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The key to self-driving cars is to realize that they don't have to be perfect - they just have to be better than us. It's not that the AI driver so good - it's

The key to self-driving cars is to realize that they don't have to be perfect - they just have to be better than us. It's not that the AI driver so good - it's that human drivers are SO BAD! I agree with you that AI is a pipe dream but I do think self-driving cars will succeed. I don't think the computers will ever match our judgement but it's trivially easy for them to beat us on attention span and reaction time, which will make them better drivers.

jallmann 12y ago
> The key to self-driving cars is to realize that they don't have to be perfect - they just have to be better than us. Again, that's skirting the issue. Do you have any idea how close self-driving cars are to being "better than us" ? As someone who's done computer vision research: not close at all. > I don't think the computers will ever match our judgement That is exactly the problem. > it's trivially easy for them to beat us on attention span and reaction time Attention span and reaction time are not the hard parts of building an autonomous vehicle. This kind of comment beautifully illustrates the problem with casual discussions about AI technology. Humans and computers have very different operating characteristics, and discussions all focus on the wrong things: typically, they look at human weaknesses, and emphasize where computers are obviously, trivially superior. What about the contrapositive: the gap between where computers are weak, and where humans are vastly superior? More importantly, what is the actual state of that gap? That question is often completely ignored, or dismissed outright. Which is disappointing, especially among a technically literate audience such as HN.
- Retric 12y ago
  I suspect that the current google car is already safer than the overall average driver. Don't forget some people speed, flee from the cops, fall asleep at the wheel, get drunk, text, look at maps, have strokes etc. So, sure at peak performance cars have a long way to go. However, accidents are often a worst case and computers are very good at paying attention to boring things for long periods of time. PS: If driverless cars on average killed 1 person each year per 20,000 cars then they would be significantly safer than human drivers.
  - dangerlibrary 12y ago
    > I suspect that the current google car is already safer than the overall average driver. Based on what? Even Google admits that the car is essentially blind (~30 feet visibility) in light rain. They've done little to no road testing in poor weather conditions. The vast majority of their "total miles driven" are highway miles in good weather, with the tricky city-driving bits at either end taken over by humans. Google often leaves the impression that, as a Google executive once wrote, the cars can “drive anywhere a car can legally drive.” However, that’s true only if intricate preparations have been made beforehand, with the car’s exact route, including driveways, extensively mapped. Data from multiple passes by a special sensor vehicle must later be pored over, meter by meter, by both computers and humans. It’s vastly more effort than what’s needed for Google Maps. http://www.technologyreview.com/news/530276/hidden-obstacles-for-googles-self-driving-cars/ http://www.technologyreview.com/news/530276/hidden-obstacles...
    - zanny 12y ago
      A self-driving car that can only do highways and can't drive in bad weather still destroys the trucker industry overnight. And that is today. No, I'm not drinking the AI koolaid here thinking there will be some breakout solution to fuzzy visibility problems these cars have. The difficulty differentiating contextual moving objects correctly, knowing what is "safe" debris and what is not, etc, are all neural net problems that will take years of development and even then just be heuristics. But you don't really need all that. All you need is something that, given a sunny day and a highway, beats the human at driving the truck, and suddenly you lose three million jobs when it hits the market.
      - vinceguidry 12y ago
        It's going to be awhile before they can actually eliminate the human. They've had self-driving tankers and self-driving airplanes for awhile now, they still need human operators for various reasons. They just don't have to actually drive.
      - krapp 12y ago
        >All you need is something that, given a sunny day and a highway, beats the human at driving the truck, and suddenly you lose three million jobs when it hits the market. I don't see how, given a sunny day and a highway, an autonomous vehicle can quantifiably beat a human driver to the degree of 'destroying the trucker industry overnight.' Unless you're assuming that there are few human drivers capable of managing a trip down a highway under the best possible conditions, the results between the two would have to be more or less equal. Those human drivers can, meanwhile, still manage night, sleet, snow, fog, and arbitrary backroads and detours.
makeset 12y ago
I'd settle for an AI that's better than only the worst drivers. It could monitor your driving, and only kick in if it thought you were that horrible/drunk.
imh 12y ago
To add to what has already been said, I sorta disagree with "they just have to be better than us." I would prefer the car to not just be better than an average driver, but be better than me. As any person, I'm sure I dramatically overestimate my skills, which makes that bar quite high. So it doesn't have to just be better than us, it has to be better than we (however wrongly) think we are.

