Economist: Self-driving cars offer huge benefits—but have a dark side

[suburbanite]

As autonomous vehicles gain popularity, and assuming they have a much lower accident rate than manual drivers, it will probably put financial pressure on the holdouts who refuse to be driven by a robot.

As the pool of insured manual drivers dwindles, premiums could rise to the point where manual driving is reserved for those who are in it for the experience. ie. driving performance cars where cost isn't an issue.

[suburbanite]

Originally Posted by maru2501

people's independence is a major concern. I happen to believe one of the incoming changes is expressways, highways and tollways eventually being closed to vehicles driven by humans. That way computers can run driverless passenger vehicles at much higher speeds and in a coordinated fashion with little to no risk of crashes.

but that will mean having to pay for that level of transports in different ways, and maybe not getting to take the interstate to florida

That's a completely different system though. What you're describing is a scenario where individual vehicles don't have any autonomy. They are coordinated by a central computer that can route the entire network of vehicles in the most efficient manner. The current trajectory is a system of completely autonomous vehicles that each act independently of each other. It would be less efficient than a unified network like you described, but also less susceptible to catastrophic failure if there was a bug in the system or it was maliciously targeted.

[maru2501]

short of a CPU you still have computerized vehicles acting predicatably and/or otherwise sensing each other and moving nearly in unison

point being I think one obvious choke point where autonomous vehicles could be separated is limited access highways, plus there's money there

[JManc]

The technology is still a long long way off to where an autonomous car can act and react like a human with intuition and emotional intelligence. For the time being, I think cars will be automated on highways and limited access roads but still rely on the human equation on city streets and busy areas. People overstate the level of development of AI especially in the media. It's advancing but we're still decades away from anything resembling "intelligence"

[mousquet]

^ This is it. In 2018, a car would require a huge — radar with a Hollywood set of cameras to compute a drunk truck driver along the way.
We won't see any real autonomous vehicle before 2030, if not 50, unfortunately.

As a dude born in Paris, I like driving cities, like it's sometimes entertaining to drive the streets and all by following the rules, but highways are boring, uncomfortable and obnoxious to me.

Anyway, the media makes a whole lot of noise, sometimes even scaring people like "technology will lay you off, stealing your jobs", but they don't know — when it comes to technical details or implementation.

It's impossible to replace human sense of criticism and spirit by any machine.

[a very long weekend]

Originally Posted by mousquet

^ This is it. In 2018, a car would require a huge — radar with a Hollywood set of cameras to compute a drunk truck driver along the way.
We won't see any real autonomous vehicle before 2030, if not 50, unfortunately.

GM plans to implement next year. In fact, its employees here in San Francisco already use a completely autonomous ride hailing service as their own private transportation system. Ie. it already exists at Level 4.

[Pedestrian]

^^I agree. Some form of autonomous vehicle should hit the street in operational mode within a couple of years. But IF there are "incidents" there could quickly be a reaction to pull them off again.

In that regard, I can't find the article in electronic form so I can quote it, but the SF Business Times is reporting this week that an analysis they did of 60 accident reports filed with the CA DMV (nearly all these involve autonomous vehicles driving themselves but with a standby driver in the driver's seat--CA requires reporting of all accidents involving autonomous vehicles) "seems to show that there's some level of human error (or angst) involved in most" of them.

[10023]

Originally Posted by mousquet

^ This is it. In 2018, a car would require a huge — radar with a Hollywood set of cameras to compute a drunk truck driver along the way.
We won't see any real autonomous vehicle before 2030, if not 50, unfortunately.

As a dude born in Paris, I like driving cities, like it's sometimes entertaining to drive the streets and all by following the rules, but highways are boring, uncomfortable and obnoxious to me.

Anyway, the media makes a whole lot of noise, sometimes even scaring people like "technology will lay you off, stealing your jobs", but they don't know — when it comes to technical details or implementation.

It's impossible to replace human sense of criticism and spirit by any machine.

This is why France doesn’t have a tech industry or a start-up ecosystem.

And taking the “human spirit” out of driving is a feature of autonomous vehicles, not a bug. That human spirit causes accidents.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by 10023

This is why France doesn’t have a tech industry or a start-up ecosystem.

And taking the “human spirit” out of driving is a feature of autonomous vehicles, not a bug. That human spirit causes accidents.

...and technology fails, crashes and is prone to malware. The stakes are higher when it is a car moving at 70 over an iPhone. Again, we will be very old by the time AI reaches the point an autonomous car can respond efficiently as a human and deal/ react to multiple unpredictable stimuli at the same time.

