Nvidia Introduces a Computer For Level 5 Autonomous Cars (engadget.com)

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Nvidia Introduces a Computer For Level 5 Autonomous Cars (engadget.com)

Posted by msmash on Tuesday October 10, 2017 @04:50AM from the shaking-up dept.

From a report: At the center of many of the semi-autonomous cars currently on the road is NVIDIA hardware. Once automakers realized that GPUs could power their latest features, the chipmaker, best known for the graphics cards that make your games look outstanding, became the darling of the car world. But while automakers are still dropping level 2 and sometimes level 3 vehicles into the market, NVIDIA's first AI computer, the NVIDIA Drive PX Pegasus, is apparently capable of level 5 autonomy. That means no pedals, no steering wheel, no need for anyone to ever take control. The new computer delivers 320 trillion operations per second, 10 times more than its predecessor. Before you start squirreling away cash for your own self-driving car, though, NVIDIA's senior director of automotive, Danny Shapiro, notes that it's likely going to be robotaxis that drive us around. In fact, the company said that over 25 of its partners are already working on fully autonomous taxis. The goal with this smaller, more powerful computer is to remove the huge computer arrays that sit in the prototype vehicles of OEMs, startups and any other company that's trying to crack the autonomous car nut.

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I know, let's call it... by Anonymous Coward · 2017-10-10 04:55 · Score: 1

HAL!
1. Re:I know, let's call it... by HumanWiki · 2017-10-10 05:17 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  HAL!
  I'm sorry AC. I'm afraid we can't do that.
2. Re:I know, let's call it... by 4wdloop · 2017-10-10 05:53 · Score: 3
  
  Highly Autonomous Limousine?
  
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  4wdloop
Should not require this much horsepower by Anonymous Coward · 2017-10-10 04:57 · Score: 1

Many games have autonomous vehicles that drive on patrol, or ferry you around, or whatever. So it's quite doable, and by non AI experts at that. It's just a matter of transitioning from an artificial world to the real world but really that's a matter only of where the inputs are coming from. It's an engineering task and nothing more. But hey buy more NVIDIA stock.
1. Re:Should not require this much horsepower by fluffernutter · 2017-10-10 05:06 · Score: 2
  
  Except the last time I played a 3D game, there were a LOT of 3d objects passing through solid objects if you look very close. In a 3d world it's easy to get around that by making the set path of the moving object be the absolute guide. Not so easy in the real world.
  
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2. Re:Should not require this much horsepower by ledow · 2017-10-10 05:17 · Score: 1
  
  If you honestly think that game "AI" is anywhere near the capabilities to operate in the real world, you're sadly mistaken. It literally does not act on a single sensor of input, input is handed to it. And even then I can recall many instances where game "AI" fucks up and can't do the simplest of things.
  If you want to have the cars driving around a set loop of routes, highly specified, not able to deviate only choose at junctions, with zero unexpected obstacles - that's called a railway.
  I'd be right behind an electric railway to every city with rentable places on the cars. We have it. Expanding it to every road is RIDICULOUSLY expensive.
  But I'd rather train-then-walk than touch an self-driving car, and I'm someone who literally does everything they can to avoid having to take a train or bus.
  This is all still the realms of hyperbole, and still doesn't resolve the fundamental incompatibility: Code which you can predict and certify to the point that you can guarantee people's lives, and code which tries to write itself or is "trained" by humans with no clue how it actually makes the decisions it does.
  There is STILL no such thing as "AI", or even proper machine "learning". It's statistical-analysis-by-given-input or complete bollocks.
  And it would be infinitely cheaper, easier and safer to just put a rail down one lane of every road and call it a tram.
3. Re:Should not require this much horsepower by Anonymous Coward · 2017-10-10 05:19 · Score: 0
  
  The game cars are not doing that via real time processing of video inputs. They have direct knowledge of the game's position and velocity databases of every last object in the game (and it's still imperfect). In the real world, cars will have to deal with a large number of unpredictable events and analyze them from sensor inputs. Not just that, but it has to infer things about the world that are not direct observations.
  A human being can reasonably conclude that if a ball rolls out from behind a parked car, they should proceed much slower than the speed limit allows because the ball might soon be followed by a child. A human being can easily cope with a short section of road closure with a sign that routes you onto a dirt field for a few dozen meters to pass a damaged section of roadway.
  To be a "L5" car, it will have to cope with those things, and thousand of others that have not been specifically pre-programmed in because they are one-off or highly unusual events.
4. Re:Should not require this much horsepower by HumanWiki · 2017-10-10 05:19 · Score: 1
  
  Many games have autonomous vehicles that drive on patrol, or ferry you around, or whatever. So it's quite doable, and by non AI experts at that. It's just a matter of transitioning from an artificial world to the real world but really that's a matter only of where the inputs are coming from. It's an engineering task and nothing more. But hey buy more NVIDIA stock.
  You're f*cking kidding, right? Should not require that much? While we meatbags take for granted our ability to usually drive around in the real-world, it is an extremely complex task to do properly and to instruct a machine to perform to the same detail.
  I'm sorry, but I'd rather not trust a game level AI to understand that the real world does indeed care about cliping, wall walking and texture convergence.
5. Re:Should not require this much horsepower by darkain · 2017-10-10 05:21 · Score: 1
  
  Go watch some interviews with game developers. There are countless shortcuts used in gaming that don't translate into the real world. Using imaging to read signs? Nope, games don't do that. Vehicles move on mostly pre-scripted paths, and that's it. All of the "road signs" in the game are all pre-programmed. When people move in the way of a vehicle, these objects are both directly controlled by the same process, not separate entities that need some form of communication (such as AI based image visual processing in the car). Computations such as acceleration, braking, road grip, etc are all simplified within games, too. The reason why it doesn't take high level AI in gaming is because the artificial world is built around the computer's computation and developer's programming limitations. In the real world, these luxuries simply don't exist.
6. Re:Should not require this much horsepower by Anonymous Coward · 2017-10-10 05:23 · Score: 0
  
  Tremendous progress has been made on AI in the past 5 years; if you need proof just see some of the personal assistants being sold by some of the FANG companies. They may not pass the Turing complete test, but my 5 year old daughter is convinced there is a little person named Alexa inside that device and to me that's a pretty decent start.
7. Re:Should not require this much horsepower by Anonymous Coward · 2017-10-10 05:24 · Score: 0, Troll
  
  First, stop playing video games. They are very obviously rotting your brain. Either that or you are 10.
  Sit down and listen. You've got a lot of learning to do, a lot, like a decade plus of learning to do.
8. Re:Should not require this much horsepower by Anubis+IV · 2017-10-10 05:30 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  So, a few things:
  1) Many video games don't compute paths in realtime. Rather, the set of paths is either precomputed or manually entered by the developers. The game then merely selects between one of the preset paths, without any ability to actually determine its own.
  2) Even when they are able to determine their own paths, video game pathing algorithms generally have perfect knowledge. There's no need to do the heavy lifting of recognizing obstacles when you have a perfect awareness of every single one in the entire world.
  3) Video games aren't necessarily bound by the rules. Most video games are tuned for fun rather than realism, particularly when it comes to their physics and recognition of the law. For instance, two vastly different cars may brake the same way in a game so that it's easier for the player to get the feel for cars in the game, but in real life, the very same car can brake completely differently based on weather, the condition of the tires, or how loaded with cargo it is, and it's important that an autonomous vehicle understand those differences so that it can drive safely. Likewise, video game cars can ignore traffic signals and the like with little concern for the law, but that's not the case in the real world.
  4) Video games cheat. You'll frequently see vehicles in games clip through obstacles that would have caused an accident in the real world, take paths that would have destroyed a real vehicle, or have spontaneous boosts in their speeds as they go through boring parts of the world.
  5) Video games are dumb. There are literally tens of thousands of YouTube videos of vehicles doing stupid things in games (e.g. driving themselves off cliffs, driving through the air, driving through walls, rolling over on gentle turns, mowing down pedestrians, etc.), so this is hardly a solved problem even in worlds that we have full control over.
  All of which is to say, if video game vehicles are our standard for success, heaven help us all, 'cause we'll all be dead within a week.
9. Re:Should not require this much horsepower by EndlessNameless · 2017-10-10 07:34 · Score: 1
  
  Many games have autonomous vehicles that drive on patrol, or ferry you around, or whatever.
  Most games have collision detection bugs that allow people to pass through walls---or allow a leaf to stop a vehicle from passing.
  Plus, how many of those games simply have the vehicles simply bump into something and "stop"? In real life, that's a potentially fatal accident.
  
  So it's quite doable, and by non AI experts at that.
  They can't even make the vehicles behave safely in a world they control entirely. We're going to bring that level of reliability to the real world. Don't make me laugh.
  
  It's an engineering task and nothing more.
  A very difficult task. So difficult that the best minds of this generation are still working on it. But hey, you've heard that pathing is simple from some random iGame developer so it must be true.
  
