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> Yes these quarterly numbers are in the best conditions and supervised, no that doesn't invalidate them... That is exactly what it does: it invalidates them.

> Yes these quarterly numbers are in the best conditions and supervised, no that doesn't invalidate them... That is exactly what it does: it invalidates them. Comparing apples to oranges is an invalid comparison. Let's compare the numbers again when there's sufficient data for self-driving tech driving in all environmental conditions without supervision and without human assistance jumping in whenever it gets rough. At that point, a comparison is valid. Until then you're comparing someone who aces tests with someone who is just doing good, but the first guy is only solving first-graders' multiple-choice tests and cheats by asking a friend who graduated at a university whenever a question pops up that isn't "choose one of these three", while the second guy is on his own in the middle of his college education.

grey-area 7y ago
Are computers better than the best human drivers in all circumstances? No, maybe they never will be, but that doesn't matter. Are they better than average humans in average conditions already? Yes. They don't need to be all powerful AGI which can replace humans in all circumstances to be useful and save lives.
- Slartie 7y ago
  What doesn't matter is who wins in average conditions. Because averages are just that: averages. But actual driving is full of non-average situations, whether they are created by weather, other human participants in traffic, animals, whatever...there's millions of surprising non-standard situations happening each day in traffic, and current technology isn't even able to reliably detect when it's facing such a situation, much less capable of handling them entirely on its own.
  - meowface 7y ago
    Right. And that's why it's not rolled out everywhere yet. But it's clearly getting closer and closer. It's probably less than 20 years away.
  - grey-area 7y ago
    And yet autopilot is doing millions of miles a year with fewer incidents than humans, and expanding in capability (for example taking lane changes and turns), all while constantly lowering the level of accidents. I think average conditions do matter, and supervised computers will continue to take over driving until humans are simply not required. Of course they will not replace humans this year or next, but at some point humans will be passengers, not drivers.
- koheripbal 7y ago
  As someone who works in insurance, I can tell you that the vast majority of accidents occur in adverse conditions. Creating an AI that only functions on dry sunny days is basically useless from a safety perspective. ...though it does save people time since they can be doing something else while in transit!
- ben_w 7y ago
  The stats aren’t good enough to be sure yet. They’re encouraging, and if you’d asked me in 2010 I absolutely would not have guessed that a few billion miles of experience wasn’t enough to know for sure, but turns out we need more data.
bananabreakfast 7y ago
It's not apples to oranges. If a human interferes then a human is now driving. That human has a worse record of non accidents than the computer. Ergo, that human is making the driving record worse not better.
- Slartie 7y ago
  You know that it's not the job of the human driver in experimental self-driving vehicles to just take control every once in a while, when he feels he'd like to drive a little? A human interferes in precisely those situations in which the machine either decided to surrender or - worse - started doing something stupid and the human caught it quickly enough to prevent an accident. It is safe to assume that the human has a much better safety record in such situations. And who does the human surrender to when he fails at driving? Should we also not count human accidents that could have been prevented if there was a world-class race driver ready to take over when the actual driver makes the failure?

grey-area 7y ago

Are computers better than the best human drivers in all circumstances? No, maybe they never will be, but that doesn't matter. Are they better than average humans in average conditions already? Yes. They don't need to be all powerful AGI which can replace humans in all circumstances to be useful and save lives.

Slartie 7y ago
What doesn't matter is who wins in average conditions. Because averages are just that: averages. But actual driving is full of non-average situations, whether they are created by weather, other human participants in traffic, animals, whatever...there's millions of surprising non-standard situations happening each day in traffic, and current technology isn't even able to reliably detect when it's facing such a situation, much less capable of handling them entirely on its own.
- meowface 7y ago
  Right. And that's why it's not rolled out everywhere yet. But it's clearly getting closer and closer. It's probably less than 20 years away.
- grey-area 7y ago
  And yet autopilot is doing millions of miles a year with fewer incidents than humans, and expanding in capability (for example taking lane changes and turns), all while constantly lowering the level of accidents. I think average conditions do matter, and supervised computers will continue to take over driving until humans are simply not required. Of course they will not replace humans this year or next, but at some point humans will be passengers, not drivers.
koheripbal 7y ago
As someone who works in insurance, I can tell you that the vast majority of accidents occur in adverse conditions. Creating an AI that only functions on dry sunny days is basically useless from a safety perspective. ...though it does save people time since they can be doing something else while in transit!
ben_w 7y ago
The stats aren’t good enough to be sure yet. They’re encouraging, and if you’d asked me in 2010 I absolutely would not have guessed that a few billion miles of experience wasn’t enough to know for sure, but turns out we need more data.

bananabreakfast 7y ago

It's not apples to oranges. If a human interferes then a human is now driving. That human has a worse record of non accidents than the computer. Ergo, that human is making the driving record worse not better.

Slartie 7y ago
You know that it's not the job of the human driver in experimental self-driving vehicles to just take control every once in a while, when he feels he'd like to drive a little? A human interferes in precisely those situations in which the machine either decided to surrender or - worse - started doing something stupid and the human caught it quickly enough to prevent an accident. It is safe to assume that the human has a much better safety record in such situations. And who does the human surrender to when he fails at driving? Should we also not count human accidents that could have been prevented if there was a world-class race driver ready to take over when the actual driver makes the failure?