button elevators were installed. The union insisted an operator was still needed - who asked you 'what floor?' and then pushed that button. Without operators, western, and indeed all global civilization would come to an end...
- Semirhage 8y agoWhen push-button elevators were installed, they worked. Can you imagine if the pitch had been, “sometimes this elevator will kill the odd person, thanks for helping us work out the bugs.” As a bonus, the actual working elevator might not emerge until decades after installation began, and the early models only worked on alternate Wednesday’s.
- regulation_d 8y agoThis might be a valid point if the current system of driving wasn’t already killing millions of people per year.
- sverige 8y ago"Millions" is an overstatement. Annual deaths worldwide are around 1.25 million. And deaths in the U.S. have declined significantly from their peak in the '70s. All of that begs the question of whether autonomous cars will save lives. It is always asserted that it will "because humans are such bad drivers compared to computers," but there's no actual, real-world data to back up that claim. Oh yes, some of these vehicles have been tested with millions of road miles, but that is far from the scale of billions or trillions of road miles on every kind of road under all conditions where people travel currently.
- aetherspawn 8y agoThey’re still working out the kinks in the elevator in my old office; it spent 6 months of the year out of order every day being repaired, and numerous people got trapped in it. Eventually, people just stopped using it, even when it was “fixed”.. because it never really was. It behaved like a chronic dud. A bad self driving car would probably develop the same reputation.
- jonhendry18 8y agoOf course, it's not the elevator buttons that kill, it's the entrance.
- shabble 8y ago"Thank you for choosing Liftatron 4000. These multi-occupant vertical travel devices are almost fully autonomous, and typically require no manual control. Simply state your floor, and enjoy your journey. Trips passing floors 3, 7, or any floor in which any resident has recently taken a shower, may revert this Fully Autonomous Lifting Device to human operated mode immediately following a n assertive audio tone. Failure to correctly operate the pop-up controls during this unlikely occurrence may result in death or serious injury to you and any other passengers. Please take the time to familiarise yourself with all operating controls that will rarely if ever be required."
- Semirhage 8y ago...and then we have the issues of “non-standard” accents. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sAz_UvnUeuU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sAz_UvnUeuU
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- stephengillie 8y agoWhat would the elevator operator do if the elevator got stuck between floors, or kept going past the selected floor? Was there a hand brake for the elevator that only they could use?
- ams6110 8y agoThey probably couldn't do any more than they could do when the manually operated elevator got stuck between floors. I think the real reason that elevator operators stayed on for a period of time is the same reason that some older people sometimes reject new technology, such as smartphones or in-home digital assistants, even when it ostensibly makes a lot of things easier. The same thing probably happened with push-button elevators. People didn't want to have to think about pushing buttons when they were used to just stepping into the elevator and telling the operator what floor they needed, or more likely the operator already knew.
- danso 8y agoPoint taken, but it doesn't mean that the scope and requirements of elevator travel are directly comparable to road travel. Car driving has not only more axes of allowed movement, but several magnitudes more variables. The skill floor for operating an elevator has more or less been the same, and easy enough for someone without any training. But driving a car today still requires weeks of education, as it did decades ago.
- jancsika 8y ago> I recall when push button elevators were installed. The designs for some of the first push button elevator circuitry was really cool tech. It was a complicated problem because elevators could appear and disappear in a given building at will. Some would appear and operate within a building for only a few minutes. Otherwise could leave seconds after they arrived without signaling their departure. The circuitry had to account for this unreliability within the "network" of all possible elevators within a given city block. The circuity in each elevator car also had to handle collision avoidance as new elevators appeared within the same shaft as other elevator cars that were already moving in that shaft. It's fascinating to look at the designs: www.archive.org/apples-and-oranges.html Self-driving cars seem like a cake walk by comparison.
- rileyphone 8y agoElevators gaining sentience is a little to Hitchiker's Guide to me. Would be frightening.
- lowtolerance 8y agogeohot has always been equal parts brains and bombast.