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10. Re:Should not require this much horsepower by Anonymous Coward · 2017-10-10 08:50 · Score: 0
  
  That's possibly the most uninformed comment I've read online today. But I guess the day isn't over.
11. Re:Should not require this much horsepower by Kjella · 2017-10-10 09:00 · Score: 1
  
  The TL;DR summary is that games are not simulators. We have driving simulators and they're pretty good when you want realism but in video games we don't. Not really real.
  
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12. Re:Should not require this much horsepower by slack_justyb · 2017-10-10 09:30 · Score: 1
  
  certify to the point that you can guarantee people's lives
  If that's the goal, you'll never reach it. AI isn't aiming for perfection, it's aiming for better than human. It's already there easily. People will die in self-driving cars, people will get ran over by self-driving cars.
  But there will be fewer people who die in self-driving cars, there will be fewer people who get ran over by self-driving cars. Humans in aggregate suck at driving, we killing a ton of other humans at insane rates per minute around the world. There is literally zero ways where AI will be worse at this than we humans already are.
13. Re: Should not require this much horsepower by Anonymous Coward · 2017-10-10 09:36 · Score: 0
  
  Oh yeah? I asked Alexa in 50 different ways for 15 minutes to tell me what a donut is or the history of donuts or really anything about donuts.
  Alexa can fool your 5 year old because she has zero real world experience. My 8 year old knows Alexa is a piece of electronic junk and only ever asked it for the weather and the time.
  Alexa is -nothing- like AI. God saves us all if when a padestrian can yell at passing cars, "stop and buy me a sweater!" and cause traffic to come to a crashing halt while hundreds of 2 hour sweater deliveries are suddenly being loaded on drones all over the city.
  AI, my ass. I prefer to share the road with drunk drivers on a Saturday night.
14. Re:Should not require this much horsepower by MachineShedFred · 2017-10-10 09:48 · Score: 1
  
  Because clearly it's exactly the same thing. And, by the way, the consequences of failure are just as unimportant in a video game as they are going through a neighborhood with playing children.
  Are you serious with that shit?
  
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15. Re:Should not require this much horsepower by reboot246 · 2017-10-10 10:11 · Score: 1
  
  It's not a problem until it happens to you or someone close to you.
  And I guarantee it will sooner or later.
16. Re: Should not require this much horsepower by whatever_01 · 2017-10-10 11:17 · Score: 1
  
  Even Google translate is pretty bad. And that is typing in the sentence.
17. Re:Should not require this much horsepower by slack_justyb · 2017-10-10 14:07 · Score: 1
  
  It's not a problem until it happens to you or someone close to you.
  You can literally say that about everything. I could get into my car tomorrow and a semi pulling gasoline could fall off an overpass bridge onto the Interstate as I travel under it. However, I'm not going to worrying about that, until it actually happens. Say diff with self-driving cars, except it'll happen a whole lot less because we have things that are distracted by phones, radio stations, hamburgers their trying to eat, phone calls they're trying to make, or hot women in another car they're trying to watch among a list of other reasons humans have killed other humans with two tons of 45 to 70 MPH hunks of iron.
18. Re:Should not require this much horsepower by deathguppie · 2017-10-10 16:59 · Score: 1
  
  ya.. I get what you are saying but you could have shortened your response to .. "video games have nothing to do with what they are using the GPU's for". In the end you kind of obfuscated the issue and turned it into a "you don't understand video game realities thing" instead of a "automated car computers don't work in any way that resembles video games' argument.
  
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  once more into the breach
Johnny Cab by Anonymous Coward · 2017-10-10 04:58 · Score: 0

How did I get here?
Awesome! by Type44Q · 2017-10-10 05:01 · Score: 1

...no need for anyone to ever take control.
Excellent idea; time to think about eventually shorting NVDA??
1. Re:Awesome! by bmimatt · 2017-10-10 05:04 · Score: 1
  
  Only if it can't mine Bitcoin when not in motion.
2. Re:Awesome! by Anonymous Coward · 2017-10-10 05:59 · Score: 0
  
  good luck with that...
Will it require GeForce experience to be installed by BLToday · 2017-10-10 05:03 · Score: 1

I would use GeForce Experience but the damn thing is flakier than a teenager with a bad case of dandruff. Previous versions would occasionally crash but the current GE is unusable.
Renter's Economy by CanHasDIY · 2017-10-10 05:04 · Score: 2

Why own a thing, when you can pay someone else an exorbitant fee to use theirs temporarily?
This will work out brilliantly for the 0.004% who currently own 80% of the wealth.

--
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
1. Re:Renter's Economy by fluffernutter · 2017-10-10 05:09 · Score: 2
  
  Autonomous cars on a course to put taxi's and real drivers out of business, then charge everyone taxi prices to go anywhere. Maybe more, depending whether you are going to an affluent area. The future seems to suck.
  
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2. Re:Renter's Economy by Jeremi · 2017-10-10 05:15 · Score: 2
  
  Autonomous cars on a course to put taxi's and real drivers out of business, then charge everyone taxi prices to go anywhere. Maybe more, depending whether you are going to an affluent area. The future seems to suck.
  What's going to stop Autonomous Car Owner A from charging a bit less than Autonomous Car Owner B, in order to get more customers? And what's then going to stop A from reducing his prices a bit below B again, in order to get customers back? And why won't this cycle continue until the prices paid by customers are only slightly higher than the costs incurred by the car owners?
  In other words, why do you think there will be no price-competition in The Sucky Future?
  
  --
  
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3. Re:Renter's Economy by Anonymous Coward · 2017-10-10 05:15 · Score: 0
  
  We are the 99.996%!
4. Re:Renter's Economy by thecatt · 2017-10-10 05:25 · Score: 2
  
  Marketplace collusion/monopoly, likely enforced with legislation. The same forces that prevent price-competition in today's markets.
5. Re:Renter's Economy by fluffernutter · 2017-10-10 05:25 · Score: 1
  
  Because there is no price competition currently with taxis for good reason. It keeps the number of cars on the road down, thus usage down for the sake of the other people using the roads. Such regulations will be more important with self driving services. Since the roads can only hold so many cars, there is no benefit to be gained by selling such services in bulk. Plus I'm not really sure if that kind of price competition really ever happens in a substantial way. I would once say technology was the one area where prices were dropping, but the $1K iPhone seems to mark the end of that as well. While not colluding, companies tend to charge as much as they can given the quality of their product with respect to the other products and obviously want upward pressure on their prices. I haven't seen the price of large appliances go down over the last 10 years, despite the massive advantages companies now have in terms of automation and cheap labor. Prices for services tend to follow the same trend.
  
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6. Re:Renter's Economy by Anonymous Coward · 2017-10-10 05:27 · Score: 0
  
  If you are talking individual owners, or small companies then if your investment of $50,000 makes only a tiny net profit then it isn't worth investing in if there are higher yielding options. This means that extreme price competition is likely to squeeze out smaller operators. An example would be grocery stores.
7. Re:Renter's Economy by Anonymous Coward · 2017-10-10 05:28 · Score: 0
  
  Collusion, like the gas companies do. In theory they're all separate companies and have their own price.s In reality they all mostly have the same price
8. Re:Renter's Economy by plague911 · 2017-10-10 05:29 · Score: 1
  
  As someone who actually tends towards socialism in many spaces, autonomous cars taxis seem to be one of the few areas that will manifest many of the advantages of capitalism. Except it will play out slightly different. You nor I will be allowed to use our autonomous cars for taxi services, due to the EULA. We will still ,however, see a fair amount of competition between the Ubers and the Fords of the future economy.
9. Re:Renter's Economy by kamapuaa · 2017-10-10 05:31 · Score: 2
  
  Maybe you live in a city and don't need to drive most of the time, but have an occasional need. Maybe you share a car with your spouse and that works fine most of the time, but occasionally you need a second car...Uber isn't expensive and owning a car isn't cheap.
  
