5 ms·

A bunch of years ago, when Tesla and Google's car were only just starting and it was fashionable to discuss the implications of self-driving cars, one dude wrot

by aasasd 5y ago

A bunch of years ago, when Tesla and Google's car were only just starting and it was fashionable to discuss the implications of self-driving cars, one dude wrote (approximately): > People are discussing: if the car has to choose between running over a pedestrian and sacrificing the driver's life, what should it choose? Well it's obvious: the driver pays for the car, so they wouldn't buy a car that kills them in case of an incident. I guess now that we're headed straight into cyberpunk, the driver's wish turns out to be not that important. The overriding concern is actually: what will make the company look better. If swerving into trees wins points for Tesla for saving pedestrians' lives, so be it.

015a 5y ago
I'm pretty strongly of the position that high levels of self-driving are impossible for artificial intelligences to attain, because they're built by corporations. Driving is VERY risky, and involves an irreducible assumption of both risk and liability on behalf of the driver. Humans are natural risk-takers. Corporations are not; and any artificial intelligence a corporation produces is always, at some level of meaningful abstraction, a projection of their own values.
- Datenstrom 5y ago
  From Tesla's release of their full self-driving beta and its performance in a recent CGP Grey video where it successfully navigates the most dangerous road in America[1] I think a lot of people are going to have to eat their hats on this stance very soon. I consider myself bullish on this tech, and I have worked closely with autonomous robotics, but I didn't expect it this soon. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6tgmGqXysM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6tgmGqXysM
  - wolrah 5y ago
    > where it successfully navigates the most dangerous road in America Twistiest, maybe. Most dangerous, not even close unless you or someone driving towards you do something dumb. Historically Autopilot's weak spots have been crappy/ambiguous road markings, low speed corners on high speed roads, and large vehicles stopped on/across the road. This video hit none of those points. The lane markings are clear, the posted limit is low, and large vehicles aren't even supposed to be there.
    - reaperducer 5y ago
      Twistiest, maybe. Most dangerous, not even close It's just CGP Grey, not NHTSA. Hyperbole is to be expected. I know he's a darling among the chattering tech class, but it's been several years since he jumped the shark from "insightful, carefully researched, and well thought out" to "just another vlogger doing and saying what is needed to get views."
    - maxdo 5y ago
      your historical observations are irrelevant for FSD beta. It's a new system, it works amazing without markings on the road at all.
      - wolrah 5y ago
        > your historical observations are irrelevant for FSD beta. It's a new system 1. I find it very unlikely that Tesla completely scrapped the previous system to start from scratch for the FSD beta. 2. If they had, that would make me even more suspicious of the new system because that would mean no one would understand its weaknesses yet. Either way, being most interested in where the previous generation system and other semiautonomous systems have historically failed makes sense. > it works amazing without markings on the road at all. I have yet to see any videos of the new system handling poorly marked high speed roads one way or another, but the crash where it tried to veer in to oncoming traffic doesn't provide confidence. All the unmarked/poorly marked roads I've seen so far have been low speed residential/urban, and even there performance has been unpredictable at best. Let's see it on a highway where night time rain has made the markings hard to see. Let's see it when snow covers the road and your only hing or lane The state of the art is such that it can simultaneously be amazing and terrifying to think that normal people are allowed to "test" it wherever they feel like trying on public roads. What it does with the limited inputs it has is incredible, but at the same time it has dangerous failure modes that do not seem to be predictable even to those who use the system regularly. --- Don't get me wrong, there is nothing I'd love more than never having to manually handle a traffic jam, or "go home car, I'm drunk", but the way this is being released will kill people.
    - seoulmetro 5y ago
  - leereeves 5y ago
    That actually didn't look like much of a challenge. All the Tesla had to do was drive slowly and stay in its lane on curves. There were no obstacles that Teslas have had trouble with in the past, like stopped firetrucks, ending lanes, or people changing tires.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    Whilst impressive, that's also a "pretty good setup" for the Tesla - the yellow line is well marked as is the white line; and the Tesla isn't speeding.
