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It’s mind blowing that even skilled software engineers were fooled into thinking that self driving cars were only months away. The hype was blinding. The amoun

It’s mind blowing that even skilled software engineers were fooled into thinking that self driving cars were only months away. The hype was blinding. The amount of complexity involved in a self driving car is unfathomable. They can’t even get the thing to work on simple trips in mega-sprawl Phoenix with perfect weather and solid lane markings. We are decades out, and maybe only if they ban human drivers.

cloudwalking 8y ago
Decades out? Here's a real world report. https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/ab2nqe/waymo_one_experience/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/ab2nqe/way...
- pofilat 8y ago
  What part of that thread/video series are you calling attention to?
  - cloudwalking 8y ago
    > They can’t even get the thing to work on simple trips Clearly it does work for simple trips.
    - oldgradstudent 8y ago
      Trips are only simple in retrospect. To "work", as self-driving car has to be able to deal with all contingencies, such as unexpected heavy traffic, pedestrians, kids, drunk college students, sudden rain, sudden fog, constructions, police redirecting traffic, etc. Oh, and it also shouldn't kill anyone more than once in 100 million miles or so. Even if some trips turned out to be slight less simple than predicted.
  - partingshots 8y ago
    You edited your comment without any mention of it. This is considered bad etiquette and is derailing to the conversation. Please try not to do that in the future.
dominotw 8y ago
It can be if we have the correct infrastructure. If we highlight thousands of ppl dying every year in dui, accidents ect. If we highlight this problem same way media highlights mass shootings. Mobilise ppl to buildout infrastructure that would save thousands of lives. But ofcourse nytimes and co doesn't care about that because its not left vs right clickbait.
empath75 8y ago
The hype is because not very long ago nobody even expected that what they’re doing now would be possible. That they can even do what they’re doing now is an amazing achievement. It turns out that it’s not enough and we need another breakthrough, but it might not have been possible to see what the limitations of the new approach were going to be when they were doing new, previously impossible things every week. I think this is similar to the belief in the 20th century that right after the moon, we’d be colonizing mars and exploring the galaxy. We had been bound to the surface of the earth for thousands of years of civilization and then suddenly it seemed like we had no limitations. You can probably excuse a little bit of excess enthusiasm.
- rayiner 8y ago
  > I think this is similar to the belief in the 20th century that right after the moon, we’d be colonizing mars and exploring the galaxy. The takeaway from the history of 20th century technology is that a given field plateaus much more quickly than the optimists expect, sometimes short of what’s needed to be truly useful. Something simple like voice recognition has been an area of intense research for 30-40 years. And it’s still not useful for all but the simplest things. I have 10 Siri reminders from the last couple of days. 4 are so badly mangled I can’t figure out what I meant to remind myself. Barring some fundamental advance, we’re not going to be talking to our computers as a primary input. The same thing with other technologies. We broke the sound barrier, but never developed the tech to make supersonic travel cost effective. We put a man on the moon, but have yet to develop the tech to colonize off world bodies. Transistor speed and density have plateaued. After years of doubling CPU clock speeds every year, Intel crawled from 3 GHz to 5 GHz over 15 years. (If CPU speeds improved so slowly back in the day, we’d be using 200 MHz Pentium Pros today.)
  - njarboe 8y ago
    In the 1970's we saw the rise of "safety first" as a philosophy for life. By the 1990 most people believed it. Safety first as a prime directive leads to doing nothing in the end. Almost none of previous tech advancements from controlling fire a million years ago to nuclear weapons could have happened following "safety first". I can't think of any new inventions (except recreational ones like wing suits, and a some medical devices and drugs) since the 1970's that can kill people when used. A huge number of things we use heavily would never be invented today. Steam engines, cars, trains, electricity, natural gas in homes, etc. Millions died as these inventions were improved and still kill millions today. The inventor of new things were only allowed to put "use at your own risk" on software, so that is where all the new stuff has happened in the last 50 years. That era is now ending as cyberwarfare, ransomware, "fake new" become serious problems and super AGI is popularized as a possibility. Sure, S curves exist for all technologies, but now the only tech allowed to even start are ones that are thought to be powerless (ie., next to useless). We wanted flying cars but got 140 characters.
oldgradstudent 8y ago
> It’s mind blowing that even skilled software engineers were fooled into thinking that self driving cars were only months away. The hype was blinding. Waymo was giving out multi-million dollar bonuses. You too will learn to believe in whatever it is required for you to believe to get those bonuses.

