5 ms·

You are factually wrong. The general case is being solved. Self-driving systems are objectively better every year, and will eventually reach human level safety.

You are factually wrong. The general case is being solved. Self-driving systems are objectively better every year, and will eventually reach human level safety. You can literally watch cars self-driving in all kinds of places and conditions. Yes, they make mistakes. So do humans.

cmontella 4y ago
See my comment about the moon ladder. Progress is nice, and I’m not saying there hasn’t been progress. But there is no indication that the methods of today that work to make taxi cabs in SF drivable will lead to a general-case self driving machine as promised for so many years. The fact that the two cases that work best have a similar climate to the 2007 DUC really highlights the reality that these methods haven’t been proven to scale generally. The industry is still chasing that 2007 success, and it’s not surprising that over 15 years they’ve improved that. But do I need to link to all the promises from CEOs about where they thought we’d be today? Those predictions were based on the idea that the DUC prototypes would be more generally applicable. The successes since then have shown we can make the experience better, but don’t show we can solve autonomous driving in the general case.
- verdverm 4y ago
  Google/Waymo demo'd the AI driving in a snow storm and the method they used to see through the flakes and maintain object detection. Having trouble finding the video I'm thinking of. Here are some videos related to self-driving in snow and progress on weird edge cases. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx7fHEhnIZk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx7fHEhnIZk (snow, like the google demo) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSX3qdy0dFg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSX3qdy0dFg | https://youtu.be/LSX3qdy0dFg?t=2229 https://youtu.be/LSX3qdy0dFg?t=2229 (snow, but not the one I was thinking of)
goatlover 4y ago
So when will these self-driving cars be ready for mass consumption? Because they're starting to sound like flying cars at this point. Yes, technically doable and there are always some working prototypes, but no real market, and not seen as practical.
- bufferoverflow 4y ago
  We have flying cars.
  - goatlover 4y ago
    Where can I purchase one to use on the road when I'm not flying (helicopters don't count as cars).
- dsr_ 4y ago
  Helicopters -- hold on -- and light general aviation are our best extant examples of flying cars. Here's what we should learn from them: - at current traffic levels, accidents are rare - but fatality rates are high (20% of helicopter accidents) - the commercial carriers have much better accident statistics than general aviation - commuter and on-demand flights are much worse than commercial scheduled flights - rather more than half of all accidents have a root incident near an airport - taxi-ing, departure, initial climb, approach, landing. My conclusion is that mass adoption of flying cars (as in, millions of people piloting small aircraft with varying levels of maintenance, safety inspections, training, and traffic control) would be a terrifyingly foreseeable disaster. On the other hand, I hold out real hope for fully autonomous vehicles being potentially safer than a distracted teenager on the road.
- fragmede 4y ago
  Soon? As a member of the general public I got opted into the Cruise beta. Took a ride from point A to point B. It had to be within a small service zone, and I have no idea how much mapping was needed to accomplish this, and thus have no idea how long it'll take for them to expand the service area, but it works! It cost $12 and I hailed it via the Cruise app. I dunno, I suppose GM could just fire the whole team and lose the code on a USB stick and just give up, but that hardly seems likely.
- ghostbrainalpha 4y ago
  I let Tesla FSD take over completely for driving my kids to school in the morning, which is approximately 90% of my driving. I might feel like intervening, 1 out of 10 times at this point. I might not be the typical driver, but I definitely feel like its ready for early adopters now. However, even though I'm a big fan, I don't see how these can easily transition to "mass consumption", because as we get into the uncanny valley where the auto drive is good enough to take over, the masses are going to completely check out of their responsibility to be a good backup driver. So I feel like we are going to be stuck in the current space for a long time, maybe 10 years. Until you Auto Drive is so good, you can ride one without getting a drivers license.
lm28469 4y ago
> will eventually reach human level safety That's a very strong statement with not much to back it up. They drive fine in straight, wide, sunny, south US roads (and even there not always), they struggle even in US cities, put them in any European country and it's game over. Mountain roads in swizerland during a snow storm ? Foggy twisty roads in the woods ? These won't be solved easily, even Waymo's ceo acknowledged that fully autonomous cars won't be able to drive everywhere.

