6 ms·

They seem very convinced, or at least are pretending to be convinced, that they can build FSD without human-level AI. I'm not convinced of that at all, though.

tantalor 6y ago
As a human with a driver's license, I'd say the job of driving a car demands ~1% of my mental system features. Here's a few skills of my brain not needed for driving, - compose poetry and alternate lyrics to "baby shark" - recognize emotions on faces - form opinions about music, movies, video games, etc. - have a conversation - remember that time I embarrassed myself in sixth grade - contemplate my own existence - divide other people into friend/enemy groups - etc...
- naebother 6y ago
  > recognize emotions on faces I'd argue this is a required skill occasionally, at least when you find yourself in a 4-way stop deadlock.
  - macintux 6y ago
    I find it depressing that cars aren't already talking to each other. I drive on a lot of winding, rural roads with zero visibility around the bend; I'd love to know that there's a car coming the other direction, even with no driving assist technologies at play.
    - naebother 6y ago
      Don't even need two way communication for that I think. A radar should do the trick (although the example video only shows it from a stationary vehicle) https://engineering.princeton.edu/news/2020/06/24/new-radar-lets-cars-spot-hazards-around-corners https://engineering.princeton.edu/news/2020/06/24/new-radar-...
- NoodleIncident 6y ago
  You still might need a functioning "vertical slice" of human-level AI to implement FSD, though. Leaving out irrelevant tasks doesn't make the one remaining task any easier.
- justapassenger 6y ago
  The question isn't if driving the car requires you to know how to write poetry. It's if complexity of how our brain works, that enables you to be able to write poetry is also requirement to drive a car in real world, unpredictable environments.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  In contrast, also as a human with a driver's license, I find that having a conversation conflicts pretty severely with the job of driving a car.
Hnaomyiph 6y ago
I'm not convinced either. I don't think I'll see a 100% FSD vehicle in my lifetime, at least the ones depicted in futuristic renderings without steering wheels. Case in point, how does a FSD vehicle deal with extremely heavy snowfall on a unplowed road? I spent 15 minutes rocking the car back and forth, so I could slowly back my way out of a one-way road onto a main street. After that I had to drive on countless roads with no visible markings due to the snow. I don't think the way we're approaching self driving cars today will ever work for these edge cases.
- ghaff 6y ago
  But it never snows in Texas or Portland, OR so they'll be fine there :-/
- naebother 6y ago
  Trains don't have a steering wheel :)
- treis 6y ago
  I'm the opposite. I don't think I'll buy another car (current is 3 years old) and I'm even surer that my son (aged 2) is not going to learn how to drive. Driving is a pretty well defined space. Stay in your lane, get to the destination, and don't hit anyone. Pretty much every similar problem that significant effort has been solved. Chess, Go, Starcraft, DOTA all were called unsolvable at one point and all were eventually solved. Your edge cases are just that. Edge cases. Nobody is going to care if they can't drive in extremely heavy snow. To begin with, they probably shouldn't do that anyways. More importantly the vast benefits of self driving cars outweighs the inconvenience of not being able to drive a dozen times a year. We all still have cell phones even though you can't make calls in elevators. Even then, if you can do it why can't a computer? Rocking the car back and forth seems doable. Following an unpaved road is much harder, but then again are humans actually good at it either? You might be right that they will still have steering wheels for no other reason than there's little downside to including them.
  - hntrader 6y ago
    Starcraft was solved in the sense that the winrate against top players was high, but the production model often found itself in pathological absorbing states that it couldn't escape from, which no human would ever get itself into. That's important, since if we are using it as an analogy for driving, it's not just the win rate we're interested in, it's the ability to consistently avoid pathological states when presented with edge cases (e.g. not braking when there's a strange looking object in front). Some would call this "common sense". Also, games like SC2 are distinct from the driving problem as far as RL goes, since you have unlimited training data which allows you to explore all edge cases given enough compute. In self-driving, the data is scarce and you can't explore all edge cases by just throwing compute at the problem.
trhway 6y ago
well, many people driving around also don't reach the "human-level AI" too :) The computer beats me in chess, while it still would fail to find the proof i came up with in my Math MS thesis. Is the driving more similar to chess or to finding a math proof? I think it is closer to the former. In a few years, giving the speed of sensor development and growth of computing power, the automated driving system can continuously capture and monitor 360 degree environment, at better resolution than human and across the specter of wavelengths (visual, IR, T/GHz) and react better/faster than human. Given that, i think human driven cars will be relegated in couple decades to the position of horse carriages - not allowed on highway for example where automated cars will be driving faster at tighter distances while being networked to each other in the vicinity. In some sense the driving may happen to be best suited for insect style distributed intelligence with relatively low intelligence of any given node which still possesses heightened senses. I wonder whether Google cars communicate to each other when meet at an intersection - either option has far reaching consequences and will define our near-term future. Plus at some point insurance industry will say their word which most probably will be based on the sole metric of $/mile loss, not AI IQ score.
carapace 6y ago
I'm not convinced either. On the other hand, if we set it up well, each car will learn from the experiences of every car, so novel situations will (ideally) only be novel once. R.I.P. Elaine Herzberg

tantalor 6y ago

As a human with a driver's license, I'd say the job of driving a car demands ~1% of my mental system features. Here's a few skills of my brain not needed for driving, - compose poetry and alternate lyrics to "baby shark" - recognize emotions on faces - form opinions about music, movies, video games, etc. - have a conversation - remember that time I embarrassed myself in sixth grade - contemplate my own existence - divide other people into friend/enemy groups - etc...

