It was on the motorway near Phoenix, Arizona, that I realised fully driverless cars might be quite a distant dream. And that was because our Google Waymo robo-taxi seemed incapable of leaving that motorway.
Myra Blanco, a researcher at the Virginia Tech Transport Institute, in the US, said we would probably see driverless cars in geo-fenced areas in two to five years but she was far more sceptical about full automation.
"That means going from the mountains, rural roadways, all the way to the city - that is going to take a little bit longer, probably potentially a couple of decades away," she said.
Far from the orderly roads of Arizona, I stood with the transport writer Christian Wolmar at the hectic crossroads outside Holborn Tube station, in central London.
He pointed out that pedestrians would have no hesitation in stepping out in front of driverless cars, knowing they were programmed to stop, and the result would be gridlock.
"Once you set the rule that driverless cars have to effectively kowtow to any pedestrian in the street, and pedestrians begin to learn that, then the whole balance of power in our streets will change," he said.
"The concept just doesn't survive the idea of mixed use streets."
In the UK, the Chancellor, Philip Hammond, has also promised that "genuine driverless cars" will be on the roads by 2021
QuoteEvery day I drive in traffic I see some situation and I think how will an auto deal with it.People used to say a chess program would never beat a grand champion, turns out you could do it in 1996 with a disappointingly trivial algoritm as long as you had enough computing power.
He pointed out that pedestrians would have no hesitation in stepping out in front of driverless cars, knowing they were programmed to stop, and the result would be gridlock.
"Once you set the rule that driverless cars have to effectively kowtow to any pedestrian in the street, and pedestrians begin to learn that, then the whole balance of power in our streets will change," he said.
"The concept just doesn't survive the idea of mixed use streets."
People used to say a chess program would never beat a grand champion, turns out you could do it in 1996 with a disappointingly trivial algoritm as long as you had enough computing power.Terribly flawed analogy. Chess has small finite set of rules on a fixed playing field. Increased computation and a smart algorithm was always destined to win.
QuoteEvery day I drive in traffic I see some situation and I think how will an auto deal with it.People used to say a chess program would never beat a grand champion, turns out you could do it in 1996 with a disappointingly trivial algoritm as long as you had enough computing power.
Terribly flawed analogy. Chess has small finite set of rules on a fixed playing field. Increased computation and a smart algorithm was always destined to win.
Autonomous cars are playing on an infinitely sized board under an almost infinite set of rules (finite set of fixed road rules, but plus infinite variability when thing change/go wrong)
It's maybe interesting to note that it was once assumed that the problem of a computer playing chess better than a human would be a milestone in creating an artificial intelligence.
As chess programs got better and better because of sophisticated algorithms and databases, it became clear that this was a misconception. So it was decided that playing soccer would be a better goal towards AI as it mimics the cooperation of living beings.
Nobody would deny that some aspects of driving can be handled by algorithms. Even human drivers are not fully "aware" most of the time. It's the short moments of awareness that are so hard to simulate.
QuoteMyra Blanco, a researcher at the Virginia Tech Transport Institute, in the US, said we would probably see driverless cars in geo-fenced areas in two to five years but she was far more sceptical about full automation.
"That means going from the mountains, rural roadways, all the way to the city - that is going to take a little bit longer, probably potentially a couple of decades away," she said.
QuoteMyra Blanco, a researcher at the Virginia Tech Transport Institute, in the US, said we would probably see driverless cars in geo-fenced areas in two to five years but she was far more sceptical about full automation.
"That means going from the mountains, rural roadways, all the way to the city - that is going to take a little bit longer, probably potentially a couple of decades away," she said.I.e. same as I've been saying and most experts are saying.
In Sweden they already have a self driving truck on a public road without a driver (there isn't even room for a driver).
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/05/15/tech/einride-self-driving-trucks/index.html
Yes, exactly, it was said that you would need full AI to defeat humans in a game like chess (sounds familiar?). Turn's out chess wasn't that hard. Driving is a tougher problem perhaps, but there's nothing magical about that either.
Hardly.
To solve Go you needed neural nets, so that was a bigger step forward (but it was still old technology that suddenly had enough computing power to make it practically useful).
Hardly.
Robot Soccer is not believed to require full AI. Sure, it's challenging, but it's not the game itself that requires a lot of "thinking", it requires a very agile robot which is a challenging task mechanically. Building a soccer playing robot team requires a wide mix of skills which makes it a nice fun challenge for a team of students.
No one is trying to make a full AI to drive cars (unless you listen to Musk).
