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Dispatch From the Future: Uber To Purchase 2,500 Driverless Cars From Google
First time accepted submitter Dave Jurgensen writes "Uber has said it will be purchasing 2,500 of Google's self driving GX3200 cars to be used around America. They are hoping to have their first set of driverless cars on the road by the end of the year. From the article: 'Uber has committed to invest up to $375 million for a fleet of Google’s GX3200 vehicles, which are the company’s third generation of autonomous driving cars, but the first to be approved for commercial use in the U.S. The deal marks the largest single capital investment that Uber has made to date, and is also the first enterprise deal that Google has struck for its new line of driverless vehicles.'" Update: Yes, this is a piece of speculative fiction.
I don't want to be the first one to post this, but "What could possiblie go wrong?".
All it takes is one single person to get hit by one of these and they're illegal in 50 states. Since Toyota can't even get their software straight in a non-driverless car, I'm thinking this is going to be a disaster. Then there's security. Yeah, it's Google but still, someone needs to mass hack these cars and crash them to prove that auto makers and security is about as great a pair as a 2 year old and a grenade.
It's dateline is 2023. It's fiction. NOT news.
It's supposed to be completely automatic, but actually you have to press this button.
First post. And article is dated 2023. Oh Slashdot, how hast thou fallen?
Unless TechCrunch has a time machine, this is a work of speculative fiction. The dateline of July 25, 2023 should be a dead giveaway, but since when did the Slashdot edittors ever RTFA?
The dateline on the original article should have been a clue: "July 25, 2023"
EOM
It's satire/fiction/humour "from the future."
It's bad enough to have April Fools come once a year and have to wade through the fake posts, but it's far from April 1st.
From TFA: "Dispatch From The Future: Uber To Purchase 2,500 Driverless Cars From Google July 25, 2023 "
We heard you like car analogies, so we put a car analogy in your car story...
very funny slashdot.. you got me again.. apparently, everyday is april fools day.
2023?
and now this fake piece of trash. What the hell's going on with the slashdot editors in the last couple days? I don't usually gripe about articles, but this is a little sad...
"goodbye and hello, as always" ~Prince Corwin, from Zelazny's Amber series
A news story from the future that is pretty much unavoidable.
I see the benefit of driverless cars, but people need jobs too. We need to think about that when we eliminate jobs instead of demonizing the unemployed. If companies and society are putting these people out of work, we need to do something. Our increasing productivity is producing a class of unemployable people. IMO, If we don't want that, we should hire these people to do what robots could.
Who the hell is Uber?
I can forsee a state where older drivers who can no longer safely drive themselves can maintain a portion of their independence by using these to be able to get around without requiring someone else to taxi them from place to place. Simple destinations such as family member's homes, stores, doctor and medical offices, and other common destinations could be pre-programmed into the vehicle's memory, with a simple menu to select a destination. A "specify your destination" feature could be used for those who retain the ability to decide where they wish to go, and either locked out or require an authoritative OK when the elder gets beyond being certain of being able to specify new destinations safely. Combine this with a search feature that would allow stores, restaurants and other destinations to provide their coordinates to the driverless car network, and it would go a long way to making the elder but still active population safer while still more independent.
I wonder how much fun it will be to use a GPS jammer on roads infested with driverless vehicles?
I read the article, but didn't note the date - so I was rather confused by a story about some mega-delivery company I'd never heard of that mentioned facts that weren't remotely true!
But, even in 2023... How is this supposed to work? They're a delivery company - are the customers supposed to be on the honor system, coming out to the curb and taking only the packages addressed to them? The basic idea doesn't really work, unless the car also has fold-out legs and can walk up to the door...
#DeleteChrome
... and I was laughing at the posters on TechCrunch that read it as anything other than fiction. Including the people arguing over whether a private companies stock price could jump 10% in a day....
I made a mental note not to visit that website anymore, their users failed my mental Darwinian challenge.
Now I fire up Slashdot for my post coffee 'news' blitz, and I'm left with a bitter taste in my mouth that has nothing to do with over roasting of beans.
I'm having a sad nostalgia moment where I feel this community is the old guy talking about how he used to be the star athlete back in high school.... glory days.
