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I’ve taken downvotes from HN optimists for years about self driving cars. The slightest bit of criticism would have comments calling me an idiot 20 different wa

I’ve taken downvotes from HN optimists for years about self driving cars. The slightest bit of criticism would have comments calling me an idiot 20 different ways. Then a single dead pedestrian changes all the news articles and the opinions change. We are a very, very long way away from self driving taxi cabs. What a total PR scam that was - but it did help valuations.

njarboe 8y ago
In the current legal environment, self driving taxi cabs everywhere at all times will never exist. Waymo seems to think they can work in Arizona desert though. How many deaths per year would be acceptable? Like you mention, in the US, it seems that zero deaths per year, similar to commercial aviation, would be required. It is a bit of a shame that a tech that could save a million lives a year globally won't be deployed because it can't be made perfectly safe. On the other hand, I'm sure people in India or China will be happy to build and deploy them with much higher failure rates. Maybe we can import those to the US someday.
- fucking_tragedy 8y ago
  > It is a bit of a shame that a tech that could save a million lives a year globally won't be deployed because it can't be made perfectly safe This is a bit of a generous assumption. It very well could turn out that self-driving cars are worse, or no better, than human drivers.
  - emodendroket 8y ago
    Right. So many arguments just start from the premise that self-driving cars must be safer and then ask why we aren't racing to replace human drivers with them. In reality the proposition that they are safer is far from proven.
    - a008t 8y ago
      Not to mention that the risk profile is going to be different. When you are driving your car, there is at least the illusion that you are in control of your risks. A careful driver at least believes that their risks are significantly lower than average. Getting into a self-driving car you have no control and are just playing Russian roulette. Not to mention that the failure modes of self-driving cars are likely to be very different from failure modes of humans, making it more difficult for other road users to predict what they would do in any given situation.
  - bluGill 8y ago
    We already know that the assumption is correct for a lot of cases. Self driving cars have logged millions of miles on the road. The only question is can we make them work in situations that are hard.
    - Piskvorrr 8y ago
      Meanwhile human-driven cars have driven billions. The only question is can we make them (humans) work in situations that are hard? In other words, "it works until it doesn't" is tautologically true, but useless precisely for that reason.
      - telchar 8y ago
        The answer to your question is basically "no". Humans aren't getting better at driving in the aggregate - new ones are born, learn to drive, get better, then get worse, then die off. On average humans are as good as they're going to get (with small variations due to culture and different training programs). On the other hand the self-driving cars are just getting started. It's entirely reasonable to suppose that they may surpass the average human in the next X years. And they won't get old and confused and eventually replaced with new cars that have to learn from scratch -- they should get more or less monotonically better. I think the optimism is warranted even if the timeline and technology is uncertain.
  - landryraccoon 8y ago
    > It very well could turn out that self-driving cars are worse, or no better, than human drivers. This is trivially true. I mean, self driving cars that are worse than human drivers already exist. Isn’t the point asking when they will be made widely available? I assume that is only possible when they are at least as good as human drivers by some key metrics.
    - fucking_tragedy 8y ago
      I agree, the sane assumption should be that self-driving cars would be made widely available if and when they are better than humans at driving. However, I've noticed that many work from the premise that self-driving cars are already safer than human drivers. That, or they'll work from the premise that self-driving cars will definitely be safer than human drivers within a reasonable timespan. Worse, some assume that self-driving cars will dramatically, or nearly eliminate automobile accidents/deaths, where any brief skim over workplace casualties involving autonomous machinery would put that fantasy to rest. For a group of tech workers that often overlap with self-described skeptics, it's an interesting blindspot to have.
- YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
