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iPhone Hacker Geohot Builds Self-Driving Car AI (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader writes: George Hotz, known for unlocking early iPhones and the PlayStation 3, has developed an autonomous driving system in his garage. "Hotz's approach isn't simply a low-cost knockoff of existing autonomous vehicle technology. He says he's come up with discoveries—most of which he refuses to disclose in detail—that improve how the AI software interprets data coming in from the cameras." The article has a video with Hotz demonstrating some basic autonomous driving similar to what Tesla rolled out earlier this year. He's clearly brimming with confidence about what the system can accomplish with more training.
He's using Unity, I'd say he has that pretty well covered himself.
" “I live by morals, I don’t live by laws,” Hotz declared in the story. “Laws are something made by assholes.”"
We rebels don't need insurance! If we kill your family on the highway, well LOL dude. #hacktheplanet
We'll see. I do kind of hope that his youthful arrogance doesn't get him killed. It seems unlikely that one kid will be able to outdo the big-budget teams of researchers working on this problem -- but I don't think it's impossible.
The article has a video with Hotz demonstrating some basic autonomous driving similar to what Tesla rolled out earlier this year.
Basic autonomous driving is (relatively) easy to do as long as you don't care much about it being actually useful in the real world. I suspect many good programmers and engineers could accomplish something functional (and dangerous) pretty quickly. It's not much more than an RC car with some sensors. Think Roomba on steroids. The problem is all the corner cases needed to actually make the system safe in real world driving. That is highly non-trivial.
The fact that he's endangering his own life for the sake of his experiments, fine. But unless he's all alone on the road, I agree with the parent poster.
most of which he refuses to disclose in detail
Snake, meet oil.
" “I live by morals, I don’t live by laws,” Hotz declared in the story. “Laws are something made by assholes.”"
We rebels don't need insurance! If we kill your family on the highway, well LOL dude. #hacktheplanet
Not only that but you can't tell us we're wrong
“For the first time in my life, I’m like, ‘I know everything there is to know’”
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Freeway autonomous driving is doable. But on regular streets it's hard, maybe impossible given current roads and parking lots.
But a freeway-only fully autonomous vehicle is still very valuable. Long-haul trucks and RVs spend most of their driving time on freeways. If a trucker can sleep 8 hours while the truck drives itself on the freeway and then take over only when the truck exits the freeway, the trucking company can save huge amounts of money. You can basically double the productivity of a driver/truck combo, since you can operate it continuously instead of having to shut down for the night. Also it's a plus from a safety standpoint; tired sleep-deprived truck drivers cause a lot of accidents. It's worth doing.
Does he have insurance coverage for his selling idea? Seems very risky as he can be on the hook for big damages with stuff goes wrong.
Is he willing to have his code go under some thing like a FAA code audit?
How much redundancy is in that system?
Does his friends really want to take on the risk?
I think you're confusing engineering with science.
The difficult part of AI, or science in general, is getting something that works. Once you have a working demo, anyone can add the reliability, the redundancy, and do a code audit.
And indeed, visionary investors might examine the idea and think "I'll take on the responsibility for liability and development, because I believe that the value of your ideas will be worth more than the expense of dealing with those issues. Sell me your idea."
But it all starts with getting something to work.
In general I think he's a reckless moron who should be arrested for having done road tests of this thing without any approval, and without any engineering at all! No, DIY knowhow isn't engineering. That said, I think the part about the 21" screen was probably a joke. Har Har Har.
If killing people on the highway hacks out fixes, leading to quality AI for cars just a year or two sooner than a measured approach does, you will have net saved several million lives over a handful of people.
So you're going to make sure to offer up yourself and your family to be the first people to be killed, right?
The problem is all the corner cases needed to actually make the system safe in real world driving. That is highly non-trivial.
Indeed and that is what seems to be quite interesting about his approach. Basically he is saying that he is developing a system that can generate all those rules and corner cases itself, without a human having to quantify each scenario and code the rules into the machine. He states in the video that the car has gotten to where it is now (basic highway driving) by teaching itself. If it has, and his approach is extendable, then this is quite an interesting solution to the problem, precisely because it may deal with the non-trivialities you describe in a, well, comparatively trivial way.
Unfortunately, based on the article and video, there isn't really any way to determine whether he will be able to extend his system to give better performance, or even whether his system is just one of those 'learning systems' that is actually so highly tuned to the problem domain that it is essentially just an obfuscated rule based program. I guess we will have to wait for it to either get better, or for him to release some more information.
The main thing that makes me suspicious is why he has gone to the media about this now. If he has gotten this far with a design that actually does use learning, then why not spend a bit longer and get it to the point where he can demo it in less predictable environments. That would get us all interested. As it stands his current system only works in very predictable situations, so without more information it is impossible to know if this is a scam or not.