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Genuinely curious: what is it that makes so many people have such high regards for Google's self-driving AI? I agree that it's a whole different ballgame compar

by w0utert 14y ago

Genuinely curious: what is it that makes so many people have such high regards for Google's self-driving AI? I agree that it's a whole different ballgame compared to just tracking a lead vehicle on the motorway, but honestly, all I have seen from the Google self-driving cars have basically been hyped-up success stories and demo video's in extremely controlled and scripted environments. Nobody ever shows that video from less than a year ago where a Google AI car crashes into another car on their test track. Yes, it appears the Google cars can drive around town 'autonomously' to some degree, yes, Google has facts to back up the number of miles travelled 'autonomously', but you never, ever get any facts from Google about how many times the human driver still had to intervene, how many times they had the software or hardware fail, how many situations the cars encountered that they could not handle. To me, self-driving car achievements are still mostly PR. A car that can really, actually drive autonomously safely, anywhere, anytime, without any need for the drive to pay any attention at all, without requiring adapting all infrastructure, it's still a pipe dream and I think it will always be. Road infrastructure and traffic (especially city traffic with bikes and pedestrians) is simply too irregular and unpredictable to handle reliably by any form of AI known to man. Personally, I think humanity will find a better way of transportation before the self-driving car will ever become a reality, as in: I can walk into a car dealership, buy a self-driving car, and have it drive me home safely while I read a newspaper, no matter where I live.

