8 ms·

I saw Levandowski do a presentation of self-driving at an Uber all-hands and it was then and there that I knew that self-driving is 20+ years away. The example

I saw Levandowski do a presentation of self-driving at an Uber all-hands and it was then and there that I knew that self-driving is 20+ years away. The example video showed so many small things that we take for granted as a human driver that would need to be built in or hand coded that AI or neural nets would never be able to get. There just isn’t a way that you can train every single little thing that could cause an accident. For some things you just need experience and fear which I imagine can’t be modeled via any current AI.

aparsons 5y ago
I chuckled! I spoke to Anthony at the Udacity office in Mountain View around 2018 (he’d already left Uber to found his trucking company). He seemed like he’d given up on city streets being autonomously drivable any time soon, but highways were still on the table in the next five years. One idea he floated was to employ drivers only from the exit ramp for the last mile journey. For trucking, this made sense.
- plank_time 5y ago
  Do you mean after he left Google? He left Google to form Otto which Uber bought. Frankly it’s the biggest mistake of TK’s career and caused the downfall in my opinion. He went against the advice of Emil and Salle, which was a huge mistake, and there were totally right.
dmix 5y ago
I think at a minimum all the cars need to be taking to each other over a protocol.
- notsureaboutpg 5y ago
  So everyone gets in an accident when that protocol has a bug or some server assisting the communication has unplanned downtime?
- johannes1234321 5y ago
  However that has to be secure that a hacker can't simply stop all traffic or cause speeding
  - rhodozelia 5y ago
    Which is pretty much impossible if you let people have the physical cars. They will report their speed to other cars, they will measure their speed from pulses generated by something rotating on the vehicle, replace rotating thing with your function generator and then you can tell other cars you are going any speed you want. Turn up your reported speed and watch all the other cars get out of your way!
    - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
      I've always thought we should just start with a dedicated lane on the highway for self driving vehicles, raise the speed limit on it, and let the vehicles communicate with each other.
    - johannes1234321 5y ago
      Well, you can take the input as a data point, but make the final decision based on sensor data. Thus the shared data can make the flow smoother. But I'm also waiting for fake street signs to troll/manipulate self driving vehicles :)
      - alasdair_ 5y ago
        I tried “tesla swatting” with a fake speed sign a couple of years ago. It worked then (autopilot went from 45 to 15 MPH) and I assume it still does. Can I copyright the phrase “Tesla swatting”? :)
      - rhodozelia 5y ago
        Sensor data is the input and can be faked!
      - netrus 5y ago
        It's easy to put up fake street signs to troll/manipulate human drivers, yet that hardly ever happens. I have read stories of people putting up fake speed cameras in their front yard to slow down traffic, but no one dares to fake speed limit signs.
- mannykannot 5y ago
  I don't disagree (and nor am I certain you are right), but if that is so, then there are some follow-on issues: 1) The system still has to react safely to pedestrians, cyclists and other entities outside of the network. 1.1) During the transition period, that is going to include vehicles driven by people (I do not think it will be feasible to ban the latter before self-driving vehicles are commonplace, except possibly in city centers and on some major highways.) 2) We do not want systems to learn how to take advantage of the protocol to drive aggressively and antisocially.
  - ehnto 5y ago
    I wonder if the software industry has it in itself to produce a safe intra-vehicle network that wouldn't be taken advantage of, either by malicious actors or the manufacturers. I am sure there is a technically sound protocol someone can come up with, but it would have to survive the corporate food chain, proprietary advances, and the three letter agencies.
    - totetsu 5y ago
      Would we see the same dynamic we are seeing now with "net neutrality" and fast lanes for certain endpoints? Like if you pay for a premium service included in the BMW package, you get to travel at full speed, while the test of the vehicles are artificially slowed down. Or if you are on your way to Disney land with a paid ticket, all the stop lights will change in your favor.
      - virtue3 5y ago
        Thankfully BMW doesn't own the roads. They do this in LA already, you can choose to be toll'd more (wireless tolls) or you can stay in the normal lanes. I'm much more ok with the regional infrastructure charging it because you have at least a chance at knowing where the money goes. The car manufacturers would love to have some sort of residual billing for crap like that I'm sure tho.
        ehnto 5y ago
manigandham 5y ago
Can you share examples of these things? Isn't training data considered "experience"?
- plank_time 5y ago
  Example: One of the examples was a self driving car driving down a busy road. There was a car trying to cross that road perpendicularly. As a driver you could see that car inching its way into traffic but the self driving car didn’t recognize that as a threat. Suddenly the car drove into traffic and the self-driving car almost t-boned it but the human driver intervened before it hit. That’s something that as a driver I would have caught and slowed down because the car was acting weird.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  No, training data influences the values of weights and biases in a neural network. An over-fitted NN might encode the training data in its network, but in general, the training data can't be recalled in the same way that a human can recall, learn from, make judgments and adjust their future behavior and perceptions based on their experiences.