naebother 6y ago
> recognize emotions on faces I'd argue this is a required skill occasionally, at least when you find yourself in a 4-way stop deadlock.
- macintux 6y ago
  I find it depressing that cars aren't already talking to each other. I drive on a lot of winding, rural roads with zero visibility around the bend; I'd love to know that there's a car coming the other direction, even with no driving assist technologies at play.
  - naebother 6y ago
    Don't even need two way communication for that I think. A radar should do the trick (although the example video only shows it from a stationary vehicle) https://engineering.princeton.edu/news/2020/06/24/new-radar-lets-cars-spot-hazards-around-corners https://engineering.princeton.edu/news/2020/06/24/new-radar-...
NoodleIncident 6y ago
You still might need a functioning "vertical slice" of human-level AI to implement FSD, though. Leaving out irrelevant tasks doesn't make the one remaining task any easier.
justapassenger 6y ago
The question isn't if driving the car requires you to know how to write poetry. It's if complexity of how our brain works, that enables you to be able to write poetry is also requirement to drive a car in real world, unpredictable environments.
thaumasiotes 6y ago
In contrast, also as a human with a driver's license, I find that having a conversation conflicts pretty severely with the job of driving a car.

Hnaomyiph 6y ago

I'm not convinced either. I don't think I'll see a 100% FSD vehicle in my lifetime, at least the ones depicted in futuristic renderings without steering wheels. Case in point, how does a FSD vehicle deal with extremely heavy snowfall on a unplowed road? I spent 15 minutes rocking the car back and forth, so I could slowly back my way out of a one-way road onto a main street. After that I had to drive on countless roads with no visible markings due to the snow. I don't think the way we're approaching self driving cars today will ever work for these edge cases.

ghaff 6y ago
But it never snows in Texas or Portland, OR so they'll be fine there :-/
naebother 6y ago
Trains don't have a steering wheel :)
treis 6y ago
I'm the opposite. I don't think I'll buy another car (current is 3 years old) and I'm even surer that my son (aged 2) is not going to learn how to drive. Driving is a pretty well defined space. Stay in your lane, get to the destination, and don't hit anyone. Pretty much every similar problem that significant effort has been solved. Chess, Go, Starcraft, DOTA all were called unsolvable at one point and all were eventually solved. Your edge cases are just that. Edge cases. Nobody is going to care if they can't drive in extremely heavy snow. To begin with, they probably shouldn't do that anyways. More importantly the vast benefits of self driving cars outweighs the inconvenience of not being able to drive a dozen times a year. We all still have cell phones even though you can't make calls in elevators. Even then, if you can do it why can't a computer? Rocking the car back and forth seems doable. Following an unpaved road is much harder, but then again are humans actually good at it either? You might be right that they will still have steering wheels for no other reason than there's little downside to including them.
- hntrader 6y ago
  Starcraft was solved in the sense that the winrate against top players was high, but the production model often found itself in pathological absorbing states that it couldn't escape from, which no human would ever get itself into. That's important, since if we are using it as an analogy for driving, it's not just the win rate we're interested in, it's the ability to consistently avoid pathological states when presented with edge cases (e.g. not braking when there's a strange looking object in front). Some would call this "common sense". Also, games like SC2 are distinct from the driving problem as far as RL goes, since you have unlimited training data which allows you to explore all edge cases given enough compute. In self-driving, the data is scarce and you can't explore all edge cases by just throwing compute at the problem.

trhway 6y ago

well, many people driving around also don't reach the "human-level AI" too :) The computer beats me in chess, while it still would fail to find the proof i came up with in my Math MS thesis. Is the driving more similar to chess or to finding a math proof? I think it is closer to the former. In a few years, giving the speed of sensor development and growth of computing power, the automated driving system can continuously capture and monitor 360 degree environment, at better resolution than human and across the specter of wavelengths (visual, IR, T/GHz) and react better/faster than human. Given that, i think human driven cars will be relegated in couple decades to the position of horse carriages - not allowed on highway for example where automated cars will be driving faster at tighter distances while being networked to each other in the vicinity. In some sense the driving may happen to be best suited for insect style distributed intelligence with relatively low intelligence of any given node which still possesses heightened senses. I wonder whether Google cars communicate to each other when meet at an intersection - either option has far reaching consequences and will define our near-term future. Plus at some point insurance industry will say their word which most probably will be based on the sole metric of $/mile loss, not AI IQ score.

carapace 6y ago

I'm not convinced either. On the other hand, if we set it up well, each car will learn from the experiences of every car, so novel situations will (ideally) only be novel once. R.I.P. Elaine Herzberg