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Theranos got a great deal of funding too, and the truth about how none of the "Second Wave" ML self driving car technology comes even remotely close to safe sel

Theranos got a great deal of funding too, and the truth about how none of the "Second Wave" ML self driving car technology comes even remotely close to safe self driving will be coming out probably later this year. The issue is that ML has no conceptual and causal understanding of anything. For confirmation, I've been carefully watching the countless "self driving" startups in San Francisco driving around, and I have almost never seen a driver in those cars not actively steering it.

AlotOfReading 5y ago
You can't always tell whether the car is operating autonomously even from the back seat, let alone another vehicle. A lot of operators keep their hands very close to the wheel and follow its motions to minimize response time when they need to take over. I've worked at companies whose vehicles you've probably seen and have never heard anything like what you're suggesting is "the truth". Can you provide more details on how current solutions don't remotely approach reasonable safety levels?
hiddencost 5y ago
> The issue is that ML has no conceptual and causal understanding of anything Practitioners work with much more tightly defined objectives and methods for improving their systems than "conceptual and causal understanding of anything". From the perspective of folks in the industry we've been making remarkable progress, well beyond what we could have expected. We're saturating major benchmarks, sometimes in one to two years. Back in the day, during the "AI Winter", it was often 10 years before a new breakthrough happened.
redytedy 5y ago
Cruise is actively running a driverless robotaxi service in SF, so your assertion is at least partly wrong.
akomtu 5y ago
None of those self-driving MLs have a virtual world model in their "head", right? They just react to the latest video frame. If so, it's not even a fish level intelligence, it's more like a house plant.
- omeze 5y ago
  If youre curious, Cruise has a fairly comprehensive (but long) overview of their tech that goes over their world model and world simulation stuff: https://youtu.be/uJWN0K26NxQ https://youtu.be/uJWN0K26NxQ So no, its a bit more than a house plant
  - gibsonf1 5y ago
    Without causal and conceptual understanding, they will never get it done.
- AlotOfReading 5y ago
  All of the self driving systems I have intimate knowledge of have some level of "persistent memory". It dramatically improves performance in a lot of common situations, e.g. you're coming up to an intersection and your view of stationary cross traffic is occluded by a bus/truck. You enter the intersection and now the planner has to decide whether that vehicle is on an intersection path with the SDC. You only have a few frames of information without persistence and the velocity error might still be large. Thus the safety system has to slam on the breaks to avoid a collision that will never actually happen, potentially causing a real accident if the car behind is following too closely.

AlotOfReading 5y ago

You can't always tell whether the car is operating autonomously even from the back seat, let alone another vehicle. A lot of operators keep their hands very close to the wheel and follow its motions to minimize response time when they need to take over. I've worked at companies whose vehicles you've probably seen and have never heard anything like what you're suggesting is "the truth". Can you provide more details on how current solutions don't remotely approach reasonable safety levels?

hiddencost 5y ago

> The issue is that ML has no conceptual and causal understanding of anything Practitioners work with much more tightly defined objectives and methods for improving their systems than "conceptual and causal understanding of anything". From the perspective of folks in the industry we've been making remarkable progress, well beyond what we could have expected. We're saturating major benchmarks, sometimes in one to two years. Back in the day, during the "AI Winter", it was often 10 years before a new breakthrough happened.

redytedy 5y ago

Cruise is actively running a driverless robotaxi service in SF, so your assertion is at least partly wrong.

akomtu 5y ago

None of those self-driving MLs have a virtual world model in their "head", right? They just react to the latest video frame. If so, it's not even a fish level intelligence, it's more like a house plant.

omeze 5y ago
If youre curious, Cruise has a fairly comprehensive (but long) overview of their tech that goes over their world model and world simulation stuff: https://youtu.be/uJWN0K26NxQ https://youtu.be/uJWN0K26NxQ So no, its a bit more than a house plant
- gibsonf1 5y ago
  Without causal and conceptual understanding, they will never get it done.
AlotOfReading 5y ago
All of the self driving systems I have intimate knowledge of have some level of "persistent memory". It dramatically improves performance in a lot of common situations, e.g. you're coming up to an intersection and your view of stationary cross traffic is occluded by a bus/truck. You enter the intersection and now the planner has to decide whether that vehicle is on an intersection path with the SDC. You only have a few frames of information without persistence and the velocity error might still be large. Thus the safety system has to slam on the breaks to avoid a collision that will never actually happen, potentially causing a real accident if the car behind is following too closely.