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I welcome the public's acknowledgement that self-driving vehicles are completely infeasible for even the medium term future. It's just unfortunate that the trig

I welcome the public's acknowledgement that self-driving vehicles are completely infeasible for even the medium term future. It's just unfortunate that the trigger for this change seems not to be anything about snow, or the inability to replicate human flocking on buried/unmarked roads during winter, etc, but instead more about the current political fallout from Musk's take-over of Twitter.

BoorishBears 4y ago
This is a weird amount of hubris for someone who either doesn't understand the goals of current work on self-driving cars or is just clueless about the field. Tesla's attempts at self-driving capture absolutely nothing besides... Tesla's attempts at self-driving. There are companies with realistic sensor stacks, not artificially imposing restrictions so they can pre-sell their results, actually focused on self-driving. A true L5 vehicle is an impossibility because that'd mean handling the frozen tundra equally as well as rush hour in Mumbai, or a wildfire in California. And laypeople tend to really lean into that... But for a realistic definition of L5, "feasibility" is low bar already proven by major players except Tesla. So to say "completely infeasible" kind of kills credibility of everything following it.
- superkuh 4y ago
  Dismissing "snow" as something that happens only in "the frozen tundra" is fairly provincial. You'd be surprised by how much of the USA (and other industrialized countries) have roads and road edges mostly obscured by snow for weeks at a time multiple times throughout winter. There's a reason almost all autonomous driving tests are done in places like Arizona. And the ones done in winter settings tend to be absolute positioning based (ground penetrating radar maps, etc) or non-human vision modalities which don't actually match how human drivers flock.
  - BoorishBears 4y ago
    > Dismissing "snow" as something that happens only in "the frozen tundra" is fairly provincial. Who did that? My comment certainly didn't by any reading of it. > You'd be surprised by how much of the USA (and other industrialized countries) have roads and road edges mostly obscured by snow for weeks at a time multiple times throughout winter Again, maybe you would, but I'm not. > There's a reason almost all autonomous driving tests are done in places like Arizona Yes, because they have good weather. It turns out that compartmentalizing a problem as large as autonomous vehicles is a smart idea. It's not like you can't work on participation just because the local weather is nice. Regardless of climate we use things like rain and temp chambers, and there are AVs in places with bad weather, but that's not where service gets launched because again, compartmentation is a good thing. I guess all that is to say, no one in the AV field is unaware that bad weather is a thing, and yet we're still in the problem space. > non-human vision modalities which don't actually match how human drivers flock Is this supposed to be a gotcha or did you not realize AV companies are not about blindly to replicate human vision in the AV field? You'll find Tesla is the only company silly enough to imply nonsense like that.
    - superkuh 4y ago
      >Is this supposed to be a gotcha or did you not realize AV companies are not about blindly to replicate human vision in the AV field? Unless the machines fail the same way human drivers do and go off the absolute positioning based lanes to follow the emergent human based ones they'll cause crashes. Sometimes doing the right thing is the wrong thing because everyone is doing the wrong thing.
      - BoorishBears 4y ago