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10. Re:Renter's Economy by Anonymous Coward · 2017-10-10 05:32 · Score: 0
  
  Because it will all be controlled by Uber, if Google doesn't bankrupt them in court. With maybe Lyft filling in the small #2 spot. I have not seen a whole lot that Google/Waymo and Tesla are getting into the ride hailing service.
  I suspect if you have the money to afford a Tesla with the autonomous features, you aren't really looking to rent out your car to any joe schmoe, to puke in on their ride home from the bar, bring their snotty nosed kids into, or pets leaving fur, slobber, and god knows what else inside the car.
  As for NVIDIA claiming class 5 autonomy, We will see once Uber, Lyft, Waymo, and Tesla put their software on the thing, until that point it is just a dumb piece of silicon and boards.
11. Re:Renter's Economy by Astrorunner · 2017-10-10 05:35 · Score: 1
  
  Why load up your own truck with fertilizer and diesel fuel when you can pay someone else an exorbitant fee to turn their cars into car bombs?
  Its a nightmare waiting to happen TBH.
12. Re:Renter's Economy by tsqr · 2017-10-10 05:36 · Score: 1
  
  What's going to stop Autonomous Car Owner A from charging a bit less than Autonomous Car Owner B, in order to get more customers? And what's then going to stop A from reducing his prices a bit below B again, in order to get customers back? And why won't this cycle continue until the prices paid by customers are only slightly higher than the costs incurred by the car owners?
  In other words, why do you think there will be no price-competition in The Sucky Future?
  Factors similar to those resulting in not much price competition between cable providers in the Sucky Present. Can you cite a reason why autonomous car fleet services won't be regulated the way the cable providers are?
13. Re:Renter's Economy by Anonymous Coward · 2017-10-10 05:41 · Score: 1
  
  Urban vs rural living. If you are in a densely populated city this sort of renter economy makes total sense. It's cheaper in nearly every large city to take a taxi or uber, even several times a day than to own a car.
  For rural people, a renter's economy will almost never make any sense.
14. Re:Renter's Economy by WrongMonkey · 2017-10-10 05:46 · Score: 1
  
  Why own a depreciating asset that requires constant fuel, maintenance and taxes? Especially when a round trip Uber ride costs less then parking downtown.
15. Re:Renter's Economy by Jeremi · 2017-10-10 05:48 · Score: 1
  
  Can you cite a reason why autonomous car fleet services won't be regulated the way the cable providers are?
  Assuming that self-driving cars really are safer than human drivers, I'd expect them to be regulated about as much as current non-autonomous car fleet services (e.g. Uber, Lyft, Hertz, Zipcar, etc) are, which is to say, lightly.
  If self-driving cars aren't safer than human drivers, then I'd expect them to be outlawed entirely.
  
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16. Re:Renter's Economy by Junta · 2017-10-10 05:58 · Score: 1
  
  I don't have the parking costs in my context, but all those other costs you mention, you are paying for them whether it is your car or a rental. Additionally you are paying for more expenses that you wouldn't incur (it uses fuel to move between fares and associated wear and tear and probably taxes not levied on a privately owned vehicle) and likely some sort of parking fee if it is ever at rest, as well as a profit margin to make it worthwhile for the owner of the item above and beyond expenses.
  Rental makes sense for one-off or occasional use of an item. If you are using something *daily*, owning is going to be cheaper than renting over the long term. Otherwise, rentals wouldn't be a viable commercial endeavor. In the short term ownership is going to be extremely cheaper or more expensive (purchases and repairs comes in bursts), but as long as you don't get too obsessed with those incidents, you realize it's still cheaper.
  
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17. Re:Renter's Economy by Jeremi · 2017-10-10 06:00 · Score: 1
  
  Because there is no price competition currently with taxis for good reason.
  
  Uber and Lyft don't count?
  
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  I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
18. Re:Renter's Economy by fluffernutter · 2017-10-10 06:09 · Score: 2
  
  Uber and Lyft are only cheaper than taxis right now because they clearly want taxis out of business, and aren't following the same regulations that cost money. It is currently unclear whether Uber and Lyft will be able to ignore regulations permanently. I doubt it, seeing as they are already getting booted out of London for that reason. In some cities in Canada, taxi drivers are demanding that they be compensated for their investment in their taxi licenses if Uber be allowed in. And rightfully so, they have their life savings in those licenses which will go from a value of $200K each to being worth nothing if other driving services don't have to uphold the same standards.
  
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19. Re:Renter's Economy by Junta · 2017-10-10 06:19 · Score: 1
  
  That kind of skips the whole 'own my own damn car' option, which hopefully presumably will be a viable option, and in fact a cheaper than ever option (insurance should go down, electric cars have less maintenance and fewer things to suddenly and catastrophically break).
  I think there's justified concern that the culture inundates people with 'nah, you don't want to own anything, rent everything' which creates an unfortunate relationship between those who own and those who use. It's generally an exploitative relationship, people getting long term suckered to avoid short term sticker shock, further funneling 'wealth' to upper class folk. People are all the time converting people to 'easy monthly payments' for fun and mostly a lot of juicy profit.
  
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20. Re:Renter's Economy by Junta · 2017-10-10 06:22 · Score: 1
  
  Also, easier to be cheaper when you don't give a crap about actually making money:
  "The company posted a net loss of $645 million", most companies aren't darling hip tech companies that are allowed to lose $645 million a quarter and still be loved by investors.
  It remains to be seen how they will do when they run out of investor patience.
  
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21. Re:Renter's Economy by ceoyoyo · 2017-10-10 06:29 · Score: 1
  
  Because there isn't now?
  Price competition is the big offer of capitalism to the working man. Except it comes with quite a few caveats and assumptions. It turns out it doesn't work so well in many markets, transportation being one of the big ones.
22. Re: Renter's Economy by Anonymous Coward · 2017-10-10 06:32 · Score: 0
  
  Socialism kills Innovation ? Dont Say that.
23. Re:Renter's Economy by Anonymous Coward · 2017-10-10 06:35 · Score: 0
  
  It's called market place competition. It is not collusion. If 7-11 started selling gas @ $1/gal, Arco across the street would soon be doing the same. It's not collusion
24. Re:Renter's Economy by b0bby · 2017-10-10 06:42 · Score: 1
  
  I don't have the parking costs in my context, but all those other costs you mention, you are paying for them whether it is your car or a rental.
  I guess it boils down to, are the marginal fuel & maintenance costs of the rental greater than your average fixed costs, like taxes, interest payments and insurance (and variable costs you'd eliminate, like parking, plus the value of any time you'd spend dealing with oil changes, filling up with fuel, etc)? For a well -used taxi, those fixed costs would be a tiny percent of my fare, but if I own a car I'm on the hook for all of them regardless of whether I use it or not. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people would be better off using a robot taxi most of the time. However, for a daily commuter, there's likely to be a peak time surcharge since basically everyone will want to be getting a taxi between 7-9am & 4-6pm; sharing the taxi could lessen that but people are often adverse to sitting with strangers.
25. Re:Renter's Economy by REden · 2017-10-10 06:43 · Score: 1
  
  If you are using something *daily*, owning is going to be cheaper than renting over the long term..
  I use my car daily... about 2 hours on average. If an automated taxi runs 66% of the time (18 hours), it could still be cheaper than my 8.3% load factor.
  
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26. Re:Renter's Economy by CanHasDIY · 2017-10-10 06:53 · Score: 1
  
  In other words, why do you think there will be no price-competition in The Sucky Future?
  Because I actually pay for my own cell phone and internet services, buy my own gasoline, et al.
  It's called the voice of experience.
  
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27. Re:Renter's Economy by CanHasDIY · 2017-10-10 06:56 · Score: 1
  
  I never said it wouldn't work - I merely pointed out who will ultimately profit in a rental-based economy.
  
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28. Re:Renter's Economy by CanHasDIY · 2017-10-10 07:03 · Score: 1
  
  Why own a depreciating asset that requires constant fuel, maintenance and taxes? Especially when a round trip Uber ride costs less then parking downtown.
  I don't know about Uber, but where I live it costs $20 one way to take a taxi to work, so $40/day round trip.
  $40 x 5 = $200/wk
  That's $800/mo., not including any weekend or after-work driving.
  I currently pay about $80/mo for fuel (big-ass V8 pickup), another $85/mo for insurance, and we'll say another $80 in maintenance (spread out over the year). Truck's paid off, but before my payment was about $220/mo.
  So, $800/mo to ride everywhere in someone else's car, or $465/mo MAX to drive my own vehicle befiore paying it off, ~$250/mo now.
  Granted, the numbers won't be the same for everyone, but that's my reasoning for preferring ownership to rental.
  
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29. Re:Renter's Economy by ShanghaiBill · 2017-10-10 07:04 · Score: 1
  
  Factors similar to those resulting in not much price competition between cable providers
  Totally dissimilar markets. Cable is infrastructure intensive, and has huge barriers to entry. Rides have near zero barriers to entry. All you need is an app. When Uber and Lyft pulled out of Austin, local companies filled the void within days.
30. Re:Renter's Economy by gander666 · 2017-10-10 07:07 · Score: 2
  
  And, from what I have read, Uber is burning their VC rounds to subsidize the rides to the tune of about 50% of the total cost. If they are forced to charge what the ride costs, they will not be able to be as inexpensive compared to the taxi's today.
  
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  Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress ... but I repeat myself. - Mark T
31. Re:Renter's Economy by mark-t · 2017-10-10 07:13 · Score: 1
  
  You exaggerate. The even richest 1% only control about 35% of the total wealth.
  