slimsag 5y ago
AI/neural nets are good at detecting patterns, but only marginally so. Humans have such incredible pattern recognition that we have built-in fear mechanics for when things are _not_ a pattern we recognize. What percentage of the time do you experience fear when performing a task such as driving? Think about it - that's the margin for error that humans have in pattern recognition for that task.
- m_mueller 5y ago
  You're raising an interesting point here. Humans pattern match everything (and integrate it into a world model). When something out of the ordinary appears, attention is brought to it immediately. By comparison, today's AIs just match what they can, leaving everything else out. I don't think that FSD can happen as long as that's the case.
  - modo_mario 5y ago
    I think a good rule to make is that to be fully selfreliant an AI would have to recognize random adjustments that are intentionally wrong or notably confusing for what they are or rather aren't. I drove to work yesterday and a driver driving over the freshly painted lines to avoid a parked truck had basically caused a swerving lighter set of the lines in the middle of the road to appear. Similarly in my country at construction sites where the road is redirected for a while the new lines are often just in a different colour and the old ones remain. Sometimes they aren't and i've gotten confused at least once. But what if it was intentional or more pronounced? Perhaps we really should paint ourselves a looney tunes-esque scenario. The kind where our hero paints some lines towards and a fake tunnel on a wall. Except instead of some by radar easily recognised wall it should be some other danger. Also. If I put a cardboard cutout of a cartoon character next to or on a road will it cause these cars to slow down? Will it take a risk to swerve if the cutout appeared around a corner?
- eptcyka 5y ago
  I think the recognition performance is irrelevant, the failure mode of a model not knowing when there's something it can't recognize is the issue. Most clssifiers will just fail silently and let the toy car drive into a trailer.
smoe 5y ago
I don’t know much about the space, but always found it interesting that most of the conversation is about autonomous driving for individuals, which to me seems to be the last step after e.g cargo outside cities and public transportation has been automated. I reckon because the latter are less sexy, lead to job losses and maybe require more public acceptance? I know there is a lot of work being done in this areas as well but what is the current state of it and what are the barriers?
- jtolmar 5y ago
  A city bus carrying 20 people has 5% the drivers-per-person that an individual vehicle has. The driverless system only would save 5% the human effort that it would for a solo vehicle, so it needs to be 20x as good before it's worthwhile. Put another way, the bus with 20 riders is already equivalent to automating 19 cars. Roughly the same idea with freight - a single truck driver serves the needs of many people.
  - azinman2 5y ago
    Human drivers still do meaningfully cost money to employ, and they do annoying things like needing to sleep or take rest room breaks. Autonomous trucking would completely revolutionize the industry.
    - danielheath 5y ago
      Autonomous trucks for urban trucking are a pipe dream, but maybe for long-haul routes. That said, it's not at all clear to me that developing autonomous trucks for long interstate routes would be meaningfully cheaper than laying rail on literally every high-traffic route on the planet, which uses perfectly-understood technology and has entirely predictable returns.
      - azinman2 5y ago
        We already have a lot of rail in the world, but still have lots and lots of trucks. Is it just not enough rail? Roads are also useful for people in a really dynamic way that rail isn’t (especially for big countries like the US).
nradov 5y ago
Beyond experience and fear, I think an autonomous vehicle will need a reasonably accurate mental model of how other human drivers on the road are likely to react.
- throwawayzRUU6f 5y ago
  The technical term for this is 'situational awareness' > Situational awareness or situation awareness (SA) is the perception of environmental elements and events with respect to time or space, the comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of their future status There's an bearish case to be made - not only are the state-of-the-art algorithms nowhere near this - it takes kids quite some time to acquire this skill. Playing ball games with my kids, I've noticed even a 3yo still doesn't intuitively grasp Newtonian mechanics - they're trying to catch the ball where it is now, not where it's going to be in a few seconds. 8yo - notably better, though not fine tuned yet. Heck, I know some adults who're lacking in this respect.
  - xsmasher 5y ago
    Cats can catch a sparrow in mid-flight, though; it may take specialized hardware or software, but not human-level intelligence.
- hellbannedguy 5y ago
  I feel this way too. I've noticed over the years that the morning commute is a symphony of madness. Drivers going over the speed limit. Drivers doing illegial things in order to get to work, and keep the traffic moving. Cops seem to let a lot of infractions go during the morning commute. (The rest of the time they let nothing go, but in the morning commute they just seem to know it's a symphony of driving?) I picture a self driving car going 25 mph with 20 vechicles behind it. I don't think you could legally program a car to break any law, even in emergencies. Well you could, but lawyers would have a fun day in court?
  - eloisant 5y ago
    If the 25mph speed limit doesn't make sense on that road it needs to change. If it makes sense, then the self driving car going at speed limit is the right thing to do and human drivers should do the same. It's as simple as that.

