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I guess I missed the predictions where people thought we'd have fully autonomous vehicles by 2019. It seems to me that we're on track for having something in a

I guess I missed the predictions where people thought we'd have fully autonomous vehicles by 2019. It seems to me that we're on track for having something in a 5-10 year timeframe. Yeah, it won't be perfect, but it doesn't need to be. In the meantime we'll see more and more driver assist technologies which will slowly transition us to fully autonomous driving.

perl4ever 8y ago
I don't have specific references, but yes, for several years I have been reading about how we are on the cusp of autonomous driving. For long enough that I got bored of discussing it maybe a year ago. In support, this article says "Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk in 2016 promised to demonstrate a vehicle traveling in fully autonomous mode from Los Angeles to New York by the end of 2017." Is it possible you don't remember the predictions because you weren't reading about autonomous driving a couple years ago? It seems like trends and popular obsessions come and go very quickly these days. If you blink, you can miss it, like the rise and fall of bitcoin.
- dlp211 8y ago
  Or it could be that you were looking to techno-optimists for your predictions while others were looking to those that actually were involved in the tech.
  - simonh 8y ago
    He is a techno-optimist, but Elon Musk is not involved in the tech?
  - rayiner 8y ago
    Like Musk?
  - perl4ever 8y ago
    I was a skeptic all along, because it seemed like the "techno-optimists" failed to grasp the difficulty of writing software in general. I'm sure the people that engaged in most online discussions that I remember were not experts. However, I don't see why you point to people actually working on self-driving cars as if they would have been pessimists - why work on such things if they didn't believe it was feasible?
- LoSboccacc 8y ago
  And Waymo promising full autonomous cars by last year, even if they limited the scope in space and weather they missed it
drieddust 8y ago
As an observer of this development, this is not correct.I recollect press releases deliberately ignoring the big elephants in the room. As an outsider relying completely on press, I think they lied by omission. When self driving was first demonstrated to work, constraints were never highlighted. For example I did not see any discussion on the topics like black ice, needing a sufficiently accurate area map, proper road marking etc. in advance were never in new. Humans might struggle but can still drive in those conditions. On the issue of driver assistance, I believe more of might give drives a sense of false safety and hence cause more accidents.
- rohit2412 8y ago
  This! So much this! I remember a interview by Elon musk at a conference called CODE where he espoused that driverless cars are solved because all you need to do is get a car to stay in Lane and brake safely at low speeds. And everybody bought it. Well, where is the cross country summon, coast to coast autonomous drive, driverless taxi networks. It astounds me that one can blatantly lie repeatedly and not be called out.
threeseed 8y ago
When you have car companies throwing about the name AutoPilot you can't blame consumers for thinking it's coming soon.
allworknoplay 8y ago
Bits and pieces like trucking or taxis in relatively easy cities have been expected very near-term by a lot of companies for a while. I don't think anyone has said manually driven cars will be entirely off the road at a given point in time. Even the bits, though, should have a hugely disruptive impact on their markets.
pj_mukh 8y ago
Yea in 2015, I distinctly remember people were predicting a 5-10 year "aggressive" timeline [1] with most AI peeps citing 10-20 years (I'm discounting Muskian bravado here messing up my averages). We are about on track on that timeline I'd say. As usual, the truth is a lot more boring than most people predicted. But WSJ gotta have something to write about I guess. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/federicoguerrini/2015/01/31/technology-is-going-to-make-truck-drivers-obsolete-in-a-decade-report-says/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/federicoguerrini/2015/01/31/tec...
JohnJamesRambo 8y ago
As soon as a few months ago even mentioning here that you didn’t think autonomous cars were close to being ready got downvotes. People don’t understand how complicated driving a car in all conditions is and how much the human brain is doing already.
Eridrus 8y ago
I remember in 2017 being pretty convinced that we'd have something commercially operating within 5 years and my wife being skeptical. As recently as a few months ago, I still felt pretty good about that prediction. WayMo's non-launch launch has made me a lot less bullish, since I really had assumed they were almost there, at least in terms of Phoenix. And 2022 is looking a whole lot closer these days.
untog 8y ago
"GM says it will launch a robot taxi service in 2019" - 11/30/17 https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/30/16720776/gm-cruise-self-driving-taxi-launch-2019 https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/30/16720776/gm-cruise-self-... "GM Hitting Bumps on $5 Billion Road to Driverless Cars by 2019" - 10/25/2018 https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2018/10/25/505576.htm https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2018/10/25/50... The hype has definitely been there, and on HN too. I can't find it now, but there was a great Twitter thread around New Year of someone calling in a bet they'd made with an SV figure about self driving Lyfts by 2019.
intended 8y ago
We are almost certainly not on track for autonomous vehicles. The simple test for autonomous vehicles is “can they drive in Indian traffic.” We are very likely, on track for a correction in the form of “ we never meant level 5 autonomy.” We will see some form of assisted driving, and nothing beyond. It’s concerning that people aren’t thinking of attackers (or the govt) taking over your car first on HN. This is the happy start of AI, Just like the happy start of the web. Those were the days before the RIAA, before phishing, five eyes, and the unending loss of innocence that it has been since then.
- ddingus 8y ago
  >It’s concerning that people aren’t thinking of attackers (or the govt) taking over your car first on HN. Yup. I am quite concerned at how capable newer cars are, sans an equal level of security and safety consideration applied. There are going to be some ugly things happen, then we will see a correction. For now? No way I plan on owning anything networked, drive by wire. And so many things are coming long before we get great self-driving vehicles. In fact, I think they will be requirements to ease the transition to them, due to the reduced complexity when humans are not part of the equation. "We have geofenced your car, due to erratic, incompatible, [insert irritating justification here], driving patterns." "Your car has been speed limited for your safety..." Yeah. Gonna be fun.
  - intended 8y ago
    And the argument FOR such controls writes itself! Do you know how many people die to drunk driving? Rash driving? Accidents in general? Imagine if we could stop all that? Those millions of lives all over the world, saved. Who could stand against such a moral argument and defend the right for people to act rashly while piloting tonnes of moving metal every day?
    - ddingus 8y ago
      If I thought for a minute those things would not be abused, count me in.