- zck 8y ago> California’s DMV requires all companies testing self-driving cars to report how many times safety operators were forced to take control of its vehicles. You make what you measure. This encourages companies to have their safety operators take over less often: if you tell the operators to err on the side of safety and take over more often, your car will look less safe. I don't have a solution here, just pointing out how this actually can benefit companies that care less about safety.
- mcny 8y agoSorry if this is a stupid question but what does California do with these numbers? If Wayne has 10 engagements per mile driven with 10M miles driven and Tesla has 2 per mile with 500k miles driven and Uber has 1 per mile with 1M miles driven (all made up numbers), will there be some sort of penalty for below average scorers? Is it possible to categorically say who is the best? How does this work?
- lern_too_spel 8y agoIt just makes the data public.
- masonic 8y agoWhat are the consequences of not reporting those accurately, and how would anyone know?
- juliangoldsmith 8y agoWhat would the point of current self-driving car systems be? If you can't take your attention off the road anyway, it's basically a glorified, expensive cruise control.
- airstrike 8y ago> What would the point of current self-driving car systems be? Baby steps, man... baby steps
- toomuchtodo 8y ago> What would the point of current self-driving car systems be? You’re teaching the AI in Tesla’s case. Theoretically, your drive is safer with driver augmentation safety systems in other manufacturers’ vehicles, even if they’re not contributing data back for algo refinement.
- commaai 8y agoWe are training our AI using user data as well. https://medium.com/@comma_ai/the-half-way-point-55662cef04f2 https://medium.com/@comma_ai/the-half-way-point-55662cef04f2
- throwawayjava 8y agoEver drive 8-12 hour days for 2 days straight? Used to do it 4-5, but sometimes up to 10, times per year. I'd pay many thousands for lane-keeping on rural interstates in a heartbeat.
- closeparen 8y agoYep. I love the headspace of focusing on something so simple for so long. If I weren’t going to have the experience of driving, I would just fly.
- throwawayjava 8y ago> If I weren’t going to have the experience of driving, I would just fly. I mean, today, ditto. But for like at least 100M of the 300M+ Americans, that's not an option for various reasons...
- stephengillie 8y agoPrevious discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17522766 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17522766
- sctb 8y agoThanks. Since that submission didn't get too much attention, we've moved those comments here.
- mirceal 8y agoInteresting tidbit: Hotz actually means thief in a few languages. I actually don’t believe this guy. He may be brilliant, but there are quite a few brilliant people working on this problem - so no.
- mieseratte 8y ago> Interesting tidbit: Hotz actually means thief in a few languages. You've piqued my inner language geek, but cursory Googling / Google Translate hasn't given me any luck. What language(s) would that be?
- ivv 8y agoRomanian
- cozzyd 8y agohoţ (pronounced hotz) is Romanian for thief. Not sure what the etymology is but it could be a Slavic loan word. Edit: looked it up... Unknown etymology. I guess if you count Moldovan as a separate language then it means thief in at least two languages...
- gcbirzan 8y agoI found https://blogulblog.wordpress.com/z-postari-pe-alte-teme-lingvistice/etimologia-unor-cuvinte-tiganesti-din-romana/ https://blogulblog.wordpress.com/z-postari-pe-alte-teme-ling... which lists it as coming from Romani. However, I find that a bit weird, as it's čor – hoț. The first letter being https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_postalveolar_affricate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_postalveolar_affrica... So, yes, cioara could come from there, but not sure how you get from there to hot. And, DEX lists cioara as coming from the Albanian sorrë.
- mmusson 8y agoI think the parent maybe have been attempting a joke. I also could not find any languages where Hotz means thief. Interestingly it means cold in Basque and hotspot in Estonian.
