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Yes, The thing about self-driving you can get to 90% or 99% or even 99.9% success and then find the cost of closing part of that extra sliver of non-success is

Yes, The thing about self-driving you can get to 90% or 99% or even 99.9% success and then find the cost of closing part of that extra sliver of non-success is the same as all the work you've done. Especially since testing those corners cases is hard since they are unusual. There's even some part of the sliver that even is "AI complete". Very small but you don't know where it is, etc. But I'd say that's going to happen about as quickly as changing the infrastructure in this country. Key point! Automation has traditionally been much, much easier when you are engineering a situation where you control all the variables. Automated factories are common. Automated warehouses are coming. Automated dock systems exist. In these situation, there's a hard border between "inside" and "outside". Roads are generally regular but the border between insight and outside fuzzy. Google can run it's self-driving taxis in a suburb in Arizona where roads are as regular as could be imagined but expanding beyond that is much, much hard than one imagines. Note: I recommend this blog which periodically tracks progress in self-driving cars as well as making intelligent, critical comments on current AI. https://blog.piekniewski.info/ https://blog.piekniewski.info/

wpietri 7y ago
Good points. And I'd add that most things we've automated are things that have been routinized in a way where people conform to the system, rather than the other way around. E.g., a ton of software development has basically been, "take this paper form and make a computer do the paperwork". The hard part was already done for us when everybody got trained to be subservient to the bureaucratic process. So societally we have this limited sense of how quickly computers can take something over. Real-world things like cars and domestic robots are much harder, because those domains are ones where people come first. As you say, key elements could well be AI-complete.
secabeen 7y ago
Even when you control all of the variables, there are plenty of situations where the automated system just runs out of runway, and kicks the can to a human. Can't read the label on this package? Push it to the exception lane, and have a human figure it out, and relabel it. Works great, but is useless for a car, because when the car hits the exception, it's 10 miles away on a residential street, and it's not going to make it to you anymore. For me, the most important thing a car can be is reliable, and every form of unattended driving cannot hit that level.
- pas 7y ago
  Sometimes the taxi you called never arrives. It happens regularly. Of course the real problem is economic. Competing with the taxi service that uses humans is hard, because human labor is cheap.

wpietri 7y ago

Good points. And I'd add that most things we've automated are things that have been routinized in a way where people conform to the system, rather than the other way around. E.g., a ton of software development has basically been, "take this paper form and make a computer do the paperwork". The hard part was already done for us when everybody got trained to be subservient to the bureaucratic process. So societally we have this limited sense of how quickly computers can take something over. Real-world things like cars and domestic robots are much harder, because those domains are ones where people come first. As you say, key elements could well be AI-complete.

secabeen 7y ago

Even when you control all of the variables, there are plenty of situations where the automated system just runs out of runway, and kicks the can to a human. Can't read the label on this package? Push it to the exception lane, and have a human figure it out, and relabel it. Works great, but is useless for a car, because when the car hits the exception, it's 10 miles away on a residential street, and it's not going to make it to you anymore. For me, the most important thing a car can be is reliable, and every form of unattended driving cannot hit that level.

pas 7y ago
Sometimes the taxi you called never arrives. It happens regularly. Of course the real problem is economic. Competing with the taxi service that uses humans is hard, because human labor is cheap.