Sure thing princess. Tell us about your travels through Canada, Europe, Russia, and Asia..
Europe and Asia. Quite extensive. Normally there's no snow. In Southern England, whenever there was snow, everything died. Places like Singapore and Hong Kong are also fairly famous for not having snow.
Even then, why... Just.... Why.... do I need to point out over and over again that the difficult places won't be the first ones these will be done in? Low hanging fruit will be picked first, technology will be refined, problems will be overcome, and as it progresses, it'll go to the difficult country.
Just... Why do I need to point this out over and over again? What part of it isn't so obvious that you feel the need to ask the question?
I can see why you're posting anonymously.... I would, too, if I was being that daft.
When labor is cheap, the urge to automation is much less.
Which goes back to making me wonder why you bothered mentioning those countries. It won't be tested there. It'll be tested in ideal Western cities (there are many) where the technology will be refined, will become cheaper, and from where it'll expand.
At first? Probably not.
Eventually, if that actually becomes a significant problem. Probably.
Does a human have a good track record for recognising either? (Personally, I've never actually seen a truck whose tire is about to blow. If I saw one tomorrow, I probably would't know what I was looking at, and consequently wouldn't realise I should back off)
I'm also not sure I've ever had something gradually loosen and start to fall off a car in front of me. With high wind and all that, when it's happened, it's happened pretty quickly.
Still clutching at straws trying to prove this thing isn't perfect?
Well... It isn't perfect. But it doesn't need to be to be worthwhile.
They're not using visible light.I understand that LIDAR can see through hedges. So I'd guess if it returns empty on the appropriate wavelength, it's not a problem.
What about one with half a cinder block hidden in it? (Kids are assholes)
Isn't this something that's a problem for a human driver anyway?
Kids moving toy? OK build an AI that identifies kids toys in an image. Humans will infer the kid chasing the toy. Think about doing that with AI.
I'd imagine all it needs to know is that something is moving in front of it.
Also, I've got a kid. Even with today's human drivers, I don't let my kid (a four year old) play near the road.
Why?
Because I know there's still a very good chance my daughter will run out in front of that driver and get blatted. I'm really not seeing how this is worse
If you can see it, there's a very good chance the computer can see it.
Also: The people designing this are probably quite aware of its limitations. We're at the dawn of this technology.
It'll start where it's easy and expand to where it's hard.
You can, but people don't.
Those who do are a very tiny minority, and won't be enough constantly enough to affect market demand.
If you're going to argue creep factor and say that's an option, you really need to consider how rare it is for the vast majority of people to do this.
Also: Have you seen numberplate recognition on traffic cameras? If someone in that position wants to track you through any reasonably inhabited area, tracked you shall be.
Your best bet in any case is to not park where you want to go, but get out and walk (and hope there are no cameras along the way... GL with this in London)
Lower ROI as well.
A thing something someone calling himself Shanghai bill should be aware of is that in poor countries, taxi drivers are cheap as chips.
Which means there's fewer saved dollars (yuan, whatever) from replacing a driver.
A thing someone calling himself that should also recognise is that a predictable legal system is far more valuable than lower legal expenses.
Finally, a thing someone calling himself that should understand is that for China in particular, it's cheaper to kill the person than to simply disable that person.
Reasonable. Can't say that hitting any of those is a common problem here...
Kangaroo on the other hand... However, the centre is a bit lower.
They're still solid masses of lean meat, bone and muscle though.
Well, the response to that point is:
If a human driver has time to consider that, then there probably isn't going to be an accident anyway.
Accidents are normally a surprise. We've got a split second to react. If we're still weighing the moral pros and cons, we've probably already hit whatever was directly in front of us/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] - it was the kind of driving error humans rarely make (at least not this human).
This would be why we don't bother with red light cameras. Because people rarely run them.
Another one of a google car hitting a bus in motion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] - again not a common accident if you simply checked your mirrors before changing lanes (busses are not hard to see) - not to mention at least where I live - it was a moving violation too - you can't turn left from a right turn only lane at an intersection.
When driving, not many problems are really major problems if you're paying attention to what you do.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] - another uber crash - probably the other drivers fault, but again failing to yield was an edge case - most people would have slowed to a stop rather than crash. Programmers hate edge cases.
