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This will never work. They are still fucking around changing vehicle configurations, sensor configurations, computers, throwing more compute at it, everything a
by baz00 3y ago
This will never work. They are still fucking around changing vehicle configurations, sensor configurations, computers, throwing more compute at it, everything after nearly a decade now. It's a hack job death march, reminiscent of half-assed software crap companies I've worked for, surrounded by hype, marketing and rabid fanboyism. I've never seen customers at this scale who are happy being experimented on like lab rats.
The real problem is that roads are vastly unconstrained systems. An analogy is you can't take a sieve and fill all the holes in it with AI because it has no determinism and you don't know what all the constraints/holes are in the first place. Humans can actually reason in these situations fairly competently, even the stupid ones.
Give up, produce a half decent low price car with basic features that a human drives that frees us from the insane EV pricing jump and perhaps the world will be changed. Self driving cars are not important other than for a few exec egos and companies who want rid of the cost of a human workforce.
This is another fucking race to the bottom and the only innovation is getting people to think it's important.
- bestcoder69 3y agoSelf-driving cars work really well so far. But we'll see, I guess! https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/09/are-self-driving-cars-already-safer-than-human-drivers/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/09/are-self-driving-cars-a...
- baz00 3y agoAll this proves is self-published research works really well for businesses! I've worked for ones that won't publish the bad reports I've written.
- hakfoo 3y agoSelf=driving cars could be important, if we used them in ways that didn't play to the traditional car narratives. An always-connected vehicle could start to deliver some of the "system intelligence" we see in more controlled public-transit platforms. Self-driving cars should be smart enough to say "You specified a destination downtown. I will wait 4 minutes 23 seconds before departure because we'll have a peak cohort of people driving downtown, and can maximize fuel economy by drafting and traveling as a convoy." Potentially we even get to the point where the cars couple together and form transient "trains" to to spread the wear on the drive systems. We could even have controls like "A parade/diplomatic mission/emergency vehicle is travelling down XYZ Street; to ensure their security, a two-block radius around it been flagged as no-go for any autonomous vehicles."
- baz00 3y agoSee now you're getting to the point but the point is that public transport is broken so we're patching it with cars. Perhaps we should be fixing that instead?
- HPMOR 3y agoThis “we” you speak of is non-existent. It’s about individuals taking actions to fix the injustices and errors they see in the system. For all his faults Elon Musk does not sit on the sidelines. What you see as a transgression by him is nonetheless action, and it will not be fixed until you, or some other individual brings it upon themselves to fix it.
- paulryanrogers 3y agoIf only individuals could pool their ideas and resources for collective action, maybe even without a profit motive. We could call it a government.
- JumpinJack_Cash 3y ago> > For all his faults Elon Musk does not sit on the sidelines He sits on the sidelines for all the billions of problems which are not heavily subsidised by the government in one way or another. The fearless QB who only takes the field when the team has a 48 points lead and for Uncle Sam's team with uncapped salary ceiling. A true underdog story. Move over Kurt Warner. Not.
- TheCleric 3y agoSay what you will about ISIS but they do not sit on the sidelines. This absurdist comparison isn't to say Musk is as bad as ISIS, but rather action shouldn't be confused with helping.
- AlotOfReading 3y agoI've seen this objection a lot and I don't really understand where it comes from. The only people who can fix public transit are the government and the public. Autonomous vehicles aren't being developed by either of these groups and in no way prevent them from fixing transit. What's the argument then? Is everyone expected to wait around until public transit is fixed before they work on something else? AVs are complementary to public transit. You're not going to take a robotaxi from SF to SJ. You might take one to the Caltrain station on either end and avoid needing a personal vehicle at all.
- sidgarimella 3y agoI ride Cruise daily– I think it's entirely a scoping problem and what they decide to finalize as "FSD". From my exp autonomous driving seems entirely plausible within large cities at slower speeds that don't instantly kill you or others, and outside that just as good a lane assist + cruise control as you can get– the rest is branding FSD and walking back a claim or two around it. It all seems very malleable.
- mavu 3y ago> at slower speeds that don't instantly kill you or others, So, what speed would that be that is safe for pedestrians? And how useful is FSD that only drives at that speed? See where this is going?
- baz00 3y agoOf course the position is malleable. The ideal end game would be a constrained system. So I mean if you put the cars on rails and gave them a dedicated space to run in, which would solve most of the determinism problems that'd be good. And you could possibly stuck a few of them together to increase overall capacity and efficiency too. We might then have a solution that's possible to execute FSD reliably on.
- paulryanrogers 3y agoSo... trains?
- cpcallen 3y agoExactly.
- inferiorhuman 3y agoAliens.
- opyate 3y agoWhat's this about automated cars on rails? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docklands_Light_Railway https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docklands_Light_Railway
- drexlspivey 3y agoAre you suggesting that AI driving is impossible? What's so special about a human brain "reasoning" while driving that AI can't do it?
- baz00 3y agoThe burden of proof is that something is possible not that it is not impossible. There is no evidence to suggest at this point that it is cost effective, safe or possible.