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
Slashdot go home, you're drunk.
Do you trust the NSA to provide you transportation without eavesdropping on you?
What happens when you discuss "terrorism" or "bombs" in the car?
What happens when you are working on a story that threatens the intelligence services?
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/08/22/Rolling-Stone-Journalist-Hastings-Feared-Car-Was-Tampered-With-Before-Fatal-Crash
I've thought, since first seeing the google car, that zip car would do well to have a fleet of them. A car that arrives where and when you need it and drops you off... it's perfect for them. And they can offer rate plans. If you don't want to spend premium and be the only person in that car with a single destination you can opt to have up to 3 other people coordinated with your ride.
Likewise, Amazon, could do well to use them for delivery on their same day service. If you click on a button saying you'll be at the delivery spot in a certain time window it would be an ideal service. The car honks, you get your package after swiping your CC in the slot.
I suspect that by 2016 we'll see a good many companies/services using autonomous cars.
The editors of the Daily Mail didn't.
Instead of a cab driver there is a cab "minder". He sits in the front but doesn't touch the controls. Instead his only job is lift people's bags into the trunk and chat with the passengers. He is a temp worker at 30 hours a week, paid minimum wage (+ the temp agency's cut).
All of those people who have no skills beyond their meager abilities to process sensory input and turn the results into mechanical action. All of them replaced by machines and possibly minimum wage, no-benefits, temp workers.
Great. Let's put the taxi drivers out of work too. That's not going to put additional pressure on other low income fields. Nope.
But it's already taken ...
There's companies in both California and Hawaii, likely others.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Check out who was fooled by this article, maybe use Google to dig up a few more...
http://www.designntrend.com/articles/7363/20130826/report-2-500-google-robo-taxi-driverless-cars-will-take.htm
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2402047/Would-hail-cab-driven-ROBOT-Rumours-Googles-self-driving-cars-day-form-robo-taxi-service.html
http://www.efinancehub.com/uber-has-decided-to-invest-up-to-375-million-for-google-inc-nasdaqgoogs-gx3200-sedans/122229.html
I know, scarey right?
In a surprise move Slashdot has ordered 10 Google autonomous tech editors at a cost of 3 billion ( only $3 in 1806 currency ).
Although this article is a spoof it should point to another issue. We are well aware that robotic transport is close at hand on a large scale. And this is a perfect example of an issue that no one is confronting. As it has occurred in other trades we will see misery applied to a very large number of professional drivers. They will simply be out of work, permanently. And then there is a ripple effect. The diners that serve truckers, cab drivers and others will close or lay off workers. Motels will do the same. Even sales of items such as CB radios could take a hit.
I would not be overly shocked to learn that robotic vehicles displaced five million workers in the US. Although nobody is entitled to earn a living we will have to create an economic system that makes certain that all people are well paid without regard for whether they work or not. People without good pay checks can not purchase nor can they pay taxes. Unemployment and under employment will shift the tax burdens to those who work and it will also collapse or limit the income of businesses leading to an ever deepening, chronic poverty.
We are now confronted with a social reality that forces a sea change in our economic and political beliefs. We have no options at all other than to create a very socialistic society. Human labor, whether physical or mental, is in decline as far as value is concerned. I strongly suspect that our youth have glimpsed that which explains their lack of concern with education and their willingness to participate in activities likely to destroy them whether that be surfing a thirty foot wave, racing a motorcycle or shooting heroin.
As many airports and cities are banning Uber and other similar services...
After the breaking news about reopening closed tabs which has been around for at least a few years somehow being the same as "Ctrl-Z for the entire Internet" and now this story which was initially presented here as a credible news story when it has a date in 2023 on the source, Slashdot should rebrand itself as Trashdot.
Tooling along the highway, suddenly your auto-car pulls itself to the side of the road, flips on the hazards, and dead-locks the doors and windows. A computerized voice emanates from the stereo system:
"Attention: during the terahertz scan of your vehicle at the last VIPR checkpoint, trace amounts of potential contraband were detected. Please remain where you are, with your hands visible, until the response team arrives and gives you further orders."
It's an inevitability.
