Machine Learning Algorithms

[tggzzz]

My 2008 Subaru [1] has camera-based adaptive cruise control and I use it a huge percentage of the time that I'm driving in traffic, whether city or highway. Awesome that it operates right down to torque converter creep speed (or below, with brakes).

I think it's pretty much an optimum level of automation. You need to steer, so you need to watch the road, but it's amazing how much cognitive load it removes, based on how much longer I can drive without being fatigued.

I haven't driven one, but that seems reasonable. The key point is that all concerned know the driver is always in control.

[brucehoult]

By the way, even with now 13 year old technology it detects and slows/brakes for cyclists and pedestrians, something that even current radar based systems struggle with. On the other hand it switches off (with a lot of beeps) if you drive directly at the setting or rising sun (especially uphill). Radar ones probably cope with that.

[tggzzz]

By the way, even with now 13 year old technology it detects and slows/brakes for cyclists and pedestrians, something that even current radar based systems struggle with. On the other hand it switches off (with a lot of beeps) if you drive directly at the setting or rising sun (especially uphill). Radar ones probably cope with that.

Out of curiosity, do you remember whether the marketing (and instruction book) were open and honest about what the system didn't do? That's a problem with Musk and the youngsters that haven't seen the fundamental limitations of ML techniques.

[brucehoult]

By the way, even with now 13 year old technology it detects and slows/brakes for cyclists and pedestrians, something that even current radar based systems struggle with. On the other hand it switches off (with a lot of beeps) if you drive directly at the setting or rising sun (especially uphill). Radar ones probably cope with that.

Out of curiosity, do you remember whether the marketing (and instruction book) were open and honest about what the system didn't do? That's a problem with Musk and the youngsters that haven't seen the fundamental limitations of ML techniques.

The manual is in Japanese.

I don't think there's a lot of ML involved. Doing edge detection is a fairly straightforward convolution operation and then comparing edges on a stereo pair to find range -- and comparing range over time to find relative speed -- is just math.

My typical following distance at 100 km/h is about 80 m (I use the most distant of the three settings) and the system quickly and accurately determines the relative velocity of cars at about twice that distance. Anything beyond that is ignored.

I think it uses steering wheel angle to decide which vehicle ahead of you is in your lane. There is certainly image processing to find lane markers near to you for the lane departure warning, but I don't know whether it uses image processing to find the lanes out 80 to 100 m in front.

[Marco]

I think the real problem is that the general public doesn't really understand what an aircraft autopilot does.

Which returns us to the fact that Elon knows exactly what he's doing and it's not being honest.

Level 2 will statistically be able to keep the plane flying till fuel runs out at a couple 9s, tesla not so much, the sky is a slightly easier environment.

[SiliconWizard]

Firstly, inadequate testing and training is no longer limited to road vehicles.

True, even though that's still going to be a much severe problem.

Secondly, untrained drivers have the Dunning-Kruger syndrome: they don't know that they don't know what the "autopilot" won't do properly.
Both those are illustrated with the Boeing 737 Max. And that's in the much simpler environment!

Yep! Informing users should always be top priority.

As I said, if anything, those driving aids should require a specific license to be allowed to use them, IMO.
And, of course, as said, on the road, the systems are much more complex and with less control and a lighter regulatory environment. Nice recipe for a disaster.

As to accidents, the analysis part here again is completely different. Plane crashes are fully investigated, sometimes for several years, until the root cause is determined with sufficient evidence and reasonable certainty. Car crashes? That's maybe a few hours and we move on. Very rarely more than this.

Even though the risks are definitely an issue, I would be kinda OK with this technology being deployed *as long as the vendors take full responsibility*, at least for the time being, as long as the technology is not yet fully proven, and the regulatory and legal frames are fuzzy. Of course, once all that becomes settled, we could switch to the usual chain of liability. But not at this point. That, and requiring much deeper investigation in case of accidents, but that's probably not going to happen. The cost would be gigantic.

People promoting new, risky and/or unproven tech and not being liable for the consequences are a major danger. Talk is ultra cheap.
As soon as they are held liable, things start to fall into place, deployments become reasonable and due care is taken, etc.

The tech is never the problem.

[brucehoult]

Even though the risks are definitely an issue, I would be kinda OK with this technology being deployed *as long as the vendors take full responsibility*

"Take responsibility" in what way, precisely?

Does Ford take responsibility when someone crashes one of their cars?

