13 ms·

With that pricepoint, maybe you don't need to implement actual autonomous driving, but instead it could be implemented by employing millions of dronepilots in s

by ako 5y ago

With that pricepoint, maybe you don't need to implement actual autonomous driving, but instead it could be implemented by employing millions of dronepilots in some far away country that drive your car for you.

imposterr 5y ago
Ah yes, artificial artificial intelligence.
- hyperhopper 5y ago
  Ask yes, exploited human intelligence. Though also, at the same time the liability questions would quickly become... Complicated.... With that model
  - m_mueller 5y ago
    In the same way that basically the entire modern global economy is exploiting humans? Well it does, but it also gives something back: living together in a civilization that kinda works (so far). I think for a lot of people doing some mechanical turk style driving could actually be quite a satisfying job, more so than e.g. data entry tasks.
    - 1-6 5y ago
      Amazon's MTurk still exists!
  - munk-a 5y ago
    "Beetle - why did you just ram us into a wall?" 'I'm sorry! Hit a lag spike, blame Telus.'
tempestn 5y ago
Would probably do a considerably better job than actual autonomous driving for the foreseeable future too.
- ako 5y ago
  There's a future for all these gaming addicted youths after all.
lawl 5y ago
latency might be an issue though
- JamesBarney 5y ago
  Not to mention connectivity
  - tempestn 5y ago
    As long as connectivity was 'good enough', the car could have just enough self-driving capability to safely pull over in the case of an interruption. Would still need to be some nines, but wouldn't need to be utterly perfect.
    - JamesBarney 5y ago
      I don't think safely pulling over a car is any easier to automate than the rest of driving. Those are some of the most complex maneuvers where you're at least as likely to hit a civilian or another car as driving down the street.
- tempestn 5y ago
  You can play high res FPS games on remote GPUs now, so I expect that part could be managed, if not now then in the very near future.
  - vidarh 5y ago
    Presumably those remote gpus are not halfway around the world. Speed of light sets an inherent floor on the latency. The issue is not the idea of remote control per se, though connection drops etc. would be a risk, but the notion yoga can outsource it to somewhere with far cheaper labour.
    - tempestn 5y ago
      Ah, yes, that's a good point.
hypnoscripto 5y ago
Like in Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age. Poorly paid actors in boxes acting as voice assistants.
- ta1234567890 5y ago
  Similar to what the company Spinvox used to do. Artificial Artificial Intelligence, they would break up audio recordings and have different people transcribe them, then piece the transcriptions together. They sold the service to wireless companies so customers could get automatic voicemail transcription.
King-Aaron 5y ago
Driving along the freeway at 100mph and suddenly "sorry afk bro need to go to the toilet"
- ls15 5y ago
  I am in a country that is far away and experience multi-second connection drops on a regular basis.
- ako 5y ago
  Easier solved than with a real driver, just flip a switch and transfer control to another drone pilot. Solves more issues: boring long trip, flip drivers every 30 minutes. One moment you're driving a car in texas, next moment you're driving a car in new york, and 30 minutes later you're driving the Hana Highway on Maui.
  - SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
    With no consequence to you if you decide to go GTA on the system, no peripheral vision, no feel of the road or wheel, assuming you at least have stereoscopic vision with a headset it’s still not at all going to work for white out or hard rain. It’s a fun idea that we can create a whole generation of Bangladeshi click farmers that drive people instead… but it’s a nonstarter for a bunch of reasons.
    - tomcooks 5y ago
      Why would there be no consequences? The person would have a driver contract, have passed driving tests, etc. Not sure what you mean with Bangladeshi click farmers
      - kwdc 5y ago
        This is how a lot of ideas get nonsensical holes put in them. There would be licenses, regulations, threat of lawsuit, qualifications and all sorts of other mandatory requirements. If someone wants to be cynical then, yes, a lot of these safeguards would not be put in place until after a certain number of deaths had been exceeded. eg seat belts, air bags, traffic lights, speed limits, road rules in general. The idea is still viable.
raverbashing 5y ago
Giving that Waymo video about a couple of weeks ago, that seems to be a very poor experience right now (even with the drivers close by).
