RE: Autonomous cars: do you feel lucky

[otolith]

culpz said:

I just don't think that us humans should be put on the back burner, just yet. Driving standards aren't the best right now, as seen on my daily commute, but is it really essential that AI technology takes over from us in the imminent future?

I don't think it's really imminent, but I do think that it will happen. And that there will come a time when we look back on the carnage created by allowing humans to drive the way that we now look back at Victorian industrial safety standards or sending small boys up chimneys.

[romac]

Paul O said:

Why is the focus so much on auto cars, with all the problems and dangers that entails, yet we haven't got auto trains yet. Surely that's far simpler? Or is the risk too high, in which case, why is it being worked on at all, other than for experimental reasons?

Docklands Railway, London: No driver in the pod.

[romac]

DonkeyApple said:

...and as mobile toilets...

Hey man, you're on to something there! Never can find one when you need one!

[ZesPak]

Stu08 said:

I'm glad someone else said it before me.

Surely we all enjoy driving? Yes the commute can be an absolute nightmare at times - but there are still those summer mornings and evenings when a drive through the countryside can be the most relaxing thing to do.

If autonomous cars become the norm and we are banned from driving on the roads - it won't be the same going to a track day for a 'relaxing' drive.......

Why would our cars be banned?

When abs came out they made it mandatory on new cars, not banned everything that didn't have it? Same for most other safety tech (do you need to install seatbelts in a car that didn't have them?).

Ok, to enjoy a drive ourselves, we might need to get our oldtimers out. But there will be plenty of manufacturers producing fun cars for years to come imho.
Can't imagine Mazda are rushing to get the MX5 self driving.

[The Vambo]

Stu08 said:

If autonomous cars become the norm and we are banned from driving on the roads

These are two completely different things and conflating them is destroying this debate.

You can still drive a horse on the road.

[DonkeyApple]

ZesPak said:

Why would our cars be banned?

Look at the companies spearheading the rush to market? They don't exactly have any track record of tolerance towards the competition and nor do they have positive track records for any form of corporate honesty or media clarity.

Once their products are ready I suspect the onslaught from lobby groups, heavily financed by offshore entities to have drivers vilified and removed will begin and be legion.

If we all thought the incumbent motor manufacturers were dishonest, manipulative and generally weasily then there is a big shock coming when the new entrants stake their claims.

[The Vambo]

DonkeyApple said:

Look at the companies spearheading the rush to market? They don't exactly have any track record of tolerance towards the competition and nor do they have positive track records for any form of corporate honesty or media clarity.

Once their products are ready I suspect the onslaught from lobby groups, heavily financed by offshore entities to have drivers vilified and removed will begin and be legion.

If we all thought the incumbent motor manufacturers were dishonest, manipulative and generally weasily then there is a big shock coming when the new entrants stake their claims.

Your style of writing has..... changed recently, you sound like you are either halfway through a bottle of scotch or halfway through a stroke.

[DonkeyApple]

The Vambo said:

Your style of writing has..... changed recently, you sound like you are either halfway through a bottle of scotch or halfway through a stroke.

Not really. I've never trusted these firms. Having spent time with them in the US, on a corporate basis I believe them to be fundamentally dishonest entities. They will be bringing a whole new style of business to the car vending arena when they arrive.

[culpz]

otolith said:

culpz said:

I just don't think that us humans should be put on the back burner, just yet. Driving standards aren't the best right now, as seen on my daily commute, but is it really essential that AI technology takes over from us in the imminent future?

I don't think it's really imminent, but I do think that it will happen. And that there will come a time when we look back on the carnage created by allowing humans to drive the way that we now look back at Victorian industrial safety standards or sending small boys up chimneys.

Well, the tone in the article suggests the sooner the better. I'm skeptical that we should be banished behind the wheel so soon.

I think it'll happen too, eventually. Hopefully not in my lifetime, Like you, i can see the positives but i simply enjoy driving too much.

I'm not convinced on your last point. Old technology, that was replaced by newer, more efficient stuff, still exists and is used today.

[Toltec]

PatCub said:

So if you were driving a car and had to make the split second choice of running down a bus queue of old people, pregnant mothers, children etc. or crashing into a concrete bollard and risking severe injury what would you choose?
I would hope most drivers would choose the later option.

What car are you driving where hitting a concrete bollard at less than 20mph would cause you serious injury?

Why were you driving at a concrete bollard in the first place? Was it one of those bus only gates with the rising bollards?

[feef]

A well developed AI car won't need to make such moral judgements as it'll have avoided the situation in the first place.
take the incident in December last year in the Netherlands:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FadR7ETT_1k

The Tesal identified an accident was going to happened applied the brakes before the driver was even aware. If you watch the video, a good half second to a second passes from the emergency braking alarm going off in the Tesla to the initial impact of the vehicle in front.

Sensors and software can monitor things far more efficiently than we can. A good example of this is Saccadic Masking

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XL_NvUHGgi8

The clever part is enhancing the AI and software development and making it merge efficiently with driver awareness and control.

[Nick Young]

Self-driving cars could be the best,safest cars in the world, and I still wouldn't sign away my rights (or those of my family) to sue the manufacturer or hold them criminally liable if the software and hardware they produce turns out to kill/maim/injure me because of a poor coding decision. It's a non-starter from the beginning for me.

