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I don't see why self driving cars need true reasoning. If you have high resolution sensors, you can use deterministic algorithms to avoid hitting anything or b

I don't see why self driving cars need true reasoning. If you have high resolution sensors, you can use deterministic algorithms to avoid hitting anything or being hit by anything. Especially if you start putting some kind of easily detected nonlinear reflector sticker on all cars and backpacks. You might get a few false trips if a trash bag blows in the road and the rear sensor says nothing will hit you if you stop, but who cares? If we really prioritize safety, we'll just accept that, and find other ways to save time. A self driving car would essentially give a person extra hours in the day, and allow people with disabilities to go outside of major cities unassisted.

rasterdog 4y ago
thanks. let's refashion our cityscape and our clothing to accommodate self driving cars. don't care about pedestrians. </sarcasm>
- valine 4y ago
  Not hitting pedestrians is already solved. Waymo couldn’t do driverless taxis rides if it wasn’t. I also have tesla’s fsd beta on my car, and it does a marvelous job not hitting people. If anything it’s way too cautious around pedestrians.
  - jqpabc123 4y ago
    So if you're traveling at interstate speed and someone steps out too close to the roadway is it going to swerve into the next lane or slam on the brakes to avoid them? I recently had a situation where a large truck off to the right in front of me had a blowout and a large chunk of tire flew over into my lane. There were other cars traveling fast on both sides and behind me. What to do? I chose to maintain my speed and lane and just hit the tire. It caused some damage to the front of my car but in my split second judgment, this was the least bad option. What would your AI do?
    - eternityforest 4y ago
      It would have rear sensors. It knows something is behind at a fixed distance, so it must be matching your speed. If that distance is less than a safe reaction time, stopping is bad. It knows stuff is happening to the sides and swerving is bad. Unlike a human, it can slow down to hit the object at minimum speed, then speed up again just in time to not get hit even if the driver behind does nothing, at an optimized profile that gives the person behind time to not overreact and cause a pileup. Self driving also has the advantage that people might stay away. Unlike regular tailgating you have machinephobia that might actually make people not tail you.
      - jqpabc123 4y ago
        One of the most common accidents with "self driving" thus far has been the auto getting rear ended. Yes, this is undoubtedly the human drivers fault for following too closely but ... is it being precipitated by unexpected AI braking? In any case, the AI has demonstrated very limited ability to avoid these sort of collisions.
        eternityforest 4y ago
        I wonder why there aren't more devices to give you an insurance discount for following to close. Or just to make an unsilencable beep if you try. In any case, some of those cases were probably due to lack of rear sensors, or lack of any sensors at all besides cameras, and lack of any deterministic code able to override the AI.
    - valine 4y ago
      Tesla has two branches of their self driving software, the fsd branch which is under active development and the highway branch which has not had major changes in 2 years. The highway software is much worse around pedestrians and obstacles than FSD. It’s hard to say how fsd would handle a situation like that on the highway, but based on my experience with fsd off highway it would never choose to hit a car, so very likely it would run over the debris.
- dale_glass 4y ago
  The argument as I take it is that AI image analysis could be avoided. We "just" use sensors to figure that it's on the road, it's not a car, so it's a potential obstacle regardless of what it might actually be. But I've got no idea how practically usable such an approach would be.
- eternityforest 4y ago
  We don't need to refashion clothing, radar sees us just fine. But I'm sure people would want radar reflectors just like they want high visibility clothing at night now, for extra assurance in edge cases, to be sure they always got priority over sensor artifact false positives.
jqpabc123 4y ago
If you have high resolution sensors ... *Something* has to interpret the data from the sensors. This is where logic and reasoning comes into play. If a bird flies across the road in front of you as you're traveling at high speed on the interstate, slamming on the brakes at that particular moment might not be the most appropriate response. A self driving car would essentially give a person extra hours in the day No one is disputing the utility --- only the difficulty of actually achieving it.
Retric 4y ago
Self driving cars don’t need assistance from the environment. We already have self driving cars in public streets that work. Arguing about the possibilities with self driving is like arguing about how good chess computers might some day become, it’s already been done. Hitting the right price point, actually mapping the environment at scale, working out reliability, and bugs etc is real engineering. We are in that stage right between the prototype works and it’s ready for production which always takes longer than people expect but can it be done is no longer in question.
- gambiting 4y ago
  We have "self driving" cars that "work" in a very narrow set of circumstances and road conditions, but to say "it's already been done" feels....silly at best. It hasn't been done, it isn't even remotely close. "but can it be done is no longer in question." You are right - it doesn't seem like it can be done at all, not in the way that most people imagine "self driving" - where you hop in your car no matter the weather, tell it where to go and it just takes you there while you sleep, and it works in every country in the world on every road like any human can drive.That doesn't seem possible this century, if ever.
  - jqpabc123 4y ago
    All we really need is a sentient automobile --- seems easy enough /s.
    - Retric 4y ago
      If you assume we need a sentient automobile to drive then we must already have them because cars are driving without drivers.
      - gambiting 4y ago
        They aren't though. I'm not aware of any example from any company anywhere. There are some really impressive examples of cruise control that works pretty well most of the time, but I wouldn't say any car "drives without drivers".
andsoitis 4y ago
> avoid hitting anything or being hit by anything Two options for the former are: brake or swerve. While for the latter a 3rd option, accelerate, can also be in play. Which do you pick when? When you brake or swerve or accelerate, what other environmental factors (e.g. wet road, gravel road, construction workers present), should be taken into account?
paxunix 4y ago
It's not that they necessarily need true reasoning. It would just be extremely beneficial, because that's what every human driver already has built-in (although exercised to varying degrees of success). What about an axe that falls off the landscaping truck in front of you? Or a mattress? Or a harmless styrofoam cooler? The self-driving car does not know what those things are, but suddenly there is <something> in the air that will likely collide with you. The computer is going to be unable to predict how the mattress or the axe or the styrofoam will fly through the air, it can only decide to take abrupt, evasive action. It is also unaware that the person behind the car has been periodically looking down at their phone instead of watching the road, so an abrupt swerve or stop may still cause an accident. A sensible human driver would realize they are taking on additional risk by following such a truck and/or remaining in front of the distracted driver, and maybe decide to change lanes safely. The car's pretend AI has no idea of any of these things until something falls off and it has to react. We'll praise it when it gets it right--ooooh how ingenious! And the apologists will claim "there's no way it could have made a perfect decision--look how many other times it gets it right!" when it fails. And the realists will conclude "ha, stupid computer, told ya so".
- eternityforest 4y ago
  Humans have reasoning, AI has zero aggressive instinct and instant reaction time. It could be a pretty even battle. They might make really bad decisions in edge cases(Which will get less and less common as more cars get smart), but they might make up for it with perfect behavior in ordinary circumstances. They will never prioritize convenience or speed or avoiding angering other people over safety. They'll do the safe thing even if no human driver could maintain that level of paranoia at all times.