- Shank 8y ago> If the driver looks down or away from the road for two seconds, a visual warning will appear on the Eon’s screen. After four seconds, the driver will hear an audible alert. And after six seconds, the system will disengage and begin to slow down. The biggest use of some kind of driver assist system is something that can keep me going straight and at a constant speed on a relatively open road while I twist open a bottle cap and take a sip of a drink. Making me have a death stare out of the windshield to avoid disengagement is about as useful as standard cruise control. Except standard cruise control isn't going to be prone to making a mistake about whether or not I'm paying attention, and then stopping my car because it isn't satisfied.
- ianlevesque 8y agoNow that it’s open source you can remove that part.
- raslah 8y agoprecisely what i was thinking.
- alkonaut 8y agoRight. Keeping in lane for 2 secs when you spill your coffee or the kid screams or you do something else that makes you lose your concentration for a short while is great. I don’t need to sleep or work for an hour during a commute. Not now not tomorrow. I can drive the damn thing or at least watch it drive itself. And like mr Hotz I believe that’s what it will be like for decades to come. My prediction is flying cars before completely self driving ones. And not some novelty one person quadcopter. I mean the proper Blade Runner ones.
- maym86 8y agoThis guy is all talk and represents one problem with Silicon Valley. There are a lot of people now who can talk the talk and get the attention needed to get money but with no ability to deliver. Stop giving him attention until he actually shows something that matches even a little bit of what he is promising. People who know what they're doing technically are deeply aware of the issues with their technology. Anyone in this area knows how hard it is to make these vehicles work. He is finding out the reality of what he promised two years late and is spinning it to get more attention.
- commaai 8y agoYou are aware we are giving away open source software that will control your car, right? It's online today! And it's on par with the best systems money can buy, Tesla Autopilot and GM Super Cruise. https://github.com/commaai/openpilot https://github.com/commaai/openpilot No ability to deliver?
- jaredklewis 8y agoNot disputing your claim, but how did you determine the comma Ai system was on par with that of autopilot and super cruise? In general, are there any standardized tests for self driving cars, like car safety ratings but for the driving part? Basically, is there even a way to measure how good a driving system is?
- commaai 8y agoNot really. It's mostly subjective, but a good metric is time between user action needed. We did 2 hours of press demos on highways without a single one. (usually it's about an hour) In addition to us, we have a community of users on slack with thousands of miles of experience with each system. I think most would generally agree with the quality assessment. You'll also find a bunch of YouTube videos comparing them.
- mynewtb 8y agoA good metric would be collision avoidance in a multitude of realistic tests, simulating all kinds of dynamic obstacles and vehicle error modes.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- flippmoke 8y agoIf you are interested in learning more about George, you should listen to him talking at Mapbox's Locate conference with the Mapbox CEO, Eric Gundersen [1]. Its another example of George being George. I just happened to be called out during the talk, but overall rather enjoyed it. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9WxlR1ZTZc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9WxlR1ZTZc
- aresant 8y agoI prefer this one -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iUvuaChDEg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iUvuaChDEg The original rap diss of Sony who was suing him, actually badass :)
- SOLAR_FIELDS 8y agoI found his description of his company, “ghost riding for the masses”, to be particularly amusing
- asteli 8y agoHere's the low-level controller for Comma AI's self-driving software. Lateral and longitudinal control, as well as actuator command are contained within. Their low level control is done in Python, on top of Android, on a smartphone. No further comment, your honor. https://github.com/commaai/openpilot/tree/devel/selfdrive/controls https://github.com/commaai/openpilot/tree/devel/selfdrive/co...
- BugsJustFindMe 8y agoIt sounds to me like you don't understand how little performance you actually need for this kind of stuff. People have been writing effective autopilot software for decades using hardware that wasn't even particularly fast at the time and may as well be a pile of sand today. What exactly do you think that that code needs to do? I promise that Python on a new smartphone can do way more now than we could do 20 years ago on a Pentium in C or C++. You're lucky if any of your sensors emit at even 100Hz.
- maym86 8y agoI think OP's point is about the latency from all the layers. At 70 mph, where 100ms is 3m, this is a problem for a control system.