As long as the other person's paying attention...
I have no doubt they will be safer than normal drivers, but who do you blame when (not if) they make some critical error.
Google's view is that Google is the driver and fines should be sent there. Same with lawsuits. (I'd assume they buy insurance or self insure.
The main thing is safer than normal drivers. Once you've got that, everything else is minor. You're talking about lives saved vs questions of insurance claims.
Regarding the creep factor. We did that with mobile phones. All of it. Happily. With a smile on our face and a song in our heart.
And re: Congestion - So it replaces taxis first.
And then, yeah, it might. As the cars drive out to some big parking lot outside of the city, waiting to be called.
But, you might have noticed if you've driven into a city, that people are generally going in one direction on their commute. All that changes is that roads that were empty now have some cars on them.
Traffic leaving the city isn't going to cause the slightest problem to traffic entering it, and vice versa.
"Most of the world" is actually closer to NYC than L.A. in pedestrian/car/cyclist dynamics. See traffic in most of Asia, India, or Latin America.
Why do you think this is going to start in poor countries?
You pick the low hanging fruit first and expand as you learn and technology improves.
Why does this need to be explained?
So human drivers have failed.
I dunno, dude. It's getting pretty tiresome to respond to your (and other's) random specific scenarios, so many of which humans already fail hardcore in. Or to your weird ones that rely on stuff like it currently being OK for pedestrians to just walk out into busy intersections.... It's not.
If NYC is difficult, it doesn't get done yet. It's got about a 10th of a percent of the world's population. Do it in easier places, learn and expand.
If you come up with a place where it's unsuitable, ask yourself the percent of the world where that isn't a problem. It starts in those places first and we learn.
This won't be perfect. We're not perfect either. It only needs to be better than us.
Over all better than us. Not better than us in every single specific scenario you can think of, but globally, lead to a reduction in fatalities.
>>Would it have known it was a deer? LIDAR doesn't distinguish types of obstacles. Maybe it was a bird. Maybe suddenly stopping with superhuman reflexes while there's a big truck following you isn't such a good idea
It would have known how big it was and it was there.
Which is about all that we're capable of processing in a split second.
If you're going to try and claim that, while doing this, we'd also be conscious of the truck behind us and acting accordingly, I'm just going to say you're off the planet.
Although I would take this as an opportunity to point out that that's a good argument for automating the truck as well. So both have superhuman reflexes.
Seriously, when you say something, try and think real hard about what an actual normal person is going to do in that same situation.
For a start, their reaction time is a tiny fraction of yours.
And their ability to maintain focus on multiple things puts yours in the dust.
For a second... That's not really a problem with the cars, but idiot pedestrians. I mean, your car was stopped. It's pretty clear that they've simply got a death wish.
What will be proven, however, is that it wasn't the car's fault, but that the idiot walked in front of a ton of metal going at speed. Doesn't matter who the driver is in that case, but at least there's no ambiguity about whose fault it is.
>>Sorry, jump to about 1:05 in the video for the "mess" I describe -- autonomous cars flowing continuously around each other without lights or stops.
Do you commonly walk into the middle of a busy intersection? Is this a normal thing in your daily walk? If so, how are you still alive?
Personally, in a place like that, I like to use this thing I call "Pedestrian crossings"
Where there's this super convenient button that makes a light change colour. Traffic then stops.
Sure, autonomous cars won't need them for dealing with each other, but they're still going to be around for humans who don't share your deathwish.
Huge, society-changing ones that require massive changes do.
We tend to underestimate the smaller ones.
Ask anyone who's been put out of work by a robot.
The number of traffic jams and accidents I saw makes me treat that statement with extreme suspicion.
Also: Lots of places don't have snow.
Huge amounts of them.
Even those that do only have snow at particular times of the year (Y'know... Winter) - The exceptions obviously being the arctic and antarctic. Neither of which are known for their heavy traffic.
Key word there is also "Currently" - This has a historical tendency to change.
>>Assuming the car survived long enough for the data to be uploaded. Also, what if there's no mobile signal?
So, basically, you're assuming that this dip would result in immediate and catastrophic destruction of the car and absolutely everything inside it.
Does this dip make the car spin off into a constantly running compactor? That's about the only scenario I can imagine in which that sort of total destruction is likely...