- wilg 3y agoWe know driving is possible. So, check. Cost effective, I don't know what this means in this context. Development costs, rider costs? I don't see why this matters. Safety is easy to measure. Just measure crash rates. If your concern is can we engineer a self-driving car with acceptable safety performance, there is only one way to figure that out and it's to try to build one. You're not going to somehow prove it out on paper before trying it.
- justinclift 3y ago> Are you suggesting that AI driving is impossible? Seems like it'll be impossible for Tesla. It's less clear for others though, as some of them (Mercedes?) seem to be taking a more responsible development approach.
- wilg 3y agoLooking at Mercedes is foolish IMO. There's no reason to think they have any expertise in this domain. They have some press releases but very little technology to show for themselves. Cruise and Waymo are the other major players here.
- Tepix 3y agoAre you aware that Mercedes has L3 (in limited circumstances) rolled out already?
- lysecret 3y agohack job death march That is my new favourite expression and describes 85% of startups.
- burkaman 3y agoThere are cheapish EVs now, you can get a Bolt or Leaf or Mini for non-luxury prices. Not as cheap as the cheapest ICE vehicles, but getting there.
- baz00 3y agoMost car sales are second hand and that's a different proposition. However on new cars, £28k for a car with 149 miles range or £20k for a car with 400 mile range that the difference in price buys you 77,000 miles of fuel?
- burkaman 3y agoYes, as I said if you want the cheapest car on the market to be an EV you'll have to keep waiting. You can also buy a used EV for under $10k right now, but obviously it's still a tiny market compared to used ICE cars.
- jlmorton 3y ago> Self driving cars are not important other than for a few exec ego This is where you really go off the rails. You can't possibly believe this.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- baz00 3y agoLiterally the main reasons for the push for self-driving cars are to drive operating costs down for private taxi services by removing humans and to have a marketable feature that can be upsold on luxury vehicles. These are a net negative for society as they drive up unemployment and consumption. It's ego because it's a gold rush revenue source if it plays off and various CEOs have been pushing because while stock price is rising for the bubble, they're earning.
- ToValueFunfetti 3y agoIs there a technology that doesn't automate work and isn't sold to consumers for money? Self driving cars could potentially end car accidents outright, saving 40,000 lives in just the US per year. But that would put some mechanics out of business.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jlmorton 3y agoNo, the main reason is to free up millions of man years of time for other more more desirable activities, and to reduce the tens of thousands of people killed in daily carnage on our roads.
- Zigurd 3y agoIn the US it is very difficult, due to low density, road design, and use patterns, to make transit service, especially bus lines, both economical and pleasant to use at rush hour. AVs can enable surge capacity for bus service, and a mix of vehicle sizes. It can enable smooth transfers, more lines with more stops, and higher frequency of service in a lot of places that have really bad mass transit. Guangzhou already has a few autonomous bus lines. Compared to the cost of a bus, a conservative approach to an AV sensor suite is cheap.
- throwaway914 3y agoI'm sure I'm just naive because I don't work in this space, but I keep wondering why they don't do machine learning from a satellite perspective. Yes, the cars need to notice and react to things in front of them. However, a lot of problem areas and odd navigation can be identified from space. I'm surprised they don't do some massive slow exposure shots from a satellite and see how traffic flows across the entire US. I want a car that can react in realtime to new problems, but it has a massive amount of storage so it can probably be told ahead of time what roads, interchanges, freeway onramps, etc.. are problems, and what should guide its decision making.
- kec 3y agoHow would satellite imagery help at night, during cloudy/stormy weather? What sort of latency does the imagery have? Can commercial imagery even resolve things like painted lane markers, construction detour signage, etc?
- ForestCritter 3y agocar meet deer meet death in my neck of the woods anyway. Satteltes can't predict deer. Most of the time we can't even predict them.
- coffeebeqn 3y agoThere’s also a much easier method - just get the delta of every Tesla on the road to the speed limit and you can see how well traffic flows. All the navigation apps already do that
- throwaway914 3y agoPart of the problem is reacting in real-time. The part I'm talking about: Is you can "tell" the car what to expect at this interchange, and still react in real-time to present conditions. You hear all the time about Teslas driving off a ramp or not changing lanes quick enough due to odd paint stripes on the road, and I keep thinking you can see this from space. Why isn't there a database of known "this is a road, this is not a road" that it looks at first before looking at surrounding cameras outside the car? You can see how traffic moves -> from space. Part of these conditions are known well ahead of time on any present day regardless of the weather.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Zigurd 3y agoIn a way, FSD hype is brilliant. Cathie Wood attributes a majority of Tesla's valuation to robotaxi revenue. That means a multi-year zero-revenue business has pushed down Tesla's cost of capital to a fraction of the incumbents. That, in turn, has made Tesla a segment leader in the game for the long run. It also made SpaceX and X possible. The main problem is lack of restraint: "Give me $15,000 non-refundable and someday I will deliver the means to make a profit on the car you bought. It already has the hardware." is building up a big potential liability. But, even if forced to refund that FSD money, it's still been cheap capital to grow Tesla.