cloudwalking 8y ago

Decades out? Here's a real world report. https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/ab2nqe/waymo_one_experience/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/ab2nqe/way...

pofilat 8y ago
What part of that thread/video series are you calling attention to?
- cloudwalking 8y ago
  > They can’t even get the thing to work on simple trips Clearly it does work for simple trips.
  - oldgradstudent 8y ago
    Trips are only simple in retrospect. To "work", as self-driving car has to be able to deal with all contingencies, such as unexpected heavy traffic, pedestrians, kids, drunk college students, sudden rain, sudden fog, constructions, police redirecting traffic, etc. Oh, and it also shouldn't kill anyone more than once in 100 million miles or so. Even if some trips turned out to be slight less simple than predicted.
- partingshots 8y ago
  You edited your comment without any mention of it. This is considered bad etiquette and is derailing to the conversation. Please try not to do that in the future.

dominotw 8y ago

It can be if we have the correct infrastructure. If we highlight thousands of ppl dying every year in dui, accidents ect. If we highlight this problem same way media highlights mass shootings. Mobilise ppl to buildout infrastructure that would save thousands of lives. But ofcourse nytimes and co doesn't care about that because its not left vs right clickbait.

empath75 8y ago

The hype is because not very long ago nobody even expected that what they’re doing now would be possible. That they can even do what they’re doing now is an amazing achievement. It turns out that it’s not enough and we need another breakthrough, but it might not have been possible to see what the limitations of the new approach were going to be when they were doing new, previously impossible things every week. I think this is similar to the belief in the 20th century that right after the moon, we’d be colonizing mars and exploring the galaxy. We had been bound to the surface of the earth for thousands of years of civilization and then suddenly it seemed like we had no limitations. You can probably excuse a little bit of excess enthusiasm.

rayiner 8y ago
> I think this is similar to the belief in the 20th century that right after the moon, we’d be colonizing mars and exploring the galaxy. The takeaway from the history of 20th century technology is that a given field plateaus much more quickly than the optimists expect, sometimes short of what’s needed to be truly useful. Something simple like voice recognition has been an area of intense research for 30-40 years. And it’s still not useful for all but the simplest things. I have 10 Siri reminders from the last couple of days. 4 are so badly mangled I can’t figure out what I meant to remind myself. Barring some fundamental advance, we’re not going to be talking to our computers as a primary input. The same thing with other technologies. We broke the sound barrier, but never developed the tech to make supersonic travel cost effective. We put a man on the moon, but have yet to develop the tech to colonize off world bodies. Transistor speed and density have plateaued. After years of doubling CPU clock speeds every year, Intel crawled from 3 GHz to 5 GHz over 15 years. (If CPU speeds improved so slowly back in the day, we’d be using 200 MHz Pentium Pros today.)
- njarboe 8y ago
  In the 1970's we saw the rise of "safety first" as a philosophy for life. By the 1990 most people believed it. Safety first as a prime directive leads to doing nothing in the end. Almost none of previous tech advancements from controlling fire a million years ago to nuclear weapons could have happened following "safety first". I can't think of any new inventions (except recreational ones like wing suits, and a some medical devices and drugs) since the 1970's that can kill people when used. A huge number of things we use heavily would never be invented today. Steam engines, cars, trains, electricity, natural gas in homes, etc. Millions died as these inventions were improved and still kill millions today. The inventor of new things were only allowed to put "use at your own risk" on software, so that is where all the new stuff has happened in the last 50 years. That era is now ending as cyberwarfare, ransomware, "fake new" become serious problems and super AGI is popularized as a possibility. Sure, S curves exist for all technologies, but now the only tech allowed to even start are ones that are thought to be powerless (ie., next to useless). We wanted flying cars but got 140 characters.

oldgradstudent 8y ago

> It’s mind blowing that even skilled software engineers were fooled into thinking that self driving cars were only months away. The hype was blinding. Waymo was giving out multi-million dollar bonuses. You too will learn to believe in whatever it is required for you to believe to get those bonuses.