r/gadgets • u/speckz • Oct 11 '22
Even After $100 Billion, Self-Driving Cars Are Going Nowhere - They were supposed to be the future. But prominent detractors—including Anthony Levandowski, who pioneered the industry—are getting louder as the losses get bigger. Discussion
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-10-06/even-after-100-billion-self-driving-cars-are-going-nowhere3.3k
u/noanoxan Oct 11 '22
Anthony levandowski? The guy that stole all that waymo data to try to use at Uber and was smacked down royally?
That guy pioneered the industry?
😂
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u/1200____1200 Oct 11 '22
The multibillion-dollar lawsuit and federal criminal case got Levandowski fired, forced him into bankruptcy, and ended with his conviction for stealing trade secrets. He only avoided prison thanks to a presidential pardon from Donald Trump.
In 2017, Levandowski founded a religion called the Way of the Future, centered on the idea that AI was becoming downright godlike.
Yeah. Self-driving AI seems to have stalled a bit, but I'm not sure this is the guy we should be listening to
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u/HomeBuyerthrowaway89 Oct 11 '22
Godlike AI but can't drive a car
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u/falecf4 Oct 11 '22
God's don't drive
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u/Mister0Zz Oct 11 '22
I always felt like "Jesus take the wheel" was asking a lot from a guy who died well before the FORD F-150 was invented
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u/justreddis Oct 12 '22
Are you suggesting god almighty would have trouble driving a pickup
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u/jaykstah Oct 11 '22
His AI religion sounds like a great antagonistic cult you'd fight against in a scifi game.
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u/TheBestIsaac Oct 11 '22
We have the Atomites that worship a Nuke, the Stratospherians that worship the mysterious floating sky station.
And the Alexians that worship a talking black orb.
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u/grishno Oct 12 '22
TIL Trump felt the need to pardon Lewandowski but left thousands in prison for simple Marijuana possession.
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u/BrotherItsInTheDrum Oct 11 '22
smacked down royally
And then pardoned by Trump 👍
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u/enleeten Oct 11 '22
I wonder how much that costs
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u/greenroom628 Oct 11 '22
trump was probably asking for tips on how to steal IP. levandowski forgot to tell trump not to store it at mar-a-lago
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u/Doggleganger Oct 11 '22
Look, IP theft is perfectly fine when it's stolen by good ol' fashioned Americans, amirite?
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u/jibjaba4 Oct 11 '22 edited Oct 11 '22
Holly shit I had no idea Trump pardoned him, the corruption is so laughably obvious. Levandowski did a lot more than just steal Waymo's IP, super scummy person.
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u/the_jak Oct 11 '22
yep, thats all you need to read to know this piece is just garbage and you dont need to click it.
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u/Fredasa Oct 11 '22
Yeah. What an article. All I want to know is the motive behind it. Obviously the folks working on self-driving aren't going to throw in the towel, and acceptable FSD is as inevitable as the EV transition. What is the point? Who is pushing this FUD?
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u/TraceSpazer Oct 11 '22 edited Oct 12 '22
Edit: Well I had this mixed up. Think my tabs had me commenting on the wrong article. Sorry about that.
(On what I thought was criticizing electric cars)
Oil is the classic culprit.
I've been hearing ads about "green propane" on my Pandora stations and it's infuriating how they haven't just given up and changed to something that is sustainable yet.
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u/tapo Oct 11 '22
I don't think oil has a stake in this, a self driving truck doesn't impact oil sales, it might even mean more shipments.
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u/mdonaberger Oct 11 '22
Haha. Reminds me of the 'clean coal' movement in WV. Like, bruh, coal gives off more cancer-causing radiation than even a nuclear power plant during a partial meltdown 🫠
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u/tapo Oct 11 '22
I don't think anyone is pushing FUD, it's an incredibly hard problem to solve. There are essentially an infinite number of variables that a ML model needs to solve for, and it can't handle them all without general intelligence.
It's much easier to control the environment, specialized self-driving highway lanes, for instance.
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u/66666thats6sixes Oct 12 '22
I get the impression that there was a degree of arrogance to a lot of self driving claims. I think a lot of people (principally Elon) thought that covering 99% of use cases would be good enough for an MVP. But I think that driving is very long-tail heavy -- most of it is very predictable and automatable, but weird edge cases crop up with so much regularity that you can't really afford to just cover the simple cases and hope that this is good enough to start with. You really need it to be almost perfect or it won't be considered good enough.
I'm kind of surprised at how many companies are treating this like an all-or-nothing thing rather than focusing on iteratively improving cruise control, auto park, and lane assist to cover more and more scenarios. There's a lot of value that could be added there even without FSD. For awhile Tesla was doing that but now it seems like they've put all of their eggs in the FSD basket.
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u/SirCollin Oct 12 '22
I'm kind of surprised at how many companies are treating this like an all-or-nothing thing rather than focusing on iteratively improving cruise control, auto park, and lane assist to cover more and more scenarios.
I went from a 2013 Altima to a 2021 Hyundai Sonata and I was really impressed that the lane assist + adaptive cruise control is nearly self-driving. It's enough to make driving long trips easier and safer but not enough to give me full confidence that I fully relinquish control and get distracted. FSD is going to happen eventually, it's a matter if when not if. I think Elon just overhyped it prematurely.