aparsons 5y ago

I chuckled! I spoke to Anthony at the Udacity office in Mountain View around 2018 (he’d already left Uber to found his trucking company). He seemed like he’d given up on city streets being autonomously drivable any time soon, but highways were still on the table in the next five years. One idea he floated was to employ drivers only from the exit ramp for the last mile journey. For trucking, this made sense.

plank_time 5y ago
Do you mean after he left Google? He left Google to form Otto which Uber bought. Frankly it’s the biggest mistake of TK’s career and caused the downfall in my opinion. He went against the advice of Emil and Salle, which was a huge mistake, and there were totally right.

dmix 5y ago

I think at a minimum all the cars need to be taking to each other over a protocol.

notsureaboutpg 5y ago
So everyone gets in an accident when that protocol has a bug or some server assisting the communication has unplanned downtime?
johannes1234321 5y ago
However that has to be secure that a hacker can't simply stop all traffic or cause speeding
- rhodozelia 5y ago
  Which is pretty much impossible if you let people have the physical cars. They will report their speed to other cars, they will measure their speed from pulses generated by something rotating on the vehicle, replace rotating thing with your function generator and then you can tell other cars you are going any speed you want. Turn up your reported speed and watch all the other cars get out of your way!
  - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
    I've always thought we should just start with a dedicated lane on the highway for self driving vehicles, raise the speed limit on it, and let the vehicles communicate with each other.
  - johannes1234321 5y ago
    Well, you can take the input as a data point, but make the final decision based on sensor data. Thus the shared data can make the flow smoother. But I'm also waiting for fake street signs to troll/manipulate self driving vehicles :)
    - alasdair_ 5y ago
      I tried “tesla swatting” with a fake speed sign a couple of years ago. It worked then (autopilot went from 45 to 15 MPH) and I assume it still does. Can I copyright the phrase “Tesla swatting”? :)
    - rhodozelia 5y ago
      Sensor data is the input and can be faked!
    - netrus 5y ago
      It's easy to put up fake street signs to troll/manipulate human drivers, yet that hardly ever happens. I have read stories of people putting up fake speed cameras in their front yard to slow down traffic, but no one dares to fake speed limit signs.
mannykannot 5y ago
I don't disagree (and nor am I certain you are right), but if that is so, then there are some follow-on issues: 1) The system still has to react safely to pedestrians, cyclists and other entities outside of the network. 1.1) During the transition period, that is going to include vehicles driven by people (I do not think it will be feasible to ban the latter before self-driving vehicles are commonplace, except possibly in city centers and on some major highways.) 2) We do not want systems to learn how to take advantage of the protocol to drive aggressively and antisocially.
- ehnto 5y ago
  I wonder if the software industry has it in itself to produce a safe intra-vehicle network that wouldn't be taken advantage of, either by malicious actors or the manufacturers. I am sure there is a technically sound protocol someone can come up with, but it would have to survive the corporate food chain, proprietary advances, and the three letter agencies.
  - totetsu 5y ago
    Would we see the same dynamic we are seeing now with "net neutrality" and fast lanes for certain endpoints? Like if you pay for a premium service included in the BMW package, you get to travel at full speed, while the test of the vehicles are artificially slowed down. Or if you are on your way to Disney land with a paid ticket, all the stop lights will change in your favor.
    - virtue3 5y ago
      Thankfully BMW doesn't own the roads. They do this in LA already, you can choose to be toll'd more (wireless tolls) or you can stay in the normal lanes. I'm much more ok with the regional infrastructure charging it because you have at least a chance at knowing where the money goes. The car manufacturers would love to have some sort of residual billing for crap like that I'm sure tho.
      - ehnto 5y ago

manigandham 5y ago

Can you share examples of these things? Isn't training data considered "experience"?

plank_time 5y ago
Example: One of the examples was a self driving car driving down a busy road. There was a car trying to cross that road perpendicularly. As a driver you could see that car inching its way into traffic but the self driving car didn’t recognize that as a threat. Suddenly the car drove into traffic and the self-driving car almost t-boned it but the human driver intervened before it hit. That’s something that as a driver I would have caught and slowed down because the car was acting weird.
heavyset_go 5y ago
No, training data influences the values of weights and biases in a neural network. An over-fitted NN might encode the training data in its network, but in general, the training data can't be recalled in the same way that a human can recall, learn from, make judgments and adjust their future behavior and perceptions based on their experiences.