  --
  File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
32. Re:Renter's Economy by ShanghaiBill · 2017-10-10 07:15 · Score: 1
  
  That kind of skips the whole 'own my own damn car' option
  The average American household owns 1.9 cars. My family has 3 drivers and 3 cars. With on-demand SDCs, we will likely go to 2, and perhaps 1. Car ownership will not disappear, but it will decline.
  Renting an SDC should be much cheaper than owning, since most cars sit idle 95% of the time. So the cost of the car can be spread across far more people. Even if an SDC is idle 50% of the time, that is still only a tenth of the capital cost per passenger-mile.
33. Re:Renter's Economy by fluffernutter · 2017-10-10 07:15 · Score: 1
  
  You think obtaining an autonomous car fleet with a mother ship to talk to for coordination is going to have a small barrier to entry? Is there any indication that individuals will ever have access to a self driving car? Or will the technology just be hoarded by companies large enough to put it in a fleet?
  
  --
  Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
34. Re: Renter's Economy by Anonymous Coward · 2017-10-10 07:22 · Score: 0
  
  Except of course that surge pricing is going to get worse and worse as more people commute by Uber. It will end up more expensive since now you hanged too pay someone else's profit too.
35. Re:Renter's Economy by fluffernutter · 2017-10-10 07:23 · Score: 1
  
  You're right it's not collusion, yet the effect is the same.
  
  --
  Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
36. Re:Renter's Economy by fluffernutter · 2017-10-10 07:32 · Score: 1
  
  But who are you renting from? It has to be from someone with the capability and capacity to have a car ready just when you need it; even at peak times. It has to be someone who can afford to license autonomous driving for commercial use. So out of the few companies you will be able to rent from, why would they not charge as much as they can for the service unless they have some deficiency that makes their product worth less than the other companies doing it?
  
  Also, when you consider the number of cars needed at rush hour to satisfy capacity versus number of cars needed the rest of the day, I wonder how utilized every car will end up being anyway. The alternative is to not have enough cars available for peak times in an effort to keep every car 100% utilized. In this case getting a ride during times of shortages (when you need to go to work) gets very expensive.
  
  --
  Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
37. Re:Renter's Economy by losfromla · 2017-10-10 08:01 · Score: 1
  
  This is what I would do and we would probably instead prefer to own a partial interest in 5 to 10 cars, one of them a pickup for the odd times we need one of those. I'd want to share ownership with people who use the cars at night, or during the workday, the times when I have no need of them.
  
  --
  Only I can judge you.
38. Re:Renter's Economy by Kjella · 2017-10-10 08:39 · Score: 1
  
  And, from what I have read, Uber is burning their VC rounds to subsidize the rides to the tune of about 50% of the total cost. If they are forced to charge what the ride costs, they will not be able to be as inexpensive compared to the taxi's today.
  Most likely they're hoping to do the VC dance until autonomous cars are ready since they have very "disposable" drivers and unlike taxi drivers that cost a lot of money idle it'll probably be about having the most taxis on the road for shortest waits. Here in Norway where labor is pretty damn expensive we have this roughly cost-neutral compensation per km for using your private vehicle for work and your typical taxi ride will be 7x-13x as expensive. Even with the added cost of self-driving vehicles and some other overhead I expect the cost to drop considerably, if they manage to keep the VC money flowing long enough to see a real uptick from an emerging SDC fleet, well... markets are almost faith based, as long as people believe in you it spirals up, when they lose faith it spirals down. As long as you can show growth, people think that eventually you'll make money on volume somehow...
  
  --
  Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
39. Re:Renter's Economy by Junta · 2017-10-10 08:42 · Score: 1
  
  Problem being that I wager you use your car at the *same time* the vast majority of people also use their cars. If the taxi fleet must accomodate peak load, then it's going to have to pretty much charge enough during peak load to pay for them the rest of the time when they are barely used. I suspect an automated taxi would be more like 12% of the time of revenue on average.
  
  --
  XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
40. Re:Renter's Economy by bws111 · 2017-10-10 08:44 · Score: 1
  
  No, the effect is not the same. If they were colluding, the 7-11 would not have started selling gas at $1/gal, thereby forcing Arco to do the same. If they were colluding the price would not drop.
41. Re:Renter's Economy by Junta · 2017-10-10 08:48 · Score: 1
  
  This is the whole part of the 'if you use it all the time'. If you use it all the time, you are going to be shouldering most if not all of the burden of the fixed costs of that thing you are renting in addition to the owners margin.
  If you have a daily commute that resembles 90+% of the local population, renting a car is not going to be a winner because the peak load is going to bear the burden of pretty much all the costs. Mass transit can get some economies of scale to actually reduce cost (buses, trains), but so long as you are puttering along in a dedicated vehicle to your purpose, that cost equation is going to be tricky.
  
  --
  XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
42. Re:Renter's Economy by bws111 · 2017-10-10 09:08 · Score: 1
  
  You think there is no price competition in gasoline? Where do you live? Gasoline retailing is one of the most price-competitive markets there is, with razor-thin margins. It is why gas stations all have mini-marts, carwashes, or something else they can actually make a profit on.
  In fact, this intense price pressure is exactly why gas prices tend to rise an fall in sync.
43. Re:Renter's Economy by CanHasDIY · 2017-10-10 09:47 · Score: 1
  
  You keep using that word, but I do not believe it means what you believe it means.
  If both gas stations agreed upon a price, that would be collusion.
  
  --
  An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
44. Re:Renter's Economy by mysidia · 2017-10-10 09:49 · Score: 1
  
  What's going to stop Autonomous Car Owner A from charging a bit less than Autonomous Car Owner B, in order to get more customers?
  The "no commercial use" in individual auto insurance policies (that costs extra), AND
  the EULA Clause in the autonomous vehicle makers' click-through agreement that says No commercial Resale or Ride-sharing of the autonomous vehicle's driving service.
45. Re:Renter's Economy by mysidia · 2017-10-10 09:54 · Score: 1
  
  You nor I will be allowed to use our autonomous cars for taxi services, due to the EULA.
  Sure we will be allowed to: So long as we don't Opt-Out of our vehicle manufacturer's sponsored Ride-Sharing program where the vehicle manufacturer gets to keep 98% of the profits and then reimburses the vehicle owner for the cost of electricity or fuel, plus a small token profit.
46. Re:Renter's Economy by grumling · 2017-10-10 09:55 · Score: 1
  
  The cost of programming is the primary reason why there's little price variation in pay television.
  And who's to say that someone might not come along with a ride model that lets you ride for free but has snack machines? Or a retail store or mall offering free trips to their establishments? There's precedent for both models, and even things like the shuttles run from hotels to airports (which I suppose are considered to be included in the room price) are already well established as "free rides."
  Heck I see where casinos and resorts would be able to supply free transportation to guests just to get them to stay.
  
  --
  "Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
47. Re:Renter's Economy by MachineShedFred · 2017-10-10 09:59 · Score: 1
  
  The effect is the opposite of what the GP post presented. If two entities collude, they both agree upon a price and sell at that price. Why would they agree on a price that is lower, if they know they aren't going to be undercut? Reality is that collusion inflates prices in order to generate more profit for the entities participating in the collusion. Prices go artificially higher, and the customer gets gouged.
  That's why it's illegal.
  
  --
  Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
48. Re:Renter's Economy by CanHasDIY · 2017-10-10 10:00 · Score: 1
  
  Factors similar to those resulting in not much price competition between cable providers
  Totally dissimilar markets. Cable is infrastructure intensive, and has huge barriers to entry. Rides have near zero barriers to entry.
  Because roads aren't infrastructure and cars are cheap!
  Seriously, I laughed my ass off when I first read your comment.
  
  When Uber and Lyft pulled out of Austin, local companies filled the void within days
  https://www.curbed.com/2017/6/...
  
  --
  An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
49. Re:Renter's Economy by CanHasDIY · 2017-10-10 10:04 · Score: 1
  
  You think there is no price competition in gasoline?
  I think the cause is far less important than the end result; to that end, you seem to agree with me:
  
  In fact, this intense price pressure is exactly why gas prices tend to rise an fall in sync.
  Ours is not to question why, ours is but to do and die... and pay standardized retail markup.
  
  --
  An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
50. Re:Renter's Economy by JaredOfEuropa · 2017-10-10 10:13 · Score: 1
  
  My prediction: self-driving cars may be too expensive for most individuals, at first. If that's the case, we'll see them in taxis first. But I expect the price to come down fast to affordable levels. Will more people rent cars? Undoubtedly. But there are a lot of advantages to actually owning one:
  - Guaranteed availability
  - Cost (if you use it a lot, owning might be cheaper than renting)
  - The ability to leave all your crap in the car while not having to deal with other people's mess
  - Status, or being able to buy one kitted just to your liking.
  
  What self-driving cars (even if it's only rentals) will change is which car people will buy. You will no longer have to select one that does your daily commute, is roomy enough for the family holidays, and can haul your boat to the lake every summer weekend. Instead, a lot of people will opt to buy one that serves their daily needs, and just rent whatever they need for other occasions. A lot of people will opt not to buy a second car either, for the same reasons.
  
  --
  If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
51. Re:Renter's Economy by MachineShedFred · 2017-10-10 10:18 · Score: 1
  
  There is at least one company working on autonomous driving who is publicly talking about your car being able to earn you money while you aren't in it.
  
