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I agree. This is a big nothing-burger. I can create a self-driving car as long as there's a real driver behind the wheel when needed. It doesn't say anything

I agree. This is a big nothing-burger. I can create a self-driving car as long as there's a real driver behind the wheel when needed. It doesn't say anything about how much autonomy is actually expected. Semi's can't react as quickly to changing conditions as a Tesla. Rolling carnage. This will never work.

0xffff2 7y ago
>Semi's can't react as quickly to changing conditions as a Tesla. That's true whether there's a human driving or a computer. The only relevant distinction for a semi or a Tesla is whether the computer can react faster and make better decisions than a human driver would.
- oldgradstudent 7y ago
  Yes, but so far, no one has ever demonstrated a computer that is even remotely competitive with a human driver.
  - 0xffff2 7y ago
    I agree completely. I just wanted to point out that the higher momentum of a semi doesn't have any bearing on whether it's suitable in theory for automation.
- linuxftw 7y ago
  Wrong. Driving a commercial vehicle requires a license that is more difficult to maintain, and for good reason: It's much harder to safely operate than a standard passenger vehicle. Tesla and other 'Autonomous Driving solutions' are missing parity in the 'contextual awareness' space IMO. Safely operating a commercial vehicle is very much about 'contextual awareness'. Car cuts you off unexpectedly? Easy, slam the brakes in a Tesla. Truck? Crash and kill the people in front of you. You have to be able to absolutely anticipate crazy drivers and their terrible habits like jumping in front of you in heavy traffic and having to stop hard.
  - 0xffff2 7y ago
    >Wrong. How petulant. > Car cuts you off unexpectedly? Easy, slam the brakes in a Tesla. Truck? Crash and kill the people in front of you. Again, how is this different between a computer and a human driver? As far as I can tell, the hardest part of self-driving is accurately seeing the world. Once you see a car, it's fairly easy to make the algorithm pessimistically assume that any car that can cut it off is likely to do so. If the car manages to cut you off anyway, you're going to "crash and kill people in front of you" either way, except that you're probably going to kill people over so slightly less often with a computer that makes the decision to brake 100ms earlier.
    - linuxftw 7y ago
      > Once you see a car, it's fairly easy to make the algorithm pessimistically assume that any car that can cut it off is likely to do so. Well, this just doesn't match reality. Uber showed us that these algorithms are full of false positives and have to be disregarded to make the vehicle actually drive itself (Remember when they killed that pedestrian?). What a computer would need is 'awareness,' and that awareness is even more critical in a larger body vehicle. There's always going to be 'emergency stop in case of unknown situation.' The difference is, the human is not in an unknown situation, they're able to anticipate and plan. Given the current landscape, I'd say with enough data you could more or less brute-force an AI driven car and be somewhere on the spectrum of safer than the worst human drivers. I say it's practically impossible for a semi truck to brute-force with sensors and pessimistic algorithms alone.
      - 0xffff2 7y ago
        Yes, I do remember when Uber killed a pedestrian. A pedestrian that the car didn't see. Yes the computer needs awareness, but it needs awareness no matter the kind of vehicle it is controlling. The hard part of awareness is the ability to see and correctly categorize potential hazards. That part is absolutely no different for any motor vehicle. The way the vehicle reacts to potential hazards is absolutely going to change depending on the vehicle's characteristics, but that's one of the least hard parts of the whole system. >Given the current landscape, I'd say with enough data you could more or less brute-force an AI driven car and be somewhere on the spectrum of safer than the worst human drivers. What's your definition of "enough data"? Tesla seems about as close are you could practically get, and they don't have a great safety history (although they don't have enough history period to really say whether they're safer than humans). The specific issues that Tesla and Uber have faced are issues with seeing and correctly interpreting the world around them. Those issues are largely the same in either case. If you assume you can see and follow lane markings and it turns out you don't do so well when the lane markings are damaged, you're going to have a bad time no matter what size vehicle you're in.

0xffff2 7y ago

>Semi's can't react as quickly to changing conditions as a Tesla. That's true whether there's a human driving or a computer. The only relevant distinction for a semi or a Tesla is whether the computer can react faster and make better decisions than a human driver would.

oldgradstudent 7y ago
Yes, but so far, no one has ever demonstrated a computer that is even remotely competitive with a human driver.
- 0xffff2 7y ago
  I agree completely. I just wanted to point out that the higher momentum of a semi doesn't have any bearing on whether it's suitable in theory for automation.
linuxftw 7y ago
Wrong. Driving a commercial vehicle requires a license that is more difficult to maintain, and for good reason: It's much harder to safely operate than a standard passenger vehicle. Tesla and other 'Autonomous Driving solutions' are missing parity in the 'contextual awareness' space IMO. Safely operating a commercial vehicle is very much about 'contextual awareness'. Car cuts you off unexpectedly? Easy, slam the brakes in a Tesla. Truck? Crash and kill the people in front of you. You have to be able to absolutely anticipate crazy drivers and their terrible habits like jumping in front of you in heavy traffic and having to stop hard.
- 0xffff2 7y ago
  >Wrong. How petulant. > Car cuts you off unexpectedly? Easy, slam the brakes in a Tesla. Truck? Crash and kill the people in front of you. Again, how is this different between a computer and a human driver? As far as I can tell, the hardest part of self-driving is accurately seeing the world. Once you see a car, it's fairly easy to make the algorithm pessimistically assume that any car that can cut it off is likely to do so. If the car manages to cut you off anyway, you're going to "crash and kill people in front of you" either way, except that you're probably going to kill people over so slightly less often with a computer that makes the decision to brake 100ms earlier.
  - linuxftw 7y ago
    > Once you see a car, it's fairly easy to make the algorithm pessimistically assume that any car that can cut it off is likely to do so. Well, this just doesn't match reality. Uber showed us that these algorithms are full of false positives and have to be disregarded to make the vehicle actually drive itself (Remember when they killed that pedestrian?). What a computer would need is 'awareness,' and that awareness is even more critical in a larger body vehicle. There's always going to be 'emergency stop in case of unknown situation.' The difference is, the human is not in an unknown situation, they're able to anticipate and plan. Given the current landscape, I'd say with enough data you could more or less brute-force an AI driven car and be somewhere on the spectrum of safer than the worst human drivers. I say it's practically impossible for a semi truck to brute-force with sensors and pessimistic algorithms alone.
    - 0xffff2 7y ago
      Yes, I do remember when Uber killed a pedestrian. A pedestrian that the car didn't see. Yes the computer needs awareness, but it needs awareness no matter the kind of vehicle it is controlling. The hard part of awareness is the ability to see and correctly categorize potential hazards. That part is absolutely no different for any motor vehicle. The way the vehicle reacts to potential hazards is absolutely going to change depending on the vehicle's characteristics, but that's one of the least hard parts of the whole system. >Given the current landscape, I'd say with enough data you could more or less brute-force an AI driven car and be somewhere on the spectrum of safer than the worst human drivers. What's your definition of "enough data"? Tesla seems about as close are you could practically get, and they don't have a great safety history (although they don't have enough history period to really say whether they're safer than humans). The specific issues that Tesla and Uber have faced are issues with seeing and correctly interpreting the world around them. Those issues are largely the same in either case. If you assume you can see and follow lane markings and it turns out you don't do so well when the lane markings are damaged, you're going to have a bad time no matter what size vehicle you're in.