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Autopilot is evidence that automated systems are already better than humans today. The edge cases scare people but on aggregate the stats show is superior to pe

by tensor 7y ago

Autopilot is evidence that automated systems are already better than humans today. The edge cases scare people but on aggregate the stats show is superior to people. This sort of tech is only going to keep getting better.

pjkundert 7y ago
Look up "Ergodicity". Autopilot doesn't need to be 2x or 10x better than a human driver -- it needs to be 100x or 1,000x better, or nobody (sane) should touch it. The problem is not that autopilot is superior than your own driving in the vast majority of the cases! The problem is the 1 in a million times when it makes a trivial mistake that virtually no human would, and kills you instantly. Like driving under an obvious semi-trailer, and shearing your torso off. An understandable example: You have two games of chance, both with identical 5/6 chance of winning. One game, you'll play immediately (and as often as possible). The other, you would never play, not even once. How is that possible? Both have identical 5/6 chances of winning? But, one is "ergotic", meaning that the odds hold over the long term as often as you play, and one is "non-ergotic", meaning that as soon as you lose, you're finished. One is a single dice roll. The other is Russian Roulette. Self-driving cars are Russian Roulette. One "mistake" on the part of the system, and you're dead. The fact that the "stats" prove that it is safer, overall, don't change the fact: you and your family are dead.
- kens 7y ago
  People die all the time from driving under a semi-trailer. Look up "Underride". Over 200 people die every year from underride crashes in the US, so this isn't a mistake made only by autopilots. In other words, if we switched to self-driving cars and three people died every week when the autopilot drove into a semi-trailer, that would be a big improvement.
  - pjkundert 7y ago
    So, your family would be ok that your car sheared you off in a quirk unnecessary accident, so long as the overall stats were better than average? Non-ergotic stats are not comparable to ergotic (group) stats.
    - michaelmrose 7y ago
      Given 100 individuals who would have died in everyday accidents all would prefer a 99% chance of survival. Given a population of a million all would prefer a 1 in a million chance of death under a semi to a 1 in 10k chance of being smeared in a more average fashion. Your argument is the same one used against seat belts with people advocating a strictly inferior survival strategy to prevent a rare misadventure.
      - iso947 7y ago
        That’s not how it works for humans though. “Other drivers are terrible. I am above average. Other drivers underride. I don’t”
      - DrScump 7y ago
        Let's say your autodrive system replaces 100,000 driver-hours. Let's say those driver-hours would have resulted in 3 deaths of others (in vehicles or pedestrians) but your autodrive results in 1 different death (which wouldn't have occurred with the human drivers). Your stats are no comfort at all to the loved ones of your victim. It's like the Trolley Problem but the humans are unidentifiable.
        michaelmrose 7y ago
        The trolley problem challenges people who don't consider choosing not to act equally an active choice or intuitively feel that action is different than inaction. I would always pick the most valuable to me side and pull the switch or leave it be to bring about the better end result. Given the availability of self driving vehicles that reduce mortality choosing to drive oneself and kill more people is an unethical choice that will be as little comfort to the 3 victims as the one.
        DrScump 7y ago
        I would always pick the most valuable to me side Of course, when you know nothing about the would-be victims. But on a pure numbers theoretical basis, you autodrive veers out away from the three killers fleeing police by driving on the wrong side of the road in favor of running down two kids in a crosswalk. Real life is complicated.
- pjkundert 7y ago
  Don’t be a drone. What are you downvoting for? Are you going to remain ignorant, or start to think? I’m totally in support of, and believe in the value of self-driving vehicles. But, the SV soy-boys need to bring their A-game. Not the “My machine learning system that underperforms a nematode worm’s neural performance is going to totes solve self-driving cars” toy they’re delivering now. Come on! I expect better, especially from Elon Musk, who should know better - he’s a Saskatchewan boy! You can’t see the highway 6 months of the year, and there’s no static friction; only dozens of variants of dynamic friction, which can only be distinguished by a sensor suite that includes vision, sound, vibration and predictive estimation from historical models, recent historical temperature profiles, and precipitation, insolation energy and angle, wind and recent traffic over the same road. So man up. Increase your model learning and real-time solving power by between 10 and 100 times. Increase your sensor suite. Include historical memory and group learning. Sheesh.
  - dang 7y ago
    Please don't let downvotes get to you like this. I know it's not always easy, but the site guidelines ask it explicitly of everyone. That's because it quickly causes comments to sink below the acceptable levels, which is what happened here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - pjkundert 7y ago
      Thanks for all you do, dang! However, unless HN implements K-Means clustering, a single-axis downvote mechanism will inevitably lead to echo-chamber bullying, I believe. Especially if no-one fights back, encouraging the people who vote “sensible” vs “nonsense”, and discouraging the “like” vs “don’t like” voters who ruin debate.
      - dang 7y ago
        In my experience, everyone is a like vs. don't-like voter.
- michaelmrose 7y ago
  You are overcomplicating things. Every minute of drive time is Russian roulette with on average very low chances of losing. The only thing that matters is the overall odds there is no inherent mathematical difference between the 2 scenarios. There is no difference to prefer more likely death in common scenario to less likely death in a stupider scenario. If you believe otherwise you ought to explicate with numbers.
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  That doesn't sound like a proper set of assumptions - that human accidents will be fender benders while self driving will be chunk-salsa worthy. The cumulative fatality risk applies to both parties. Humans will die in fatal accidents that no Self Driving car would do. The 1000x better demand is more a stupid human illusion of control thing like fearing flying more than a road trip of equal distance.
blub 7y ago
Autopilot is at most evidence that human-machine systems are better than just human drivers. Throughout its history "autopilot" had many cases where the human saved its ass and quite a few where it managed to kill the human anyway.

