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Re: Comparing self-driving cars to AGI: It's counterintuitive, but depending how versatile the car is meant to be, the problems might actually be pretty close i
by xamuel 7y ago
Re: Comparing self-driving cars to AGI: It's counterintuitive, but depending how versatile the car is meant to be, the problems might actually be pretty close in difficulty.
If the self-driving car has no limits on versatility, then, given an oracle for solving the self-driving car problem, you could use that to build an agent that answers arbitrary YES-NO questions. Namely: feed the car fake input so it thinks it has driven to a fork in the road and there's a road-sign saying "If the answer to the following question is YES then the left road is closed, otherwise the right road is closed."
Compare with e.g. proofs that the C++ compiler is Turing complete. These proofs involve feeding the C++ compiler extremely unusual programs that would never actually come up organically. But that doesn't invalidate the proof that the C++ compiler is Turing complete.
- bumby 7y agoGood points. I was thinking in terms of "minimum viable product" for self-driving cars, which I have a hunch will be of limited versatility compared to what you describe. To have a truly self-driving car as capable as humans in most situations, you may be right.
- xamuel 7y agoThey already made a minimum viable product self-driving car. It's called a "train".
- bumby 7y agoI know this is meant jokingly, but for many cities (especially relatively remote ones), trains are not considered viable because they have strictly defined routes. Many cities choose to forego trains for busses in large part due to the lower upfront costs and the ability to change routes as the needs of the populace change.
- chronolitus 7y agoVery well put. And you could argue that it is not as much a stretch as it seems. Self driving cars would realistically have to keep functioning in situations where arbitrary communication with humans is required (which happens daily), which tends to turn into an AI-hard problem quite quickly.
- taneq 7y agoThat's the problem with all of the fatuous interpretations floating around of "level 5" self-driving. "It has to be able to handle any possible conceivable scenario without human assistance" so people ask things like "will a self-driving car be able to change its own tyre in case of a flat" and "will a self-driving car be able to defend the Earth from an extraterrestrial invasion in order to get to its destination". They need to update the official definition of level 5 to "must be able to handle any situation that an average human driver could reasonably handle without getting out of the vehicle." (Although the "level 1" - "level 5" scale is a terrible way to describe autonomous vehicles in any case and needs to be replaced with a measure of how long it's safe for the vehicle to operate without human supervision.)