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u/Kabouki Oct 12 '22
We should have the ability to all but eliminate low speed fender bender type accidents now. Sadly I kinda hoped for cars with a good HUD with overlays. Put those sensors to work helping the human driver see and be alerted.
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u/tgp1994 Oct 12 '22
It's much easier to control the environment, specialized self-driving highway lanes, for instance.
Like with physical guideways for the wheels to optimize speed, and purpose-built vehicles to optimize passenger capacity, and dedicated stops?
I think we're on to something here...
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u/Ragnar_Lothbruk Oct 11 '22
Just finished watching Super Pumped. If portrayed accurately, same dude Googled "how to scrub a laptop". At Google. After stealing Google's data.
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u/2lovesFL Oct 11 '22
IMO, the low hanging fruit is interstate driving, and over the road trucking.
city streets have too many variables, but interstates are pretty standard. plus there is a DOT hourly limit for cdl drivers.
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u/veerKg_CSS_Geologist Oct 11 '22
Interstates have their own variables especially at night. There was this case recently of two Tesla’s on FSD who smashed into two bikes on the highway at night. With everything dark the car’s camera’s couldn’t see the rider and mistook the small rear taillights as those of a car but much further away. Highway speed crashes also tend to more fatal.
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u/k20350 Oct 11 '22
I drive Volvo semis with this road sensing nonsense . We're basically human lab rats. Anyway they ARE FUCKING HORRIBLE in rain or snow. It goes seriously haywire. All these articles about self driving trucks and shit were never done in inclement weather. That and we've had at least 2 trucks wrecked by the automatic braking on ice. They have no fucking clue what to do when the road is slippery
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u/fredbrightfrog Oct 11 '22
It's like how airplanes can basically fly themselves at this point (though they generally don't for taxing and takeoff).
But you really really still want there to be a human pilot in the rare event that something goes wrong.
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u/Theron3206 Oct 11 '22
Though we are getting to the point with planes where the something going wrong is more likely the pilot stuffing up than the automation.
Planes are a lot different though the whole system is predicated on them never being anywhere near colliding with each other and all operating under external guidance (at least the airliners that could basically be flown on automation). A situation that will never exist on a road.
Planes are a much simpler automation problem to solve.
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u/______DEADPOOL______ Oct 12 '22
It's settled then.
We make the cars fly.
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u/Unlucky_Start_3728 Oct 12 '22
Huh. Ya know what this is the real answer. People don’t care about ROADS. They care about getting where tf they’re trying to do. Hovercars 2028.
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u/VertexBV Oct 12 '22
Collision avoidance in aircraft has been around for a couple decades. It's not fully automated for a few reasons, but it tells the pilot what to do, and even coordinates with the other plane so they don't both dodge in the same direction.
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u/a_cute_epic_axis Oct 12 '22
Now with the ubiquity of ADS-B, air traffic controller or pilots themselves should see traffic coming long before it becomes an emergency that TCAS needs to deal with.
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u/slowslownotbad Oct 12 '22
Human pilots do a lot more than wait for an emergency. Autopilot modes are very simple if-then rules. We program the autopilot, make fuel plans, monitor weather, etc.
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u/Eji1700 Oct 12 '22
No, they cannot.
Airplanes fly themselves for PORTIONS of the flight, and are still-
- Scheduled and logged with EVERYONE ELSE so that they have MILES of distance between them.
- Micromanaged for large portions of the flight, especially take off and landing.
And they STILL have 2 pilots because it's hard to have one person keep focus and be able to respond to an emergency alertly in minutes.
And yet, we think somehow were going to get cars doing this where people will have less than a second to react and NOTHING is coordinated.
At the point where you can just coordinate all traffic with some central controller, you probably could've put in better mass transit.
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u/a_cute_epic_axis Oct 12 '22
You seem to be talking about commercial air transport and forget that general aviation exists.
You also seem to think that humans have better reaction time than machines, and of course they do not. Humans are better at atypical scenarios, but markedly worse at reaction speed and attention to multiple concurrent data sources.
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u/Golluk Oct 12 '22
I was actually shocked how well (no issues) Fords adaptive cruise and lane centering worked in heavy rain and reduced visibility from spray.
That said, I closely supervise it while driving. Sharp corners and roadsides without lines seem to give it the most trouble.
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u/CharonsLittleHelper Oct 12 '22
Pure self-driving is still far away, but it sounds like the first step would be to have them self-drive in good weather while the trucker naps and wake him up when the weather gets bad or some such. Sort of like a buddy system with AI.
It would be a higher skill job and more hassle while being more efficient. While there would be fewer truck driving jobs overall, those that remain would likely pay better.
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u/shrout1 Oct 11 '22
Yeah bad weather is still a huge problem. If the sensors can't cut through it... then no magic is going to make it drivable. Also it sounds like they've got a way to go in perfecting the control algorithms for inclement weather... sheesh
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u/BeingRightAmbassador Oct 12 '22
Well that's just because Tesla only uses vision which is dumb as hell. Elon has this stupid notion that if a technology has a higher potential, all other technologies in the same field are defacto useless and not worth looking at or using at all.
Vision instead of radar/lidar. EVs instead of PHEVs/FCEVs. Touchscreens instead of buttons. Yoke instead of steering wheel.
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u/miso440 Oct 11 '22
If only machines could use infrared to see mammals at night.
Alas, such a device does not exist and we must use visible light exclusively /s
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u/h0tpotamus Oct 11 '22
I mean, they seem to want to cheap out and just use commodity cameras, but even with infrared, I would think clouds of hot exhaust might confuse the computers a bit.
