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I've never understood the argument "humans only use vision and hearing so self driving cars should too". We don't constrain what we do with machines to what hum

by brettp 1y ago

I've never understood the argument "humans only use vision and hearing so self driving cars should too". We don't constrain what we do with machines to what humans do. Humans don't have wheels either. Is Tesla planning to replace wheels in their cars with legs, Flintstones style?

smallmancontrov 1y ago
That's not the argument and never was. Humans aren't proof that you can't do better than vision, we are proof that the problem can be solved with vision. This isn't a question of max-sensors vs min-sensors, though. It's a question of max-sensors vs max-data under economics constraints that forbade "why not both?". Tesla chose max-data, and they now have a 40x data advantage thanks to their choice, and probably more once you consider the improved diversity of data collected from private cars in every corner of the country and world. If you were training a self-driving car, would you rather have 40x the data or would you rather have point clouds that are only a smidgen better than what you can get from modern monocular depth reconstruction on the vision data?
- tzs 1y ago
  > Humans aren't proof that you can't do better than vision, we are proof that the problem can be solved with vision. It's proof that the problem can be solved with vision when your driver is a human. That doesn't necessarily prove it for non-human drivers implemented on currently known AI architectures. Humans can learn from a lot less data then current non-human AIs require. We also learn in the field, often recognizing when we've made a mistake and consciously updating ourselves to handle similar situations better in the future. It is possible that this is necessary to make vision only driving work well.
  - smallmancontrov 1y ago
    You dodged the question about whether you would choose 40x data or redundant depth maps. I think you dodged the question because you know that 40x data is the clear winner.
    - tzs 1y ago
      I didn't dodge the question. I didn't even consider it enough to form an opinion. I responded to the part of your comment that interested me, which concerned what we can infer from the ability of humans to do vision based driving.
      - smallmancontrov 1y ago
        You dodged it again lol.
jdminhbg 1y ago
I didn’t say nobody should try to solve the problem using lidar, I just said humans are an existence proof that it can be done. Lidar gives you more data, but maybe that data will turn out to be overkill. We’ll find out.

by brettp 1y ago

smallmancontrov 1y ago

That's not the argument and never was. Humans aren't proof that you can't do better than vision, we are proof that the problem can be solved with vision. This isn't a question of max-sensors vs min-sensors, though. It's a question of max-sensors vs max-data under economics constraints that forbade "why not both?". Tesla chose max-data, and they now have a 40x data advantage thanks to their choice, and probably more once you consider the improved diversity of data collected from private cars in every corner of the country and world. If you were training a self-driving car, would you rather have 40x the data or would you rather have point clouds that are only a smidgen better than what you can get from modern monocular depth reconstruction on the vision data?

tzs 1y ago
> Humans aren't proof that you can't do better than vision, we are proof that the problem can be solved with vision. It's proof that the problem can be solved with vision when your driver is a human. That doesn't necessarily prove it for non-human drivers implemented on currently known AI architectures. Humans can learn from a lot less data then current non-human AIs require. We also learn in the field, often recognizing when we've made a mistake and consciously updating ourselves to handle similar situations better in the future. It is possible that this is necessary to make vision only driving work well.
- smallmancontrov 1y ago
  You dodged the question about whether you would choose 40x data or redundant depth maps. I think you dodged the question because you know that 40x data is the clear winner.
  - tzs 1y ago
    I didn't dodge the question. I didn't even consider it enough to form an opinion. I responded to the part of your comment that interested me, which concerned what we can infer from the ability of humans to do vision based driving.
    - smallmancontrov 1y ago
      You dodged it again lol.

jdminhbg 1y ago

I didn’t say nobody should try to solve the problem using lidar, I just said humans are an existence proof that it can be done. Lidar gives you more data, but maybe that data will turn out to be overkill. We’ll find out.