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We're going to get driverless cars one way or another. Even if the problems are much more intractable than we first gave them credit for people are too clever.
by 3pt14159 8y ago
We're going to get driverless cars one way or another. Even if the problems are much more intractable than we first gave them credit for people are too clever.
Take driving in the snow, for instance. It might be completely impossible to do it safely for the next twenty years by having a computer manage the drive path, but designs might create the ability for cars to form mini-trains where the lead car is driven by a human and the cars fall in line together. Then you could still get in a self-driving car, it could still get you from Toronto to Ottawa. It could even get you right to your front door! They'd just have to pay some train drivers (conductors?) when the weather is too harsh for to put it in full auto mode.
We're going to get there. The benefits are too obvious and we can work around the persistent problems.
- paganel 8y agoObvious question: why just not take the train? In your example I’d have to depend on other strangers for my private travel, one of the most important things that made me purchase my first car in my 30s, I don’t want that.
- kd0amg 8y agoI'd rather depend just on there being a handful of other people who want to go where I want to go than on there being an active railroad as well.
- TulliusCicero 8y agoAt least in the US, transit is unfortunately quite bad on average, and that doesn't look to change anytime soon in most areas.
- 3pt14159 8y agoI actually think the European model is superior (dense towns with trains between), but we have what we have.
- jaclaz 8y ago>We're going to get driverless cars one way or another. Sure we will, no doubt about that. The question is when? In 10 to 20 years from now level 4 sounds reasonable, in 2 to 5 years from now it sounds not, notwithstanding the (daily) announces about this or that new autonomous driving system or related "breakthrough".
- TulliusCicero 8y agoSnow seems like one of the easier problems, honestly. Pretty much all the "technical" problems seem pretty straightforward. Waymo already posted an article where they talked about how they can filter falling snow out of their LIDAR input, for example. It's the social problems that are hard for AI, like how to handle a construction zone that looks like you need to break the law to get around. Those don't always have easily generalizable answers.
- amelius 8y ago> It's the social problems that are hard for AI, like how to handle a construction zone that looks like you need to break the law to get around. For these cases, the car could have a manual mode (?)
- Symbiote 8y agoA huge benefit was people without a license being able to use the car alone.
- jpindar 8y agoHow can it be both hard to handle a construction zone that you need to break the law to get around and also easy to handle snow piles that you need to break the law to get around?
- omg_ketchup 8y agoSo construction signs now need a QR code on them to provide guidance. Companies that work on the road like that are presumably regulated somehow, right?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]