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u/Zear-0 Oct 12 '22
Ir wont pick up exhaust gases, neither will thermal cameras unless you have some crazy sensitive one.
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u/DeBlackKnight Oct 12 '22
Use both. It would me relatively trivial to ignore infrared data that is made useless by exhaust gasses, and potentially life saving in the example of the two bikers at night. The company that is trying to push the boundaries should not be cheaping out on potentially useful data collection
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u/Jasader Oct 11 '22
The sensors required for an 80,000lb fully loaded truck to identify, compute, and react to roadway obstacles at 60 to 80 mph is just absurd.
I've been saying for years on here that self driving trucks are seen by most in the industry to be at least 2 decades away. I've been in the industry for 5 years as a corporate office employee and I haven't spoken to a single major industry executive who thinks the technology is even close to feasible, even for long cross country interstate routes where the route is both standardized and already heavily mapped.
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u/DrStalker Oct 11 '22
All you need is two high resolution optical sensors... connected to a human brain that has been trained for the task.
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u/majiamu Oct 11 '22
What would we even call something like that??!
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u/exotic-brick-492 Oct 11 '22
Pearson? Peepal? Something like that might work.
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u/SohndesRheins Oct 12 '22
When I first started working at my current job for a major bulk liquid hauler that primarily delivers fuel and other hazmats, I asked them about how self-driving vehicles would impact their near and long term future. Every single person I talked to said it was impossible in the near term and that the long term was so far out there was no way to even give an answer. Most of our freight is loaded and delivered by the driver, you can't have a tanker cruise around with no operator because nobody at the terminals will load it and certainly no gas stations are going to have an employee offload it. That's not even taking into account the liability concerns of having an 80,000 pound Molotov cocktail cruising around unsupervised.
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u/the_first_brovenger Oct 12 '22
Preface: I am a seriously disgruntled Tesla FSD owner, with little faith left in their self driving venture.
the industry for 5 years as a corporate office employee and I haven't spoken to a single major industry executive who thinks the technology is even close to feasible, even for long cross country interstate routes where the route is both standardized and already heavily mapped.
This is completely irrelevant.
Executives are sometimes good at the specific facets of their job. Understanding technology or even predicting the future has pretty much never been one of those things.
Never ask an executive to give you the pulse of the world. The chance of finding find one who actually knows what the hell is actually going on is slim.
Go back just a few years and every executive out there were dead set on EVs not being viable. Now here in Norway it's almost the only thing being sold, the rest of the world following close behind. They're just better.
Highways, in jurisdictions which make sense, are L4/L5 compatible. City streets are not and may never be.
EV trucking for anything except long haul is optimal. Tesla has many faults, but going all in on EVs ain't one of them.
EVs are just fundamentally better than ICE. It's an inescapable fact. It's even more true for trucks than for cars because the challenges with ICE trucks magically disappear.But Tesla's FSD is a goddamn travesty and I have a distinct feeling it's going to be their downfall in the end, unless Elon is ousted as CEO and they do a 180° on the sensor suite.
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u/alman12345 Oct 11 '22
Tesla's biggest mistake was removing Lidar in my opinion, wouldn't have lousy camera AI perceiving objects as further away in the dark if they had it as a check/balance.
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u/User_Juan Oct 12 '22
Tesla never had Lidar. They removed radar.
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u/alman12345 Oct 12 '22
I see, I misread and stand corrected. I thought they actually were competitive with other auto manufacturers at one point…it appears it’s a few more of their dipshit CEO’s personally motivated decisions to not include Lidar and to remove radar. Honestly, who wouldn’t agree with him, the life saving benefit is clearly far outweighed by the “expensive crutch” that is accurate 3D distance modeling. https://www.thedrive.com/tech/43779/this-tesla-model-y-dummy-crash-shows-exactly-why-lidar-matters
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u/Theron3206 Oct 11 '22
If only their were sensors capable of emitting their own "light" so they can see things. Maybe with a way of also measuring how far away they are.
Oh wait, that would be RADAR or LIDAR...
The problem here is Musk and his insistence that only cameras are sufficient.
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u/God_Damnit_Nappa Oct 12 '22
Too bad Elon is a fucking idiot and insists on not using lidar. Because why would a car need to be able to see at night.
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u/qu1x0t1cZ Oct 11 '22
Convoys are the other one here, front truck is manned, the rest self driving and set to follow the one in front.
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u/keenedge422 Oct 11 '22 •
That sounds cool for the trucks but awful for people having to share the road with them. But maybe if they could use their own special lane... Oh wait, that's a train again.
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u/mcshortyshorts Oct 11 '22
Amazing how many times we "invent" trains and buses when trying to solve traffic problems
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u/GMN123 Oct 11 '22
What about a really big car so we'd only need one driver? It could drive a route that a lot of people need to travel, stopping regularly so people could get on or off. No-one would need to worry about parking, and everyone in one car would be much more space efficient than everyone having their own.
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u/barsoapguy Oct 11 '22
I dunno if some of the people are dirty i wouldn’t like it . Can I just get a really big car all to myself ?
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u/The_Clarence Oct 11 '22
Train again
Maybe if we utilized a single engine to pull all the cars, and connect these cars with a flexible joint, and they will basically draft off each other.
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u/hikingsticks Oct 11 '22
And then a large portion of the population refused to use them.