Having a self-aware AI in every car would be crazy and unethical, no one is anywhere near creating full AI.
Self driving cars will not be AI, it will be dumb machines that can solve most driving problems autonomously.
There will be some driving tasks humans can handle better, but there will be other driving tasks that self driving cars handle better. And it's not about who's best, it's about getting the self driving car "good enough" so that it can be trusted on public roads. (Well, one explicitly stated goal is to reduce traffic accident rates, so they will have to be a lot better in that regard.)
QuoteEvery day I drive in traffic I see some situation and I think how will an auto deal with it.People used to say a chess program would never beat a grand champion, turns out you could do it in 1996 with a disappointingly trivial algoritm as long as you had enough computing power.
Terribly flawed analogy. Chess has small finite set of rules on a fixed playing field. Increased computation and a smart algorithm was always destined to win.
Autonomous cars are playing on an infinitely sized board under an almost infinite set of rules (finite set of fixed road rules, but plus infinite variability when thing change/go wrong)Quite right, chess is a so called perfect information game, but it wasn't meant as an analogy but as an example of other things that were deemed impossible for a computer to do by many 20-30 years ago. Since Deep Blue won over Kasparov in 1996 it's been more than 20 years, and computer power have continued to increase exponentially. Things that weren't possible then have become possible now, and that is quite unintuitive to many, and maybe why so many believe self driving cars are impossible.
There will be some driving tasks humans can handle better, but there will be other driving tasks that self driving cars handle better. And it's not about who's best, it's about getting the self driving car "good enough" so that it can be trusted on public roads. (Well, one explicitly stated goal is to reduce traffic accident rates, so they will have to be a lot better in that regard.)A dumb machine will never be good enough to be entrusted with people'e lives on public roads.
People expect a much higher degree of perfection from computers, and when people start dying in autonomous cars (as they have been already) public opinion will not be kind.
And the argument that "but self driving cars are statistically safer" will not hold water, people won't care, they'll still trust humans more for a very long time.
And after the first few deaths, hell will rain down.
No one is saying they are "impossible".
But they are currently flawed and will be for a very long time, the infinite variability in conditions practically guarantee this.
Your statement about chess most certainly is an analogy, otherwise it's pointless to mention.
Many (most?) people make the huge mistake that because self driving cars can do albeit impressive things now, that perfection is only a few years away. But it doesn't work like that with open ended complex problems in an infinitely variable playing field like self driving cars will have endure.
Smarter people do understand this which is why there is much talk about them only truly being practical when they have their own dedicated lanes, or once they are the majority on the road etc.
It's the same thing with humanoid robots. People see the Boston Dynamics robots etc and think that perfection is only a few years away. Not even close.
Actually, since the mid 90s, quite a lot of people uttered something like "Robocup is the next AI challenge" .
http://theconversation.com/why-football-not-chess-is-the-true-final-frontier-for-robotic-artificial-intelligence-62296
https://medium.com/syncedreview/having-notched-impressive-victories-over-human-professionals-in-go-atari-games-and-most-recently-30b88ee363e9
To solve Go you needed neural nets, so that was a bigger step forward (but it was still old technology that suddenly had enough computing power to make it practically useful).Hard to say if Go couldn't have been beaten with traditional algorithms just because nobody managed (up to now). Anyway, it's still a very well defined environment with very strict rules and without realtime requirements (turn based like chess), so something like playing soccer on the level of humans is actually much more challenging.
Actually, probably nobody can tell if this can still be done by algorithms but I kinda doubt it.
No one is trying to make a full AI to drive cars (unless you listen to Musk).Well, an artificial intelligence on the level of a human driver is needed to cope with every possible situation in a realworld environment as good as a human driver. IMHO, whoever denies this, underestimates the complexity.
Self driving cars will not be AI, it will be dumb machines that can solve most driving problems autonomously.Nah, this will never work reliably in the real world. It will work though in a restricted environment but that just doesn't really help for true autonomous driving.
There will be some driving tasks humans can handle better, but there will be other driving tasks that self driving cars handle better. And it's not about who's best, it's about getting the self driving car "good enough" so that it can be trusted on public roads. (Well, one explicitly stated goal is to reduce traffic accident rates, so they will have to be a lot better in that regard.)A dumb machine will never be good enough to be entrusted with people'e lives on public roads.
Our sensor array is average at best and easily swamped by environmental factors. Our reaction time is atrocious and the worst part is probably that we aren't properly aware of our own capabilities and limitations. Worldwide millions of people die in traffic each year and in the US alone 40000 people meet their untimely end each year.