For quite some years now already, Tesla cars on "autopilot" crash fewer times per million km than cars driven by humans. They crash in different ways, and when they crash they attract far more publicity than other car crashes. But they have been overall safer -- and improving rapidly (which humans aren't) -- for a long time.

Perfect safety doesn't and can't exist.

[tggzzz]

Even though the risks are definitely an issue, I would be kinda OK with this technology being deployed *as long as the vendors take full responsibility*

"Take responsibility" in what way, precisely?

Does Ford take responsibility when someone crashes one of their cars?

For quite some years now already, Tesla cars on "autopilot" crash fewer times per million km than cars driven by humans. They crash in different ways, and when they crash they attract far more publicity than other car crashes. But they have been overall safer -- and improving rapidly (which humans aren't) -- for a long time.

Perfect safety doesn't and can't exist.

Take responsibility for the claims made for its performance limits and design failures. Like they infamously didn't with the Pinto.

[brucehoult]

Take responsibility for the claims made for its performance limits and design failures. Like they infamously didn't with the Pinto.

Not a great example.

Later analysis shows the Pinto wasn't significantly different to or worse than its peers, all of which had similar designs.

The whole thing was a hatchet job by Ralph Nader and 60 Minutes. The famous video was basically faked.

[tggzzz]

Take responsibility for the claims made for its performance limits and design failures. Like they infamously didn't with the Pinto.

Not a great example.

Later analysis shows the Pinto wasn't significantly different to or worse than its peers, all of which had similar designs.

The whole thing was a hatchet job by Ralph Nader and 60 Minutes. The famous video was basically faked.

So, it was the whole class of vehicles that had similar inherent design flaws? That seems directly relevant to ML!

Are you saying that the design flaws didn't roast people, that calculations about compensation vs rectification costs weren't made, and that tightened laws weren't needed?

[SiliconWizard]

Even though the risks are definitely an issue, I would be kinda OK with this technology being deployed *as long as the vendors take full responsibility*

"Take responsibility" in what way, precisely?

Even if you did that because you were only interested in the "responsibility" part in my statement, please don't partially quote, especially if after that you use a strawman argument ('any car marker for any car crash'.)

So, in the way that again brand-new technology of this kind is still largely unknown territory with potentially unexpected behavior (as was discussed in this thread), so pushing it hard to customers without informing them enough (and training them!) and without the legal frame is irresponsible.

In case of a crash, as I mentioned above, I think exceptional investigations should take place, until again the tech is completely proven. And, of course ideally, those investigations should be led by 100% independent organizations. Would you trust Boeing or Airbus to lead their own investigation, and them only, in case of a plane crash? But we get back to points we have made earlier - ML-based systems are extremely hard to analyze. Given those points, I do think the vendors should be considered liable until it's fully proven it was the user's fault. Right now, it's mostly vendors having a quick look at the accident and claiming, in almost all cases, that "no technical issue was found, and so it 's entirely the driver's fault". Where are the independent labs challenging that? Is this acceptable? Come on. And it's like authorities almiost don't care either, because "it's this all new shiny tech that is obviously the future and we can't hinder that progress". To me, it sounds more like a child's approach to safety than making responsible use of technology.

Does Ford take responsibility when someone crashes one of their cars?

As I just said - strawman argument. It's as though you hadn't read any of the now 7 pages of the discussion.

For quite some years now already, Tesla cars on "autopilot" crash fewer times per million km than cars driven by humans.

Ditto. It's as though you're just ignoring 7 pages of discussion here. We already went into that.
So no, not everything is equal to everything, no, safety is not just a matter of numbers in an Excel sheet (I know it's a popular way of dealing with everything these days), and yes, we can make figures say about just anything.

Statistics so far don't mean squat anyway, since there are far, far too few cars with those features on the road to get anything significant and comparable with the decades of driving cars on the roads.

But even if that ended getting us better "figures", is that the end of the story? Nope.

[rstofer]

Does Ford take responsibility?  Beats me!

But Chevy has a battery problem with ALL Bolt EVs and there have been about 12 fires out of 100,000+ vehicles.  They are working toward replacing all of the batteries in all of the cars.  So, yes, Chevy takes responsibility.  And the replacement comes with a 100,000 mile warranty!

This is a serious issue, I own one of the Bolt EVs.

https://www.cars.com/articles/gm-announces-fix-for-chevrolet-bolt-ev-battery-problems-441536/

No AI involved (yet) but Chevy is trying to do right even though the number of fires is quite low.

I am NEVER going to trust my life to some AI driving my vehicle.  It's NEVER going to happen!  If I'm not driving, I'm not going!