  --
  Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
52. Re:Renter's Economy by plague911 · 2017-10-10 11:10 · Score: 1
  
  O I am sure there is, however, due to the economics of scale in auto manufacturing the production will get locked into the same small cartel situation we have now, just new names and faces. Having the right to use your own car like that will quickly get EULAed out.
53. Re:Renter's Economy by Joe_Dragon · 2017-10-10 11:57 · Score: 1
  
  some may game the free shuttle to the casino to/from the near by public transportation station to park for free.
54. Re:Renter's Economy by ShanghaiBill · 2017-10-10 12:11 · Score: 2
  
  Or will the technology just be hoarded by companies large enough to put it in a fleet?
  You mean the way individuals were unable to own cars, washing machines, clothes dryers, dishwashers, Roombas, cell phones, laptops, etc?
  Number of technologies that are available only to "the rich": 0.
55. Re:Renter's Economy by ShanghaiBill · 2017-10-10 12:16 · Score: 1
  
  Because roads aren't infrastructure and cars are cheap!
  Uber and Lyft do not build their own roads, and do not own the cars.
  
  https://www.curbed.com/2017/6/...
  What is your point? This link confirms everything I said. Uber and Lyft left. Competition sprang up immediately (no new roads and no new cars were needed). Uber and Lyft returned (still no new roads needed).
56. Re:Renter's Economy by ShanghaiBill · 2017-10-10 12:30 · Score: 1
  
  But who are you renting from?
  Uber, Lyft, Waymo, etc.
  
  It has to be from someone with the capability and capacity to have a car ready just when you need it; even at peak times.
  Uber and Lyft already have this working pretty well. Once drivers are out of the loop, it should get even better.
57. Re:Renter's Economy by fluffernutter · 2017-10-10 13:54 · Score: 1
  
  Right but still no indication that Uber and Lyft will be any cheaper than a taxi once that point is reached. Right now they don't have to invest in a vehicle at all, so the peak times problem works out for them. All they have to do is offer people more money to drive during peak times and they are willing to volunteer their cars. In off-peak times they go back to making their own cars their own. If Uber and Lyft have a fleet of autonomous driving cars, they have the problem of supplying enough cars to supply for peak but what do they do in non-peak? 85% of their cars are idle.
  
  --
  Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
58. Re:Renter's Economy by fluffernutter · 2017-10-10 13:59 · Score: 1
  
  You're making a rather large assumption that a self driving car will ever work using technology that can be easily mass produced. Since there is no sensor array that works in all weather and all situations yet, and we don't seem to have the technology available yet, you're being a bit premature in comparing it to a washing machine.
  
  --
  Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
59. Re:Renter's Economy by fluffernutter · 2017-10-10 14:03 · Score: 1
  
  They have to actually communicate and plan to set a price for it to be collusion. Seeing the price of the gas station across the street from you is 1.00 and deciding to charge 1.00 yourself is not collusion, yet it ends up having the same effect on consumers. Businesses are rarely ever willing to start a price war.
  
  --
  Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
60. Re:Renter's Economy by fluffernutter · 2017-10-10 14:07 · Score: 1
  
  But Uber and Lyft will need to own the cars if they convert to autonomous driving. Very few people are going to want others using their $60K cars unattended. They will be puked and pissed in.
  
  --
  Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
61. Re:Renter's Economy by fluffernutter · 2017-10-10 14:08 · Score: 1
  
  The problem is that most people need the cars during rush hour. That's why it is rush hour.
  
  --
  Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
62. Re:Renter's Economy by fluffernutter · 2017-10-10 14:10 · Score: 1
  
  Uh, no. Gas prices rise and fall in sync because gas stations have to charge what they are told to charge. There is very little profit for gas stations, but massive profit for oil companies.
  
  --
  Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
63. Re:Renter's Economy by REden · 2017-10-10 15:17 · Score: 1
  
  You'd lose that wager... I work out of the house. Since the trip is only one-way, there's about 15 minutes to take my daughter to school and pick her up. (as apposed to half hour each way it takes me). Throw in a post work trip to get the other hour. I think it's a safe bet that more than half of the local population isn't going to work at the same time.
  I do agree that 66% may be a little generous, but your 12% is much too low. Do you really think more than half of all vehicles are on the road at the same time? Does an entire office building ever arrive at the same time? Even still, "congestion pricing" could cause people to vary times. I can see 40-50% being a floor... much higher than 12%. Still plenty of room for profit.
  (BTW, I doubt we would get to automated taxis, but this is all hypothetical).
  
  --
  --- If it's worth doing, it's worth doing in Perl!
64. Re: Renter's Economy by losfromla · 2017-10-10 17:19 · Score: 1
  
  Seniors, students, salespeople, people on vacation, travelers, early starters, late starters, housewives, are some of those that can share and don't necessarily need to cleave to the "rush hour".
  
  --
  Only I can judge you.
65. Re:Renter's Economy by ShanghaiBill · 2017-10-10 17:42 · Score: 1
  
  So you think the tech will be "hoarded" by the rich ... and that it won't exist?
66. Re:Renter's Economy by ShanghaiBill · 2017-10-10 17:44 · Score: 1
  
  But Uber and Lyft will need to own the cars if they convert to autonomous driving.
  Do you mean just like Airbnb owns all those houses?
67. Re:Renter's Economy by ShanghaiBill · 2017-10-10 17:47 · Score: 1
  
  Right but still no indication that Uber and Lyft will be any cheaper than a taxi once that point is reached.
  Why would a car cost more than a car+driver?
68. Re: Renter's Economy by Anonymous Coward · 2017-10-11 01:07 · Score: 0
  
  On average, cars spend 95% of the time parked and around 50% of the lifetime pollution/emissions is in manufacturing the car in the first place.. If people could only agree not to travel, e.g. to work, at the same time, autonomous transport could drastically reduce the number of vehicles on the road.
69. Re:Renter's Economy by fluffernutter · 2017-10-11 01:18 · Score: 1
  
  Cost doesn't matter. Desperation for people to use it is what matters. And any how, we have no idea what a self driving array will cost once they get it to work.
  
  --
  Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
70. Re: Renter's Economy by fluffernutter · 2017-10-11 01:20 · Score: 1
  
  That misses the point. Most people will want to use autonomous cars during rush hour. Unless you think only housewives will be using autonomous cars.
  
  --
  Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
71. Re:Renter's Economy by fluffernutter · 2017-10-11 01:24 · Score: 1
  
  There are horror stories with AirBnB as well. It's a lot easier to fix a house then it is to fix a car. And houses don't tend to kill people.
  
  --
  Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
72. Re: Renter's Economy by losfromla · 2017-10-11 03:55 · Score: 1
  
  Dude!
  I live in the Los Angeles Metro Region, actually I'm in a suburb of Los Angeles County. On what used to be freeways, we now have a slowly flowing parking lot from about 6:30 AM to about 9:00 AM and similarly (but in the opposite direction) around the going home time. In-between, we have fairly congested traffic for a large part of the day. Most of the vehicles are empty save for the driver, that means 90% of vehicles on that "freeway" have a minimum 3 more seats and save for motorcycles 100% of them could be carrying at least one more person. With some good algorithms and a widespread vehicle sharing infrastructure traffic could be cut by roughly 75% and commute times decimated. I talk to the people that commute singly rather than carpool and a lot of them do it because they want to be able to run errands or leave at odd times, the car-sharing fixes even this complaint. Not sure where you live but we could definitely do better in my neck of the woods and a lot more than housewives could in fact benefit from and make use of them.
  Even at rush hour, my pessimistic buddy.
  
  --
  Only I can judge you.
73. Re:Renter's Economy by fluffernutter · 2017-10-11 05:47 · Score: 1
  
  Technology tends to get licensed in a way that the companies that develop it stand to gain the most by it. It remains to be seen whether any of them will see enough value with putting it in personally owned vehicles. They seem to be on a course to keep it in the hands of companies running fleets.
  
  --
  Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
74. Re:Renter's Economy by Anonymous Coward · 2017-10-11 07:25 · Score: 0
  
  Sure, and are they going to have their own insurance company? Because most of the car insurance companies want to charge the car owner a higher rate to ferry people around.
75. Re:Renter's Economy by david_thornley · 2017-10-11 08:36 · Score: 1
  
  My current car is controlled by two eyes, two cameras, and some internal sensors. That particular array doesn't work in all weather and situations, but they allow me onto the road with it. Sensors aren't the problem.
  What is the problem is the software. That's not going to be cheap to develop, and whoever does it is going to want to get the maximum money out of it. That's likely to include mass-marketing it. The hardware will be quite affordable relative to the price of the car, and the software can be duplicated and installed at approximately no cost to the manufacturer.
  
  --
  "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
76. Re:Renter's Economy by david_thornley · 2017-10-11 09:01 · Score: 1
  
  You can rent like that today. Have your normal car for commuting, rent something to take a vacation with. It doesn't seem to be a popular option.
  