- CanHasDIY
Stop all the talk and just get these things on the road. The sooner the concept fails the sooner we can move on. I also don't want to see a post to ONE car driving safely down the road, I want to see a highway where 40-50% of the cars are autonomous intermingling with some of the dumbest drivers on the planet.
I'd rather strap myself into a coffin and be shot across the country in a big metal straw before I get into an autonomous car driving down the highway with other humans..
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
...for these to become common in states like Massachusetts. The amount of anger from the average driver in that state would be incredible to see (having to sit behind a car that is programmed to strictly adhere to the posted speed limit, not try to beat red lights, and will not respond to any form of road rage directed towards it).
After years of not using a signature, I am going to make one to say the following: Fuck Beta
It's a pretty good rule of thumb that anything in the Mail is wrong. So I guess that's consistent...
I saw the summary just before I went to lunch...came back and tried to find details on the Google GX3200 autonomous car. Results for "google gx3200 -uber" give nothing about any cars.
Refresh page and...yeah, it was a bunch of marketing bullshit.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I really don't see how these vehicles can actually work in real-live driving situations... Supposing there is an accident, or other temporary traffic re-routing... the local cop wants you to roll down your window, and he is going to TELL you where to drive to get around this obstruction... Or deer running across the street... I'm sure VERY hard to detect (I can barely see them myself coming off from the side...) Or small things in the road that you want to avoid (potholes, glass, etc) Or avoiding certain streets but only during certain times or days of the year or certain sporadic happenings (parties, riots, drug street wars, or snow, flooding, etc)
You simply cannot calculate the chance of having an accident that way. Driving 300,000 miles in Montana is going to be different than driving 300,000 miles in New York City. If you want accident statistic rates, one need look no further that auto insurance. If it was a matter of dividing total mileage by number of accidents, none of us could afford our premiums.
If your articles don't make sense. The first one, the pro google article (what would you expect them to tell you about the safety) claims that people have 1 accident per 165,000 miles driven (not taking gender into question). The second article, even if men drove the same as women, would be 1 accident every 175,000 miles. Averaging the 2 rates given yields a rate of 1 accident approximately every 186K miles and in reality the number would be higher as there are more male drivers than female drivers. But even at the 186K figure that is 13% greater than the first article's number. Now, it has been a long time since I studied statistics, but a 13% variance in something that is measuring a finite set seems that there is bad data somewhere.
In reality, it goes back to Mark Twain's there lies, damn lies and statistics. Without valid samples, statistics are pretty much meaningless. Without knowing the types of accidents, any projections on deaths are meaningless (how many of those accidents are in parking lots or while parallel parking?). If your goal is to reduce fatal accidents, you can do that now, by lowering speed limits. That would be more effective now versus 20 years from now, the earliest projection when google cars will reach enough percentage of vehicles on the road to impact highway safety).
Until then, all we know is the project accident rate for a google car. Your insurance company has that same figure for you, too and they figure your premium on it. If you premium is manageable, then you are not an insurance risk and you are no more likely to be in an accident than a google car. If it is high, then you are. Plain and simple. Insurance companies are in business to make a profit and they are pretty good at analyzing the risk involved with insuring drivers.
I really don't see how these vehicles can actually work in real-live driving situations...
That's because you're not using your imagination, and seeing problems rather than possibilities.
Supposing there is an accident, or other temporary traffic re-routing... the local cop wants you to roll down your window, and he is going to TELL you where to drive to get around this obstruction...
I can see many ways this would work. Driverless doesn't have to mean that you have no control over what the vehicle is doing.
Automatic navigation systems have been able to "find alternate routes" for years. The occupant might just push a button and the car finds an alternate route.
If you want it to be done without occupant intervention, in fact, driverless cars could make it *easier* to do things like temporary traffic rerouting.
A high tech approach would be that if you know in advance that certain roads are going to be off limits due to some sort of event you could conceivably upload that information into a public database that could then be used by the self driving cars to route around any damage. In fact, long-distance traffic could be made aware of this and plan routes accordingly to avoid congestion.