[DonkeyApple]

True but what are the implications of all the cars running around on different competitors' software programming? Isn't that going to be the main issue going forward? 100 cars all at a complex junction with random pedestrians and cyclists etc and those 100 cars all reacting based on 100 different manufacturer's programming?

I'm pretty sure we will still have crashes and I'm pretty sure that is why the manufacturers are setting out their stall early with regards to who is going to be to blame.

[captain_cynic]

Venturist said:

For god’s sake can we stop banging on about the “AI making moral choices” thing. It is not a thing. The car decision tree is very simple and better than humans are at it:
Is it clear to continue, or not?
No?
Is there time to stop?
No?
Is there space to SAFELY avoid the obstacle?
No?
Then the impact is inevitable so slam on the anchors in a straight line, the most efficient way to scrub as much speed as possible, and take the hit front-on, the direction that cars are safest taking hits.
The end. At no point does the car need to decide the relative worth of a kleptomaniac elderly nun vs a reformed tax fraud with a potato carving hobby.

This,

The highway code already tells the car what to do in most, if not all situations. If an autonomous car loses traction and spins out of control then there isn't much it can do, same as if a van just pulls out in front.

Here's the fundamental problem with this argument, how would a car know that the vehicle to its left contains a homicidal meth junkie on benefits and the vehicle on its right contains a Nobel laureate brain surgeon on his way to save the woman who bought peace to the Middle East?

The answer is, it doesn't. The same way you don't know if the car to your left contains a decorated war vet, or some bloke named Dave who works at a Tesco (not that there's anything wrong with Dave at Tesco mind you, I'm sure he's a good bloke).

Even if computers become fast enough and portable enough to handle this kind of decision making along with the (at the moment) more processor intensive task of real time image and sensor data processing, the data it will be fed will be suspect without 3rd party verification and those pesky laws of physics will limit the round trip time of the signal used for this... put simply by the time the car can be certain it's Dave who works at Tesco, the collision would have already happened.

Right now my reversing sensors cant even tell I'm turning and will obviously miss the car its detecting, I wish the voice command "shut up, I know what I'm doing" would switch them off. The self driving car is years, if not decades away from public consumption. Decades beyond that for integration (see: Diffusion of Innovation). Sorry, but the robot car is not going to be here in 2020, the robot lawyer and accountant will likely be because current (soft or weak) AI is good at applying rules to data but terrible at interpreting anything ambiguous, for that we need strong AI (or AGI, Artificial General Intelligence) which doesn't exist just yet.

[otolith]

culpz said:

I'm not convinced on your last point. Old technology, that was replaced by newer, more efficient stuff, still exists and is used today.

It's not so much the absence of Victorian tech, it's the idea that we used to accept that horrendous rates of industrial injuries were just something that happened - that getting mangled by a cotton loom or getting lung disease from working in a mine were normal occupational hazards and the cost of getting work done. Over time we introduced legislation to make workplaces safer, and now we see that the toll of deaths and injuries that people just accepted would be completely unacceptable.

Likewise, we accept death and injury on the roads as the result of human failure as inevitable. Once that has been massively reduced by automation, it will seem crazy that we just used to tolerate it.

[Stu08]

The Vambo said:

These are two completely different things and conflating them is destroying this debate.

You can still drive a horse on the road.

You are kind of correct about being able to drive a horse - if it's in a horse box..........

Horses aren't ridden along the motorway at 70+ MPH - do you really think these two things are separate subjects? How is this destroying the debate? If autonomous cars become the norm - do you really think we won't be pushed down the path of humans no longer being allowed to drive due to the risk of AI and human interaction?

Edited by Stu08 on Wednesday 15th November 12:42

[The Vambo]

feef said:

Sensors and software can monitor things far more efficiently than we can. A good example of this is Saccadic Masking

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XL_NvUHGgi8

The clever part is enhancing the AI and software development and making it merge efficiently with driver awareness and control.

That is a very interesting video, I'd never heard of Saccadic Masking but it explains a lot.

[DeanHelix]

Debaser said:

Can we not get the programmers working on AI and deep learning to come up with automatic wipers that actually work?

A major car company is doing a lot of work on that currently. Give it a few years for them to reach production.

[otolith]

Stu08 said:

If autonomous cars become the norm - do you really think we won't be pushed down the path of humans no longer being allowed to drive due to the risk of AI and human interaction?

I don't think the problem will be that autonomous and human drivers can't coexist, they will have to do so from the first releases of autonomous vehicles (and have been doing so for the millions of miles they have already been driven on the roads). Coexistence will have to be a solved problem before they become the norm.

I think what will push against humans being allowed to drive is the realisation that they are continuing to make mistakes with dire consequences when there is no longer no reasonable alternative.

[The Vambo]

Stu08 said:

The Vambo said:

These are two completely different things and conflating them is destroying this debate.

You can still drive a horse on the road.

A horse doesn't drive down a motorway at 70+ MPH - do you really think these two things are separate subjects? How is this destroying the debate? If autonomous cars become the norm - do you really think we won't be pushed down the path of humans no longer being allowed to drive due to the risk of AI and human interaction?

You can still take dobbin for a Sunday morning st strewn jaunt down the B45234, never heard anybody daydream about a spring morning top down blast on the M6.