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Self-Driving Cars Are Self-Driving Bullets

mac-chaffee 5y ago
My takeaway from this article was a familiar complaint for many of us: over-hyped new features being prioritized over more beneficial work. The key quote being: > Tesla should focus instead on improving its actually-existing AI, its autopilot system. After all, the general idea of using computers to help humans avoid collisions is very good; we kill over 36,000 people a year with cars, so anything that drives that number down is worthwhile. I think the author is saying that Tesla keeps promising a technology that seems to always be a few years away. But they could be saving lives right now with driver-assist tech that just isn't as "flashy" as full self-driving. We're drowning under a mountain of tech debt and security issues (car crashes) that we could alleviate in 1 sprint, but the PM wants to add "cloud" to the marketing slides, so chop chop!
101_101 5y ago
Well, self-driving bullets reach their desired destination, self-driving cars on the other hand, tend to drive into things.
ayyy 5y ago
Surely there will be a tipping point when human drivers are considered riskier than AI drivers. It seems far in the future, but it's probably not when you consider all of the human errors made every day. Not that anyone cares about that, of course, because agency is preferred over outcome. Also, it's super annoying that now I need multiple addons (bypass-paywalls-clean, ublock origin, and 'i don't care about cookies') just to browse basic blogs these days without jumping through hoops.
- LocalPCGuy 5y ago
  This is what gets missed. Self driving cars don't need to be flawless. They just need to be some order of magnitude better than human drivers. And assistive technology is the first step towards using that automation to make driving safer. This idea that a computer driver should never get in an accident is flawed, IMO. Sure, we don't want "computers killing people" but the very definition of an accident is an unpredictable event and we should be looking at the entire sum/statistics of the industry, not throwing up out hands at every accident. (Not saying we shouldn't learn from each one, disect it and work to do even better, we should do that also.) And as to those that work around safety measures so they can goof off instead of driving, congrats on the Darwin award, I have zero sympathy for them. Harsh, but c'mon. And they should be charged with a crime if they do that and injure or kill someone else.
  - MarkMc 5y ago
    Another thing that gets missed is this: With self-driving cars every single fatal accident will be investigated, and the result of that investigation will be used to improve the software on all cars in the network. In this way the rate at which cars kill people will decline, similar to the systematic decline in airplane deaths over the years. So maybe it's worth initially accepting a self-driving fatality rate that is slightly above the human-driving rate?
risyachka 5y ago
>> we kill over 36,000 people a year with cars What about >1 million killed in car accidents each year worldwide? Looks like the author just criticizes Musk and his overly optimistic approach. On the other hand without it US would still be flying to space on Russian rockets. Does his approach has its flaws? Sure. Is it working? Looks like it does.
sneak 5y ago
Both of the fatal accidents cited in this article have human errors as proximate causes: the Uber safety driver in the bicyclist jaywalking incident was watching TV on her phone and not the road, and the teenager killed when a Tesla hit a pickup wasn't wearing a seatbelt and was thrown from the vehicle. Humans are already the weak link, and will only become more so over time.
- new_realist 5y ago
  This is the danger of requiring humans to monitor non-L5 systems for safe operation. They are incapable of babysitting robots, and their brains shut down involuntarily. Shit automation is more dangerous than no automation at all.
  - sneak 5y ago
    Her watching TV on her phone was a voluntary action. I'm a big proponent of machine-assisted and humane attention span monitoring systems, as someone with massive attention span issues myself, but let's call a spade a spade. This wasn't a failure of attention, this was criminal negligence on the safety driver's part. (I would be willing to bet money that part of her job training also explicitly specified that you're not to be watching TV on your phone while driving/monitoring.) It's plausible that if she hadn't been watching TV, she still couldn't have conducted the monitoring task successfully due to the issue you describe, but we'll never know in this instance because she was consciously and voluntarily distracting herself. EDIT, addendum: FSD betas with human supervisors have logged many, many miles, for years now. If what you say is true (we know it's plausible), I believe we would have seen way, way more accidents and fatalities than we have. Not everything they is plausible and fits the narrative is true. It's entirely possible that the FSD betas being tested in industry rn are already safer than human drivers, if not as useful (eg getting caught up on simple edge cases and simply stopping in the middle of the road out of caution, et c).
    - rendall 5y ago
      Humans are wired to need stimulation. Putting someone in a self-driving car for hours on end with nothing to do but watch the road - but not drive - is inhumane.
safog 5y ago
Is there any information in here beyond A - Self driving has been hyped B - Full self driving is hard and may not happen (without any concrete arguments beyond reality is complex)
- nathanaldensr 5y ago
  I don't think the author was trying to write an informative piece.
genmud 5y ago
I’m gonna be honest, having worked in infosec for nearly 2 decades, I don’t trust programmers unless there is extensive testing and almost all inputs are controlled. I would be all for having separate lanes where autonomous vehicles could drive and basically have all the vehicles sharing telemetry. I feel like this is one of the only ways to control for the amount of variables you need to account for. I have a newer model vehicle with a adaptive cruise control and I have seen it literally slam on the brakes if someone merges into my lane. This type of stuff doesn’t give me the slightest bit of confidence considering the same company is touting its self driving cars being the way of the future.

