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| Tesla Full Self Driving (FSD) info - interesting stuff! |
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| TerraHertz:
I find the topic of self driving cars fascinating. Not so much for the technology, but what it reveals about people's not-so-rational dreams and expectations. Much the same as the apparent yearning for 'AI servants and industrial production', but with the added dimension of staking your life on the software controlling a high speed vehicle. A few points: * Any highly automated system with some kind of always-on net connectivity will be susceptible to remote hijacking. Don't even bother to talk about computer security, in a world where (for eg) hardware level backdoors are built into all contemporary Intel CPUs, all network routers, all cell phones, etc. Ask Michael Hastings about the pros and cons of remote vehicle operation. * All complex software systems are prone to obscure bugs and design mistakes. Some are more stupid than others (eg Boeing's 'please fly us into the ground right now' brilliant idea.) * The nature of the problem prevents 'perfection.' Road driving is a highly complex task, with infinite numbers of obscure marginal and tricky cases. Even alert, skilled humans get fooled sometimes and end up in accidents. Some of which are high speed and fatal. No level of AI is going to completely eliminate all situational f*ck-ups. Self-driving cars ultimately involve a statistical risk evaluation: What added probability of death or maiming do you accept for the 'convenience' of not being in control of the vehicle yourself? * What's the actual benefit of not being in control? What kind of person could actually nap, or concentrate on some productive task, while being carried at speed by an AI system? I definitely never could. Idle conversation, maybe. But that's not something I'd choose to even want, let alone try. I can relax in trains, because that infrastructure is very good at achieving an extremely low risk. Planes, because again quite low risk, and skilled humans are in charge (unless a new Boeing...) Cars on ordinary roads - never! * At a political level, there are too many ideologues trying to impose restrictions on individual travel, and also track such travel. Taxing travel at a rate per Km, requires logging of travel. Automated cars can be legislated to support that. Tracking for social control, ditto. Schemes like China's 'social credit', also would find automated cars useful. How about governments mandating things like rationed travel, selected days when you are allowed to travel, zones you are not allowed to enter, and so on? Automated cars enable all that kind of bullshit. * Privacy. Given that Google, Amazon, etc 'home assistants' are being revealed to upload a lot of information about conversations in the home (and commonly making comical interpretation mistakes), do you want that in cars as well? * Legal liability. I can't wait till this issue becomes prominent through increasing numbers of accidents in which no human adult was responsible. I wonder if legal principles for dealing with AI in general, will be founded in road accident case precedent? That will go well, not. Then there are the fundamental philosophical issues with increasingly general purpose AI systems (which is where self-driving cars will be forced to go, by virtue of the complexity of the problem.) There are many questions here. For instance, how wide is the window of workability, in which the car is smart enough to get the job done, but not smart enough to get in a snit about something you said to it, and refuse to do the job? (Or decide to suicide, with you as passenger.) Meanwhile, I'm keeping my old, pre-engine-management-computer car. Self-driving car technology is good for one thing - entertainment, in watching a fairly predictable developing social insanity. |
| apis:
--- Quote from: TerraHertz on April 30, 2019, 10:04:53 am ---but with the added dimension of staking your life on the software controlling a high speed vehicle. --- End quote --- Why trust a car at all, it's a pile of complicated software and hardware. Most people stake their life on incredible complex hardware and software every day. --- Quote from: TerraHertz on April 30, 2019, 10:04:53 am ---Even alert, skilled humans get fooled sometimes and end up in accidents. --- End quote --- No one thinks self driving cars will be perfect, but some people realise that neither are humans. In fact humans are **** poor drivers and that's the main reason why replacing them with a computer is not such a bad idea. Even the Tesla "autopilot" cruise control is claimed to already have much better accident statistics than human drivers. It's safe to be a naysayer regarding this because it won't become widespread overnight, might take decades, but self driving cars are no doubt the future, mainly because it will be cheaper than human drivers and money rules. I understand that some people might enjoy driving and not like the idea of a future where the average man might not have the option to drive, but other than that I don't really understand why anyone would be against robotic cars or other forms of automation. Just seems like ludditis to me. |
| apis:
Waymo disengagement rate for 2018 was 1 disengage per 11,017 miles out of 1.28 million self-driven miles in CA 2018. That corresponds to about one disengage per year for an average driver in the US. "By the end of 2018 we’d driven another six million miles, which means our self-driving cars have now covered 10+ million real-world road miles. The connection between our real-world miles coupled with our 7+ billion miles in our simulation is key to our improvement rate." https://medium.com/waymo/an-update-on-waymo-disengagements-in-california-d671fd31c3e2 "At one disengagement per 11,017 miles, Waymo’s closest competitor is GM-owned Cruise Automation at 5,205 miles. Apple’s effort is last at a disengagement every 1.1 miles, though the company disagrees with the metric." :) |
| nctnico:
--- Quote from: TerraHertz on April 30, 2019, 10:04:53 am ---* The nature of the problem prevents 'perfection.' Road driving is a highly complex task, with infinite numbers of obscure marginal and tricky cases. Even alert, skilled humans get fooled sometimes and end up in accidents. Some of which are high speed and fatal. No level of AI is going to completely eliminate all situational f*ck-ups. Self-driving cars ultimately involve a statistical risk evaluation: What added probability of death or maiming do you accept for the 'convenience' of not being in control of the vehicle yourself? --- End quote --- Now you are assuming self driving cars will always be worse than human drivers. Automatic anti-skid systems (which exist for a long time) are already proving you wrong. |
| Rick Law:
--- Quote from: extide on April 29, 2019, 02:16:18 am --- --- Quote from: Rick Law on April 28, 2019, 09:15:54 pm ---Mercedes tried that with the 190's in the 1980s. It didn't go over too well. --- End quote --- FWIW, The 190 series became the C class, which is not only the most popular model that Mercedes sells in the US, it's the most popular model out of all luxury brands. --- End quote --- You have a point there. I am thinking how snob-appeal may affect sales to the rich clientele. I don't think anyone will dispute that it has an impact, but it would be merely one of the many variables that would affect the financials. No doubt some of the S class buyers would rather not the C class folks clogging up the shop, but when you add up all the dollars the seller/manufacturer make, the case is not as clear whether it is more profitable to focus on high end. Your point is absolutely right and I have to adjust my thinking here. Walking myself back from snob-appeal and related, the issue of quality remains. I still stand by my point that for Tesla FSD is not as important as interior trim falling off new cars or wind-shield cracking by itself. That two were both cited by Consumers Report as quality issues. When the car is falling apart by itself, mean while, Tesla is hoping I would trust my life to that car auto-driving me to somewhere... That I think is silly. |
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