rasterdog 4y ago

thanks. let's refashion our cityscape and our clothing to accommodate self driving cars. don't care about pedestrians. </sarcasm>

valine 4y ago
Not hitting pedestrians is already solved. Waymo couldn’t do driverless taxis rides if it wasn’t. I also have tesla’s fsd beta on my car, and it does a marvelous job not hitting people. If anything it’s way too cautious around pedestrians.
- jqpabc123 4y ago
  So if you're traveling at interstate speed and someone steps out too close to the roadway is it going to swerve into the next lane or slam on the brakes to avoid them? I recently had a situation where a large truck off to the right in front of me had a blowout and a large chunk of tire flew over into my lane. There were other cars traveling fast on both sides and behind me. What to do? I chose to maintain my speed and lane and just hit the tire. It caused some damage to the front of my car but in my split second judgment, this was the least bad option. What would your AI do?
  - eternityforest 4y ago
    It would have rear sensors. It knows something is behind at a fixed distance, so it must be matching your speed. If that distance is less than a safe reaction time, stopping is bad. It knows stuff is happening to the sides and swerving is bad. Unlike a human, it can slow down to hit the object at minimum speed, then speed up again just in time to not get hit even if the driver behind does nothing, at an optimized profile that gives the person behind time to not overreact and cause a pileup. Self driving also has the advantage that people might stay away. Unlike regular tailgating you have machinephobia that might actually make people not tail you.
    - jqpabc123 4y ago
      One of the most common accidents with "self driving" thus far has been the auto getting rear ended. Yes, this is undoubtedly the human drivers fault for following too closely but ... is it being precipitated by unexpected AI braking? In any case, the AI has demonstrated very limited ability to avoid these sort of collisions.
      - eternityforest 4y ago
        I wonder why there aren't more devices to give you an insurance discount for following to close. Or just to make an unsilencable beep if you try. In any case, some of those cases were probably due to lack of rear sensors, or lack of any sensors at all besides cameras, and lack of any deterministic code able to override the AI.
  - valine 4y ago
    Tesla has two branches of their self driving software, the fsd branch which is under active development and the highway branch which has not had major changes in 2 years. The highway software is much worse around pedestrians and obstacles than FSD. It’s hard to say how fsd would handle a situation like that on the highway, but based on my experience with fsd off highway it would never choose to hit a car, so very likely it would run over the debris.
dale_glass 4y ago
The argument as I take it is that AI image analysis could be avoided. We "just" use sensors to figure that it's on the road, it's not a car, so it's a potential obstacle regardless of what it might actually be. But I've got no idea how practically usable such an approach would be.
eternityforest 4y ago
We don't need to refashion clothing, radar sees us just fine. But I'm sure people would want radar reflectors just like they want high visibility clothing at night now, for extra assurance in edge cases, to be sure they always got priority over sensor artifact false positives.