perl4ever 8y ago

I don't have specific references, but yes, for several years I have been reading about how we are on the cusp of autonomous driving. For long enough that I got bored of discussing it maybe a year ago. In support, this article says "Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk in 2016 promised to demonstrate a vehicle traveling in fully autonomous mode from Los Angeles to New York by the end of 2017." Is it possible you don't remember the predictions because you weren't reading about autonomous driving a couple years ago? It seems like trends and popular obsessions come and go very quickly these days. If you blink, you can miss it, like the rise and fall of bitcoin.

dlp211 8y ago
Or it could be that you were looking to techno-optimists for your predictions while others were looking to those that actually were involved in the tech.
- simonh 8y ago
  He is a techno-optimist, but Elon Musk is not involved in the tech?
- rayiner 8y ago
  Like Musk?
- perl4ever 8y ago
  I was a skeptic all along, because it seemed like the "techno-optimists" failed to grasp the difficulty of writing software in general. I'm sure the people that engaged in most online discussions that I remember were not experts. However, I don't see why you point to people actually working on self-driving cars as if they would have been pessimists - why work on such things if they didn't believe it was feasible?
LoSboccacc 8y ago
And Waymo promising full autonomous cars by last year, even if they limited the scope in space and weather they missed it

drieddust 8y ago

As an observer of this development, this is not correct.I recollect press releases deliberately ignoring the big elephants in the room. As an outsider relying completely on press, I think they lied by omission. When self driving was first demonstrated to work, constraints were never highlighted. For example I did not see any discussion on the topics like black ice, needing a sufficiently accurate area map, proper road marking etc. in advance were never in new. Humans might struggle but can still drive in those conditions. On the issue of driver assistance, I believe more of might give drives a sense of false safety and hence cause more accidents.