My takeaway from this article was a familiar complaint for many of us: over-hyped new features being prioritized over more beneficial work. The key quote being: > Tesla should focus instead on improving its actually-existing AI, its autopilot system. After all, the general idea of using computers to help humans avoid collisions is very good; we kill over 36,000 people a year with cars, so anything that drives that number down is worthwhile. I think the author is saying that Tesla keeps promising a technology that seems to always be a few years away. But they could be saving lives right now with driver-assist tech that just isn't as "flashy" as full self-driving. We're drowning under a mountain of tech debt and security issues (car crashes) that we could alleviate in 1 sprint, but the PM wants to add "cloud" to the marketing slides, so chop chop!

101_101 5y ago

Well, self-driving bullets reach their desired destination, self-driving cars on the other hand, tend to drive into things.

ayyy 5y ago

Surely there will be a tipping point when human drivers are considered riskier than AI drivers. It seems far in the future, but it's probably not when you consider all of the human errors made every day. Not that anyone cares about that, of course, because agency is preferred over outcome. Also, it's super annoying that now I need multiple addons (bypass-paywalls-clean, ublock origin, and 'i don't care about cookies') just to browse basic blogs these days without jumping through hoops.

LocalPCGuy 5y ago
This is what gets missed. Self driving cars don't need to be flawless. They just need to be some order of magnitude better than human drivers. And assistive technology is the first step towards using that automation to make driving safer. This idea that a computer driver should never get in an accident is flawed, IMO. Sure, we don't want "computers killing people" but the very definition of an accident is an unpredictable event and we should be looking at the entire sum/statistics of the industry, not throwing up out hands at every accident. (Not saying we shouldn't learn from each one, disect it and work to do even better, we should do that also.) And as to those that work around safety measures so they can goof off instead of driving, congrats on the Darwin award, I have zero sympathy for them. Harsh, but c'mon. And they should be charged with a crime if they do that and injure or kill someone else.
- MarkMc 5y ago
  Another thing that gets missed is this: With self-driving cars every single fatal accident will be investigated, and the result of that investigation will be used to improve the software on all cars in the network. In this way the rate at which cars kill people will decline, similar to the systematic decline in airplane deaths over the years. So maybe it's worth initially accepting a self-driving fatality rate that is slightly above the human-driving rate?

risyachka 5y ago

>> we kill over 36,000 people a year with cars What about >1 million killed in car accidents each year worldwide? Looks like the author just criticizes Musk and his overly optimistic approach. On the other hand without it US would still be flying to space on Russian rockets. Does his approach has its flaws? Sure. Is it working? Looks like it does.

sneak 5y ago

Both of the fatal accidents cited in this article have human errors as proximate causes: the Uber safety driver in the bicyclist jaywalking incident was watching TV on her phone and not the road, and the teenager killed when a Tesla hit a pickup wasn't wearing a seatbelt and was thrown from the vehicle. Humans are already the weak link, and will only become more so over time.

new_realist 5y ago
This is the danger of requiring humans to monitor non-L5 systems for safe operation. They are incapable of babysitting robots, and their brains shut down involuntarily. Shit automation is more dangerous than no automation at all.
- sneak 5y ago
  Her watching TV on her phone was a voluntary action. I'm a big proponent of machine-assisted and humane attention span monitoring systems, as someone with massive attention span issues myself, but let's call a spade a spade. This wasn't a failure of attention, this was criminal negligence on the safety driver's part. (I would be willing to bet money that part of her job training also explicitly specified that you're not to be watching TV on your phone while driving/monitoring.) It's plausible that if she hadn't been watching TV, she still couldn't have conducted the monitoring task successfully due to the issue you describe, but we'll never know in this instance because she was consciously and voluntarily distracting herself. EDIT, addendum: FSD betas with human supervisors have logged many, many miles, for years now. If what you say is true (we know it's plausible), I believe we would have seen way, way more accidents and fatalities than we have. Not everything they is plausible and fits the narrative is true. It's entirely possible that the FSD betas being tested in industry rn are already safer than human drivers, if not as useful (eg getting caught up on simple edge cases and simply stopping in the middle of the road out of caution, et c).
  - rendall 5y ago
    Humans are wired to need stimulation. Putting someone in a self-driving car for hours on end with nothing to do but watch the road - but not drive - is inhumane.

safog 5y ago

Is there any information in here beyond A - Self driving has been hyped B - Full self driving is hard and may not happen (without any concrete arguments beyond reality is complex)

nathanaldensr 5y ago
I don't think the author was trying to write an informative piece.

genmud 5y ago

I’m gonna be honest, having worked in infosec for nearly 2 decades, I don’t trust programmers unless there is extensive testing and almost all inputs are controlled. I would be all for having separate lanes where autonomous vehicles could drive and basically have all the vehicles sharing telemetry. I feel like this is one of the only ways to control for the amount of variables you need to account for. I have a newer model vehicle with a adaptive cruise control and I have seen it literally slam on the brakes if someone merges into my lane. This type of stuff doesn’t give me the slightest bit of confidence considering the same company is touting its self driving cars being the way of the future.