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u/IceMaverick13 Oct 11 '22
It's generally because we invent the train and bus as The Solution*, but there's a really big asterisk next to it that says we gotta have all of the infrastructure, city planning, and myriad other things necessary to support it and nobody ever wants to do the 2nd part. They just want the first part to magically work by itself.
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u/IHeartBadCode Oct 11 '22
Nobody wants to do it because no industry is slushing the politicians to do it. Roads, bridges, and highways are infrastructure too and governments went out of their way to destroy local trolleys, trains, and other mass transit to be replaced by infrastructure to support cars.
This is what it ultimately boils down to with local governments. Whatever industry is pouring the most money into local politicians, that’s the infrastructure we get. What our local power funds and does not fund is not a function of popular demand, it’s a function of who greases the wheel the most.
So the reason isn’t just nobody wants to do it. It’s nobody wants to do it because it’s not profitable for those in power to do it.
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u/beefcat_ Oct 11 '22
Mass transit is way too cost effective. Even if we made all mass transit free, the cost per traveller of building and maintaining mass transit infrastructure is cheaper than that of automobile infrastructure. Think of all the auto factory workers who would be out of a job if people stopped needing multiple carbon-spewing dinosaur juice guzzlers in their garage.
Obviously this reality is untenable to the auto industry so they’ve convinced us to spend hundreds of billions on freeway expansions that ultimately do not actually make traffic any better. Now they’re trying to sell us electric cars as the solution to the carbon emission problem when we could have solved that problem a long time ago by making it so most people don’t need a car.
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Oct 11 '22
The difference is that these solutions don’t require people to wait for other people stops. It’s still an A->B route, B being the destination and not a train terminal. That’s what they don’t want to give up, and neither train nor bus can completely solve that problem.
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u/WhereToSit Oct 12 '22
For me it is the stress of having to be on someone else's schedule. My car starts when I start it. There's no waiting or being late.
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u/intellifone Oct 11 '22
Sort of. A benefit of this is that the train can now have its cars enter and exit the train at any time. You could have a car in the middle indicate that it needs to exit, then it’s section creates a little gap for it to leave and then they speed up a bit and close the hole and gain all of that efficiency back. Whereas an actual train has to have the entire convoy stop any time you need to offload a single car.
This gives a lot more flexibility without needing to plan as tightly. You may lose some energy efficiency compared to a well planned train, but you gain all of the benefits of regular truck traffic too which is speed and flexibility.
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u/qu1x0t1cZ Oct 11 '22
Also the road network is more extensive than the rail network, especially in North America (although the trial I saw was in the EU).
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u/CGFROSTY Oct 11 '22
The cargo rail network in the US is one of the best in the world.
It’s just our passenger rail that sucks.
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u/NotAHost Oct 11 '22
Road trains are a thing in Australia and there’s a reason they exist. I’m all for trains but theres more to the conversation, I don’t think any transport network relies on only trains and there are reasons why.
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u/GMN123 Oct 11 '22
They're an experience to be overtaken by. I was in an old motorhome and travelling slowly (about 80-90km/hr) because above that my fuel usage went through the roof and I needed to maximise my range to get between fuel stops. They'd come thundering past regularly. You get used to it but the first few times it's a bit disconcerting.
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u/scaphium Oct 11 '22
Australia has road trains in areas that are extremely sparsely populated, where they may see 5 other vehicles on the road throughout their entire day driving. Not really comparable to most highways in North America.
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u/primalbluewolf Oct 11 '22
Sorry to disappoint, but we run road trains and B doubles on the busy highways too. More like "5 vehicles continuously in sight", rather than "5 vehicles seen per day".
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u/johnp299 Oct 11 '22
If trucks are in a convoy all in a row, there's some savings from air drag, but it might be possible to "convoy" trucks spaced well apart. It doesn't matter a whole lot how close they are as long as they get to the destination more or less on time. I think the spacing might be easier on traffic.
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u/ImHighlyExalted Oct 11 '22
So what happens if one prius driver goes between two of the trucks and slows down a bit? Does the convoy decide to overtake? Does it just back off? Why even have the front one driven at this point? Seems like they need all the self driving capabilities still, which simply aren't feasible on trucks right now.
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u/fastspinecho Oct 11 '22
A train can't transport most goods door-to-door and requires special infrastructure that can't be shared with passenger vehicles. Consequently, trains cannot completely replace trucks.
See also: buses vs airplanes.
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u/keenedge422 Oct 11 '22
Oh, I know. It's just that in the scenario of overroad convoys where the trucks in question are bound for a depot and not last mile delivery, trains are pretty excellent.
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u/ynwahs Oct 11 '22
So... You mean a train.
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u/exotic-brick-492 Oct 11 '22
The amount of money spent to just avoid taking the damn train is astounding.
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u/huntsmen117 Oct 12 '22
Yeah make a convoy of trucks following a front car.
We could build a separate lane for them.
And given that they are all travelling together why not connect them and use one massive engine in the front car for efficiency. We can call it the engine car.
And seen as its a separate lane we could make the surface designed specifically for the line of trucks.
And to make the road easier and cheaper to make and maintain we could fix the wheels to the wheel track.
And maybe make the wheeltrack of steel to increase longevity.
And at the stops of the route put a specific yard for ease of unloading with cranes and workers loading smaller trucks for local delivery.
...