        Again you're showing that you're not familiar with the field you're talking about. Being able to follow vehicles in front of you outside of lines is below table stakes in this field, you wouldn't even get into the casino. Mobileye was doing that 11 years ago with nothing more than a OTS radar and a single BW camera. I mean, again, do you really think saying "humans don't perfectly follow the rules of the road" could possibly be a novel concept to anyone in the field of AVs? There's nothing like being in a field to realize how far HN hubris actually goes. Someone reading your first comment would think you're a thought leader with how flippantly you write off an entire industry, yet here you are 2 comments in and slowly re-discovering the ground truths that the industry is already built on.
        superkuh 4y ago
        I'm not talking about following other vehicles in front of you. I'm talking about follow the paths the other vehicles, now long gone, have left in the snow/ice/mush. >do you really think saying "humans don't perfectly follow the rules of the road" could possibly be a novel concept to anyone in the field of AVs? I do think that driving in cold regions seems to be a novel concept because every time I talk to someone in the know like yourself they latch on to the wrong side of the idea immediately.
        BoorishBears 4y ago
        I think that's because they're being charitable. Not realizing that we can follow other cars is somewhat understandable. Bringing up following tire tracks in the snow at this stage is so utterly nonsensical, it simply doesn't pass muster when considering the ways to parse the statement. Millions upon millions of people who can be served without having to checks notes solve following tire tracks on the ground... but that's your current bastion for why self-driving is "completely infeasible" No good deed goes unpunished apparently, because here you are now wearing the misguided nature of our charitable interpretations as a badge of honor.
ethanbond 4y ago
Tesla has been getting dragged for years for this stuff? It’d be way weirder if Man Does Bad Thing #2 should actually quiet Man Does Bad Thing #1. He made himself the star, decided to be the villain, and reaps the reward of said villainy. Yes, everything is tainted by everything.
giantrobot 4y ago
Musk's Twitter takeover is just an added layer of bullshit on top of the FSD lies. People have paid thousands of dollars for a "feature" that will run them into center dividers, trains, and children but disengage a fraction of a second before impact so it can't be blamed. Tesla also requires NDAs be signed to uphold service agreements and fights tooth and nail to keep FSD's failures out of the news. Meanwhile Musk is over promising the feature and saying it'll be done in a few months and it's the future of the company. So you'd think if it was so important it would be his primary focus during his supposed 22 hours a day of work. People can see the problems with FSD and then look over and Musk bought a fucking social media network to go play edgelord troll on. So it's a legitimate topic of discussion because the public is to believe FSD will be ready Real Soon Now™ and is super serial important yet it's obviously not the focus of the huckster that's been continually lying about it.
- SpelingBeeChamp 4y ago
  NDAs for service agreements? What do you mean?
photochemsyn 4y ago
Self-driving vehicles seem only feasible under one condition: you have isolated roads that allow no other motorized vehicles, no pedestrians, no bicycles, etc. In that case, a robust computerized system with built-in failsafes seems almost entirely plausible (although hacking-related takeover is definitely an issue). Part of this is just legal issues - i.e. our legal system will hold human drivers responsible for fatal car accidents, via civil suits and/or criminal prosecution, but corporations are largely protected from liability (excluding special cases like Ford Pinto gas tanks etc.). With self-driving cars, the corporation will always be held directly responsible, even if the relative safety risk is lower. It's similar to airplane disasters for that reason (i.e. airplanes are relatively much safer than personal vehicles, statistically speaking).

