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Uber Nowhere Close to Having a Fully Autonomous Vehicle, Its Self-Driving Cars Need a Lot of Human Help (recode.net)
Uber may see self-driving cars as "existential" to its future, but the company is nowhere close to having a fully autonomous vehicle. According to internal documents obtained by Recode, during the week ending March 8, Uber's self-driving cars traveled, on average, just 0.8 miles on their own before a human had to take over, in a process known as "disengagement." From the report: As a whole, Uber's self-driving system is putting on many more miles than it did in January. Last week, the company's 43 active cars drove 20,354 miles autonomously, according to the documents. This is only the second time since late December 2016 that its cars have driven more than 20,000 miles in a week. In January, the cars only drove 5,000 miles. At that point, however, the company only had about 20 active vehicles, mainly in Pittsburgh. By February, the company's cars were driving themselves around 18,000 miles a week. Uber passengers took around 930 rides in these autonomous cars in Pittsburgh last week and around 150 rides in Phoenix. To be clear, these vehicles still had a driver at the wheel to take over if needed. In Pittsburgh, where Uber launched its commercial self-driving pilot in September, the company has been performing around 800 or more UberX trips per week in semi-autonomous mode since the middle of February.
We're still a lot farther away from truly autonomous cars than most people tend to think. Sure, driver assist and suped-up cruise control is coming in, and will be great on clearly marked and standardized interstates. But good luck trying to get a computer to navigate the old backroads of some city or country backwater.
Hell, Alexa still can't even understand a lot of basic questions I ask her. I'm sure as shit not about to let that bitch drive.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
...does that include or exclude the 0.8 mile stretches to the next human interaction or not?
Seems that you shouldn't start tallying self-driving miles until you exceed a mile.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
"The Technology of the Future....Today!" hype around a new piece of technology is proving to be more hype and promise than actual practical useful reality?
Color me surprised.
If Google's lawsuit on theft of trade secrets and intellectual property and patent violations goes though, I suspect this will kill Uber's self-driving program. Last I recall Google was actually the farthest ahead on this "self-driving" technology and from the sounds of it the safest to rely on.
working on making autonomous cars and all that we hear about is fucking Uber.
Alphabet’s [Google] self-driving company, Waymo, has been working on its own autonomous tech since 2009, for instance, and while it has vastly improved year over year, the system still sees a handful of what are known as “disengagements”: Basically, when a driver has to take over for the computer.
So even though Google has been working on autonomous cars for around 8 years, their cars still require a human driver to be present in case there is a need for "disengagement". Uber's been at it since 2015.
Uber wasn't able to solve self-driving car problem in a few short months. What does this mean for the future? Is innovation dead? Read on for all the redundant words on the topic that no one is interested in below.
I want to get a driving job at Uber. I just need to finish training my replacement here first!
I don't see why this is so difficult to understand. Only real AI can hope to cope with the infinite number of variables that arise while driving. What does a rudimentary AI do when a wind storm has blown down a tree branch in the middle of the road? Does it know that it's OK to go around the obstacle even if it means briefly driving into an oncoming lane? What does it do when a piece of newspaper blows around in traffic on the freeway? Does it swerve to avoid collision with a harmless object? What does it do when it approaches a vehicle that has stalled? Does it wait for ever? Does it go around when the oncoming traffic has cleared? Does it do a 3-point turn and pick a new route? What does the rudimentary AI do when it's Friday night and the passengers are requesting to be dropped off at a night club in a part of the city that has scores of drunk pedestrians that are jay walking all over the place and are not sticking to the sidewalks. (eg 10th and Pike in Seattle). Maybe it drops the passengers off 2 blocks away instead.
Fully autonomous vehicles right now are nothing more than a hair-brained-scheme. Once (if ever) real AI is developed, teaching it to drive can be done over night. So to speak. Until then, I would not be investing a single dollar into companies like Uber or robotics companies. All of this talk about robots taking over wreaks of investor propaganda.
I think Lyft, Uber spending money on research and development of autonomous vehicles is awesome, and we should encourage them (and Google) to do even more. That said, I got the opinion that Uber's business leaders thought self-driving cars where not just far-off rnd, but rather a vital investment to get a return on within a few years so they could start replacing human drivers ASAP.
This sends bad signals across the marketplace. It implies Uber's current business model is unsustainable (which may be true according to recent slashdot posts) It also implies that Uber doesn't care about their current drivers, or labor as a whole, it also reeks of desperation. Market signals are important, if they don't course-correct soon they could find themselves with angry investors, boycotting consumers, and no additional venture capital.
I've said it so many times and I will continue to say it. There are just way too many edge cases.
captcha: safely
I cackle with existential derision at the crap they are trying to peddle on people. . . I'd give it another 15-20 years and a LOT of data before you would see me step into one of those crap-boxes.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/b6/a5/c9/b6a5c92895286856f82681fd641c8671.jpg
This is the official Autonomous Vehicle Disengagement Report for California https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/... Google is at 5000 miles before a disengagement is required, compared to the 0.8 miles reported for Uber. Google also logged over half a million miles, compared to a couple of thousand of some of the other companies. So at least for the companies doing autonomous vehicle testing in public roads in California, no one come even close to Google.
I had no idea that "Uber Nowhere" existed, much less that they were so close to solving the problem of autonomous driving. It makes sense that its self-driving cars need a lot of human help, too, because humans know a lot about going nowhere.
Cloudiot: A person who does not see offsite storage as a way to lose control over access to his or her own data.
Somehow I feel that if Susan Fowler hadn't written her letter, Uber would still be flying high. There seems to be so much pent-up-demand to bash Uber, and her letter opened the floodgates. Kalanick has literally lost billions of dollars personallyby making Uber so douchy. He could have had a nice Snapchat style mega IPO, cashed out big time and be free and clear. Now it may be the case Uber evaporates underneath him. Just for the sake of keeping his 'frat' going...dumb--s
This sends bad signals across the marketplace. It implies Uber's current business model is unsustainable (which may be true according to recent slashdot posts) It also implies that Uber doesn't care about their current drivers, or labor as a whole, it also reeks of desperation. Market signals are important, if they don't course-correct soon they could find themselves with angry investors, boycotting consumers, and no additional venture capital.
That depends on what Uber's business model is. As far as I can tell they are pumping as much money as they can into undermining taxi operators and achieving regulatory capture in as many cities as possible. Once they have achieved that and crushed existing operators prices will skyrocket for a ride as they will have achieved a monopoly. Then existing drivers will be squeezed until automated vehicles are available, after all where else can they go?
Let's not pretend Uber is a tech company either. Their app and its infrastructure is their only sincere technological investment and the goal of that is to grope market share. They have no intention of investing money into autonomous vehicles sincerely as all of their capital is being used to subsidize passengers, for now.
Not that I'm a fan of the way taxis work either it is a business model long overdue for an update, specifically when operators ignore common carrier rules and refuse to take a fare. Uber is masquerading as a tech company so people go 'wow, shiney, new' and believe Uber has a viable business model replacement. Uber doesn't offer innovation in they way Amazon, ebay or other true tech innovators do.
If their business model was innovative passenger rides would be cheap and drivers would take the lion share of the profits to attract more drivers. Their business model only makes sense when it is framed into a long game with the goal of monopoly and regulatory capture.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.