driax 14y ago
I have not heard of a Google AI Car crashing into another car. I have heard that one of the Google AI Cars was involved in a small crash (the other car crashed into the Google Car) while it was driven manually just outside Google's headquarters. Is that the incident you are referring to?
- w0utert 14y ago
  No, I didn't even know about that crash, reading the reports it apparently involved 4 cars, and the AI Prius running into the back of the car in front of it. Obviously, Google declared afterwards that it was driven by a human at that time, and that the crash was due to human error. What else would you expect them to do? There's no way to verify Google's statement, and why would anyone want to anyway, blaming it on one of the Google employees that are still required to be in the Google vehicles works out much better for every party involved in such an incident, and for Google in particular. The incident I was referring to was a video of a Google AI car doing laps on a small test track that they set up on a parking lot. The car basically missed a turn and left the track, hit the brakes and skid into a car parked next to the track. Somehow (coincidentally?) the video is nowhere to be found using Google, but I remember watching it like it was yesterday. You could see 2 Google employees chatting a bit next to the track until the car crashed in the background and they got pretty upset. Just to make myself clear: I'm not trying to talk down the great achievements Google has made with their driverless cars, I'm just a little sceptic about how far they actually are if you strip down all the PR coming from Google.
  - vecinu 14y ago
    I would really like to see this video because if it is true, then they are covering up their mistakes just to increase their credibility.
  - Retric 14y ago
    So, because in Alpha testing they had two issues that where later corrected your suggesting the hole thing is impossible? Will self driving cars be perfect, of course not. However, the threshold is simply will the first generation of self driving cars be hit by people more often than they hit people and I think that's vary obtainable as in 7-12 years from now they will be expensive but on public highways. PS: #1 reason they will be adopted after the price drops? Ability for them to drive you home after a night of drinking.
    - w0utert 14y ago
      I'm not suggesting anything, I'm just saying that extrapolating publicly available information about the performance of Google AI cars, does not give me any clue about how they would do in real traffic. I don't think 'just as bad as some human drivers' will be good enough for driverless cars to ever become reality by the way. I'm amazed how so many people adhere to this strange way of reasoning: because some people are bad drivers and have accidents, it's ok for AI cars to do better than the average driver, but still worse than the responsible, safe driver? I'd say we'd better spend the time and energy trying to reduce the number of bad drivers, or limit the damage they can do when they screw up (for example by AI assistance as opposed to AI drivers). It's exactly arguments like this that put me off in the driverless-cars debate, just like the eternal 'but we have driverless planes for years and they work' argument I see a lot of people make. It only goes to show how love for technology clouds some peoples judgement (I hope I don't have to explain why comparing AI cars to planes doesn't make any sense on about any level imaginable?) Anyway, judging from the votes I get, it was a bad idea to post my thoughts about driverless cars here, as I already feared. Just like the discussions I sometimes have with my colleagues who all also love technology, it goes nowhere. It's almost as if driverless cars have become a religion for some, anytime I try to put things into perspective I only get back a lot of negativity and non-sequitur arguments. I guess some people really want to believe in driverless cars.
randomdata 14y ago
I read in an article recently that Kinze is planning on releasing a fully autonomous agriculture planting machine by the end of this year. The field is certainly not the highway, but it is still neat to see the technology is already starting to becoming available for purchase (assuming they are able to deliver on their estimates).
- ams6110 14y ago
  Modern agricultural planting and harvesting equipment is already GPS guided, this is more of an incremental step to full automation of something that was probably 80--90% there already.
  - randomdata 14y ago
    Which is, realistically, the stage Google is at now. The car seems to be able to drive just fine until an outlier condition arises. What makes the Kinze system interesting is that they must feel confident enough about the safety/obstacle avoidance features to ready it for mass consumption. Again, the complexity of monitoring a field is not to the level of the road, but it does show that a lot of progress is happening in the study. It does show promise for Google to be able to pull it off on the road too.
excuse-me 14y ago
Suppose there was a super HOV lane on your freeway where you were allowed to do 100mph in stead of 55mph and the distance between cars was 20ft instead of 300ft. Would you buy one then ? Would your local highway authority jump at the chance of getting 4x as many cars without building anymore infrastructure?
- stretchwithme 14y ago
  no, the local highway authority would not jump at the chance. They have little incentive to make roads more efficient. There is incentive to make them safer. No one wants to be blamed for 25-car pileups. I think convincing officials that this could be done safely will be difficult.
  - excuse-me 14y ago
    They do have an incentive to avoid 4hour queues in people getting to work - at least when those queues mean companies start moving to other cities because of the traffic. That's why cities are forever building new freeways, widening freeways, building bridges etc. The cities don't get blamed for pileups in the same way that airports don't get blamed for plane crashes.
    - stretchwithme 14y ago
      what is the incentive for highway planners? Isn't how many companies are in the area a little indirect of an incentive? How does it impact their individual wellbeing? An indirect political incentive is a very weak incentive. There is more direct incentive to do nothing innovative.
  - encoderer 14y ago
    I don't know where you're from, but around here highway dollars are spent expanding and rebuilding highways to increase capacity and throughput. Projects that focus on only safety -- removing left-lane exits and entrances, adding full-width paved shoulders, increasing grade, increasing curve radius, etc -- are rare-to-non-existant uses of scarce highway dollars. States -- especially California -- have a serious interest in increased highway efficiency. The only thing about the original premise that I wonder is how much additional wear-and-tear the high speed lane would create, especially considering it would need to be kept in optimal condition to avoid deleterious safety affects at such high speeds.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

by w0utert 14y ago

driax 14y ago

I have not heard of a Google AI Car crashing into another car. I have heard that one of the Google AI Cars was involved in a small crash (the other car crashed into the Google Car) while it was driven manually just outside Google's headquarters. Is that the incident you are referring to?