cmontella 4y ago

See my comment about the moon ladder. Progress is nice, and I’m not saying there hasn’t been progress. But there is no indication that the methods of today that work to make taxi cabs in SF drivable will lead to a general-case self driving machine as promised for so many years. The fact that the two cases that work best have a similar climate to the 2007 DUC really highlights the reality that these methods haven’t been proven to scale generally. The industry is still chasing that 2007 success, and it’s not surprising that over 15 years they’ve improved that. But do I need to link to all the promises from CEOs about where they thought we’d be today? Those predictions were based on the idea that the DUC prototypes would be more generally applicable. The successes since then have shown we can make the experience better, but don’t show we can solve autonomous driving in the general case.

verdverm 4y ago
Google/Waymo demo'd the AI driving in a snow storm and the method they used to see through the flakes and maintain object detection. Having trouble finding the video I'm thinking of. Here are some videos related to self-driving in snow and progress on weird edge cases. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx7fHEhnIZk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx7fHEhnIZk (snow, like the google demo) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSX3qdy0dFg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSX3qdy0dFg | https://youtu.be/LSX3qdy0dFg?t=2229 https://youtu.be/LSX3qdy0dFg?t=2229 (snow, but not the one I was thinking of)

goatlover 4y ago

So when will these self-driving cars be ready for mass consumption? Because they're starting to sound like flying cars at this point. Yes, technically doable and there are always some working prototypes, but no real market, and not seen as practical.

bufferoverflow 4y ago
We have flying cars.
- goatlover 4y ago
  Where can I purchase one to use on the road when I'm not flying (helicopters don't count as cars).
dsr_ 4y ago
Helicopters -- hold on -- and light general aviation are our best extant examples of flying cars. Here's what we should learn from them: - at current traffic levels, accidents are rare - but fatality rates are high (20% of helicopter accidents) - the commercial carriers have much better accident statistics than general aviation - commuter and on-demand flights are much worse than commercial scheduled flights - rather more than half of all accidents have a root incident near an airport - taxi-ing, departure, initial climb, approach, landing. My conclusion is that mass adoption of flying cars (as in, millions of people piloting small aircraft with varying levels of maintenance, safety inspections, training, and traffic control) would be a terrifyingly foreseeable disaster. On the other hand, I hold out real hope for fully autonomous vehicles being potentially safer than a distracted teenager on the road.
fragmede 4y ago
Soon? As a member of the general public I got opted into the Cruise beta. Took a ride from point A to point B. It had to be within a small service zone, and I have no idea how much mapping was needed to accomplish this, and thus have no idea how long it'll take for them to expand the service area, but it works! It cost $12 and I hailed it via the Cruise app. I dunno, I suppose GM could just fire the whole team and lose the code on a USB stick and just give up, but that hardly seems likely.
ghostbrainalpha 4y ago
I let Tesla FSD take over completely for driving my kids to school in the morning, which is approximately 90% of my driving. I might feel like intervening, 1 out of 10 times at this point. I might not be the typical driver, but I definitely feel like its ready for early adopters now. However, even though I'm a big fan, I don't see how these can easily transition to "mass consumption", because as we get into the uncanny valley where the auto drive is good enough to take over, the masses are going to completely check out of their responsibility to be a good backup driver. So I feel like we are going to be stuck in the current space for a long time, maybe 10 years. Until you Auto Drive is so good, you can ride one without getting a drivers license.

lm28469 4y ago

> will eventually reach human level safety That's a very strong statement with not much to back it up. They drive fine in straight, wide, sunny, south US roads (and even there not always), they struggle even in US cities, put them in any European country and it's game over. Mountain roads in swizerland during a snow storm ? Foggy twisty roads in the woods ? These won't be solved easily, even Waymo's ceo acknowledged that fully autonomous cars won't be able to drive everywhere.