BoorishBears 4y ago

This is a weird amount of hubris for someone who either doesn't understand the goals of current work on self-driving cars or is just clueless about the field. Tesla's attempts at self-driving capture absolutely nothing besides... Tesla's attempts at self-driving. There are companies with realistic sensor stacks, not artificially imposing restrictions so they can pre-sell their results, actually focused on self-driving. A true L5 vehicle is an impossibility because that'd mean handling the frozen tundra equally as well as rush hour in Mumbai, or a wildfire in California. And laypeople tend to really lean into that... But for a realistic definition of L5, "feasibility" is low bar already proven by major players except Tesla. So to say "completely infeasible" kind of kills credibility of everything following it.

superkuh 4y ago
Dismissing "snow" as something that happens only in "the frozen tundra" is fairly provincial. You'd be surprised by how much of the USA (and other industrialized countries) have roads and road edges mostly obscured by snow for weeks at a time multiple times throughout winter. There's a reason almost all autonomous driving tests are done in places like Arizona. And the ones done in winter settings tend to be absolute positioning based (ground penetrating radar maps, etc) or non-human vision modalities which don't actually match how human drivers flock.
- BoorishBears 4y ago
  > Dismissing "snow" as something that happens only in "the frozen tundra" is fairly provincial. Who did that? My comment certainly didn't by any reading of it. > You'd be surprised by how much of the USA (and other industrialized countries) have roads and road edges mostly obscured by snow for weeks at a time multiple times throughout winter Again, maybe you would, but I'm not. > There's a reason almost all autonomous driving tests are done in places like Arizona Yes, because they have good weather. It turns out that compartmentalizing a problem as large as autonomous vehicles is a smart idea. It's not like you can't work on participation just because the local weather is nice. Regardless of climate we use things like rain and temp chambers, and there are AVs in places with bad weather, but that's not where service gets launched because again, compartmentation is a good thing. I guess all that is to say, no one in the AV field is unaware that bad weather is a thing, and yet we're still in the problem space. > non-human vision modalities which don't actually match how human drivers flock Is this supposed to be a gotcha or did you not realize AV companies are not about blindly to replicate human vision in the AV field? You'll find Tesla is the only company silly enough to imply nonsense like that.
  - superkuh 4y ago
    >Is this supposed to be a gotcha or did you not realize AV companies are not about blindly to replicate human vision in the AV field? Unless the machines fail the same way human drivers do and go off the absolute positioning based lanes to follow the emergent human based ones they'll cause crashes. Sometimes doing the right thing is the wrong thing because everyone is doing the wrong thing.
    - BoorishBears 4y ago
      Again you're showing that you're not familiar with the field you're talking about. Being able to follow vehicles in front of you outside of lines is below table stakes in this field, you wouldn't even get into the casino. Mobileye was doing that 11 years ago with nothing more than a OTS radar and a single BW camera. I mean, again, do you really think saying "humans don't perfectly follow the rules of the road" could possibly be a novel concept to anyone in the field of AVs? There's nothing like being in a field to realize how far HN hubris actually goes. Someone reading your first comment would think you're a thought leader with how flippantly you write off an entire industry, yet here you are 2 comments in and slowly re-discovering the ground truths that the industry is already built on.
      - superkuh 4y ago
        I'm not talking about following other vehicles in front of you. I'm talking about follow the paths the other vehicles, now long gone, have left in the snow/ice/mush. >do you really think saying "humans don't perfectly follow the rules of the road" could possibly be a novel concept to anyone in the field of AVs? I do think that driving in cold regions seems to be a novel concept because every time I talk to someone in the know like yourself they latch on to the wrong side of the idea immediately.
        BoorishBears 4y ago
        I think that's because they're being charitable. Not realizing that we can follow other cars is somewhat understandable. Bringing up following tire tracks in the snow at this stage is so utterly nonsensical, it simply doesn't pass muster when considering the ways to parse the statement. Millions upon millions of people who can be served without having to checks notes solve following tire tracks on the ground... but that's your current bastion for why self-driving is "completely infeasible" No good deed goes unpunished apparently, because here you are now wearing the misguided nature of our charitable interpretations as a badge of honor.

ethanbond 4y ago

Tesla has been getting dragged for years for this stuff? It’d be way weirder if Man Does Bad Thing #2 should actually quiet Man Does Bad Thing #1. He made himself the star, decided to be the villain, and reaps the reward of said villainy. Yes, everything is tainted by everything.

giantrobot 4y ago

Musk's Twitter takeover is just an added layer of bullshit on top of the FSD lies. People have paid thousands of dollars for a "feature" that will run them into center dividers, trains, and children but disengage a fraction of a second before impact so it can't be blamed. Tesla also requires NDAs be signed to uphold service agreements and fights tooth and nail to keep FSD's failures out of the news. Meanwhile Musk is over promising the feature and saying it'll be done in a few months and it's the future of the company. So you'd think if it was so important it would be his primary focus during his supposed 22 hours a day of work. People can see the problems with FSD and then look over and Musk bought a fucking social media network to go play edgelord troll on. So it's a legitimate topic of discussion because the public is to believe FSD will be ready Real Soon Now™ and is super serial important yet it's obviously not the focus of the huckster that's been continually lying about it.

SpelingBeeChamp 4y ago
NDAs for service agreements? What do you mean?

photochemsyn 4y ago

Self-driving vehicles seem only feasible under one condition: you have isolated roads that allow no other motorized vehicles, no pedestrians, no bicycles, etc. In that case, a robust computerized system with built-in failsafes seems almost entirely plausible (although hacking-related takeover is definitely an issue). Part of this is just legal issues - i.e. our legal system will hold human drivers responsible for fatal car accidents, via civil suits and/or criminal prosecution, but corporations are largely protected from liability (excluding special cases like Ford Pinto gas tanks etc.). With self-driving cars, the corporation will always be held directly responsible, even if the relative safety risk is lower. It's similar to airplane disasters for that reason (i.e. airplanes are relatively much safer than personal vehicles, statistically speaking).