jallmann 12y ago

> The key to self-driving cars is to realize that they don't have to be perfect - they just have to be better than us. Again, that's skirting the issue. Do you have any idea how close self-driving cars are to being "better than us" ? As someone who's done computer vision research: not close at all. > I don't think the computers will ever match our judgement That is exactly the problem. > it's trivially easy for them to beat us on attention span and reaction time Attention span and reaction time are not the hard parts of building an autonomous vehicle. This kind of comment beautifully illustrates the problem with casual discussions about AI technology. Humans and computers have very different operating characteristics, and discussions all focus on the wrong things: typically, they look at human weaknesses, and emphasize where computers are obviously, trivially superior. What about the contrapositive: the gap between where computers are weak, and where humans are vastly superior? More importantly, what is the actual state of that gap? That question is often completely ignored, or dismissed outright. Which is disappointing, especially among a technically literate audience such as HN.

Retric 12y ago
I suspect that the current google car is already safer than the overall average driver. Don't forget some people speed, flee from the cops, fall asleep at the wheel, get drunk, text, look at maps, have strokes etc. So, sure at peak performance cars have a long way to go. However, accidents are often a worst case and computers are very good at paying attention to boring things for long periods of time. PS: If driverless cars on average killed 1 person each year per 20,000 cars then they would be significantly safer than human drivers.
- dangerlibrary 12y ago
  > I suspect that the current google car is already safer than the overall average driver. Based on what? Even Google admits that the car is essentially blind (~30 feet visibility) in light rain. They've done little to no road testing in poor weather conditions. The vast majority of their "total miles driven" are highway miles in good weather, with the tricky city-driving bits at either end taken over by humans. Google often leaves the impression that, as a Google executive once wrote, the cars can “drive anywhere a car can legally drive.” However, that’s true only if intricate preparations have been made beforehand, with the car’s exact route, including driveways, extensively mapped. Data from multiple passes by a special sensor vehicle must later be pored over, meter by meter, by both computers and humans. It’s vastly more effort than what’s needed for Google Maps. http://www.technologyreview.com/news/530276/hidden-obstacles-for-googles-self-driving-cars/ http://www.technologyreview.com/news/530276/hidden-obstacles...
  - zanny 12y ago
    A self-driving car that can only do highways and can't drive in bad weather still destroys the trucker industry overnight. And that is today. No, I'm not drinking the AI koolaid here thinking there will be some breakout solution to fuzzy visibility problems these cars have. The difficulty differentiating contextual moving objects correctly, knowing what is "safe" debris and what is not, etc, are all neural net problems that will take years of development and even then just be heuristics. But you don't really need all that. All you need is something that, given a sunny day and a highway, beats the human at driving the truck, and suddenly you lose three million jobs when it hits the market.
    - vinceguidry 12y ago
      It's going to be awhile before they can actually eliminate the human. They've had self-driving tankers and self-driving airplanes for awhile now, they still need human operators for various reasons. They just don't have to actually drive.
    - krapp 12y ago
      >All you need is something that, given a sunny day and a highway, beats the human at driving the truck, and suddenly you lose three million jobs when it hits the market. I don't see how, given a sunny day and a highway, an autonomous vehicle can quantifiably beat a human driver to the degree of 'destroying the trucker industry overnight.' Unless you're assuming that there are few human drivers capable of managing a trip down a highway under the best possible conditions, the results between the two would have to be more or less equal. Those human drivers can, meanwhile, still manage night, sleet, snow, fog, and arbitrary backroads and detours.

makeset 12y ago

I'd settle for an AI that's better than only the worst drivers. It could monitor your driving, and only kick in if it thought you were that horrible/drunk.

imh 12y ago

To add to what has already been said, I sorta disagree with "they just have to be better than us." I would prefer the car to not just be better than an average driver, but be better than me. As any person, I'm sure I dramatically overestimate my skills, which makes that bar quite high. So it doesn't have to just be better than us, it has to be better than we (however wrongly) think we are.