  --
  "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
77. Re:Renter's Economy by CanHasDIY · 2017-10-12 06:49 · Score: 1
  
  Why does just internet cost more than internet + cable?
  Because it can, so it will.
  Don't look for rhyme nor reason when discussing corporate pricing schemes.
  
  --
  An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Comment removed by account_deleted · 2017-10-10 05:14 · Score: 4, Interesting

Comment removed based on user account deletion
Error handling and robustness? by ameline · 2017-10-10 05:16 · Score: 2

Unlike a GPU where a memory error or an ALU or register bit flip might result in a 1 frame glitch, or at worst a frozen GPU, requiring a reboot, failures in this hardware will kill people.
I hope they have ECC on everything, and redundancy everywhere -- possibly a space-shuttle like voting system where multiple computers are fed the same input, and if they don't produce the same output, a majority wins approach is taken.
It should also have very detailed logging -- so every decision taken can be traced, so when there is an accident, a proper root cause analysis can be performed, and corrective measures instituted.
NVidia as a company has a great track record for being on the cutting edge of technology -- but no track record at all for making safety critical systems. That cutting edge will cause people to bleed if they don't get this right.

--
Ian Ameline
1. Re:Error handling and robustness? by darkain · 2017-10-10 05:28 · Score: 1
  
  What you've described is essentially nVidia's Quadro line, vs their normal retail/gamer lines: http://www.nvidia.com/object/q...
2. Re:Error handling and robustness? by ameline · 2017-10-10 05:28 · Score: 1
  
  Apparently it is targeting ASIL-D
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
  So they are at least not unaware of the safety implications. Still would be a shame for a stray cosmic ray to kill someone...
  
  --
  Ian Ameline
3. Re:Error handling and robustness? by ameline · 2017-10-10 05:39 · Score: 1
  
  I still wouldn't trust my life to a Quadro -- are all the caches and registers ECC protected? Are all the internal data paths fault tolerant? What happens to performance when an error is detected/corrected?
  What happens when an uncorrectable error is encountered? If there is a failure, can you determine its cause?
  These are things to be concerned about in a hard real-time system like controlling a few tons of steel moving along with significant kinetic energy containing and nearby squishy, fragile meat bags who believe they are self-aware.
  These are mostly irrelevant to a GPU producing pretty pictures on a display or two.
  
  --
  Ian Ameline
4. Re:Error handling and robustness? by Anonymous Coward · 2017-10-10 05:46 · Score: 0
  
  So they are at least not unaware of the safety implications. Still would be a shame for a stray cosmic ray to kill someone...
  This isn't a hard thing to solve. After all, we've got satellite control systems controlling hardware that's much more sensitive and experiences probably 10^10 times as many cosmic rays, and those systems demonstrate pretty impressive reliability. Just apply the same error correction, redundancy, and state protection techniques. The real driver (pardon the pun) of errors here will be bugs in the software, which even in space tend to dominate the malfunction rate.
5. Re:Error handling and robustness? by Anonymous Coward · 2017-10-10 06:03 · Score: 0
  
  Good questions. Do you think other vendors have ECC/parity/CRCs/etc all over their chips? If so, why would you think NVIDIA would not? Or, what about just having two CPUs, two SOCs, two computers, operating in parallel? Or maybe three, and go with majority decision (it's all binary, so all choices can be decomposed into true/false). Anyway, point being, why assume the NVIDIA solution falls short of your safety metric, absent any data either way?
6. Re:Error handling and robustness? by Anonymous Coward · 2017-10-10 06:16 · Score: 0
  
  You do know what a satellite costs, right? I think if we used the same solutions they use there, these things would be out of reach for everybody price wise. A satellite that isn't all that spectacular from a functionality standpoint costs millions, often 10s of millions.
7. Re:Error handling and robustness? by Waffle+Iron · 2017-10-10 06:29 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Yet you trust you life to hundreds of random human strangers in the traffic you navigate nearly every day, many of whom are distracted, buzzed, senile or just plain idiots.
  At any rate, the bulk of the hardware doesn't need to totally failsafe as long as there are effective backup measures in place such as collision avoidance systems (which generally don't require anywhere near as much compute power). We already have such things in many of today's cars to help with the highly unreliable controllers mentioned in the first paragraph.
8. Re:Error handling and robustness? by ceoyoyo · 2017-10-10 06:35 · Score: 1
  
  That approach will never work. Even if you could guarantee every computation was correct, you can't guarantee every input is bit correct.
  The only way is making the algorithms resistant to noise. Which modern ones are.
9. Re:Error handling and robustness? by 0100010001010011 · 2017-10-10 06:37 · Score: 1
  
  ASIL-D. ISO 26262. IEC 61508.
  If you live in the automotive space you're used to all of this by now. If this is what Nvidia is targeting then Nvidia has taken that into account.
  Every ASIL-D chip I'm aware of does exactly what you think it should. End to end ECC and lock step cores.
10. Re:Error handling and robustness? by Anonymous Coward · 2017-10-10 06:50 · Score: 0
  
  From the pictures, looks like doubling-up the chips is exactly what they're doing.
11. Re:Error handling and robustness? by Anonymous Coward · 2017-10-10 06:50 · Score: 0
  
  I suspect this is primarily meant to be used as a development platform, with later generations adressing the issues discovered here.
12. Re:Error handling and robustness? by Anonymous Coward · 2017-10-10 06:54 · Score: 0
  
  ECC on internal RAMs is not why satellites cost millions of dollars...
13. Re:Error handling and robustness? by Doctor+Memory · 2017-10-10 07:07 · Score: 2
  
  LOL, most satellite and space probes run on something like a radiation-hardened 15MHz R3000. Good luck getting any real-time performance out of something like that (even a Beowulf cluster!).
  
  --
  Just junk food for thought...
14. Re:Error handling and robustness? by RhettLivingston · 2017-10-10 07:15 · Score: 2
  
  And human drivers have these things? Frankly, I am sure as an engineer that redundancy or at the least safe fallbacks are part of the design. I've never worked a critical system where that wasn't the case. But, the argument is flawed.
  Nobody has ever crashed a vehicle when they had a heart attack or stroke? There has always been a redundant designated driver when the main one was inebriated? Always a redundant check on the decisions of everyone whose abilities have declined? Everyone who has ever run out of a house mad wanting to jump into the car and squeal away recklessly has been stopped? Every human who malfunctioned and decided to drive a vehicle through a crowd has been overridden?
  If autonomous vehicles can merely match our ineptitude, they will be starting at an acceptable point, and we can eliminate the flaws as they happen (something we can't seem to do with human drivers).
15. Re:Error handling and robustness? by Anonymous Coward · 2017-10-10 09:06 · Score: 0
  
  If I was designing a system like that (I used to design factory automation) I'd try to implement a system where a failure e-stop process for the current situation was kept available for execution by a simpler and much more robust real time actuator control system. If the bigger, smarter, less robust big brain fails to update the strategy or other watchdog outputs in a timely manner the e-stop process is executed. Otherwise the vehicle actuators are made to follow the big brain commands.
16. Re:Error handling and robustness? by liquid_schwartz · 2017-10-10 09:32 · Score: 1
  
  That cutting edge will cause people to bleed if they don't get this right.
  Currently around 3500 people die in auto accidents every month, and another 380k get injured badly enough to go to a hospital (citation below). What we have today is far from perfect and if they can improve on what we currently have, despite not being perfect, it's progress and a good thing. The early data is that it helps reduce deaths by ~20% and injuries by ~40%. That's quite an improvement and I'm certain that it will get even better over time.
  Citation:
  http://www.rightdiagnosis.com/...
  https://www.bloomberg.com/news...
17. Re:Error handling and robustness? by Wrath0fb0b · 2017-10-10 11:54 · Score: 1
  
  The human brain, for all it's distraction, drugs, senility and idiocy, is a fairly remarkable error-handling device. It is capable of multiple layers of self-correction and self-audit. Even the basic act of bipedal locomotion requires an extraordinary depth, let alone doing so basically without conscious effort.
18. Re: Error handling and robustness? by Anonymous Coward · 2017-10-10 12:44 · Score: 0
  
  Yes. I trust other human drivers, warts n all, more than agile development driven developers at google, nvidia, Uber(!!!) or other silly social media SV companies who have never had to write software that people's lives directly depend on working correctly at all times.
  Absolutely, yes, I trust people more.
TaaS: Transportation as a Service by Anonymous Coward · 2017-10-10 05:20 · Score: 2, Interesting

I currently pay $250/month for a car payment, $160/month for insurance, and probably $120/month for gas. ($530)
I'll assume I need 3 trips per day (commute plus errand/grocery); for 1 month, that's 90 trips.
Simple math says if the robotaxi charges less than (530 / 90) = $5.89 per trip, then I should ditch my personal vehicle.
Let's see how hungry these transportation as a service companies are.
1. Re: TaaS: Transportation as a Service by Anonymous Coward · 2017-10-10 07:39 · Score: 0
  
