5 ms·

Ehhh I’d side with the parent on this one, given how we thought self-driving cars were gonna be a solved problem by 2015 but how intractable the problem has tur

by xref 4y ago

Ehhh I’d side with the parent on this one, given how we thought self-driving cars were gonna be a solved problem by 2015 but how intractable the problem has turned out to be.

unsupp0rted 4y ago
The problem isn’t intractable at all. We had self-driving cars by 2015 and especially do today. But we can’t let self-driving cars injure or kill even 25% as often as human drivers do, so we refuse to use them to their maximum capability.
- xref 4y ago
  We don’t, and you have no numbers to back that up. When my blind grandma can sit in a car and it drives her from Paris to Rome though the Alps in winter, then maybe. Keep in mind this thread’s premise is us developing an intelligence that can navigate space and maintain all requirements of that for millennia. Not driving a couple miles on a clear stretch of highway.
  - unsupp0rted 4y ago
    About navigating space, I have no comment, but about driving a car safely: My non-blind and somewhat functional 90-year old uncle can sit in a car and drive it quite legally at the moment. I'm pretty sure self-driving cars are less dangerous on the roads than he is, but we're not willing to test that assumption.
  - google234123 4y ago
    Nice straw man
  - ben_w 4y ago
    > When my blind grandma can sit in a car and it drives her from Paris to Rome though the Alps in winter, then maybe. Your standard for "maybe" exceeds the abilities of many humans. AFAICT, the statistics for fatal accidents do exist, and suggest that car AI may be marginally better than average humans — the caveats to that include at the very least (1) it's within the margin of error; (2) that includes drunks, dangerously tired, teenagers, and people like my mother and grandmother when their Alzheimer's was in the early stages; and (3) I don't trust the impartiality of the source. But the stats do exist.
    - simiones 4y ago
      The stats for self-driving cars also have other caveats: they are only deployed in extremely favorable conditions (areas with very little rain and no snow), and the vast majority have human safety drivers for added verification. Also, many self-driving cars are not so much unsafe as occasionally bad at the basics of driving in certain scenarios - such as massively over/under-steering in intersections, leading to the need to maneuver in traffic (I've especially seen this in Tesla FSD videos). Also, > Your standard for "maybe" exceeds the abilities of many humans. I'm very curious what human driver is simply unable to do that task. In fact, the vast majority of human drivers could do this task, but 0 current self-driving cars could even attempt it.
      - ben_w 4y ago
        > they are only deployed in extremely favorable conditions (areas with very little rain and no snow) I've heard a lot of conflicting reports about this with regard to Tesla's AI, but regardless your point is sound, my list is not exhaustive. > not so much unsafe as occasionally bad at the basics of driving in certain scenarios Indeed. It's one of the counterintuitive things about machine intelligence in general, that it can be wildly superhuman in domains that humans consider challenging while also being utterly pathetic in domains we consider trivial. > I'm very curious what human driver is simply unable to do that task. In fact, the vast majority of human drivers could do this task, but 0 current self-driving cars could even attempt it. A quick google suggested that the roads in the alps are often closed in the winter by the police because of the snow, so hopefully in such conditions the answer is "100% of humans cannot do this" :)
naasking 4y ago
Sure, and 20 years ago nobody thought language would be a solved problem and we now have AIs pumping out coherent essays and academic papers from one sentence prompts. Even 10 years ago nobody thought AI photorealistic art would be possible, but here we are. People are too quick to forget how many "unassailable" towers have already been toppled. They see how kind of obvious each problem looks in hindsight, "oh it was just this one trick", not realizing the irony that yes, one or two tricks, and we may be only one more trick from being in serious trouble.
- poulpy123 4y ago
  > coherent essays and academic papers from one sentence prompts. No they don't. They managed to get impressive results, but it's still far from coherent because the algorithms still lack the ability to think
  - naasking 4y ago
    > No they don't. They managed to get impressive results Given that these papers have actually been published, the papers they produce are at least as coherent as the state of the art in the field. > but it's still far from coherent because the algorithms still lack the ability to think Nobody knows what "thinking" is, as a functional process. For all you know, human thinking may itself just be the same sort of pattern matching as used in machine learning, just with a few more parameters. In which case these algorithms actually are thinking, just with more limited intelligence than us.
adamsmith143 4y ago
Conversely people thought it would take another 50 years to solve something like the game of Go which Deepmind cracked in a few years.

