7 ms·

Well said. Autonomous navigation is still a huge open research problem, in the sense that we don't even know how it _could_ work, there is no AI work capable of

by 60654 7y ago

Well said. Autonomous navigation is still a huge open research problem, in the sense that we don't even know how it _could_ work, there is no AI work capable of integrating all of the necessary pieces. Heck, we don't even know how simple bird or lizard intelligence works, much less be able to replicate human cognition that goes into operating heavy machinery in a busy multi-agent social context. So promising that it will be not just solved, but productized into a polished consumer gadget, in 5 or so years, was an astonishing, unbelievably foolish promise. And worst of all, yes, it came from people who should have known better. And as a quick aside: there's much talk about "ethical AI", but here's a more common AI ethics failure: taking money from funders, shareholders, and customers, with promises of imminent deliverables, while knowing full well that the AI advances required for that haven't happened yet, and there's no evidence for when they will, if at all.

im_down_w_otp 7y ago
Indeed, it's unclear if anyone has yet to develop a path planner that can overcome "the freezing robot problem". Even with perfect perception performance, which doesn't exist, the path planning to deal with congested environments is an unsolved problem, and the path planning to deal with ambiguous multi-modal intent might be an unsolvable problem. To add insult to injury, the manner in-use today of modeling humans as essentially just another kind of dynamic object breaks down extremely quickly once humans are normalized to the presence of autonomous robots. The humans change their own behavior model to achieve their own objective function. They're not dynamic objects, they're learning objects, and now your AV models (which will include human interaction and reaction behaviors on purpose if you're it right and on accident if you're not) breakdown along an entirely new longitudinal axis. I think the AV market fundamentally broke when GM acquired Cruise for $1B seemingly out if nowhere. 1) Because the reality is that the DARPA Urban Challenge result was not assuredly generalizable, and it may be the case that there's still basic science to be done before the domain is just better, cheaper sensors & high-performance compute away from being productionizable. 2) It's not at all clear that deep learning is really iterating toward a solution to this problem either, but the improvements to methods and hardware have produced the ability to make very compelling demos, that even the purveyors of themselves might believe in, and show iterative improvements on the previous result, thus fueling more investment into something that isn't even known to be possible. 3) But, none of that would matter if GM hadn't decided to make a power move in throwing $1B at an acquisition and in one fell swoop turned an early stage unproven scientific research market into a super, super frothy capital market where it looked like anybody at any moment could be a unicorn without any clear reason or any fundamentals. Investors went insane and the expectations and promises followed them.
- tlarkworthy 7y ago
  We have multi player poker breakthrough so it seems possible. I don't think planning is the core issue, I think that's solvable in time, it's the hardware and reliable general perception that is the blocker
  - rimliu 7y ago
    In poker, the computer knows, that none of the players will suddenly start playing chess instead of poker. On the road, the number of possible situations is way way way bigger.
    - sandworm101 7y ago
      Not just bigger. Bigger can be fixed with more cpu time. It is a fundimentally different problem. Nobody has a good theoretical answer even with infinite cpu time. I say this while on a car ferry. Getting on this boat required me to navigate several strange road markings and obey a half-dozen hand gestures from staff, including several that were contrary to the painted lines. No AI is even contemplating car ferries.
      - ghaff 7y ago
        Right. And, sure, that's an edge case for most people. But even if such edge cases only crop up every now and then, you're now at the difference between a reliable automated door-to-door system and one that can drive you around most of the time but every now and then forces a hopefully sober/licensed/competent driver to get behind the wheel to take some actions. That's a huge difference. Maybe you can address it with some sort of remote OnStar-like system but now you're forcing a remote operator to jump into an unknown context and take actions that were too hard for the AI.
      - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
        It's not just car ferries. Accident scenes and construction zones sometimes require you to obey hand signals and ignore road markings. There aren't many car ferries around where I live. But there's plenty of construction...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
pedrocr 7y ago
> much less be able to replicate human cognition that goes into operating heavy machinery in a busy multi-agent social context This holds if you expect self-driving cars to be able to work like humans in picking up "body-language" cues around other drivers. But we can also approach the problem the other way around and set better fixed rules for how driving needs to be done and adjust the road and car infrastructure to make the problem simpler. Human drivers get away with breaking so many rules that the problem becomes much harder than it needs to be.
- compiler-guy 7y ago
  Someone should redo the old "Spam Solutions" form except for self-driving cars. Found it: https://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt https://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt The parent response would have these ideas checked: (X) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once ... (X) Asshats (X) Jurisdictional problems ... (X) Technically illiterate politicians ... (X) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
  - pedrocr 7y ago
    >Someone should redo the old "Spam Solutions" form except for self-driving cars. Automating being dismissive of discussion does sound like a great idea... > Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once It requires setting stricter traffic rules and having them be followed. Something that's done everywhere in the world every year. It can be done as gradually and as locally-specific as needed. > Asshats We already have those on the road causing accidents. Traffic rules are there to punish this exact behavior. The fact that we don't enforce a few of them makes self-driving harder. I'm not "failing to account for asshats", I'm specifically targeting them. > Jurisdictional problems We already have different jurisdictions where different driving requirements exist. Having self-driving cars that are only allowed to drive in country X would be nothing new. > Technically illiterate politicians My suggestions was specifically to make the road rules stricter and enforced. This is not a technical issue, it's the boring old issue of what the road rules should be and who should follow them. > Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually Enforcing road rules works fine even if done gradually. It also makes self-driving gradually simpler.