  Out of curiosity, do you have the (or rough KM values?)
  Using my city for numbers, $530 would get you ROUGHLY 2500 KM in 90 rides a month. ($3.10 base fare, and $0.10/KM)
  That driving pattern here would literally be cheaper already by conventional taxi.
2. Re:TaaS: Transportation as a Service by Anonymous Coward · 2017-10-10 09:37 · Score: 0
  
  That seems incredibly inefficient. I commute to work when not working from home, and I typically have 5 trips a week, no more than 10 trips even in an errand heavy week. I'd figure maybe 1/3 of your 90 trips for me, but then I only spend $60 or so for gas maybe once every 6-10 weeks and the car is paid for.
3. Re:TaaS: Transportation as a Service by Anonymous Coward · 2017-10-10 11:32 · Score: 0
  
  On the other hand, We paid $45K including tax for our automobile 11 years ago. We've had to cover about $6K in routine maintenance and repairs. It is our only vehicle and now has 90K miles on it. Insurance is roughly $1K per year. That's about $62K. It gets 18 mpg so at an average cost of around $3 / gallon we've also paid around $15K for fuel. So we're now around $77K. But, we could sell the vehicle today for about $7K (and are about ready to do so because upcoming maintenance possibilities are scary). So we've had a net expenditure of $70K.
  This comes to around $0.78 / mile right now.
  Without the cost of drivers and with a fully vertical operation that covers the entire lifecycle of the car from building it through maintaining it, generating the power to power it, and all the way through recycling its parts, I really expect the TaaS model is going to blow away my $0.78 / mile. They will be able to go well below the current taxi services.
  As soon as TaaS becomes the major goal of automakers, they become their own customers. We will suddenly see million mile vehicles with a large portion of the normal maintenance fully automated or at least made so easy that it can be done in a few minutes without tools.
  And, given the scale of their power needs, they will at the least make unbelievable deals for power and, more likely, just provide for it themselves. Because batteries that are no longer optimal for a car can have a much longer after-life as utility storage, they have a leg up on the solar equation.
  If only half of the savings of scale make it into the consumer pocket, this model will blow the current one away while providing for much greater convenience. Essentially, every family will have as many cars as they need at any given moment without ever having to worry about purchasing, paying for insurance on, or maintaining cars.
4. Re:TaaS: Transportation as a Service by MrLogic17 · 2017-10-10 16:01 · Score: 1
  
  Only if you don't place a value on time & convenience.
  Case #1: Oops, I left my laptop bag in the car. Will I ever see it again?
  Case #2: I want to do a grocery run over lunch. Can I just take the jug or milk to the cooler, or must I schlep all the bags to my desk?
GeForce Experience by PopeRatzo · 2017-10-10 05:21 · Score: 5, Funny

If you have a level 5 autonomous car, I suggest waiting before you download the latest drivers.

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You are welcome on my lawn.
1. Re:GeForce Experience by psmoot · 2017-10-10 06:05 · Score: 2
  
  No, the point is a level 5 car doesn't have a driver. :)
2. Re:GeForce Experience by Anonymous Coward · 2017-10-10 06:35 · Score: 0
  
  And even then, you may want to consider running a Level 5 diagnostic.
3. Re:GeForce Experience by Anonymous Coward · 2017-10-10 07:41 · Score: 0
  
  Whoosh.
4. Re:GeForce Experience by PopeRatzo · 2017-10-10 10:24 · Score: 1
  
  Whoosh.
  No woosh. You're the woosh.
  
  --
  You are welcome on my lawn.
5. Re:GeForce Experience by Anonymous Coward · 2017-10-10 16:54 · Score: 0
  
  Also, water cooling only requires a split valve inline with the already provided reservoir!
Re:Autonomous Level 5 C-Level Positions by darkain · 2017-10-10 05:24 · Score: 1

This actually is in active development. There is research and development going into writing AI software for business decision making. It just isn't called "CEO Automation", but that is essentially what their function will be. Things like HR and lawyers are being automated now too.
Re:Autonomous Level 5 C-Level Positions by Anonymous Coward · 2017-10-10 05:30 · Score: 0

sigh, horse carriages. When was the last time you saw one of those? What about ice delivery trucks? News boys selling papers on the corners? Blacksmiths? Yes, some of these professions still have some people working in them. But many times less than there used to be in the past.
While driver jobs are going to be on the way out, there will be other jobs to take their place. This has happened numerous times over the course of history and will happen several more times
There is no real 'AI' in anything by Anonymous Coward · 2017-10-10 05:30 · Score: 0

So-called 'self driving cars' don't have real 'AI', they can't think, they just follow a script, they have to call a human remote operator when they encounter something not in their script.
'Self-driving cars' will be a disaster and cause MORE deaths than human drivers.
Humans will get even lazier and dumber than they already are, become incapable of taking care of themselves, become incapable of even getting anywhere without some half-assed computer to drive them.
Governments will love these since they will then have complete control over every aspect of peoples lives including when and where they are allowed to travel anywhere at all.
Criminals will love thses since they will be able to remotely hijack people so they can ransom, rob, rape, or kill them.
If you actually get into a box on wheels with no controls for you to use and strap yourself into a seat you are an IDIOT and deserve everything bad that WILL happen to you because of it, please don't breed we don't need your violently retarded kids polluting the world with their stupidity.
Google and all companies making so-called 'self driving cars' are RIPPING YOU OFF and LYING TO YOU none of this will amount to anything but a DECREASE in overall quality of living for EVERYONE as your basic freedoms are TAKEN AWAY from you and you become slaves to machines.
Disagreeing with me just proves you're stupid and a pussy and will put up with anyone raping your life and not complain.
Re:Autonomous Level 5 C-Level Positions by plague911 · 2017-10-10 05:30 · Score: 1

The answer is, it is harder. Some day. We are just not there yet. It is just easier to automate most low talent/education jobs.
I'd rather walk. by Rick+Schumann · 2017-10-10 05:32 · Score: 1

*drops mic*
1. Re:I'd rather walk. by Anonymous Coward · 2017-10-10 06:34 · Score: 0
  
  *picks up mic*
  Sir! You dropped this!
Re:Autonomous Level 5 C-Level Positions by kamapuaa · 2017-10-10 05:38 · Score: 1

Huh? Average workers still draw a lot more salary than CEO, so replacing the workers make more sense. Lower-end jobs like driving a taxi or a truck are also much easier to automate than a CEO.
Realistically, if technology could effectively replace a CEO it would already happen.

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Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
Re:Autonomous Level 5 C-Level Positions by thecatt · 2017-10-10 05:47 · Score: 1

CEO-bot 9000 says you're fired. Have fun driving for Uber.
Seriously, though, you're not the first to suggest that CEO positions are ripe for automation.
Re:Autonomous Level 5 C-Level Positions by 4wdloop · 2017-10-10 05:56 · Score: 1

I have a prototype running on Arduino...It can can flip power point slides very well.

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4wdloop
Re:Autonomous Level 5 C-Level Positions by Junta · 2017-10-10 06:01 · Score: 1

At some point that won't be true. Of course hopefully the answer is not to intentionally not progress because we can't sort out a fair economy, but to sort out some fair economy that will work.
Post scarcity might be easier, the challenge will be the in-between, where some people are still pretty much needed more than 40 hours a week and some people we couldn't find work for them to do even if they wanted to.

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XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Well, there you go by DontBeAMoran · 2017-10-10 06:01 · Score: 1

A chip capable of self-driving a car but yet not powerful enough to mine a single block of Bitcoins on its own.

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#DeleteFacebook
1. Re:Well, there you go by Pascoea · 2017-10-10 07:48 · Score: 1
  
  It's almost as if those are two different tasks, that require two different sets of specialized hardware. But I hear you, I too get frustrated while trying to eat soup with a fork.
2. Re:Well, there you go by DontBeAMoran · 2017-10-10 12:36 · Score: 1
  
  I too get frustrated while trying to eat soup with a fork.
  That's nothing. Ever tried eating a sandwich through a straw?
  
  --
  #DeleteFacebook
Autonomous car is easy by boudie2 · 2017-10-10 06:20 · Score: 1

Compared to an autonomous motorcycle https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
New dilemma by Anonymous Coward · 2017-10-10 06:33 · Score: 0

Will it still listen to instruction from woman passenger in the front seat?
Re: Autonomous Level 5 C-Level Positions by Anonymous Coward · 2017-10-10 06:46 · Score: 0

Plumbers and other housing workers are in high demand.
German plumbers make AS much as Most Software engineers here.
320 Tflops! by Mysticalfruit · 2017-10-10 06:59 · Score: 1

320 Tflops! I'm going to buy myself one of these cars and then simply rent its CPU out when it's sitting in the driveway!

Imagine thousands of super computing taxis that as soon as they go and sit idle hook back up to the grid and keep computing!