A low tech approach would be to construct some kind of markers, that could either be some kind of IR beacons (similar to what are used to stop your robot vaccuum to go in a certain place) or even signs designed to be machine-readable that would tell the system "this road is no good for 500 meter. Find another road." It would be relatively simple to come up with a vendor-independent standard to do this. The technology to do this is easy today, and could be done for a few bucks.
Probably the right approach is to do both. Build "road blocked" signs that when deployed use GPS and mobile data to upload data to some server somewhere, and that also act as a beacon for traffic that for some reason can not receive this data as a redundancy.
Or deer running across the street... I'm sure VERY hard to detect (I can barely see them myself coming off from the side...)
Or small things in the road that you want to avoid (potholes, glass, etc)
I would imagine that a self-driving car could do a better job avoiding these kinds of things than a human because of the myriad sensors they could employ. In comparison, human vision is very limited. I could imagine a self-driving car driving safely in the dark using heat cameras, radar or ultrasonic sensors looking in all directions. But most likely that wouldn't happen, since it would be scary for the occupants and would be potentially hazardous to other road users relying on light to see and react to other cars.
Or avoiding certain streets but only during certain times or days of the year or certain sporadic happenings (parties, riots, drug street wars, or snow, flooding, etc)
Again, this could be done with the system detailed above. It is even conceivable that a self-driving car might detect an obstacle on a road and report that fact to other cars on the road causing them to choose an alternate route.
None of this requires any kind of exotic technology, it is mainly a software and integration problem at this stage. It doesn't even require constant internet access (although it can make the system work a lot better, it is not advisable to make it safety-critical).
Even today, Google Maps has a "traffic" layer that shows how congested a certain road is. I believe this is sampled from cell phones and GPS data. Imagine how much more accurate that info could be if all autonomous cars were to report on congestion.
Self-driving cars present far more opportunities than problems. Learn to see them. :-)
What happens when one of these vehicles is involved in a collision? Could be caused by the truck running over a bicycle or another vehicle striking the autonomous vehicle.
signature pending slashdot approval
All this talk about Google making autonomous cars makes me wonder why Google wants us to ride around in them? Is it so we can be exposed to more advertising? Should we spend every awaken moment wanting new products, and just consume? Whats next? The Google bed, where you can dream about the next big thing in personal hygiene products and streaming video services in your sleep?
New signature coming soon.
"My favourite keyboard short-cut" was bad enough, but now we can submit any old made-up bullshit and get it posted as fact on Slashdot?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
In the end of the article, it says Uber's shares are up 10% because of this news. Uber is a private company. There are no shares traded. Is anyone even editing or reading the whole article.
Try, really try not to post FAKE "NEWS".
These self driving vehicles are doing extremely well so far. Hundreds of thousands of miles with no at-fault accidents. And they could hardly do worse than people. Chimps could hardly do worse than people. Really. We suck at driving. Thirty thousand dead last year in the US. That is 10 times the number of people killed on 9/11 every year. And it is 75% (roughly) of the number we lost in the Vietnam war. When I see what other people do behind the wheel these days I really start to want this tech in place. Texters, talkers, make-up artists, wankers, DJs, nursemaids, tipplers and tokers... anything but driving. Time for the bots. "Home, Hal."
I was not in the least confused by this article. I guess I read the dateline. Let's see. If it really takes another ten years then we'll lose another 300,000 lives.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
Im sure there are a whole lot of lawyers just waiting for trhe lawsuits that will result from accidents when thes 'driverless' cars are found to be largely incompetant when used for more general purposes.
Big suits should kill that company pretty quicks (if not force grounding all those vehicles and taking the whole thing as a writeoff (assuming they have any profits left to write off against)
Maybe our government should buy a whole lot of these (taxpayer paid for of course) they are always looking for new trendy ways to squander the publics money.
Seriously, what could go wrong? What happens when they clog up interstates with "accidents" and Americans can't get their widgets?
When I saw the title "dispatch from the future", I assumed it would be a BS "article" saying that the author was hoping this would happen eventually. But it was written in such a way as to make it look like it was actually a "dispatch from the future" in that Uber just hadn't bought the cars yet, but were actually in discussion with Google about buying them as soon as they were available.
I liked that read better. Now I'm sad.