alkonaut 5y ago
If cars driving themselves will asymptotically approach say 90%, 95% or 99% or situations it can handle, then the car that also handles the last few situations will be very attractive. That's the car that can drive me home from the bar, or that a blind person can own. The 90-99% cars are still for able bodied people with licenses. At some price point, it will always be a lot cheaper to add humans than it is to make the cars "self driving". And the last % I'm almost certain will never be cheap enough for autonomy.
- throwawayzRUU6f 5y ago
  There's a large and perhaps unsolvable problem of the state of the art solutions that doesn't get nearly as much attention as it should - even if the car can safely handle 99% or 99.9% of the situations, the algorithms are not really able to detect if they're in the last 0.1%. The car will slam into stationary trucks, suddenly brake for no reason, consider the tollbooth to be a bus - all with utmost confidence it's doing the right thing. In other words - the value of proposition of autonomous driving would be completely fine if the car gives up on unarguably difficult situations and alerts the driver to take over. As of now, however, the car will boldly do something stupid and dangerous.
  - johndubchak 5y ago
    That "brake for no reason" is a big one. I have a 2015 GMC SUV that has "adaptive cruise control" which I (used to) love. Since my last service, it seems they've updated it and it's far more sensitive than it used to and seems to break in many situations where it previously did not. What sucks about that is the vehicles behind me are caught off-guard with no obvious signs of the need to break and then the jackass in the GMC SUV slams on his breaks.
    - woleium 5y ago
      I had a similar issue, turned out the tech had moved the sensor and it needed recalibration
  - aledalgrande 5y ago
bsder 5y ago
I still don't understand why the "autonomous driving" people aren't concentrating on freeway driving--possibly with special roadway markings--over local driving. I don't really mind driving the 10 minutes to the store. I mind driving 90 minutes between San Diego and LA. I mind driving 90 minutes between San Jose and San Francisco. I mind driving 7 hours between LA and SF. I mind driving driving 24 hours (two 12 hour shifts) between San Diego and Austin. And for those of you suggesting car rentals, have you seen the price of car rentals even before Covid? It was getting to the point that car rental was often more expensive than airfare.
- gspr 5y ago
  If we could have true autonomous local driving, cities would change forever. All cars would live outside the city, and cover (pooled!) demand with incredible efficiency. Cars in cities today are incredibly stupid compared to public transit. Full autonomy could change that.
- slfnflctd 5y ago
  > special roadway markings I continue to expect something of this nature to be necessary before we get self-driving tech anywhere close to where we want it to be. Cameras simply don't work in all conditions, and even with LIDAR mistakes can be made. There needs to be an external reference point.
  - onethought 5y ago
    But currently eyes do. So theoretically cameras should right?
    - smaudet 5y ago
      Lol - if it were that simple we would have had this tech years ago. The physics of the eye are relatively complex, the data processing and recognition we do more so, and the ability to dynamically mentally model a set of controls onto a vehicle of arbitrary shape and dimension even more so. Cameras are not eyes, the algorithms we use to detect are completely different, the algorithms we use are completely different. I can't prove that it is impossible, but its different enough that it might be. A bit like saying a tomato and a brocoli are both vegetables with organic matter, but good luck making Tomato Juice with broccoli.
imtringued 5y ago
Yes, just hide an Indian in the trunk...
pulse7 5y ago
In some countries you could even get a real driver (sitting inside your car) for that money...
Jemm 5y ago
Frankly I am amazed we don't already have remotely piloted vehicles.
- johndubchak 5y ago
  Sadly we do, they're just called drones and they are used to kill people. (Sorry, don't mean to be so dystopian)
zh3 5y ago
A lot of the early 'voice recognition' did this; the audio went real-time to far-away countries where a human would press the appropriate buttons. Makes me wonder what those humans are now doing for a living.
kuratkull 5y ago
That was literally my first idea after reading the title. I hope this plan meets a sad ending. I also see people very quickly stop using their autopilot, as you will think ca. twice a day: "so do I really want to spend 8.50 right now?"