  - hellomyguys 5y ago
    Following a well-marked winding road is not a difficult challenge for self-driving cars. Driving in a city, with bus lanes, light rail, bikers, and pedestrians is much harder.
  - gonzoflip 5y ago
    That is the most boring Tail of the Dragon driving vid I have ever seen.
  - aasasd 5y ago
    BTW, if anyone wants to experience the boredom of 18 km of turns among the trees, without actually going to NC/TN—there are custom circuits of Deals Gap/Tail of the Dragon for rFactor, Assetto Corsa and perhaps other sims. (Possibly ‘Grand Prix Legends’ was the first one to get the mod.)
  - lm28469 5y ago
    Lmao, their tech is faaaar away from anything remotely usable in real life. Sure it can follow a double yellow in the middle of the woods, I could do that when I was 10, as soon as you put it in city traffic it's game over in 15 seconds. We will not have fully autonomous vehicles in our street until we ban human driven vehicles and completely rework our infrastructure, aka probably not in our lifetime. Look at that video, it's comically bad: https://www.reddit.com/r/IdiotsInCars/comments/rgiu8m/the_future_is_now/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IdiotsInCars/comments/rgiu8m/the_fu...
  - root_axis 5y ago
    I own a Tesla and it's the best car I've ever owned. However, the FSD software is garbage, I'd sooner trust a drunk human over the Tesla FSD any day of the week.
  - somerandomqaguy 5y ago
    I'm really not sure how that is at all challenging for computer vision to handle. Conditions like these are probably more along the lines to challenge self driving tech: - British Columbia Highway 5 (Coquihalla Highway) Daytime: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIF79ZlWcOI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIF79ZlWcOI - The Coquihalla Highway at night: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hM3BPOLVoUg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hM3BPOLVoUg - Alberta Highway 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Re-Ap5fboi8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Re-Ap5fboi8
- defaultprimate 5y ago
  While I agree with you 100%. High level self driving is impossible on a technical level too imo, there's too many aspects of human perception, processing, and intuition that aren't possible to emulate or account for in, what machine learning really boils down to, a statistical model. There will always be novel situations that you can't simply math your way out of that a human could navigate effortlessly.
  - shagie 5y ago
    Córy Doctorow wrote a collection of short stories (or a single short stories with a variety of smaller chapters - depending on how you look at it) called Car Wars - https://craphound.com/news/2016/11/23/car-wars-a-dystopian-science-fiction-story-about-the-nightmare-of-self-driving-cars/ https://craphound.com/news/2016/11/23/car-wars-a-dystopian-s... It was originally hosted http://this.deakin.edu.au/culture/car-wars http://this.deakin.edu.au/culture/car-wars though is no longer available there. https://web.archive.org/web/20170105065118/http://this.deakin.edu.au/culture/car-wars https://web.archive.org/web/20170105065118/http://this.deaki... has it. As much as the idea of full self driving is nice in theory, living in the northern midwest and having times in the winter where the traditional rules of driving go out the window when there's a question of "drive in the middle of what might be the road or find the ditch." I'd like to see driver assist and some augmented reality for driving. Things like "driver's seat with bumps on the back to assist in awareness of 360° objects around the car". But self driving? I'm not sure I trust it yet or will for another decade or two. Developing software, I've seen how the sausage gets made - that doesn't inspire confidence.
    - defaultprimate 5y ago
      I'm gonna check these stories out! I'm with you on the seeing the sausage made. I work in software development and algorithm research (though in a completely unrelated, but much better funded and cutting edge field) and the idea that we're anywhere close to truly level 3 autonomous driving, let alone 4 or 5, is laughable. I love technology enhanced features, like radar cruise control, lane detection, etc. But only as extra sensory input for the driver, not replacement.
- borkyborkbork 5y ago
  I wouldn't describe Tesla as a corporation that is risk averse.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
the8472 5y ago
Those are irrelevant tangents. You don't win the game by being best at solving the trolley problem. You win the game by making a car that is good at not crashing.