jqpabc123 4y ago

If you have high resolution sensors ... *Something* has to interpret the data from the sensors. This is where logic and reasoning comes into play. If a bird flies across the road in front of you as you're traveling at high speed on the interstate, slamming on the brakes at that particular moment might not be the most appropriate response. A self driving car would essentially give a person extra hours in the day No one is disputing the utility --- only the difficulty of actually achieving it.

Retric 4y ago

Self driving cars don’t need assistance from the environment. We already have self driving cars in public streets that work. Arguing about the possibilities with self driving is like arguing about how good chess computers might some day become, it’s already been done. Hitting the right price point, actually mapping the environment at scale, working out reliability, and bugs etc is real engineering. We are in that stage right between the prototype works and it’s ready for production which always takes longer than people expect but can it be done is no longer in question.

gambiting 4y ago
We have "self driving" cars that "work" in a very narrow set of circumstances and road conditions, but to say "it's already been done" feels....silly at best. It hasn't been done, it isn't even remotely close. "but can it be done is no longer in question." You are right - it doesn't seem like it can be done at all, not in the way that most people imagine "self driving" - where you hop in your car no matter the weather, tell it where to go and it just takes you there while you sleep, and it works in every country in the world on every road like any human can drive.That doesn't seem possible this century, if ever.
- jqpabc123 4y ago
  All we really need is a sentient automobile --- seems easy enough /s.
  - Retric 4y ago
    If you assume we need a sentient automobile to drive then we must already have them because cars are driving without drivers.
    - gambiting 4y ago
      They aren't though. I'm not aware of any example from any company anywhere. There are some really impressive examples of cruise control that works pretty well most of the time, but I wouldn't say any car "drives without drivers".

andsoitis 4y ago

> avoid hitting anything or being hit by anything Two options for the former are: brake or swerve. While for the latter a 3rd option, accelerate, can also be in play. Which do you pick when? When you brake or swerve or accelerate, what other environmental factors (e.g. wet road, gravel road, construction workers present), should be taken into account?

paxunix 4y ago

It's not that they necessarily need true reasoning. It would just be extremely beneficial, because that's what every human driver already has built-in (although exercised to varying degrees of success). What about an axe that falls off the landscaping truck in front of you? Or a mattress? Or a harmless styrofoam cooler? The self-driving car does not know what those things are, but suddenly there is <something> in the air that will likely collide with you. The computer is going to be unable to predict how the mattress or the axe or the styrofoam will fly through the air, it can only decide to take abrupt, evasive action. It is also unaware that the person behind the car has been periodically looking down at their phone instead of watching the road, so an abrupt swerve or stop may still cause an accident. A sensible human driver would realize they are taking on additional risk by following such a truck and/or remaining in front of the distracted driver, and maybe decide to change lanes safely. The car's pretend AI has no idea of any of these things until something falls off and it has to react. We'll praise it when it gets it right--ooooh how ingenious! And the apologists will claim "there's no way it could have made a perfect decision--look how many other times it gets it right!" when it fails. And the realists will conclude "ha, stupid computer, told ya so".

eternityforest 4y ago
Humans have reasoning, AI has zero aggressive instinct and instant reaction time. It could be a pretty even battle. They might make really bad decisions in edge cases(Which will get less and less common as more cars get smart), but they might make up for it with perfect behavior in ordinary circumstances. They will never prioritize convenience or speed or avoiding angering other people over safety. They'll do the safe thing even if no human driver could maintain that level of paranoia at all times.