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And the problem with current approaches is entirely that while we can "train" a NN to produce specific emergent behavior associated with the training data to a
by jschwartzi 7y ago
And the problem with current approaches is entirely that while we can "train" a NN to produce specific emergent behavior associated with the training data to a great degree of accuracy, we're totally unable to demonstrate that these systems have perfectly(100% accurate) predictable behaviors.
This is because we're totally unable to come up with a coherent model for why the emergent behavior occurs given the input data and NN training. We know how individual elements of the NN work, and we can describe how the training system works. But the whole notion of repeatedly letting perturbations in a control value or control values dictate the entirety of the performance of a system is nuts.
The only way to determine how a NN will perform in a given situation outside of the training set is to actually feed it the stimulus and check the outputs. Given the amount of stimulus that we as drivers routinely get, it's impossible to say with any degree of certainty that a self-driving car that is built on an NN classifying engine will accurately classify everything in all situations and lighting conditions, because it's impossible to feed it a training set large enough to encompass those situations.
That leaves the question of making a classifier that is better than humans. And whether an NN is better than a human depends very much on the situation. We could make some statistical arguments, but when you're gambling with peoples' lives here it becomes difficult to tolerate such arguments. It's easy to be blase about it until it's your child chasing a ball in front of an AV, at which point any discussion of the statistics is academic.
- stefan8r 7y agoSome large teams have tried to overcome this by making up every such scenario, coding it into simulation, and testing their system. What makes this challenging is that there are more such scenarios that might occur than there are grains of sand, or stars in the universe. Those teams end up thinking they did all the necessary work and then go test, just to find out that there's a new edge case. At Starsky we called it Safety Theatre
- jschwartzi 7y agoI had a mentor at my last job who would repeatedly say "You can't test safety into a product." As in you have to actually do the work to understand and limit how the product behaves, and only then can you call it safe. If you build a product without thinking of safety, then try to test the safety into the finished product, you just end up covering all the known sharp edges with foam. Software products have limitless sharp edges.