rohit2412 8y ago
This! So much this! I remember a interview by Elon musk at a conference called CODE where he espoused that driverless cars are solved because all you need to do is get a car to stay in Lane and brake safely at low speeds. And everybody bought it. Well, where is the cross country summon, coast to coast autonomous drive, driverless taxi networks. It astounds me that one can blatantly lie repeatedly and not be called out.

threeseed 8y ago

When you have car companies throwing about the name AutoPilot you can't blame consumers for thinking it's coming soon.

allworknoplay 8y ago

Bits and pieces like trucking or taxis in relatively easy cities have been expected very near-term by a lot of companies for a while. I don't think anyone has said manually driven cars will be entirely off the road at a given point in time. Even the bits, though, should have a hugely disruptive impact on their markets.

pj_mukh 8y ago

Yea in 2015, I distinctly remember people were predicting a 5-10 year "aggressive" timeline [1] with most AI peeps citing 10-20 years (I'm discounting Muskian bravado here messing up my averages). We are about on track on that timeline I'd say. As usual, the truth is a lot more boring than most people predicted. But WSJ gotta have something to write about I guess. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/federicoguerrini/2015/01/31/technology-is-going-to-make-truck-drivers-obsolete-in-a-decade-report-says/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/federicoguerrini/2015/01/31/tec...

JohnJamesRambo 8y ago

As soon as a few months ago even mentioning here that you didn’t think autonomous cars were close to being ready got downvotes. People don’t understand how complicated driving a car in all conditions is and how much the human brain is doing already.

Eridrus 8y ago

I remember in 2017 being pretty convinced that we'd have something commercially operating within 5 years and my wife being skeptical. As recently as a few months ago, I still felt pretty good about that prediction. WayMo's non-launch launch has made me a lot less bullish, since I really had assumed they were almost there, at least in terms of Phoenix. And 2022 is looking a whole lot closer these days.

untog 8y ago

"GM says it will launch a robot taxi service in 2019" - 11/30/17 https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/30/16720776/gm-cruise-self-driving-taxi-launch-2019 https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/30/16720776/gm-cruise-self-... "GM Hitting Bumps on $5 Billion Road to Driverless Cars by 2019" - 10/25/2018 https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2018/10/25/505576.htm https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2018/10/25/50... The hype has definitely been there, and on HN too. I can't find it now, but there was a great Twitter thread around New Year of someone calling in a bet they'd made with an SV figure about self driving Lyfts by 2019.

intended 8y ago

We are almost certainly not on track for autonomous vehicles. The simple test for autonomous vehicles is “can they drive in Indian traffic.” We are very likely, on track for a correction in the form of “ we never meant level 5 autonomy.” We will see some form of assisted driving, and nothing beyond. It’s concerning that people aren’t thinking of attackers (or the govt) taking over your car first on HN. This is the happy start of AI, Just like the happy start of the web. Those were the days before the RIAA, before phishing, five eyes, and the unending loss of innocence that it has been since then.

ddingus 8y ago
>It’s concerning that people aren’t thinking of attackers (or the govt) taking over your car first on HN. Yup. I am quite concerned at how capable newer cars are, sans an equal level of security and safety consideration applied. There are going to be some ugly things happen, then we will see a correction. For now? No way I plan on owning anything networked, drive by wire. And so many things are coming long before we get great self-driving vehicles. In fact, I think they will be requirements to ease the transition to them, due to the reduced complexity when humans are not part of the equation. "We have geofenced your car, due to erratic, incompatible, [insert irritating justification here], driving patterns." "Your car has been speed limited for your safety..." Yeah. Gonna be fun.
- intended 8y ago
  And the argument FOR such controls writes itself! Do you know how many people die to drunk driving? Rash driving? Accidents in general? Imagine if we could stop all that? Those millions of lives all over the world, saved. Who could stand against such a moral argument and defend the right for people to act rashly while piloting tonnes of moving metal every day?
  - ddingus 8y ago
    If I thought for a minute those things would not be abused, count me in.