- commaai 8y agoHuman latency is about 250ms.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Jack000 8y agoI think that's not a fair comparison - a digital control system needs much finer time slices to compete with human reaction time. A control system that worked off of webcam images at 4hz would be a jittery mess, or just very slow if using a Kalman filter.
- yters 8y agoBrilliant! Pure AI is a dead end street. Turing machines cannot increase their minimal Kolmogorov sufficient statistic, so will always be unable to learn more information than is put into them originally. Humans are the only known information creators, and so only hybrid human/AI systems can work in the real world.
- jrace 8y ago>Humans are the only known information creators What do you think whale-sounds and bird-songs are?
- rileyphone 8y agoObviously entropy!
- yters 8y agoIf whale-sounds and bird-songs are information, and human intelligence is the only thing that can create information, then the conclusion is whales and birds were created by some kind of intelligence.
- jrace 8y agoSo it is your belief that whales and birds and all other animals were created by humans? And if so, then why would a human not be able to create an AI that is capable of creating information?
- yters 8y agoI think they were created by God. God is a meta-intelligence, an intelligent being that can create other intelligent beings. Our intelligence is only capable of creating mechanical beings, which are necessarily not intelligent. The second question does not follow. If intelligence is defined by the ability to do something non-algorithmic (i.e. create information), then AI can never be intelligent.
- 8y ago
- 21 8y agoSo now we'll have weekend "hackers" downloading this open source software, tweaking it, and hurling their cars down the road at high speed. Great. The system also seems to have a single front facing camera. How will this detect for example a cyclist riding along the car and prevent the car from turning into him?
- xedeon 8y agoYou seem to have pretty strong opinions without even actually taking the time to look into comma.ai and how it works. All it takes is 5 minutes to know that it actually uses the built-in safety systems in cars like ADAS, LKAS, ACC. Hence, they only support only specific make/models. It's not just the "single front facing camera".
- qznc 8y agoNone of these built-in safety systems is design to work without a human driver having the actual responsibility. This is why e.g. ACC is a "comfort" system but not a "safety" system. Even systems like AEB don't come with a guarantee. They just might help.
- xedeon 8y ago>None of these built-in safety systems is design to work without a human driver having the actual responsibility You are exactly right! which is why NEITHER comma.ai, Tesla's Autopilot, Nissan's Propilot, and GM Supercruise are being marketed as such i.e. only as L2/Partial Automation at the moment.
- alkonaut 8y agoBut cars that have any cameras likely already have a front facing one. So if they support only cars that have other cameras it can use (and assuming now that autonomous driving requires camera/or lidar view) why do they even need the camera? Did he drive that civic autonomously without lidars and without it knowing what’s behind it?
- 8y ago
- anfractuosity 8y agoIsn't a key part of openpilot, the vision related code, still closed source?
- raslah 8y agoDriver assist is a good way to get people comfortable with automated driving. The only way autonomous vehicles will ever really show any benefit is if communities, municipalities and eventually, governments start rolling them out en masse and incentivising their purchase; SDVs driving together is the only way to finally eliminate traffic related deaths and make travel smooth and fast. As long as you have computers trying to predict and/or respond to erratic human behavior, you're fighting a losing battle; it doesn't matter how many times you rehearse it you'll hit a certain plateau where the correct decisions simply can't be determined.
- jacksmith21006 8y agoDisagree and think it does the opposite. It can never be done safely and with the crashes and deaths it gives what Waymo is doing a bad name.
- brokenmachine 8y agoI'm personally very happy that homemade self-driving tech would be illegal to use on the road in my country.
- amelius 8y agoHow about a small startup selling that tech? Would it be legal to use? Curious, what kind of regulations does your country have in place?