by 60654 7y ago

im_down_w_otp 7y ago

Indeed, it's unclear if anyone has yet to develop a path planner that can overcome "the freezing robot problem". Even with perfect perception performance, which doesn't exist, the path planning to deal with congested environments is an unsolved problem, and the path planning to deal with ambiguous multi-modal intent might be an unsolvable problem. To add insult to injury, the manner in-use today of modeling humans as essentially just another kind of dynamic object breaks down extremely quickly once humans are normalized to the presence of autonomous robots. The humans change their own behavior model to achieve their own objective function. They're not dynamic objects, they're learning objects, and now your AV models (which will include human interaction and reaction behaviors on purpose if you're it right and on accident if you're not) breakdown along an entirely new longitudinal axis. I think the AV market fundamentally broke when GM acquired Cruise for $1B seemingly out if nowhere. 1) Because the reality is that the DARPA Urban Challenge result was not assuredly generalizable, and it may be the case that there's still basic science to be done before the domain is just better, cheaper sensors & high-performance compute away from being productionizable. 2) It's not at all clear that deep learning is really iterating toward a solution to this problem either, but the improvements to methods and hardware have produced the ability to make very compelling demos, that even the purveyors of themselves might believe in, and show iterative improvements on the previous result, thus fueling more investment into something that isn't even known to be possible. 3) But, none of that would matter if GM hadn't decided to make a power move in throwing $1B at an acquisition and in one fell swoop turned an early stage unproven scientific research market into a super, super frothy capital market where it looked like anybody at any moment could be a unicorn without any clear reason or any fundamentals. Investors went insane and the expectations and promises followed them.

tlarkworthy 7y ago
We have multi player poker breakthrough so it seems possible. I don't think planning is the core issue, I think that's solvable in time, it's the hardware and reliable general perception that is the blocker
- rimliu 7y ago
  In poker, the computer knows, that none of the players will suddenly start playing chess instead of poker. On the road, the number of possible situations is way way way bigger.
  - sandworm101 7y ago
    Not just bigger. Bigger can be fixed with more cpu time. It is a fundimentally different problem. Nobody has a good theoretical answer even with infinite cpu time. I say this while on a car ferry. Getting on this boat required me to navigate several strange road markings and obey a half-dozen hand gestures from staff, including several that were contrary to the painted lines. No AI is even contemplating car ferries.
    - ghaff 7y ago
      Right. And, sure, that's an edge case for most people. But even if such edge cases only crop up every now and then, you're now at the difference between a reliable automated door-to-door system and one that can drive you around most of the time but every now and then forces a hopefully sober/licensed/competent driver to get behind the wheel to take some actions. That's a huge difference. Maybe you can address it with some sort of remote OnStar-like system but now you're forcing a remote operator to jump into an unknown context and take actions that were too hard for the AI.
    - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
      It's not just car ferries. Accident scenes and construction zones sometimes require you to obey hand signals and ignore road markings. There aren't many car ferries around where I live. But there's plenty of construction...

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

pedrocr 7y ago

> much less be able to replicate human cognition that goes into operating heavy machinery in a busy multi-agent social context This holds if you expect self-driving cars to be able to work like humans in picking up "body-language" cues around other drivers. But we can also approach the problem the other way around and set better fixed rules for how driving needs to be done and adjust the road and car infrastructure to make the problem simpler. Human drivers get away with breaking so many rules that the problem becomes much harder than it needs to be.

compiler-guy 7y ago
Someone should redo the old "Spam Solutions" form except for self-driving cars. Found it: https://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt https://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt The parent response would have these ideas checked: (X) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once ... (X) Asshats (X) Jurisdictional problems ... (X) Technically illiterate politicians ... (X) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
- pedrocr 7y ago
  >Someone should redo the old "Spam Solutions" form except for self-driving cars. Automating being dismissive of discussion does sound like a great idea... > Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once It requires setting stricter traffic rules and having them be followed. Something that's done everywhere in the world every year. It can be done as gradually and as locally-specific as needed. > Asshats We already have those on the road causing accidents. Traffic rules are there to punish this exact behavior. The fact that we don't enforce a few of them makes self-driving harder. I'm not "failing to account for asshats", I'm specifically targeting them. > Jurisdictional problems We already have different jurisdictions where different driving requirements exist. Having self-driving cars that are only allowed to drive in country X would be nothing new. > Technically illiterate politicians My suggestions was specifically to make the road rules stricter and enforced. This is not a technical issue, it's the boring old issue of what the road rules should be and who should follow them. > Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually Enforcing road rules works fine even if done gradually. It also makes self-driving gradually simpler.