by tensor 7y ago

pjkundert 7y ago

Look up "Ergodicity". Autopilot doesn't need to be 2x or 10x better than a human driver -- it needs to be 100x or 1,000x better, or nobody (sane) should touch it. The problem is not that autopilot is superior than your own driving in the vast majority of the cases! The problem is the 1 in a million times when it makes a trivial mistake that virtually no human would, and kills you instantly. Like driving under an obvious semi-trailer, and shearing your torso off. An understandable example: You have two games of chance, both with identical 5/6 chance of winning. One game, you'll play immediately (and as often as possible). The other, you would never play, not even once. How is that possible? Both have identical 5/6 chances of winning? But, one is "ergotic", meaning that the odds hold over the long term as often as you play, and one is "non-ergotic", meaning that as soon as you lose, you're finished. One is a single dice roll. The other is Russian Roulette. Self-driving cars are Russian Roulette. One "mistake" on the part of the system, and you're dead. The fact that the "stats" prove that it is safer, overall, don't change the fact: you and your family are dead.

kens 7y ago
People die all the time from driving under a semi-trailer. Look up "Underride". Over 200 people die every year from underride crashes in the US, so this isn't a mistake made only by autopilots. In other words, if we switched to self-driving cars and three people died every week when the autopilot drove into a semi-trailer, that would be a big improvement.
- pjkundert 7y ago
  So, your family would be ok that your car sheared you off in a quirk unnecessary accident, so long as the overall stats were better than average? Non-ergotic stats are not comparable to ergotic (group) stats.
  - michaelmrose 7y ago
    Given 100 individuals who would have died in everyday accidents all would prefer a 99% chance of survival. Given a population of a million all would prefer a 1 in a million chance of death under a semi to a 1 in 10k chance of being smeared in a more average fashion. Your argument is the same one used against seat belts with people advocating a strictly inferior survival strategy to prevent a rare misadventure.
    - iso947 7y ago
      That’s not how it works for humans though. “Other drivers are terrible. I am above average. Other drivers underride. I don’t”
    - DrScump 7y ago
      Let's say your autodrive system replaces 100,000 driver-hours. Let's say those driver-hours would have resulted in 3 deaths of others (in vehicles or pedestrians) but your autodrive results in 1 different death (which wouldn't have occurred with the human drivers). Your stats are no comfort at all to the loved ones of your victim. It's like the Trolley Problem but the humans are unidentifiable.
      - michaelmrose 7y ago
        The trolley problem challenges people who don't consider choosing not to act equally an active choice or intuitively feel that action is different than inaction. I would always pick the most valuable to me side and pull the switch or leave it be to bring about the better end result. Given the availability of self driving vehicles that reduce mortality choosing to drive oneself and kill more people is an unethical choice that will be as little comfort to the 3 victims as the one.
        DrScump 7y ago
        I would always pick the most valuable to me side Of course, when you know nothing about the would-be victims. But on a pure numbers theoretical basis, you autodrive veers out away from the three killers fleeing police by driving on the wrong side of the road in favor of running down two kids in a crosswalk. Real life is complicated.
pjkundert 7y ago
Don’t be a drone. What are you downvoting for? Are you going to remain ignorant, or start to think? I’m totally in support of, and believe in the value of self-driving vehicles. But, the SV soy-boys need to bring their A-game. Not the “My machine learning system that underperforms a nematode worm’s neural performance is going to totes solve self-driving cars” toy they’re delivering now. Come on! I expect better, especially from Elon Musk, who should know better - he’s a Saskatchewan boy! You can’t see the highway 6 months of the year, and there’s no static friction; only dozens of variants of dynamic friction, which can only be distinguished by a sensor suite that includes vision, sound, vibration and predictive estimation from historical models, recent historical temperature profiles, and precipitation, insolation energy and angle, wind and recent traffic over the same road. So man up. Increase your model learning and real-time solving power by between 10 and 100 times. Increase your sensor suite. Include historical memory and group learning. Sheesh.
- dang 7y ago
  Please don't let downvotes get to you like this. I know it's not always easy, but the site guidelines ask it explicitly of everyone. That's because it quickly causes comments to sink below the acceptable levels, which is what happened here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - pjkundert 7y ago
    Thanks for all you do, dang! However, unless HN implements K-Means clustering, a single-axis downvote mechanism will inevitably lead to echo-chamber bullying, I believe. Especially if no-one fights back, encouraging the people who vote “sensible” vs “nonsense”, and discouraging the “like” vs “don’t like” voters who ruin debate.
    - dang 7y ago
      In my experience, everyone is a like vs. don't-like voter.
michaelmrose 7y ago
You are overcomplicating things. Every minute of drive time is Russian roulette with on average very low chances of losing. The only thing that matters is the overall odds there is no inherent mathematical difference between the 2 scenarios. There is no difference to prefer more likely death in common scenario to less likely death in a stupider scenario. If you believe otherwise you ought to explicate with numbers.
Nasrudith 7y ago
That doesn't sound like a proper set of assumptions - that human accidents will be fender benders while self driving will be chunk-salsa worthy. The cumulative fatality risk applies to both parties. Humans will die in fatal accidents that no Self Driving car would do. The 1000x better demand is more a stupid human illusion of control thing like fearing flying more than a road trip of equal distance.

blub 7y ago

Autopilot is at most evidence that human-machine systems are better than just human drivers. Throughout its history "autopilot" had many cases where the human saved its ass and quite a few where it managed to kill the human anyway.