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Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
1. Re:320 Tflops! by HuguesT · 2017-10-11 09:04 · Score: 1
  
  Not general purpose teraflops. Useful if you want to do lots of fixed-sized matrix multiplications but not much else.
Re:Autonomous Level 5 C-Level Positions by RhettLivingston · 2017-10-10 07:02 · Score: 1

This is what technology has been doing for centuries - automating away the low-level positions. We could bring that back I suppose. Would you like to restore the wonderful jobs of cotton picking and wheat thrashing? Or maybe we should go back to horse-drawn plows so that plowing a field involves enough people to slowly plow one furrow at a time and as a bonus you can clean stalls? Perhaps we should regulate bakeries and require the dough for every loaf of bread to be kneaded by hand? It would certainly require a lot of low wage workers to prepare building sites if we eliminated bulldozers, wouldn't it?
But, you have a great point, and, good news, this is actually a very exciting age! The most exciting part is that we aren't just looking at the low-wage jobs anymore! Yes, drivers are likely to disappear in the next couple of decades as well as cashiers, stockers, and numerous other low-wage positions. But, if you look deeper you'll find that we are also seeing the beginnings of the development to automate away the work of surgeons, diagnosticians, orthodontists, accountants, financial advisors, investment managers, assistants (actually, the PC decimated their careers 30-35 years ago and almost nobody stood up to stop it), physics researchers, drug researchers, mathematicians, etc. - and, yes, even CEOs.
As an engineer, almost everything I've ever worked on had the goal to reduce the workload on people. The coming age is what technology has been working towards for millennia. I know there are naysayers out there that believe we'll always find new work for people because we always have. It's nearly useless to try to discuss the flaws in that kind of reasoning. If you can't see them, well, hmmm, I've been taught to try not to say anything if there is nothing good to say.
It is my job to make things easier. It's the job of sociologists and politicians to figure out how to distribute resources when we don't have to work anymore.
Instead of asking me to slow down or shift efforts, demand that they speed up!
And for all of you naysayers - if it's your desire to work forever, tell your representatives and maybe they can make sure that everyone is offered a pile of dirt and enough room to spend their days moving it around. That would be about as useful to us as having people drive 20 years from now or perform surgery 20-30 years from now. Of course, you'll get paid the same as everyone else because the difference in value to others of your work versus the person spending their newfound freedom exploring art, sports, nature, or whatever it is that they enjoy the most will be zero.
better to not own it till the laws / liability by Joe_Dragon · 2017-10-10 07:50 · Score: 1

better to not own it till the laws / liability issues have worked though the courts
"no need for anyone to ever take control" by Anonymous Coward · 2017-10-10 08:22 · Score: 0

yeah just sit there strapped into your chair and scream while you die horribly unable to do anything to save yourself, great fucking plan FUCK YOU AND YOUR SO CALLED AUTONOMOUS DEATH MACHINES
Level 5 is a huge step. by lazlo · 2017-10-10 08:29 · Score: 1

I understand that AI can be really smart, that sensors are really good at seeing objects, predicting collisions, reading road signs, that sort of thing, and they have the distinct advantage that they're always on, always looking in every direction, and don't get distracted. However, the one thing I cannot fathom being possible in a car at this level of autonomy is being able to handle a cop in an intersection directing traffic. I'm a human (at least according to CAPTCHAs), and humans are notorious for their ability to see patterns and derive meaning even when there isn't anything there, but sometimes even I have a really hard time figuring out what a cop directing traffic wants me to do. Are you saying go? Stop? Wait a second? Are you even trying to communicate with me, or someone else near me? Or maybe you're just throwing up random gang signs because you got bored?
That's honestly a really huge step in autonomy. Removing the steering wheel and pedals means you've increased confidence in your AI from being able to handle 99.999% of situations to being able to handle 100% of situations.

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Pound! Bang! Bin! Bash! is this a shell script or a Batman comic?
1. Re:Level 5 is a huge step. by Anonymous Coward · 2017-10-10 08:49 · Score: 0
  
  Nah, it just means recent changes in the distribution of gullible people just made it profitable.
2. Re:Level 5 is a huge step. by Anonymous Coward · 2017-10-10 08:53 · Score: 0
  
  The other day, I approached a closed lane with an officer standing in front of a spotlight and gesturing by extending his arm and pulling it back toward himself, a motion that isn't terribly perceptible even when there isn't a light shining directly into your eyes. My only option was to go slowly and hope for the best because I couldn't even see what he was doing until I was about 10 feet away from him. I'm guessing an autonomous car would have to just ignore the obviously malfunctioning meatbag and proceed when safe to do so. I'm sure the police union will love that...
3. Re:Level 5 is a huge step. by WrongMonkey · 2017-10-10 09:53 · Score: 1
  
  "Law enforcement officer detected. Additional driver feedback required. Please selected an option from the drop down menu"
4. Re:Level 5 is a huge step. by angel'o'sphere · 2017-10-10 10:16 · Score: 1
  
  Probably the officer can tell the car himself what to do.
  And when he gets annoyed about needing to tell so man cars what to do, he finally follows the "normal" traffic organizing protocol again.
  I'm also often quite amused what kind of show traffic regulators are giving ... once I saw one dancing (a fat male).
  
  --
  Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Here is the thing I think you are missing.... by gerald.edward.butler · 2017-10-10 08:38 · Score: 1

In a car AI we can break things like this:
1. Video/Utlrasonic/Lidar/etc capture
2. Processing and "Model Building" (builds 3D model in real-time from 1)
3. "Game-Like" AI uses the 3-D Model from 2 which is exactly equivalent to what would be in a game
This is, to the best of our knowledge, how our own brains do it.
I, like, Totally Recall something... by Whooty+McWhooface · 2017-10-10 09:33 · Score: 1

Got a name for them: Johnny Cabs. I, uh...., just made it up on the spot. Yeah...yeah, that's the ticket!
What is this nonsense about? by angel'o'sphere · 2017-10-10 09:58 · Score: 2

The self driving cars/autonomous cars/driver assistance systems, I was involved with, run on 4 - 6 ARM Cortex, 160MHz and are mostly idle all the time.
You don't need such absurd computing power for a self driving car.

--
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
1. Re: What is this nonsense about? by Anonymous Coward · 2017-10-10 12:54 · Score: 0
  
  Are those level 5?
2. Re:What is this nonsense about? by HuguesT · 2017-10-11 09:07 · Score: 1
  
  Once it is trained, maybe you don't. Training a deep CNN is computationally expensive.
3. Re:What is this nonsense about? by angel'o'sphere · 2017-10-11 09:29 · Score: 1
  
  Self driving cars are not run by artificial neural networks. Hence there is no training.
  They basically are run by image recognition ... regardless if via camera or radar/lidar.
  
  --
  Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
4. Re:What is this nonsense about? by Anonymous Coward · 2017-10-11 13:19 · Score: 0
  
  Boosting the stock price of NVIDIA and autonomous car developers.
  This is all still hypothetical. Level 2 is dangerous and pointless, it requires the driver to intervene in a split second, but deprives them of the stimulus needed to keep them engaged in driving. You need Level 3 to be useful but the only systems available are highly restricted e.g. driving at slow speeds on a German Autobahn. It's not till you get to Level 5 that it become economical because you can fire taxi drivers and truckers. Even Level 1 systems are only safe on freeways. They can only control one variable and at high speeds in variable conditions even collision avoidance systems can cause more accidents than they prevent.
  However, replacing cars, and as many trucks as you can, with bicycles and autonomous trains can be done today and would have massive economic and health benefits. What Silicon Valley wants is rarely turns out to be good for people.
Re:Autonomous Level 5 C-Level Positions by Joe_Dragon · 2017-10-10 12:00 · Score: 1

no cashiers = more shoplifting when you more or less have to self scan.
Re: Autonomous Level 5 C-Level Positions by Anonymous Coward · 2017-10-10 12:37 · Score: 0

Plumbing is literally a shit job. You'd have more luck getting me out to pick tomatoes with the Mexicans than to shovel shit. There's a reason no one wants that job.
Re: Autonomous Level 5 C-Level Positions by Junta · 2017-10-11 01:57 · Score: 1

The problem of course is that you don't need an infinite number of plumbers. There may come a time when we need some people to work, but we don't need or even want enough 'stuff' to justify everyone working. In all likelihood, many of those jobs will be highly skilled so you can't always just make up for it with more people and fewer hours (and even when we could, our current laws and reality discourage spreading out few hours among more people anyway).
So if you can't even 'offer' a livelihood, what's a fair way to provide for your populace to cover both those working and those for whom there doesn't exist work to do?

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XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Leveling Up by Anonymous Coward · 2017-10-11 04:42 · Score: 0

If the car runs over enough people does that give it the XP to become a level 6 car?
Software not included by HuguesT · 2017-10-11 09:10 · Score: 1

That system may be capable of running a level 5 autonomous vehicle one day, but no now out of the box. Since Nvidia only makes the hardware and associated libraries, the hard work of setting up systems with cameras and other sensors, training and certifying these systems still remains to be done.