by ako 5y ago

imposterr 5y ago

Ah yes, artificial artificial intelligence.

hyperhopper 5y ago
Ask yes, exploited human intelligence. Though also, at the same time the liability questions would quickly become... Complicated.... With that model
- m_mueller 5y ago
  In the same way that basically the entire modern global economy is exploiting humans? Well it does, but it also gives something back: living together in a civilization that kinda works (so far). I think for a lot of people doing some mechanical turk style driving could actually be quite a satisfying job, more so than e.g. data entry tasks.
  - 1-6 5y ago
    Amazon's MTurk still exists!
- munk-a 5y ago
  "Beetle - why did you just ram us into a wall?" 'I'm sorry! Hit a lag spike, blame Telus.'

tempestn 5y ago

Would probably do a considerably better job than actual autonomous driving for the foreseeable future too.

ako 5y ago
There's a future for all these gaming addicted youths after all.

lawl 5y ago

latency might be an issue though

JamesBarney 5y ago
Not to mention connectivity
- tempestn 5y ago
  As long as connectivity was 'good enough', the car could have just enough self-driving capability to safely pull over in the case of an interruption. Would still need to be some nines, but wouldn't need to be utterly perfect.
  - JamesBarney 5y ago
    I don't think safely pulling over a car is any easier to automate than the rest of driving. Those are some of the most complex maneuvers where you're at least as likely to hit a civilian or another car as driving down the street.
tempestn 5y ago
You can play high res FPS games on remote GPUs now, so I expect that part could be managed, if not now then in the very near future.
- vidarh 5y ago
  Presumably those remote gpus are not halfway around the world. Speed of light sets an inherent floor on the latency. The issue is not the idea of remote control per se, though connection drops etc. would be a risk, but the notion yoga can outsource it to somewhere with far cheaper labour.
  - tempestn 5y ago
    Ah, yes, that's a good point.

hypnoscripto 5y ago

Like in Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age. Poorly paid actors in boxes acting as voice assistants.

ta1234567890 5y ago
Similar to what the company Spinvox used to do. Artificial Artificial Intelligence, they would break up audio recordings and have different people transcribe them, then piece the transcriptions together. They sold the service to wireless companies so customers could get automatic voicemail transcription.

King-Aaron 5y ago

Driving along the freeway at 100mph and suddenly "sorry afk bro need to go to the toilet"

ls15 5y ago
I am in a country that is far away and experience multi-second connection drops on a regular basis.
ako 5y ago
Easier solved than with a real driver, just flip a switch and transfer control to another drone pilot. Solves more issues: boring long trip, flip drivers every 30 minutes. One moment you're driving a car in texas, next moment you're driving a car in new york, and 30 minutes later you're driving the Hana Highway on Maui.
- SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
  With no consequence to you if you decide to go GTA on the system, no peripheral vision, no feel of the road or wheel, assuming you at least have stereoscopic vision with a headset it’s still not at all going to work for white out or hard rain. It’s a fun idea that we can create a whole generation of Bangladeshi click farmers that drive people instead… but it’s a nonstarter for a bunch of reasons.
  - tomcooks 5y ago
    Why would there be no consequences? The person would have a driver contract, have passed driving tests, etc. Not sure what you mean with Bangladeshi click farmers
    - kwdc 5y ago
      This is how a lot of ideas get nonsensical holes put in them. There would be licenses, regulations, threat of lawsuit, qualifications and all sorts of other mandatory requirements. If someone wants to be cynical then, yes, a lot of these safeguards would not be put in place until after a certain number of deaths had been exceeded. eg seat belts, air bags, traffic lights, speed limits, road rules in general. The idea is still viable.

raverbashing 5y ago

Giving that Waymo video about a couple of weeks ago, that seems to be a very poor experience right now (even with the drivers close by).

