GM Buys Driverless Software Startup Cruise Automation (thestack.com)

An anonymous reader writes: General Motors has confirmed its acquisition of autonomous software company Cruise Automation. The Silicon Valley-based firm, set up by former Twitch co-founder Kyle Vogt in 2013, creates auto-pilot technologies which can transform regular cars into driverless vehicles. Cruise will now be turning its focus exclusively to designing software for GM vehicles. It will continue to operate as an independent unit from its San Francisco base within the auto giant's newly established Autonomous Vehicle Development Team. Cruise now represents the latest strategic push for the multinational into future transport technologies, following its purchase of assets from former ride-hailing company Sidecar and a $500 million partnership with Uber-rival Lyft.

Comments

Cruisin'

[TroII]

Will Slashdot be giving away another PT Cruiser to celebrate this milestone?

Re:Cruisin'

[Anonymous Coward]

Just the self driving one weaponized for DARPA.

Re:Cruisin'

[HumanWiki]

I want to know if you double tap the accelerator if it'll do a wheelie.

I-DED

[turkeydance]

Intelligent Driving Explosive Device

Re:I-DED

[Anonymous Coward]

Intelligent Driving Explosive Device

Terrorists using the freeways, the information super highway, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!!

Re:I-DED

[K. S. Kyosuke]

You forgot the MS SQL Server for Linux.

Re:I-DED

[Jeremi]

Intelligent Driving Explosive Device

We got those already, it's just that the intelligent driving algorithm is currently implemented via a human driver.

It's a lot cheaper that way, and a lot harder to trace (since a computer-driven car is necessarily going to be communicating with other computers and leaving audit trails everywhere, whereas you can buy a used beater van off of Craigslist with cash and drive it to your target without leaving any forensic trail at all)

Cruise Automation

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

>> Cruise Automation

Sounds safe until someone leaves a couch on the side of the road.

Did they make anything?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did they make anything? Or did they form a startup, create just enough to patent some ideas, and then waited for a big automaker to buy them out?

How safe again?

[burtosis]

With all the talk of how it's impossible for a computer to have an accident and how terrible humans are at driving...

how safe would you feel in an autonomous vehicle that gets shut off by harsh weather conditions (like a snowstorm) or catastrophic loss of roadway and leaves you completely unable to even have a chance to navigate to safety?

Would you feel safe on roads occupied by autonomous vehilcles with malware and trojans installed in them?

How many years after mainstream driverless cars are developed will a hack cause more than one thousand simultaneous deaths?

Will autonomous vehicles allow suicide bombers to become repeat offenders?

How easy will it be to simply reprogram the autopilot and send it on a killing spree like running through a parade at 100mph or taking out a whole major interstate highway?

With greater technology comes greater ability to use it for good or ill. I for one am not convinced that autonomous cars are actually safer when you take all possible uses into account.

Re:How safe again?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Note that you only need one autonomous car for the killing spree. You don't need everyone to have it. And someone will build it no matter what.

Re:How safe again?

[Firethorn]

How many years after mainstream driverless cars are developed will a hack cause more than one thousand simultaneous deaths?

Consider that, once we're at 'driverless cars, on average, prevent 95% of automotive deaths', you'd need approximately 30 of these events each year to simply reach the current death toll.

Plus, well, they've found exploits that could be used to cause fatal crashes in current vehicles and we don't know of any, much less widespread, uses of this.

Will autonomous vehicles allow suicide bombers to become repeat offenders?

Nope, because if they're not in the vehicle they're not a suicide bomber.

How easy will it be to simply reprogram the autopilot and send it on a killing spree like running through a parade at 100mph or taking out a whole major interstate highway?

On the first, it should be fairly hard - there's still lots of slow vehicles in the road, generally speaking, and lots of barriers, especially given current concerns about terrorism - they don't want somebody showing up with a VBIED after all.

On the second - odds are that the car will become disabled sooner rather than later. Indeed, at current technology levels, it'd probably be easier to modify a current car for remote control than to 'take over' the AI of a self-driver.

With greater technology comes greater ability to use it for good or ill. I for one am not convinced that autonomous cars are actually safer when you take all possible uses into account.

Current death toll, in the USA alone, is over 30k a year. Anything that improves that substantially in most use cases makes it very hard to make up for in marginal ones.

If somebody does manage to take over a number of cars and kill 1k people, rather than get rid of them I'd imagine that you'd see insane levels of work to secure them.

Re:How safe again?

[radarskiy]

"With all the talk of how it's impossible for a computer to have an accident "

-1, strawman

Re:How safe again?

[ShanghaiBill]

With all the talk of how it's impossible for a computer to have an accident

Nonsense. Nobody said it was "impossible". Self driving cars have already had accidents. But they have also driven millions of miles on public roads, and have a safety record far better than human drivers.

how safe would you feel in an autonomous vehicle that gets shut off by harsh weather conditions (like a snowstorm)

All current SDCs can be manually controlled, and will be for the foreseeable future. So just flick it into manual mode, and drive it home.

Would you feel safe on roads occupied by autonomous vehilcles with malware and trojans installed in them?

Soccer moms yakking on their cellphones have killed infinitely more people than malware on SDCs.

How many years after mainstream driverless cars are developed will a hack cause more than one thousand simultaneous deaths?

If it is less than once a month, it will still be fewer deaths than human drivers cause.

How easy will it be to simply reprogram the autopilot and send it on a killing spree

Reprogramming the autopilot is not "simple". There is already very little stopping people from mass murder. The main reason it doesn't happen more often is that most people have little interest in killing. SDCs are not going to change that.

Re:How safe again?

[mikael]

>Would you feel safe on roads occupied by autonomous vehilcles with malware and trojans installed in them?

It's going to be a lot safer that with someone in the country illegally, driving while drunk and with no insurance.

Some of the worst accidents have happened when one car has had a breakdown, the driver has put on the hazard warning lights, gone to the back of the car to get a toolkit or spare tire, only to be crushed when a drunk driver couldn't slow down in time.