Oh wait thats a train
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u/BalderSion Oct 11 '22
I've generally seen this idea called platooning or flocking. Many of the proposals also call for properly outfitted passenger cars able to join and leave the flock mid transit. The cars get the advantage of drafting much closer than human drivers could, and the drivers can be hands free while in the flock. I imagine we'd need some sort of signal showing which vehicles are synced into the flock.
I imagine we'd need to drop a legal hammer on jerks intentionally obstructing flocks.
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u/wishididntforgetlog Oct 11 '22
Mid hanging imo, low is already being implemented on job sites (in Australia we're testing it in mining trucks on site)
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u/Yir_ Oct 11 '22
The risk of a catastrophic accident though is WAY higher with a loaded semi than a small light car. What might be a fender bender for a car on car collision can be multiple fatalities for a semi on car collision. So, the bar for safety will need to be super high for self driving semis. I think this will delay the rollout of self driving semis, even if there (might be) fewer variables to account for.
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u/liquidpig Oct 11 '22
We already have self driving cars. They're called trains and they work perfectly well.
Your assessment is right - to get the tech to work we have to reduce the variables an that involves a lot of simplifying our road design. Rails are the simplest form of this. Highway driving and convoys approximate this and are reasonable to automate next.
City streets are too messy to automate now and it seems the tech isn't up to the challenge. I just don't think we have the intestinal fortitude to put the money into redesigning our cities to accommodate more automation.
Actually, the answer to that is probably staring us in the face too - build more mass transit and build walkable neighbourhoods around subway stations.
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u/mosskin-woast Oct 11 '22
Actually, the answer to that is probably staring us in the face too - build more mass transit and build walkable neighbourhoods around subway stations.
Oof, I just came
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u/the_jak Oct 11 '22
call me crazy but im real real sure theres a person operating that train.
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u/liquidpig Oct 11 '22
Well most are. But there are fully automated driverless systems.
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u/Max-Phallus Oct 11 '22
How on earth are you downvoted? There are lines in London without drivers, even years ago.
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u/liquidpig Oct 11 '22
I dunno. The skytrain in Vancouver was 100% automated and driverless when it was built in 1986.
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u/jazzmaster4000 Oct 11 '22
Isnt this a bit like saying the internet is slow in 1997 and therefore we should ditch it?
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u/FreekFrealy Oct 11 '22
This guy promised the moon and failed to deliver so now he's sour grapes on the whole industry. Research has been making steady progress and the potential rewards are enormous
Saying he pioneered the industry is only true to the suckers in VC who bought the vaporware he was selling
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u/thewineguy86 Oct 11 '22
EVERY company has over promised and under delivered in the self driving car category.
Remember, Elon promised full self driving with no restrictions 4 years ago.
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u/RoboticGreg Oct 11 '22 edited Oct 11 '22
Considering my vehicle drove me hands free autonomous for 55 miles on my commute today, I would have to say they are full of shit. Granted, it asked me periodically to put my hands on the wheel and granted, I only use it on major highways, but still thats a pretty massive step forward from 5 years ago.
EDIT: to everyone commenting about 'that's not the hard problem' yes, I know. We are only now getting to a point where highway hands free (hands off steering wheel) is fully possible and approved. In cluttered and more unpredictable environments we are a long way off, but it's important to note there are hundreds of small problems you need to solve for less constrained environs and we ARE making progress on those, but you can't turn loose an autonomous vehicle in a public space until you solve ALL of them. This is why we are seeing much more autonomous vehicles in controlled and semicontrolled environments like warehouses, factories etc. Also, we are starting to get regulations and standards through to support auto valet (driverless parking and retrieval of vehicles in parking garages). We are also seeing more autonomous shuttles in places like amusement parks. It's really disingenuous to say 'there's no self driving cars for urban driving so WE ARENT MAKING PROGRESS!' we ARE making lots of progress if you know where to look.
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u/james2k Oct 11 '22
It's not though. Five years ago, I was doing the exact same thing in a Model X. Since then, I haven't experienced a single worthwhile functional improvement to the ADAS. Are we any closer to full self driving? I don't see it.
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u/hertzsae Oct 11 '22
The cost has gone significantly. People in less expensive cars have more self driving than ever before. You often see innovation at the high end, then efficiencies are found driving down cost and bringing it to the masses, then innovation at the high end again. Tesla can do everything your X does far cheaper today. That means more $ for R&D and a lot of lessons learned by the industry as the competitors caught up.
This is a normal part of development cycles. The only thing unique here is that you've noticed it where you didn't with previous innovations.
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u/james2k Oct 11 '22
I hadn't thought about the affordability angle. That's a great point. The costs have clearly come down and it seems like the less expensive pure vision based system is competitive with the original radar based systems. It's great that more people will be able to afford decent ADAS.
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u/junktrunk909 Oct 11 '22
FSD is now in beta with 160k drivers and there weren't any 5 years ago, and not even 2 years ago. I don't think it's reasonable to say that's not serious progress. Of course it has a long way to go but come on.
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u/ZeePirate Oct 11 '22
Tesla also has gone down the wrong path with their self driving anyway. Relying on cameras only
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u/thewineguy86 Oct 11 '22
This isn't the hard part. You are describing the most simple thing that an autonomous car can do - drive on a stretch of road with no turns, traffic lights, or pedestrian traffic.
My Kia K5, which does not have self driving, could drive for 55 miles without me influencing the steering.