alkonaut 5y ago

If cars driving themselves will asymptotically approach say 90%, 95% or 99% or situations it can handle, then the car that also handles the last few situations will be very attractive. That's the car that can drive me home from the bar, or that a blind person can own. The 90-99% cars are still for able bodied people with licenses. At some price point, it will always be a lot cheaper to add humans than it is to make the cars "self driving". And the last % I'm almost certain will never be cheap enough for autonomy.

throwawayzRUU6f 5y ago
There's a large and perhaps unsolvable problem of the state of the art solutions that doesn't get nearly as much attention as it should - even if the car can safely handle 99% or 99.9% of the situations, the algorithms are not really able to detect if they're in the last 0.1%. The car will slam into stationary trucks, suddenly brake for no reason, consider the tollbooth to be a bus - all with utmost confidence it's doing the right thing. In other words - the value of proposition of autonomous driving would be completely fine if the car gives up on unarguably difficult situations and alerts the driver to take over. As of now, however, the car will boldly do something stupid and dangerous.
- johndubchak 5y ago
  That "brake for no reason" is a big one. I have a 2015 GMC SUV that has "adaptive cruise control" which I (used to) love. Since my last service, it seems they've updated it and it's far more sensitive than it used to and seems to break in many situations where it previously did not. What sucks about that is the vehicles behind me are caught off-guard with no obvious signs of the need to break and then the jackass in the GMC SUV slams on his breaks.
  - woleium 5y ago
    I had a similar issue, turned out the tech had moved the sensor and it needed recalibration
- aledalgrande 5y ago

bsder 5y ago

I still don't understand why the "autonomous driving" people aren't concentrating on freeway driving--possibly with special roadway markings--over local driving. I don't really mind driving the 10 minutes to the store. I mind driving 90 minutes between San Diego and LA. I mind driving 90 minutes between San Jose and San Francisco. I mind driving 7 hours between LA and SF. I mind driving driving 24 hours (two 12 hour shifts) between San Diego and Austin. And for those of you suggesting car rentals, have you seen the price of car rentals even before Covid? It was getting to the point that car rental was often more expensive than airfare.

gspr 5y ago
If we could have true autonomous local driving, cities would change forever. All cars would live outside the city, and cover (pooled!) demand with incredible efficiency. Cars in cities today are incredibly stupid compared to public transit. Full autonomy could change that.
slfnflctd 5y ago
> special roadway markings I continue to expect something of this nature to be necessary before we get self-driving tech anywhere close to where we want it to be. Cameras simply don't work in all conditions, and even with LIDAR mistakes can be made. There needs to be an external reference point.
- onethought 5y ago
  But currently eyes do. So theoretically cameras should right?
  - smaudet 5y ago
    Lol - if it were that simple we would have had this tech years ago. The physics of the eye are relatively complex, the data processing and recognition we do more so, and the ability to dynamically mentally model a set of controls onto a vehicle of arbitrary shape and dimension even more so. Cameras are not eyes, the algorithms we use to detect are completely different, the algorithms we use are completely different. I can't prove that it is impossible, but its different enough that it might be. A bit like saying a tomato and a brocoli are both vegetables with organic matter, but good luck making Tomato Juice with broccoli.

imtringued 5y ago

Yes, just hide an Indian in the trunk...

pulse7 5y ago

In some countries you could even get a real driver (sitting inside your car) for that money...

Jemm 5y ago

Frankly I am amazed we don't already have remotely piloted vehicles.

johndubchak 5y ago
Sadly we do, they're just called drones and they are used to kill people. (Sorry, don't mean to be so dystopian)

zh3 5y ago

A lot of the early 'voice recognition' did this; the audio went real-time to far-away countries where a human would press the appropriate buttons. Makes me wonder what those humans are now doing for a living.

kuratkull 5y ago

That was literally my first idea after reading the title. I hope this plan meets a sad ending. I also see people very quickly stop using their autopilot, as you will think ca. twice a day: "so do I really want to spend 8.50 right now?"