Well... That or an active volcano...
As far as no mobile signal goes... Those places are pretty rare these days. Even then, it seems a safe bet that if an accident that catastrophic happened, someone would fix the root cause in the road's flawed design.
You're really stretching to think of scenarios in which this is going to do a bad job.
>>Because sensors still aren't as good as human eyes at recognising many hazards. Also, an autonomous car can't think about the best option for the situation unless the engineers building it anticipated that specific situation. They're never going to be able to anticipate everything.>What happens if there's a rock slide and there's a boulder rolling down the hill towards the road, potentially colliding with the car? Were the sensors designed to detect that? Was the AI designed to predict boulder trajectories on uneven terrain? Is stopping in the potential path of a rock slide even a good idea?
When I'm driving in a situation like that, I'm looking ahead of me. The rock is coming from my side.
Seriously, where are you driving that this is a major problem though? Is boulders going across your path at speed a normal occurrence in your daily commute?
There seems to be this absurd obsession with coming up with unusual scenarios to prove that AI driving is useless when human drivers are causing over a million fatalities per year (As of 2010, anyway. I'm guessing by now it's around two million, but whatever. This ignores accidents as a whole. This is just failures that result in a death)
It doesn't need to be perfect, it needs to be better, overall, than the meatbags currently driving. Which is not nearly as difficult as making sure it's perfect in scenarios in which human drivers are likely to fail as well.
I need to be very clear here:
And cyclists are a gray area. However, they should always be conscious of what's going on around them, and not do anything unpredictable.
If you're calling it "Traffic" pedestrians SHOULD NOT BE IN IT.
If you've got pedestrians wandering through traffic, there's a bigger problem.
>>It wouldn't make a worse decision than a human. But the "driver" will have deeper pockets and more to lose, so there will need to be a legal structure as to what to do in such a case (and others).
THat's what insurance is for (even for large companies like that... Although they might self insure)
Also, road injuries and fatalities are expected to plummet... Which should make insurance far more affordable.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure thing princess. Tell us about your travels through Canada, Europe, Russia, and Asia..
Europe and Asia. Quite extensive. Normally there's no snow. In Southern England, whenever there was snow, everything died. Places like Singapore and Hong Kong are also fairly famous for not having snow.
Even then, why... Just.... Why.... do I need to point out over and over again that the difficult places won't be the first ones these will be done in? Low hanging fruit will be picked first, technology will be refined, problems will be overcome, and as it progresses, it'll go to the difficult country.
Just... Why do I need to point this out over and over again? What part of it isn't so obvious that you feel the need to ask the question?
I can see why you're posting anonymously.... I would, too, if I was being that daft.
When labor is cheap, the urge to automation is much less.
Which goes back to making me wonder why you bothered mentioning those countries. It won't be tested there. It'll be tested in ideal Western cities (there are many) where the technology will be refined, will become cheaper, and from where it'll expand.
At first? Probably not. Eventually, if that actually becomes a significant problem. Probably. Does a human have a good track record for recognising either? (Personally, I've never actually seen a truck whose tire is about to blow. If I saw one tomorrow, I probably would't know what I was looking at, and consequently wouldn't realise I should back off) I'm also not sure I've ever had something gradually loosen and start to fall off a car in front of me. With high wind and all that, when it's happened, it's happened pretty quickly. Still clutching at straws trying to prove this thing isn't perfect? Well... It isn't perfect. But it doesn't need to be to be worthwhile.
Is a paper bag in the road an obstacle?
They're not using visible light.I understand that LIDAR can see through hedges. So I'd guess if it returns empty on the appropriate wavelength, it's not a problem.
What about one with half a cinder block hidden in it? (Kids are assholes)
Isn't this something that's a problem for a human driver anyway?
Kids moving toy? OK build an AI that identifies kids toys in an image. Humans will infer the kid chasing the toy. Think about doing that with AI.
I'd imagine all it needs to know is that something is moving in front of it. Also, I've got a kid. Even with today's human drivers, I don't let my kid (a four year old) play near the road. Why? Because I know there's still a very good chance my daughter will run out in front of that driver and get blatted. I'm really not seeing how this is worse
If you can see it, there's a very good chance the computer can see it. Also: The people designing this are probably quite aware of its limitations. We're at the dawn of this technology. It'll start where it's easy and expand to where it's hard.