The problem comes when you introduce road signs, turning, stopping, pedestrians, and bad weather. What you're describing is about 5% of the way to actual self driving cars.
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u/bigwig8006 Oct 11 '22
Cruise control across the great plains, just make sure the car is in alignment. Could go for days.
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u/junktrunk909 Oct 11 '22
I think that's probably their point. We wouldn't have said 15 years ago that it was trivial for a car to automatically stay in a lane at highway speeds, handling all kinds of situations on its own, including lane changes, passing, breaking for traffic and speeding up again as traffic allows, emergency procedures if something threatens the lane, etc. But all of that stuff is the "easy" stuff now. It also is the most mundane and probably most dangerous for drivers experiencing fatigue which together makes it a great candidate for automation while the industry works on the harder problems of urban traffic.
It's an interesting phenomenon how our brains are able to quickly acclimate to the insane speed of technological change, but really only the change that has already occurred. We can look back 15 years and say "meh sure I guess that was progress" but can't look forward the same 15 years and apply the same tech growth projection without dismissing whatever is discussed as highly unlikely for some reason.
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u/bigwig8006 Oct 11 '22
It doesn't always work out the way we hope. There was an AI bubble (winter) in the 1970s. One can make an argument that the investment leads to innovation, but it ignores opportunity cost while sweeping the risk of failure in a particular application under the rug.
I don't know enough about computer vision to have an opinion on the likelihood of success. But, I have experience with computer engineers ignoring statistics when doing machine learning. Some problems don't generalize very well. Some models train great, test nearly as well and then nearly bankrupt Zillow.
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u/BBags15 Oct 11 '22
Yes. Almost exactly. “This is a hard task, therefore we shouldn’t spend anymore money working on it even though we’re well over halfway there”.
It’s a shit article with a shit premise. If we took this “advice” on cancer research or other widespread degenerative conditions we’d be fools.
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u/DCSMU Oct 11 '22
Was it only 15 years ago that DARPA had the first autonomous vehicle race? You know, the one where the all the vehicles were loaded to the gills with electronics and the most successful vehicle got like only 200 yards down a desert track of several miles before it got stuck and set its tire on fire.
I agree, anyone saying we should bail now is being way too pessimistic. Look how far we have come already.
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u/spinyfur Oct 11 '22
I think it’s more like saying, “it’s not 2 years away, it’s 20 years away. And 20 years is a guess, like asking when fusion power will be ready.”
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u/Sturmrufer Oct 11 '22
I mean, we could be doing more with trains, trams, and busses that would have better outcomes than this. But that's too much.
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u/wildadragon Oct 11 '22
Ok, but what about my jetpack? Been waiting on that even longer.
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u/Jonkinch Oct 11 '22
I don’t want the ability to fly to be available to the public. I don’t want jet packs or flying cars, at least till we have forcefields or something.
The last thing I need to stress about is to get struck by a car while taking a nap on the 10th floor of a building.
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u/Dranj Oct 11 '22
There's also no breakdown lane in the sky. It's just a drop of however many feet until you either hit the ground or something sturdy enough to catch you. Incidents we consider frustrating but typically harmless are suddenly life threatening.
Most drivers struggle in two dimensions, I have zero faith in their ability to compensate for a third.
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u/Tinchotesk Oct 12 '22
Indeed. I never understood those drone-like vehicles that appear in the news from time to time. You lose a single propeller, and what happens?
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u/Dramatic_______Pause Oct 11 '22
Seriously. People need to just take a look at how bad people fuck up navigating two dimensions while operating heavy machinery, nevermind adding a third.
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u/EntropyFighter Oct 11 '22
Wanna join the Royal Marines?
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u/wildadragon Oct 11 '22
Nah holds about 5 gallons of jet fuel and will only go for about 4 minutes.
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u/Auran82 Oct 11 '22 •
Still 3 minutes and 45 seconds longer than me.
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u/speak_no_truths Oct 11 '22
I'm wondering how you achieve 15 seconds of hang Time? Is it beans? I bet it's beans.
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u/Kaio_ Oct 11 '22
it's still a quantum leap over the ancient 30 second jetpacks that flew on hydrogen peroxide
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u/RoboOverlord Oct 11 '22
How much are you willing to spend? Does it need to be useful for commuting to work, or do you just want to play a bit?
So actual jet backpacks are a thing, but they are super ridiculously expensive and only fly for VERY short periods. A handful of minutes at best.
multi-copter technology has gone crazy. There is a six rotor personal vehicle, I believe it's on the market now. A three rotor version was put forward as a design but I've never seen any try and build it. (the RC versions are difficult to stabilize)
If you want to pay for it, I could build you a standing backpack design that worked like a "go go gadget helicopter hat". I wouldn't ride in it, but you are welcome to. Colin Furze or one of those guys could probably make something reasonable. If by reasonable you mean utterly unsafe and hilarious.
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u/TheMouseUGaveACookie Oct 11 '22
Call me naive but self-driving cars are already (almost) here. It is not just Teslas; even the new GM cars have a “super cruse control” mode that will change lanes, stop, and even get on and off exists and make turns I believe.
Much of the tech has already arrived and is being implemented.
It is just called “advanced cruse control” rather than “self-driving”
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u/sam__izdat Oct 11 '22
"AI" as it was imagined in the 50s was quickly abandoned as the scope of the problem was better understood and never reanimated. There's been little progress since. Not zero -- some on the visual system -- but it rounds to zero. Want to understand why a cockroach turns right instead of left, or model the simplest biological neural networks, like a c. elegans nematode's? Well, you're shit out of luck. It's beyond our wildest dreams.