The strategy part of soccer isn't hard, ...
Or in the words of the first article you linked to:
"Technical problems of hitherto unimaginable complexity have to be solved: timing a kick while running, identifying the ball against a glaring sun, r [...]"
With autonomous driving the mechanical part isn't a problem, because both humans and computers drive the same kind of machine (i.e. cars) which we already know how to make.
Soccer strategy really isn't hard. One reason go is harder than chess is because the search space is much much larger than chess, so just adding a little bit more computing power wouldn't have been effective any time soon.
Let's take a look at how computers perform at imperfect information games that is much more difficult than soccer from a strategy point of view:
A self driving car doesn't need "to cope with every possible situation in a realworld environment as good as a human driver".
"True" autonomous driving is a red herring, what does it even mean? Humans also drive in a restricted environment; we only drive along certain roads, we try to follow well defined rules and we sometimes (quite often) fail miserably and need help from others to get out of a tricky situation.
There will be some driving tasks humans can handle better, but there will be other driving tasks that self driving cars handle better. And it's not about who's best, it's about getting the self driving car "good enough" so that it can be trusted on public roads. (Well, one explicitly stated goal is to reduce traffic accident rates, so they will have to be a lot better in that regard.)
Except, they already are. People are already testing without human drivers on public roads.
The strategy part of soccer isn't hard, ...Who talked about strategy? It's about the player judging the situation and making decisions in realtime.
Or in the words of the first article you linked to:
"Technical problems of hitherto unimaginable complexity have to be solved: timing a kick while running, identifying the ball against a glaring sun, r [...]"
With autonomous driving the mechanical part isn't a problem, because both humans and computers drive the same kind of machine (i.e. cars) which we already know how to make.Even in the cherry picked quote, you left have these statements about timing and object recognition. Additionally, a humanoid soccer robot playing against a human (since this is the goal!) would have to predict human behavior - exactly as an autonomous car. It's just that the complexity is much higher for the car as there are so many possibilities for humans and animals and what not to interact with the car.
You continue to ignore that even a large number of turns with fixed movement rules is a total piece of cake compared to any real world movement scenario.
Let's take a look at how computers perform at imperfect information games that is much more difficult than soccer from a strategy point of view:Again, that's a virtual environment where nothing unexpected can happen. Letting aside if the computer performs image analysis at all and that the movement control is very basic: also the actions of each unit are clearly defined etc. Agreed, it's real time, but very, very far away from the complexity of the real world.
A self driving car doesn't need "to cope with every possible situation in a realworld environment as good as a human driver".Sure it has to. Else the whole thing is totally pointless and must be restricted to confined areas where the possible interactions with the real world are limited to a degree the dumb car can handle.
"True" autonomous driving is a red herring, what does it even mean? Humans also drive in a restricted environment; we only drive along certain roads, we try to follow well defined rules and we sometimes (quite often) fail miserably and need help from others to get out of a tricky situation.Humans can follow rules but also decide when they better shouldn't. If something blocks the lane, a human driver will be able to react in a sensible way. A dumb car will just stop and block the traffic. Now even this can cause deaths if the car is not able to let an ambulance pass.
Except, they already are. People are already testing without human drivers on public roads.AFAIK that's not even true. I'm not aware of any tests on public roads without a human driver who can take over at any time. And if this driver is not 100% focused, this can result in a dead pedestrian as we've learned.
Humans can follow rules but also decide when they better shouldn't. If something blocks the lane, a human driver will be able to react in a sensible way. A dumb car will just stop and block the traffic. Now even this can cause deaths if the car is not able to let an ambulance pass.
I don't think you have a driver's license or (while being in a car) pay any attention to the stupid stuff other people do while driving a car (or attempting to do so). Especially the Saturdays and Sundays are bad.
Well, maybe you should train that thinking thing a bit then. Anyway, of course there a dumb drivers as there are lots of dumb people. Still, even a stupid driver has a strong interest in getting forward instead of just waiting forever. Just watch what happens if a traffic light gets stuck in the red phase. Human drivers will tolerate this for a few minutes and then the first ones will either ignore the red light or turn around or maybe even call the police. Nobody will just stand there and wait forever.
That's why everyone is planning on ride-share or taxi services I believe. There will always be an operations center that is in contact with all the cars. If there is a problem the computer or the passengers can call for help. Operators can then remote control or guide the car until it can manage by itself again, or in worst case send a replacement car and a technician.