You can, but people don't. Those who do are a very tiny minority, and won't be enough constantly enough to affect market demand. If you're going to argue creep factor and say that's an option, you really need to consider how rare it is for the vast majority of people to do this. Also: Have you seen numberplate recognition on traffic cameras? If someone in that position wants to track you through any reasonably inhabited area, tracked you shall be. Your best bet in any case is to not park where you want to go, but get out and walk (and hope there are no cameras along the way... GL with this in London)
Looser regulations, and far fewer legal expenses.
Lower ROI as well. A thing something someone calling himself Shanghai bill should be aware of is that in poor countries, taxi drivers are cheap as chips. Which means there's fewer saved dollars (yuan, whatever) from replacing a driver. A thing someone calling himself that should also recognise is that a predictable legal system is far more valuable than lower legal expenses. Finally, a thing someone calling himself that should understand is that for China in particular, it's cheaper to kill the person than to simply disable that person.
Reasonable. Can't say that hitting any of those is a common problem here... Kangaroo on the other hand... However, the centre is a bit lower. They're still solid masses of lean meat, bone and muscle though.
Well, the response to that point is: If a human driver has time to consider that, then there probably isn't going to be an accident anyway. Accidents are normally a surprise. We've got a split second to react. If we're still weighing the moral pros and cons, we've probably already hit whatever was directly in front of us/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] - it was the kind of driving error humans rarely make (at least not this human).
This would be why we don't bother with red light cameras. Because people rarely run them.
Another one of a google car hitting a bus in motion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] - again not a common accident if you simply checked your mirrors before changing lanes (busses are not hard to see) - not to mention at least where I live - it was a moving violation too - you can't turn left from a right turn only lane at an intersection.
When driving, not many problems are really major problems if you're paying attention to what you do.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com] - another uber crash - probably the other drivers fault, but again failing to yield was an edge case - most people would have slowed to a stop rather than crash. Programmers hate edge cases.
As long as the other person's paying attention...
I have no doubt they will be safer than normal drivers, but who do you blame when (not if) they make some critical error.
Google's view is that Google is the driver and fines should be sent there. Same with lawsuits. (I'd assume they buy insurance or self insure. The main thing is safer than normal drivers. Once you've got that, everything else is minor. You're talking about lives saved vs questions of insurance claims.
Regarding the creep factor. We did that with mobile phones. All of it. Happily. With a smile on our face and a song in our heart. And re: Congestion - So it replaces taxis first. And then, yeah, it might. As the cars drive out to some big parking lot outside of the city, waiting to be called. But, you might have noticed if you've driven into a city, that people are generally going in one direction on their commute. All that changes is that roads that were empty now have some cars on them. Traffic leaving the city isn't going to cause the slightest problem to traffic entering it, and vice versa.
Compare the relative value of a pilot's salary with the contents of a plane and a taxi driver's salary with the contents of his taxi.
So there's a bigger problem. Or, as I've said previously. You do NYC later. Heaps of cities around the world this can be started in.
"Most of the world" is actually closer to NYC than L.A. in pedestrian/car/cyclist dynamics. See traffic in most of Asia, India, or Latin America.
Why do you think this is going to start in poor countries? You pick the low hanging fruit first and expand as you learn and technology improves. Why does this need to be explained?
Normal? As if anything about NYC traffic is normal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
So human drivers have failed. I dunno, dude. It's getting pretty tiresome to respond to your (and other's) random specific scenarios, so many of which humans already fail hardcore in. Or to your weird ones that rely on stuff like it currently being OK for pedestrians to just walk out into busy intersections.... It's not. If NYC is difficult, it doesn't get done yet. It's got about a 10th of a percent of the world's population. Do it in easier places, learn and expand. If you come up with a place where it's unsuitable, ask yourself the percent of the world where that isn't a problem. It starts in those places first and we learn. This won't be perfect. We're not perfect either. It only needs to be better than us. Over all better than us. Not better than us in every single specific scenario you can think of, but globally, lead to a reduction in fatalities.