by xref 4y ago

Ehhh I’d side with the parent on this one, given how we thought self-driving cars were gonna be a solved problem by 2015 but how intractable the problem has turned out to be.

unsupp0rted 4y ago

The problem isn’t intractable at all. We had self-driving cars by 2015 and especially do today. But we can’t let self-driving cars injure or kill even 25% as often as human drivers do, so we refuse to use them to their maximum capability.

xref 4y ago
We don’t, and you have no numbers to back that up. When my blind grandma can sit in a car and it drives her from Paris to Rome though the Alps in winter, then maybe. Keep in mind this thread’s premise is us developing an intelligence that can navigate space and maintain all requirements of that for millennia. Not driving a couple miles on a clear stretch of highway.
- unsupp0rted 4y ago
  About navigating space, I have no comment, but about driving a car safely: My non-blind and somewhat functional 90-year old uncle can sit in a car and drive it quite legally at the moment. I'm pretty sure self-driving cars are less dangerous on the roads than he is, but we're not willing to test that assumption.
- google234123 4y ago
  Nice straw man
- ben_w 4y ago
  > When my blind grandma can sit in a car and it drives her from Paris to Rome though the Alps in winter, then maybe. Your standard for "maybe" exceeds the abilities of many humans. AFAICT, the statistics for fatal accidents do exist, and suggest that car AI may be marginally better than average humans — the caveats to that include at the very least (1) it's within the margin of error; (2) that includes drunks, dangerously tired, teenagers, and people like my mother and grandmother when their Alzheimer's was in the early stages; and (3) I don't trust the impartiality of the source. But the stats do exist.
  - simiones 4y ago
    The stats for self-driving cars also have other caveats: they are only deployed in extremely favorable conditions (areas with very little rain and no snow), and the vast majority have human safety drivers for added verification. Also, many self-driving cars are not so much unsafe as occasionally bad at the basics of driving in certain scenarios - such as massively over/under-steering in intersections, leading to the need to maneuver in traffic (I've especially seen this in Tesla FSD videos). Also, > Your standard for "maybe" exceeds the abilities of many humans. I'm very curious what human driver is simply unable to do that task. In fact, the vast majority of human drivers could do this task, but 0 current self-driving cars could even attempt it.
    - ben_w 4y ago
      > they are only deployed in extremely favorable conditions (areas with very little rain and no snow) I've heard a lot of conflicting reports about this with regard to Tesla's AI, but regardless your point is sound, my list is not exhaustive. > not so much unsafe as occasionally bad at the basics of driving in certain scenarios Indeed. It's one of the counterintuitive things about machine intelligence in general, that it can be wildly superhuman in domains that humans consider challenging while also being utterly pathetic in domains we consider trivial. > I'm very curious what human driver is simply unable to do that task. In fact, the vast majority of human drivers could do this task, but 0 current self-driving cars could even attempt it. A quick google suggested that the roads in the alps are often closed in the winter by the police because of the snow, so hopefully in such conditions the answer is "100% of humans cannot do this" :)

naasking 4y ago

Sure, and 20 years ago nobody thought language would be a solved problem and we now have AIs pumping out coherent essays and academic papers from one sentence prompts. Even 10 years ago nobody thought AI photorealistic art would be possible, but here we are. People are too quick to forget how many "unassailable" towers have already been toppled. They see how kind of obvious each problem looks in hindsight, "oh it was just this one trick", not realizing the irony that yes, one or two tricks, and we may be only one more trick from being in serious trouble.

poulpy123 4y ago
> coherent essays and academic papers from one sentence prompts. No they don't. They managed to get impressive results, but it's still far from coherent because the algorithms still lack the ability to think
- naasking 4y ago
  > No they don't. They managed to get impressive results Given that these papers have actually been published, the papers they produce are at least as coherent as the state of the art in the field. > but it's still far from coherent because the algorithms still lack the ability to think Nobody knows what "thinking" is, as a functional process. For all you know, human thinking may itself just be the same sort of pattern matching as used in machine learning, just with a few more parameters. In which case these algorithms actually are thinking, just with more limited intelligence than us.

adamsmith143 4y ago

Conversely people thought it would take another 50 years to solve something like the game of Go which Deepmind cracked in a few years.