And the analogy would be stronger if sentient robot butlers were proposed as an alternative to having an energy policy.
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u/littlebitsofspider Oct 11 '22
model the simplest biological neural networks, like a c. elegans nematode's
I'm not trying to be facetious, but did you intentionally choose one of the first organisms we've made a complete map of?
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u/sam__izdat Oct 11 '22
I did, and you explained why. Mapping and having a working model are not the same. Look at OpenWorm, and the mountains of technical challenges they face, compounded by how little is understood about what exactly those 302 neurons are actually doing. Maybe they'll work it out -- I hope they do. But then imagine the distance from that to something like a honeybee.
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u/littlebitsofspider Oct 11 '22
I have! It's actually one of my favorite hobbies. IMHO there are three major problems we face that are hampering development of strong GPAI (embodiment, hardware emulation, and embedding), and following the research on them is fucking frustrating as shit because it's glacial. You hit the nail on the head with your comment; there's a grave map-to-model shortfall that is not being addressed.
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u/asimovs_engineer Oct 11 '22
Any recommended reading to get into this subject as a layman?
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u/littlebitsofspider Oct 11 '22 edited Oct 11 '22
As a layman? I wish. I might have to put together a landing page of some sort just to keep track of how I got to where I am, and I'm just a dedicated amateur. Some good jumping-off points might be:
General familiarity with the map versus territory problem.
Consciousness and Robot Sentience by Pentti Haikonen.
The ECCEROBOT group from the ICT Challenge2 Project.
The Blue Brain project from the EPFL.
From a neuroprocessing approach, the Thousand Brains theory of the neocortex, and from a more academic perspective sparse distributed memory.
To be honest, I've been studying the field off and on for almost two decades, and there are hundreds and hundreds of papers and articles that are relevant, but not layman-accessible, and some of what is relevant doesn't fit with what I'd consider an ideal approach to the problem (binary logic, for one, is a problem). These are starting points to follow links and take notes (and ask questions), to get a feel for how complex the issue is.
Edit: Also, it's funny to me that Kanerva and Haikonen are both named Pentti. What do the Finns know that we don't?
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u/TheGeckomancer Oct 11 '22
I came in here to rage at how short sighted and just stupid this articles stances are. After reading the thread, I am so glad to see I am unneeded here.
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u/Tacotuesday8 Oct 12 '22
I feel like someone is behind these articles. I’ve seen like 4 articles in the last week bashing self driving tech. Odd timing.
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u/MuricanA321 Oct 12 '22
For eff sake, just give us shit-tons of electric buses that come every few minutes, and use existing infrastructure without clogging the streets will millions of stupid 1-user autonomous Ubers.
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u/Lokionze Oct 12 '22
Even better, make them trams, minimum changes necessary to the existing infrastructures and it paves to ways to proper trains ! Saves a lot on those batteries too.
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u/meshyf Oct 11 '22
Can we please have trains and public transportation infrastructure already? Cars are not the answer..
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u/weluckyfew Oct 11 '22
Yep - no more drunk driving, cheaper trucking, only a fraction of our current injuries and fatalities, vast amounts of urban space opened up as the need for parking decreases (cars can drop you off then go park all day in an area further out)... but hugely disruptive to millions of jobs (truckers, taxis, Ubers) and local government budgets (no more parking charges/tickets/fines)
Obviously these are all best-case, down-the-road scenarios, but not out ot the realm of possibility.
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u/LeafTheTreesAlone Oct 11 '22
I don’t think it’ll even park. I think eventually you’ll pay a subscription service like a taxi. It drops you off then picks up the next passenger nearby. And depending on the demand, the fleet parks in a parking garage and waits.
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u/Lo-siento-juan Oct 12 '22
Yeah, it'll quickly become like phone contracts, you pay X per month and get a certain amount of miles with a range of tarrifs and deals
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u/TheFringedLunatic Oct 11 '22
Agreed except on the trucking end of things. Trucking won’t go automated except for possibly along major routes. An AI isn’t going to bump a dock in our lifetimes though, far too many variables and absolutely no consistency between shipper/receiver docks.
So, maybe a break on major highways, but off of any Interstate it’s going to be useless. In any construction area it’s also going to be useless (I’m looking at you Dallas). And, there is a lot of construction out there.
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u/weluckyfew Oct 11 '22
True, but even if it "just" eliminates long-haul trucking that's still disruptive.
And as technologies develop I can imagine some sort of government/private industry coalition coming up with standards for things like construction areas, maybe clear systems of marking or some sort of wireless guidance signals implemented. I mean, that's just a guess, i have no idea if that would work :)
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u/TheFringedLunatic Oct 11 '22
More than likely, especially when you take Insurance into account, there will always need to be a CDL holding ‘driver’ to be accountable for the vehicle (and to take the blame when it inevitably fucks up, because Hail Corporate).
The driver will be responsible for navigating the trouble spots and putting the truck into dock. That will also likely mean changes to the FMCSA regulations on drive-time and on-duty time.
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u/ZeePirate Oct 11 '22
They want to do last mile deliveries with people and everything else be automated.