by aasasd 5y ago

015a 5y ago

I'm pretty strongly of the position that high levels of self-driving are impossible for artificial intelligences to attain, because they're built by corporations. Driving is VERY risky, and involves an irreducible assumption of both risk and liability on behalf of the driver. Humans are natural risk-takers. Corporations are not; and any artificial intelligence a corporation produces is always, at some level of meaningful abstraction, a projection of their own values.

Datenstrom 5y ago
From Tesla's release of their full self-driving beta and its performance in a recent CGP Grey video where it successfully navigates the most dangerous road in America[1] I think a lot of people are going to have to eat their hats on this stance very soon. I consider myself bullish on this tech, and I have worked closely with autonomous robotics, but I didn't expect it this soon. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6tgmGqXysM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6tgmGqXysM
- wolrah 5y ago
  > where it successfully navigates the most dangerous road in America Twistiest, maybe. Most dangerous, not even close unless you or someone driving towards you do something dumb. Historically Autopilot's weak spots have been crappy/ambiguous road markings, low speed corners on high speed roads, and large vehicles stopped on/across the road. This video hit none of those points. The lane markings are clear, the posted limit is low, and large vehicles aren't even supposed to be there.
  - reaperducer 5y ago
    Twistiest, maybe. Most dangerous, not even close It's just CGP Grey, not NHTSA. Hyperbole is to be expected. I know he's a darling among the chattering tech class, but it's been several years since he jumped the shark from "insightful, carefully researched, and well thought out" to "just another vlogger doing and saying what is needed to get views."
  - maxdo 5y ago
    your historical observations are irrelevant for FSD beta. It's a new system, it works amazing without markings on the road at all.
    - wolrah 5y ago
      > your historical observations are irrelevant for FSD beta. It's a new system 1. I find it very unlikely that Tesla completely scrapped the previous system to start from scratch for the FSD beta. 2. If they had, that would make me even more suspicious of the new system because that would mean no one would understand its weaknesses yet. Either way, being most interested in where the previous generation system and other semiautonomous systems have historically failed makes sense. > it works amazing without markings on the road at all. I have yet to see any videos of the new system handling poorly marked high speed roads one way or another, but the crash where it tried to veer in to oncoming traffic doesn't provide confidence. All the unmarked/poorly marked roads I've seen so far have been low speed residential/urban, and even there performance has been unpredictable at best. Let's see it on a highway where night time rain has made the markings hard to see. Let's see it when snow covers the road and your only hing or lane The state of the art is such that it can simultaneously be amazing and terrifying to think that normal people are allowed to "test" it wherever they feel like trying on public roads. What it does with the limited inputs it has is incredible, but at the same time it has dangerous failure modes that do not seem to be predictable even to those who use the system regularly. --- Don't get me wrong, there is nothing I'd love more than never having to manually handle a traffic jam, or "go home car, I'm drunk", but the way this is being released will kill people.
  - seoulmetro 5y ago
- leereeves 5y ago
  That actually didn't look like much of a challenge. All the Tesla had to do was drive slowly and stay in its lane on curves. There were no obstacles that Teslas have had trouble with in the past, like stopped firetrucks, ending lanes, or people changing tires.
- bombcar 5y ago
  Whilst impressive, that's also a "pretty good setup" for the Tesla - the yellow line is well marked as is the white line; and the Tesla isn't speeding.
- hellomyguys 5y ago
  Following a well-marked winding road is not a difficult challenge for self-driving cars. Driving in a city, with bus lanes, light rail, bikers, and pedestrians is much harder.
- gonzoflip 5y ago
  That is the most boring Tail of the Dragon driving vid I have ever seen.
- aasasd 5y ago
  BTW, if anyone wants to experience the boredom of 18 km of turns among the trees, without actually going to NC/TN—there are custom circuits of Deals Gap/Tail of the Dragon for rFactor, Assetto Corsa and perhaps other sims. (Possibly ‘Grand Prix Legends’ was the first one to get the mod.)
- lm28469 5y ago
  Lmao, their tech is faaaar away from anything remotely usable in real life. Sure it can follow a double yellow in the middle of the woods, I could do that when I was 10, as soon as you put it in city traffic it's game over in 15 seconds. We will not have fully autonomous vehicles in our street until we ban human driven vehicles and completely rework our infrastructure, aka probably not in our lifetime. Look at that video, it's comically bad: https://www.reddit.com/r/IdiotsInCars/comments/rgiu8m/the_future_is_now/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IdiotsInCars/comments/rgiu8m/the_fu...
- root_axis 5y ago
  I own a Tesla and it's the best car I've ever owned. However, the FSD software is garbage, I'd sooner trust a drunk human over the Tesla FSD any day of the week.
- somerandomqaguy 5y ago
  I'm really not sure how that is at all challenging for computer vision to handle. Conditions like these are probably more along the lines to challenge self driving tech: - British Columbia Highway 5 (Coquihalla Highway) Daytime: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIF79ZlWcOI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIF79ZlWcOI - The Coquihalla Highway at night: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hM3BPOLVoUg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hM3BPOLVoUg - Alberta Highway 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Re-Ap5fboi8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Re-Ap5fboi8
defaultprimate 5y ago
While I agree with you 100%. High level self driving is impossible on a technical level too imo, there's too many aspects of human perception, processing, and intuition that aren't possible to emulate or account for in, what machine learning really boils down to, a statistical model. There will always be novel situations that you can't simply math your way out of that a human could navigate effortlessly.
- shagie 5y ago
  Córy Doctorow wrote a collection of short stories (or a single short stories with a variety of smaller chapters - depending on how you look at it) called Car Wars - https://craphound.com/news/2016/11/23/car-wars-a-dystopian-science-fiction-story-about-the-nightmare-of-self-driving-cars/ https://craphound.com/news/2016/11/23/car-wars-a-dystopian-s... It was originally hosted http://this.deakin.edu.au/culture/car-wars http://this.deakin.edu.au/culture/car-wars though is no longer available there. https://web.archive.org/web/20170105065118/http://this.deakin.edu.au/culture/car-wars https://web.archive.org/web/20170105065118/http://this.deaki... has it. As much as the idea of full self driving is nice in theory, living in the northern midwest and having times in the winter where the traditional rules of driving go out the window when there's a question of "drive in the middle of what might be the road or find the ditch." I'd like to see driver assist and some augmented reality for driving. Things like "driver's seat with bumps on the back to assist in awareness of 360° objects around the car". But self driving? I'm not sure I trust it yet or will for another decade or two. Developing software, I've seen how the sausage gets made - that doesn't inspire confidence.
  - defaultprimate 5y ago
    I'm gonna check these stories out! I'm with you on the seeing the sausage made. I work in software development and algorithm research (though in a completely unrelated, but much better funded and cutting edge field) and the idea that we're anywhere close to truly level 3 autonomous driving, let alone 4 or 5, is laughable. I love technology enhanced features, like radar cruise control, lane detection, etc. But only as extra sensory input for the driver, not replacement.
borkyborkbork 5y ago
I wouldn't describe Tesla as a corporation that is risk averse.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

the8472 5y ago

Those are irrelevant tangents. You don't win the game by being best at solving the trolley problem. You win the game by making a car that is good at not crashing.