slimsag 5y ago

AI/neural nets are good at detecting patterns, but only marginally so. Humans have such incredible pattern recognition that we have built-in fear mechanics for when things are _not_ a pattern we recognize. What percentage of the time do you experience fear when performing a task such as driving? Think about it - that's the margin for error that humans have in pattern recognition for that task.

m_mueller 5y ago
You're raising an interesting point here. Humans pattern match everything (and integrate it into a world model). When something out of the ordinary appears, attention is brought to it immediately. By comparison, today's AIs just match what they can, leaving everything else out. I don't think that FSD can happen as long as that's the case.
- modo_mario 5y ago
  I think a good rule to make is that to be fully selfreliant an AI would have to recognize random adjustments that are intentionally wrong or notably confusing for what they are or rather aren't. I drove to work yesterday and a driver driving over the freshly painted lines to avoid a parked truck had basically caused a swerving lighter set of the lines in the middle of the road to appear. Similarly in my country at construction sites where the road is redirected for a while the new lines are often just in a different colour and the old ones remain. Sometimes they aren't and i've gotten confused at least once. But what if it was intentional or more pronounced? Perhaps we really should paint ourselves a looney tunes-esque scenario. The kind where our hero paints some lines towards and a fake tunnel on a wall. Except instead of some by radar easily recognised wall it should be some other danger. Also. If I put a cardboard cutout of a cartoon character next to or on a road will it cause these cars to slow down? Will it take a risk to swerve if the cutout appeared around a corner?
eptcyka 5y ago
I think the recognition performance is irrelevant, the failure mode of a model not knowing when there's something it can't recognize is the issue. Most clssifiers will just fail silently and let the toy car drive into a trailer.

smoe 5y ago

I don’t know much about the space, but always found it interesting that most of the conversation is about autonomous driving for individuals, which to me seems to be the last step after e.g cargo outside cities and public transportation has been automated. I reckon because the latter are less sexy, lead to job losses and maybe require more public acceptance? I know there is a lot of work being done in this areas as well but what is the current state of it and what are the barriers?

jtolmar 5y ago
A city bus carrying 20 people has 5% the drivers-per-person that an individual vehicle has. The driverless system only would save 5% the human effort that it would for a solo vehicle, so it needs to be 20x as good before it's worthwhile. Put another way, the bus with 20 riders is already equivalent to automating 19 cars. Roughly the same idea with freight - a single truck driver serves the needs of many people.
- azinman2 5y ago
  Human drivers still do meaningfully cost money to employ, and they do annoying things like needing to sleep or take rest room breaks. Autonomous trucking would completely revolutionize the industry.
  - danielheath 5y ago
    Autonomous trucks for urban trucking are a pipe dream, but maybe for long-haul routes. That said, it's not at all clear to me that developing autonomous trucks for long interstate routes would be meaningfully cheaper than laying rail on literally every high-traffic route on the planet, which uses perfectly-understood technology and has entirely predictable returns.
    - azinman2 5y ago
      We already have a lot of rail in the world, but still have lots and lots of trucks. Is it just not enough rail? Roads are also useful for people in a really dynamic way that rail isn’t (especially for big countries like the US).

nradov 5y ago

Beyond experience and fear, I think an autonomous vehicle will need a reasonably accurate mental model of how other human drivers on the road are likely to react.

throwawayzRUU6f 5y ago
The technical term for this is 'situational awareness' > Situational awareness or situation awareness (SA) is the perception of environmental elements and events with respect to time or space, the comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of their future status There's an bearish case to be made - not only are the state-of-the-art algorithms nowhere near this - it takes kids quite some time to acquire this skill. Playing ball games with my kids, I've noticed even a 3yo still doesn't intuitively grasp Newtonian mechanics - they're trying to catch the ball where it is now, not where it's going to be in a few seconds. 8yo - notably better, though not fine tuned yet. Heck, I know some adults who're lacking in this respect.
- xsmasher 5y ago
  Cats can catch a sparrow in mid-flight, though; it may take specialized hardware or software, but not human-level intelligence.
hellbannedguy 5y ago
I feel this way too. I've noticed over the years that the morning commute is a symphony of madness. Drivers going over the speed limit. Drivers doing illegial things in order to get to work, and keep the traffic moving. Cops seem to let a lot of infractions go during the morning commute. (The rest of the time they let nothing go, but in the morning commute they just seem to know it's a symphony of driving?) I picture a self driving car going 25 mph with 20 vechicles behind it. I don't think you could legally program a car to break any law, even in emergencies. Well you could, but lawyers would have a fun day in court?
- eloisant 5y ago
  If the 25mph speed limit doesn't make sense on that road it needs to change. If it makes sense, then the self driving car going at speed limit is the right thing to do and human drivers should do the same. It's as simple as that.