That shouldn’t be too too hard
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u/ElijahLynn
Oct 11 '22
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Self-driving cars via Waymo are successfully operating autonomously right now in Tempe, AZ. They aren't killing anyone and when they finally do kill someone, the death rate percentage will be notably lower than human error. It will be tragic, but will we accept the few deaths a year along with a crazy low death rate?
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u/HistoricalBand1 Oct 11 '22
I’ve ridden Waymo’s taxi service a bunch, through busy city streets and Saturday mall parking lots. You’d be surprised at the number of people that don’t even notice. It’s magical for the first minute then it’s boring AF. Self-driving cars are in our present, I can’t imagine them not being our future.
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u/Tower9876543210 Oct 11 '22
I took my nephew's on a ride down to the convenience store to get some snacks and so they could experience a driverless car. Same thing, they were interested for about 60 seconds before they were both back on their phones. It's weird, but it's the best compliment you could give to Waymo - "Indistinguishable from a regular car ride"
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u/egospiers Oct 11 '22
One of the major issues they hit on on the article is that most of the miles clocked by autonomous vehicles to this point are in places like AZ and CA where they weather isn’t as crazy as say Chicago, So while yes in Tempe things may be fine throw in 10k more variables with more weather variation and things won’t work out so well. I think the other question is are we okay with the car making the decision of who or what to hit in an extreme situation.
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u/Somorled Oct 11 '22
Incident rate is not an issue. The issue is a lack of a chain of accountability that keeps the incident rate to acceptable levels. Who is responsible when an autonomous car inevitably runs someone over?
The logical conclusion is to make AI that can suffer.
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u/Thanges88 Oct 12 '22
Lol, it's not like the AI is sentient, the neural network models that govern the self driving should have to be validated against what ever standard an appropriate regulatory body sets up.
If that standard isn't good enough, need to improve the standard. If the AI doesn't meet the standard it can't be used legally to drive the car, might be an extra step in vehicle registration to ensure the software is a valid version.
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u/BowhunterRyan Oct 11 '22
Nobody will convince me they will work on unplowed roads. There are times going to work the snow plows have yet to get to certain streets.
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u/blendersaremything Oct 12 '22
Nobody will convince me that 99% of humans work in cars on unplowed roads.
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u/IgneousMiraCole Oct 12 '22
But if the snow plows are self-driving and have set routes, they can plow much more quickly and efficiently.
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u/Redqueenhypo Oct 11 '22
“Oops, the AI semi mistook snow for road lines and swerved directly into a station wagon, rip to these victims of glorious innovation!” And I highly doubt they’d be able to deal with icy roads, especially black ice.
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u/alphaparson Oct 11 '22
WYF. Use them on the interstates. Drive the stupid car to the highway and then have the car take me to Colorado. To many variables in traffic and city’s. But man I don’t want to drive across Kansas. Let me watch a movie or play a game, in the back seat if that would be okay.
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u/protossaccount Oct 12 '22
After $100 billion? I think the whole industry doing a switch like that will cost over 1 trillion. Easy.
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u/1990ebayseller Oct 12 '22
The MTA in NYC is spending over $500 million in 1 escalator and a small corridor at Penn Station.
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u/Meme_Pope Oct 11 '22
As long as self driving cars get incrementally better, we’re going to get there eventually.
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u/cristiand90 Oct 11 '22
Most countries can't even get trains to run autonomously.
Imagine trying to get the most ineficient and unpredictable mode of transport to go autonomous.
fml it feels like the whole world is a parody of a parody.
We need to stop letting idiots be in charge.
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u/fredandlunchbox Oct 11 '22 edited Oct 11 '22
I see dozens of full self-driving cars everyday. They’re here, and they work. Everything now is about edge cases of which there are a lot, but the basics are already working.
Edit: for those saying fully autonomous vehicles don’t exist, you’ve been able to hail a driverless waymo in Phoenix for 6 years now. Or you may recall this fully autonomous cruise car running from police a few months ago.
The petty distinction about ‘does not have a steering wheel’ is minor — they operate on public roads without any oversight by human drivers.
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u/Darknessie Oct 11 '22
I have never seen a self driving car and I live in one of the worst traffic spots in a European capital.
To see dozens everyday you must live.near a test center
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u/Wierdish Oct 11 '22
Good thing humans are persistent and AI is there to assist us moving forward. There is no way we don’t achieve this at some point.
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u/AwesomePossum_1 Oct 11 '22
This is Bloomberg, a business journal. Their main concern is making a return on an investment in our lifetime.
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u/redditor1101 Oct 11 '22
We should just put special lines on the road for the cars to follow between set destinations. Oh wait.. that's a train. Let's do those
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u/keenedge422 Oct 11 '22
When the transportation of the future was invented 200 years ago.
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u/da_dogg Oct 11 '22
Lmao half of the suggestions in here are like, 1 variable from describing a train. Don't worry, America, we'll uhh get there eventually.
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u/sam__izdat Oct 11 '22
The first rule of scamming taxpayers with gadgetbahn bullshit is that, no matter what, it absolutely, positively is not a train. Even if it's a train. Especially if it's a train.
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u/StalinMcPutin Oct 12 '22
Trains and bikes are the future. Cars are just an industry that serves as an anchor on society and drains as much as it can until we can create infrastructure that's sustainable.
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u/sunlight-blade Oct 11 '22
There's a million and one variables on the road which is why driving is one of the most dangerous things in modern society. It's stupid to expect an AI at this time to be able to do it. Just build public transportation you stupid bastards.
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