  >> On the other hand, I'm sure people in India or China will be happy to build and deploy them with much higher failure rates. You might have seen this internet classic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjrEQaG5jPM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjrEQaG5jPM [India Driving] Driving in India is notoriously chaotic and if self-driving cars are ever deployed there in our lifetime, they will come with a safety guarantee about equal to a car driven by a blind dog with a missing paw. It would be impossible to safely navigate the streets there with anything less situationaly aware than a fully developed adult human brain. The article above makes it sound like weather is the big problem for self-driving cars and once that's solved- wooohoo, we're on our way! It's far from that. Self-driving car AI is still incapable of reasoning about its environment, neither does it have any "undersanding" of it in any way, shape or form. Consequently it only works in very limited environments, in very limited conditions - of traffic, visibility, road quality etc.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    You don't need to go to India: (Paris) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lay8aZlsbB0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lay8aZlsbB0 (Manhattan) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8WiJgI3N4A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8WiJgI3N4A
    - falcolas 8y ago
      Don't forget Uber in the US! A fantastic display of man and machine working as one and how they deal with unexpected obstacles.
- SiempreViernes 8y ago
  How many years per death would be acceptable is highly culture dependent. Uber should ask the NRA for branding advice, though they might not be patient enough to put in the work to reach such an untouchable brand.
  - shiftpgdn 8y ago
    My gun isn't controlled by a computer and in fact that is fairly strictly banned by the ATF.
    - SiempreViernes 8y ago
      Ah, so you agree that avoidable deaths from computer controlled systems are viewed as much worse than avoidable deaths from human controlled systems?
jryle70 8y ago
Not sure if you have read the article, but it's actually about a company called WaveSense who claims to have developed ground-penetrating radar that can greatly improve all weather autonomous driving. So yes, it's a daunting task but lot of people are working on it and progress is being made. I'd be interested to hear your counterargument.
- gugagore 8y ago
  That helps with localization only, right? Not with any other perceptual tasks?
- YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
  >> I'd be interested to hear your counterargument. Not the OP, but like you say, the article is about a company who claims to have developed a technology that will solve self-driving cars' problems with rain. People in industry make claims all the time. People in the sciences do, too. Just because someone makes a claim, doesn't mean it's true. It's only a claim.
- seibelj 8y ago
  I’m not an expert in self driving car engineering. I have some experience with ML but not in a significant professional way. What I have is a decade of professional experience building all kinds of software and a skeptical eye. You have a problem that is unconstrained, with infinite variables, where even a simple mistake can have catastrophic outcomes. Society itself may object to self driving cars for a ton of reasons, from safety to simply driving like a grandma and slowing everything and everyone down. The cost to develop this technology, plus the added cost of hardware to each car, will be enormous and is not obviously a cost savings over a $15 per hour human. If the self driving car is doing anything other than getting from A to B, you still need a human (or a human-like robot) to handle the unloading / delivery / whatever at the end. Now, I’ve worked at companies with extremely talented and intelligent engineers, and something as constrained and seemingly simple as making a login form can take a long time to perfect - and no lives are at risk! Just imagine the challenges and requirements for building self driving cars. New hardware, software, real-time processing and analysis of tons of data, all to drive split-second decisions that can kill people if done incorrectly. Huge challenge - huge risks - huge money - uncertain payoff. This is not something that will appear suddenly. If there aren’t convoys of self driving trucks operating in desert highways overnight, where it’s dry and straight and flat and no one else is there, then we aren’t going to see city taxis for a very long time.
Itsdijital 8y ago
>Then a single dead pedestrian changes all the news articles and the opinions change. Frankly, it didn't change my opinion at all. As far as I can tell, Uber is a train wreck of a company. When I first read the story I was kind of surprised, until I found out it was an Uber car.
nerdnumerouno 8y ago
Anyone with half a brain knew this would never work.

