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The article mentioned something about the company being liable for anything that happens if there is no driver. At first that didn't sound quite right to me, ar

The article mentioned something about the company being liable for anything that happens if there is no driver. At first that didn't sound quite right to me, aren't they already liable to that degree? Then I remembered contractors etc. I do think, having a human in the loop who's life is on the line in any accident, will tend to be more creative in avoiding one than software would be. Training an AI to avoid simulated accidents is not a complete solution. For one thing, there will always be novel situations not trained for, and for another, the AI has no visceral fear of its own death.

mwint 5y ago
But that’s kind of like saying a calculator can never be as creative at solving math problems, because it will never have the visceral fear of failing an exam. Well… yeah, I guess, but it’s not really relevant. We don’t need creativity in avoiding accidents; the solution space is small: accelerate, brake, and/or steer. The machine knows the velocity vectors, accelerations, and sizes of all other objects on the road. That alone is a huge advantage over a human, which don’t look in all directions at once. You can probably drop the AI part altogether and have an always-running routine that takes over when collision is imminent based on relatively simple vector projection. Avoiding collision isn’t the hard part here, adhering to the myriad rules (spoken and unspoken) we’ve set up is. I think that’s probably why we all cringe at the Tesla videos of it doing crazy stuff, but somehow it’s not hitting stuff very often.
- worik 5y ago
  > [Tesla's]...not hitting stuff very often That is the problem. 99% of the time not hitting stuff is 100% useless
  - mwint 5y ago
    To be clear, what I mean is that there is much less evidence of Tesla hitting stuff than we would expect from the videos of it doing “scary-looking” things. We may need to recognize that safe driving for a computer can look different than safe driving for a human, because of reaction time and awareness differences. It’s important we define safety properly for regulatory purposes. 99% is certainly not enough. But at some point Tesla, or another company, will get enough 9’s to surpass humans. It will happen.
- UncleEntity 5y ago
  > You can probably drop the AI part altogether and have an always-running routine that takes over when collision is imminent based on relatively simple vector projection. Umm, yeah… Last week the collision avoidance on the truck decided a traffic sign was enough to sound the alarm and hit the brakes while going around a curve on a wet road in sub-freezing weather. Let’s just say that the pucker factor on that one was off the scale. Actually, the truck was fairly intent on killing me for that leg of the trip since there were a few winding downhill sections, I was at maximum weight and the stupid robo-transmission would randomly downshift instead of just easing down the hills without using the brakes — or randomly upshift into redline which will cause all the important bits inside the engine to come flying through the hood if you don’t catch it immediately. The thing that really gets my goat is the truck has the ability to be put into manual shift mode (specifically so it doesn’t do something stupid and kills a bus full of kids) but the company has it disabled for fuel economy reasons. I mean, “move fast and break things” doesn’t really work so well when you’re taking 80,000lbs down an 8% grade and this freightliner is a buggy POS on the best of days.

mwint 5y ago

But that’s kind of like saying a calculator can never be as creative at solving math problems, because it will never have the visceral fear of failing an exam. Well… yeah, I guess, but it’s not really relevant. We don’t need creativity in avoiding accidents; the solution space is small: accelerate, brake, and/or steer. The machine knows the velocity vectors, accelerations, and sizes of all other objects on the road. That alone is a huge advantage over a human, which don’t look in all directions at once. You can probably drop the AI part altogether and have an always-running routine that takes over when collision is imminent based on relatively simple vector projection. Avoiding collision isn’t the hard part here, adhering to the myriad rules (spoken and unspoken) we’ve set up is. I think that’s probably why we all cringe at the Tesla videos of it doing crazy stuff, but somehow it’s not hitting stuff very often.

worik 5y ago
> [Tesla's]...not hitting stuff very often That is the problem. 99% of the time not hitting stuff is 100% useless
- mwint 5y ago
  To be clear, what I mean is that there is much less evidence of Tesla hitting stuff than we would expect from the videos of it doing “scary-looking” things. We may need to recognize that safe driving for a computer can look different than safe driving for a human, because of reaction time and awareness differences. It’s important we define safety properly for regulatory purposes. 99% is certainly not enough. But at some point Tesla, or another company, will get enough 9’s to surpass humans. It will happen.
UncleEntity 5y ago
> You can probably drop the AI part altogether and have an always-running routine that takes over when collision is imminent based on relatively simple vector projection. Umm, yeah… Last week the collision avoidance on the truck decided a traffic sign was enough to sound the alarm and hit the brakes while going around a curve on a wet road in sub-freezing weather. Let’s just say that the pucker factor on that one was off the scale. Actually, the truck was fairly intent on killing me for that leg of the trip since there were a few winding downhill sections, I was at maximum weight and the stupid robo-transmission would randomly downshift instead of just easing down the hills without using the brakes — or randomly upshift into redline which will cause all the important bits inside the engine to come flying through the hood if you don’t catch it immediately. The thing that really gets my goat is the truck has the ability to be put into manual shift mode (specifically so it doesn’t do something stupid and kills a bus full of kids) but the company has it disabled for fuel economy reasons. I mean, “move fast and break things” doesn’t really work so well when you’re taking 80,000lbs down an 8% grade and this freightliner is a buggy POS on the best of days.