w0utert 14y ago
No, I didn't even know about that crash, reading the reports it apparently involved 4 cars, and the AI Prius running into the back of the car in front of it. Obviously, Google declared afterwards that it was driven by a human at that time, and that the crash was due to human error. What else would you expect them to do? There's no way to verify Google's statement, and why would anyone want to anyway, blaming it on one of the Google employees that are still required to be in the Google vehicles works out much better for every party involved in such an incident, and for Google in particular. The incident I was referring to was a video of a Google AI car doing laps on a small test track that they set up on a parking lot. The car basically missed a turn and left the track, hit the brakes and skid into a car parked next to the track. Somehow (coincidentally?) the video is nowhere to be found using Google, but I remember watching it like it was yesterday. You could see 2 Google employees chatting a bit next to the track until the car crashed in the background and they got pretty upset. Just to make myself clear: I'm not trying to talk down the great achievements Google has made with their driverless cars, I'm just a little sceptic about how far they actually are if you strip down all the PR coming from Google.
- vecinu 14y ago
  I would really like to see this video because if it is true, then they are covering up their mistakes just to increase their credibility.
- Retric 14y ago
  So, because in Alpha testing they had two issues that where later corrected your suggesting the hole thing is impossible? Will self driving cars be perfect, of course not. However, the threshold is simply will the first generation of self driving cars be hit by people more often than they hit people and I think that's vary obtainable as in 7-12 years from now they will be expensive but on public highways. PS: #1 reason they will be adopted after the price drops? Ability for them to drive you home after a night of drinking.
  - w0utert 14y ago
    I'm not suggesting anything, I'm just saying that extrapolating publicly available information about the performance of Google AI cars, does not give me any clue about how they would do in real traffic. I don't think 'just as bad as some human drivers' will be good enough for driverless cars to ever become reality by the way. I'm amazed how so many people adhere to this strange way of reasoning: because some people are bad drivers and have accidents, it's ok for AI cars to do better than the average driver, but still worse than the responsible, safe driver? I'd say we'd better spend the time and energy trying to reduce the number of bad drivers, or limit the damage they can do when they screw up (for example by AI assistance as opposed to AI drivers). It's exactly arguments like this that put me off in the driverless-cars debate, just like the eternal 'but we have driverless planes for years and they work' argument I see a lot of people make. It only goes to show how love for technology clouds some peoples judgement (I hope I don't have to explain why comparing AI cars to planes doesn't make any sense on about any level imaginable?) Anyway, judging from the votes I get, it was a bad idea to post my thoughts about driverless cars here, as I already feared. Just like the discussions I sometimes have with my colleagues who all also love technology, it goes nowhere. It's almost as if driverless cars have become a religion for some, anytime I try to put things into perspective I only get back a lot of negativity and non-sequitur arguments. I guess some people really want to believe in driverless cars.

randomdata 14y ago

I read in an article recently that Kinze is planning on releasing a fully autonomous agriculture planting machine by the end of this year. The field is certainly not the highway, but it is still neat to see the technology is already starting to becoming available for purchase (assuming they are able to deliver on their estimates).

ams6110 14y ago
Modern agricultural planting and harvesting equipment is already GPS guided, this is more of an incremental step to full automation of something that was probably 80--90% there already.
- randomdata 14y ago
  Which is, realistically, the stage Google is at now. The car seems to be able to drive just fine until an outlier condition arises. What makes the Kinze system interesting is that they must feel confident enough about the safety/obstacle avoidance features to ready it for mass consumption. Again, the complexity of monitoring a field is not to the level of the road, but it does show that a lot of progress is happening in the study. It does show promise for Google to be able to pull it off on the road too.

excuse-me 14y ago

Suppose there was a super HOV lane on your freeway where you were allowed to do 100mph in stead of 55mph and the distance between cars was 20ft instead of 300ft. Would you buy one then ? Would your local highway authority jump at the chance of getting 4x as many cars without building anymore infrastructure?

stretchwithme 14y ago
no, the local highway authority would not jump at the chance. They have little incentive to make roads more efficient. There is incentive to make them safer. No one wants to be blamed for 25-car pileups. I think convincing officials that this could be done safely will be difficult.
- excuse-me 14y ago
  They do have an incentive to avoid 4hour queues in people getting to work - at least when those queues mean companies start moving to other cities because of the traffic. That's why cities are forever building new freeways, widening freeways, building bridges etc. The cities don't get blamed for pileups in the same way that airports don't get blamed for plane crashes.
  - stretchwithme 14y ago
    what is the incentive for highway planners? Isn't how many companies are in the area a little indirect of an incentive? How does it impact their individual wellbeing? An indirect political incentive is a very weak incentive. There is more direct incentive to do nothing innovative.
- encoderer 14y ago
  I don't know where you're from, but around here highway dollars are spent expanding and rebuilding highways to increase capacity and throughput. Projects that focus on only safety -- removing left-lane exits and entrances, adding full-width paved shoulders, increasing grade, increasing curve radius, etc -- are rare-to-non-existant uses of scarce highway dollars. States -- especially California -- have a serious interest in increased highway efficiency. The only thing about the original premise that I wonder is how much additional wear-and-tear the high speed lane would create, especially considering it would need to be kept in optimal condition to avoid deleterious safety affects at such high speeds.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]