njarboe 8y ago

In the current legal environment, self driving taxi cabs everywhere at all times will never exist. Waymo seems to think they can work in Arizona desert though. How many deaths per year would be acceptable? Like you mention, in the US, it seems that zero deaths per year, similar to commercial aviation, would be required. It is a bit of a shame that a tech that could save a million lives a year globally won't be deployed because it can't be made perfectly safe. On the other hand, I'm sure people in India or China will be happy to build and deploy them with much higher failure rates. Maybe we can import those to the US someday.

fucking_tragedy 8y ago
> It is a bit of a shame that a tech that could save a million lives a year globally won't be deployed because it can't be made perfectly safe This is a bit of a generous assumption. It very well could turn out that self-driving cars are worse, or no better, than human drivers.
- emodendroket 8y ago
  Right. So many arguments just start from the premise that self-driving cars must be safer and then ask why we aren't racing to replace human drivers with them. In reality the proposition that they are safer is far from proven.
  - a008t 8y ago
    Not to mention that the risk profile is going to be different. When you are driving your car, there is at least the illusion that you are in control of your risks. A careful driver at least believes that their risks are significantly lower than average. Getting into a self-driving car you have no control and are just playing Russian roulette. Not to mention that the failure modes of self-driving cars are likely to be very different from failure modes of humans, making it more difficult for other road users to predict what they would do in any given situation.
- bluGill 8y ago
  We already know that the assumption is correct for a lot of cases. Self driving cars have logged millions of miles on the road. The only question is can we make them work in situations that are hard.
  - Piskvorrr 8y ago
    Meanwhile human-driven cars have driven billions. The only question is can we make them (humans) work in situations that are hard? In other words, "it works until it doesn't" is tautologically true, but useless precisely for that reason.
    - telchar 8y ago
      The answer to your question is basically "no". Humans aren't getting better at driving in the aggregate - new ones are born, learn to drive, get better, then get worse, then die off. On average humans are as good as they're going to get (with small variations due to culture and different training programs). On the other hand the self-driving cars are just getting started. It's entirely reasonable to suppose that they may surpass the average human in the next X years. And they won't get old and confused and eventually replaced with new cars that have to learn from scratch -- they should get more or less monotonically better. I think the optimism is warranted even if the timeline and technology is uncertain.
- landryraccoon 8y ago
  > It very well could turn out that self-driving cars are worse, or no better, than human drivers. This is trivially true. I mean, self driving cars that are worse than human drivers already exist. Isn’t the point asking when they will be made widely available? I assume that is only possible when they are at least as good as human drivers by some key metrics.
  - fucking_tragedy 8y ago
    I agree, the sane assumption should be that self-driving cars would be made widely available if and when they are better than humans at driving. However, I've noticed that many work from the premise that self-driving cars are already safer than human drivers. That, or they'll work from the premise that self-driving cars will definitely be safer than human drivers within a reasonable timespan. Worse, some assume that self-driving cars will dramatically, or nearly eliminate automobile accidents/deaths, where any brief skim over workplace casualties involving autonomous machinery would put that fantasy to rest. For a group of tech workers that often overlap with self-described skeptics, it's an interesting blindspot to have.
YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
>> On the other hand, I'm sure people in India or China will be happy to build and deploy them with much higher failure rates. You might have seen this internet classic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjrEQaG5jPM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjrEQaG5jPM [India Driving] Driving in India is notoriously chaotic and if self-driving cars are ever deployed there in our lifetime, they will come with a safety guarantee about equal to a car driven by a blind dog with a missing paw. It would be impossible to safely navigate the streets there with anything less situationaly aware than a fully developed adult human brain. The article above makes it sound like weather is the big problem for self-driving cars and once that's solved- wooohoo, we're on our way! It's far from that. Self-driving car AI is still incapable of reasoning about its environment, neither does it have any "undersanding" of it in any way, shape or form. Consequently it only works in very limited environments, in very limited conditions - of traffic, visibility, road quality etc.
- ghaff 8y ago
  You don't need to go to India: (Paris) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lay8aZlsbB0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lay8aZlsbB0 (Manhattan) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8WiJgI3N4A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8WiJgI3N4A
  - falcolas 8y ago
    Don't forget Uber in the US! A fantastic display of man and machine working as one and how they deal with unexpected obstacles.
SiempreViernes 8y ago
How many years per death would be acceptable is highly culture dependent. Uber should ask the NRA for branding advice, though they might not be patient enough to put in the work to reach such an untouchable brand.
- shiftpgdn 8y ago
  My gun isn't controlled by a computer and in fact that is fairly strictly banned by the ATF.
  - SiempreViernes 8y ago
    Ah, so you agree that avoidable deaths from computer controlled systems are viewed as much worse than avoidable deaths from human controlled systems?

jryle70 8y ago

Not sure if you have read the article, but it's actually about a company called WaveSense who claims to have developed ground-penetrating radar that can greatly improve all weather autonomous driving. So yes, it's a daunting task but lot of people are working on it and progress is being made. I'd be interested to hear your counterargument.

gugagore 8y ago
That helps with localization only, right? Not with any other perceptual tasks?
YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
>> I'd be interested to hear your counterargument. Not the OP, but like you say, the article is about a company who claims to have developed a technology that will solve self-driving cars' problems with rain. People in industry make claims all the time. People in the sciences do, too. Just because someone makes a claim, doesn't mean it's true. It's only a claim.
seibelj 8y ago
I’m not an expert in self driving car engineering. I have some experience with ML but not in a significant professional way. What I have is a decade of professional experience building all kinds of software and a skeptical eye. You have a problem that is unconstrained, with infinite variables, where even a simple mistake can have catastrophic outcomes. Society itself may object to self driving cars for a ton of reasons, from safety to simply driving like a grandma and slowing everything and everyone down. The cost to develop this technology, plus the added cost of hardware to each car, will be enormous and is not obviously a cost savings over a $15 per hour human. If the self driving car is doing anything other than getting from A to B, you still need a human (or a human-like robot) to handle the unloading / delivery / whatever at the end. Now, I’ve worked at companies with extremely talented and intelligent engineers, and something as constrained and seemingly simple as making a login form can take a long time to perfect - and no lives are at risk! Just imagine the challenges and requirements for building self driving cars. New hardware, software, real-time processing and analysis of tons of data, all to drive split-second decisions that can kill people if done incorrectly. Huge challenge - huge risks - huge money - uncertain payoff. This is not something that will appear suddenly. If there aren’t convoys of self driving trucks operating in desert highways overnight, where it’s dry and straight and flat and no one else is there, then we aren’t going to see city taxis for a very long time.

Itsdijital 8y ago

>Then a single dead pedestrian changes all the news articles and the opinions change. Frankly, it didn't change my opinion at all. As far as I can tell, Uber is a train wreck of a company. When I first read the story I was kind of surprised, until I found out it was an Uber car.

nerdnumerouno 8y ago

Anyone with half a brain knew this would never work.