BMW, Intel, Mobileye Partner On Self-Driving Cars, 'Turning Point For Automotive Industry': Reports (bloomberg.com)
BMW, Intel, and Mobileye NV are working to develop autonomous-car technology, reports Bloomberg, citing multiple sources. Senior executives from each company will hold an event on Friday to discuss the driverless-vehicle initiative, the report adds. From the article:Jerusalem-based Mobileye has been an early leader in providing cameras, software and other components that allow vehicles to see the world around them. BMW has been a client of Mobileye, along with General Motors Co. and Tesla Motors Inc. As automakers and their suppliers race to create systems to replace human drivers, most companies are betting on some form of artificial intelligence, which requires powerful processing.Reuters, citing one source, reports the same thing. The announcement will be a "turning point for the automotive industry," Amnon Shashua, the chairman and co-founder of Mobileye.
The best AI I've seen is stuff that uses techniques which are easy on resources.
The holy grail of AI is something that can run with limited resources and give you reasonably good results and from what I've seen that's not beyond the state of the art today. In fact, I personally think the advancement in AI will only take place once we forget this foolish notion that we can field brut force algorithms for stuff like driving cars where the range of 'acceptable' solutions is pretty wide given a 6 foot wide car going down a 10 foot wide lane. We don't even do that for trains yet, and you don't have to manage the steering wheel, just the throttle and brakes on those things.
Tell me, how do YOU drive a car? Do you have a better than HD set of cameras scanning the area around the car to 1/4" tolerances? Absolutely not. Why do we think we need to brute force this problem in order to do it on a computer? Something tells me we have over engineered this if Intel thinks they will be selling more processing power by being involved.
I get the devil is in the details, but watching my 16 year old learn how to drive does not tell me this is problem takes huge amounts of processing power...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
It's popular on Slashdot to loudly pronounce that strong AI is impossible. This is different from years past. I take the change to mean that it's coming very soon. As it seems more inevitable people who don't want change (whether out of fear, distrust, or sour grapes) will decry AI more.
Now weak AI isn't just coming. It has arrived. And Moore's law was supposed to have stopped years ago but supercomputers and video cards are still on a logarithmic slope for performance and price. The human brain is estimated to calculate between 100 petaflops and 1 exaflop. I know that's not a good metric but for this purpose it suffices. But as performance keeps doubling and doubling it becomes more evident that even the highest estimates are a question of a few more doubling periods. And the highest estimates assume direct one-to-one simulation of each neuron. Consider how many neurons are used for breathing, processing vision, and other things that either aren't needed in a machine or have already been done at a much lower computational cost on silicon.
It's true we don't know everything about how the human brain works. But recent progress is undeniable in terms of success stories. Jeopardy. Go. Commodity trading. Corporate resource balancing. Piloting. To keep shouting that strong AI is impossible is to only betray one's own insecurity. You are not special. Your brain doesn't run on quantum magic. You have no soul. Fucking deal with it.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.