- brokenmachine 8y agoI'm in Australia. Cars need to be registered to legally be on the road, and you couldn't register a car with some homemade self-driving tech attached to it. If you had a small startup selling the tech, I'm sure there's some painful and lengthy process to prove it's safe. But certainly if the code is user-modifiable, it wouldn't be approved. How do other countries operate without such regulations? Certainly I've seen some crazy car mods on the road in US TV shows that would never be allowed without masses of red tape here in Australia. Even to import a normal car from Japan to Australia you need to get child restraint attachments installed/engineer approval/etc. I don't know how a car could possibly be considered safe otherwise. Some of those "Pimp my Ride"-type show mods just don't seem safe.
- jimnotgym 8y agoWhen George demonstrated his first model I showed a friend who designs safety critical systems. To paraphrase he said, that of course you can hack something together in a weekend that does this. However a analysing a million edge cases, making sure all failures fail in a safe way takes a lot of time and knowledge. It made me think that this is a great demonstration of the difference between hobbyist hacking and professional engineering.
- jsiepkes 8y ago> that of course you can hack something together in a weekend that does this. However a analysing a million edge cases, making sure all failures fail in a safe way takes a lot of time and knowledge. Thats true for a lot of things. Most developers can whip up a Slack clone in a weekend, create an uber clone in a weekend or create a Netflix clone in a weekend. But dealing with all the edge cases, the details, making it scalable, etc. that's were the pain is.
- amai 8y agoHotz always reminds me of those kids using Adderall in the TV series Silicon Valley.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 8y agoI think that this being marketed as anything other than the next generation of cruise control is a lie. Don’t get me wrong, for that it’s absolutely great. I would pay for this kit (if my car was new enough to actually have software for it) just for the ability to be able to eat a sandwich on the way to work or cruise down the boring parts of E6 or I-10 in a more relaxed, reclined position. I think Hotz is wrong about the predictions of self driving cars, but he doesn’t have to be right to make this business succeed in the medium term because he is filling an entirely different market niche here.
- nojvek 8y agoTruly self driving car is incredibly hard. He’s right: waymo, cruise, Uber, Tesla are over-selling it. People have died in Teslas because drivers were over confident in their technology. Uber has run over people because their software couldn’t see humans in dark. A reliable and smarter cruise control can save so many lives. I think we’re trying to jump the gun sometimes. The number of highway deaths is insane. If software just augmented humans better and saved those people/animals we’re coming out ahead as a civilization.
- iamleppert 8y agoI personally do not want a smartphone with a 3D printed case and heatsink controlling my car. Do you hear that? It's the sound of a critical flaw in your product, no matter what you do technically you are never going to have a mass appeal product that becomes more than the nerds who hang out in your Slack channel. But it's fine for a lifestyle business I suppose. You can market to them and sell them over-priced odb2 fit-bit-for-your-car dongles. Until Honda or whoever comes out with a "good enough" consumer grade "auto-pilot" (whatever that means these days because you still have to watch the car like a teenage driver), you'll loose a huge swatch of users right there who are only spending time on it to be on the cutting edge of tech and to look cool for their friends. Once it becomes a blender, those users will leave and go on to the next thing that grabs their attention in a banner ad. Or else people will get bored, loose interest after the first few joy rides with their friends. I'd imagine retention would be difficult in a business like that which takes a lot of sustained effort and engagement from the users. The only possible path forward in this market is to partner with an OEM (car manufacture vroom vroom), have access to users, or make some kind of must-have tech that you can then con one of the real big money backed self-driving companies into buying. I've seen a bunch of web apps popping up lately that offer to annotate your training data, those seem like a lot better pump and dump tech companies than this dashcam that plays Pandora and runs some cool python PID controller.
- stillsut 8y agoIt seems likely that autonomy will not be first adopted by the US but instead in the 'wild west' of BRICs - Brazil, Russia, India or China. Also maybe in a country small, rich, authoritarian, and organized enough to build infrastructure around it and limit liability like Singapore or Luxembourg. And oh look, a cheap and open source solution that gets you started in CommaAI. I think they (or a fork of them) are quite good candidates for the first system to reach one trillion miles driven. There will no doubt be carnage. But the benefits of self driving are going to be first on display outside of US markets.