>>Would it have known it was a deer? LIDAR doesn't distinguish types of obstacles. Maybe it was a bird. Maybe suddenly stopping with superhuman reflexes while there's a big truck following you isn't such a good idea It would have known how big it was and it was there. Which is about all that we're capable of processing in a split second. If you're going to try and claim that, while doing this, we'd also be conscious of the truck behind us and acting accordingly, I'm just going to say you're off the planet. Although I would take this as an opportunity to point out that that's a good argument for automating the truck as well. So both have superhuman reflexes. Seriously, when you say something, try and think real hard about what an actual normal person is going to do in that same situation.
For a start, their reaction time is a tiny fraction of yours. And their ability to maintain focus on multiple things puts yours in the dust. For a second... That's not really a problem with the cars, but idiot pedestrians. I mean, your car was stopped. It's pretty clear that they've simply got a death wish. What will be proven, however, is that it wasn't the car's fault, but that the idiot walked in front of a ton of metal going at speed. Doesn't matter who the driver is in that case, but at least there's no ambiguity about whose fault it is.
>>Sorry, jump to about 1:05 in the video for the "mess" I describe -- autonomous cars flowing continuously around each other without lights or stops. Do you commonly walk into the middle of a busy intersection? Is this a normal thing in your daily walk? If so, how are you still alive? Personally, in a place like that, I like to use this thing I call "Pedestrian crossings" Where there's this super convenient button that makes a light change colour. Traffic then stops. Sure, autonomous cars won't need them for dealing with each other, but they're still going to be around for humans who don't share your deathwish.
Huge, society-changing ones that require massive changes do. We tend to underestimate the smaller ones. Ask anyone who's been put out of work by a robot.
The number of traffic jams and accidents I saw makes me treat that statement with extreme suspicion. Also: Lots of places don't have snow. Huge amounts of them. Even those that do only have snow at particular times of the year (Y'know... Winter) - The exceptions obviously being the arctic and antarctic. Neither of which are known for their heavy traffic. Key word there is also "Currently" - This has a historical tendency to change.
>>Assuming the car survived long enough for the data to be uploaded. Also, what if there's no mobile signal? So, basically, you're assuming that this dip would result in immediate and catastrophic destruction of the car and absolutely everything inside it. Does this dip make the car spin off into a constantly running compactor? That's about the only scenario I can imagine in which that sort of total destruction is likely... Well... That or an active volcano... As far as no mobile signal goes... Those places are pretty rare these days. Even then, it seems a safe bet that if an accident that catastrophic happened, someone would fix the root cause in the road's flawed design. You're really stretching to think of scenarios in which this is going to do a bad job.
>>Because sensors still aren't as good as human eyes at recognising many hazards. Also, an autonomous car can't think about the best option for the situation unless the engineers building it anticipated that specific situation. They're never going to be able to anticipate everything.>What happens if there's a rock slide and there's a boulder rolling down the hill towards the road, potentially colliding with the car? Were the sensors designed to detect that? Was the AI designed to predict boulder trajectories on uneven terrain? Is stopping in the potential path of a rock slide even a good idea? When I'm driving in a situation like that, I'm looking ahead of me. The rock is coming from my side. Seriously, where are you driving that this is a major problem though? Is boulders going across your path at speed a normal occurrence in your daily commute? There seems to be this absurd obsession with coming up with unusual scenarios to prove that AI driving is useless when human drivers are causing over a million fatalities per year (As of 2010, anyway. I'm guessing by now it's around two million, but whatever. This ignores accidents as a whole. This is just failures that result in a death) It doesn't need to be perfect, it needs to be better, overall, than the meatbags currently driving. Which is not nearly as difficult as making sure it's perfect in scenarios in which human drivers are likely to fail as well.
Also... That mess is the creation of human drivers. How is replacing them with autonomous drivers going to make things worse, exactly?
I need to be very clear here: And cyclists are a gray area. However, they should always be conscious of what's going on around them, and not do anything unpredictable. If you're calling it "Traffic" pedestrians SHOULD NOT BE IN IT. If you've got pedestrians wandering through traffic, there's a bigger problem.
>>It wouldn't make a worse decision than a human. But the "driver" will have deeper pockets and more to lose, so there will need to be a legal structure as to what to do in such a case (and others). THat's what insurance is for (even for large companies like that... Although they might self insure) Also, road injuries and fatalities are expected to plummet... Which should make insurance far more affordable.