[10023]

Originally Posted by JManc

...and technology fails, crashes and is prone to malware. The stakes are higher when it is a car moving at 70 over an iPhone. Again, we will be very old by the time AI reaches the point an autonomous car can respond efficiently as a human and deal/ react to multiple unpredictable stimuli at the same time.

And I disagree. I’d give it 10 years.

Not for AI to be perfect, but for it to be better than most drivers (at least in the US, where standards for driving licenses are so low).

[JManc]

You must subscribe to the Ray Kurzweil line of thought; technological singularity is just around the corner and technology is evolving much faster than we realize.

[dubu]

Originally Posted by JManc

You must subscribe to the Ray Kurzweil line of thought; technological singularity is just around the corner and technology is evolving much faster than we realize.

True that, we won’t really need cars in the future. We could work from home and have gardens indoors with the lights comming out.

[10023]

Originally Posted by JManc

You must subscribe to the Ray Kurzweil line of thought; technological singularity is just around the corner and technology is evolving much faster than we realize.

I don’t know about the singularity, but I do think self-driving cars will exist sooner rather than later.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by 10023

I don’t know about the singularity, but I do think self-driving cars will exist sooner rather than later.

I think we're going in circles. Self-driving cars already do exist (my Acura has limited self-driving capability) but they won't be replacing humans anytime soon. There are a lot of technological, legal and social hurdles to sort out first...

[Pedestrian]

Are robot cars magnet for aggression in San Francisco?
By Caille MillnerMarch 8, 2018 Updated: March 9, 2018 12:48pm

As soon as San Francisco opened its streets to robot cars, people started attacking them.

That’s the news out of the California Department of Motor Vehicles this week.

On March 6, the DMV quietly released this year’s six autonomous-car-involved collision reports. Two of the incidents, both in San Francisco, happened when people approached the cars and attacked them . . . .

https://www.sfchronicle.com/entertainmen...agnet-for-aggression-in-San-12740086.php

Also this week came news the CA Highway Patrol is driving big luxurious busses around as decoys for people shooting at the busses that haul tech wrokers from the city to and from Silicon Valley jobs with BB —.

Are we wtinessing the return of the Luddites in the home of tech?

[montréaliste]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

https://www.sfchronicle.com/entertainmen...agnet-for-aggression-in-San-12740086.php

Also this week came news the CA Highway Patrol is driving big luxurious busses around as decoys for people shooting at the busses that haul tech wrokers from the city to and from Silicon Valley jobs with BB —.

Are we wtinessing the return of the Luddites in the home of tech?

Man, that's nothing.

I looked through my telescope the other night and I could've sworn there was a Tesla flying in orbit on autopilot.

[dubu]

Originally Posted by montréaliste

Man, that's nothing.

I looked through my telescope the other night and I could've sworn there was a Tesla flying in orbit on autopilot.

I thought that was just a green screen. It looked like a old vw bug through the telescope to me jk. That’s what I would have done. Even if I was rich, I’d give the Tesla to a random person on the street. Then put a broke down car in space, no one would know.

[Denvergotback]

I haven't read the whole thread so maybe this has already been discussed, or there is the great possibility that I could just have no idea what I'm talking about... But who's to say that everyone will be on board with car sharing services when it comes to self driving cars? I can very well see people wanting to own their own self driving car, parked in their suburban garage and use it like any regular car today. Only difference is they can relax and enjoy the long commute to work instead of traffic raging their way to work. I can honestly see these car dealerships still in business just selling personal self driving cars... And honestly I can see it going either way, either the car sharing services take off and add to the urban fabric or people replace their user driving cars with self driving cars and therefore induce more sprawl into our cities fabric.

[AbortedWalrus]

Originally Posted by JManc

...and technology fails, crashes and is prone to malware. The stakes are higher when it is a car moving at 70 over an iPhone. Again, we will be very old by the time AI reaches the point an autonomous car can respond efficiently as a human and deal/ react to multiple unpredictable stimuli at the same time.

You do realize that level 4 autonomous cars have been on the road for months without incident, right? Waymo had them first on a trial basis since about September, and now they are open to the public. These cars and are already out are responding more efficiently than humans and successfully reacting to multiple unpredictable stimuli at the same time. This is not a 10 year thing, it's a now thing. Level 5 autonomy is a 5 year thing. In 10 years they will be common.

[JManc]

Originally Posted by AbortedWalrus

You do realize that level 4 autonomous cars have been on the road for months without incident, right? Waymo had them first on a trial basis since about September, and now they are open to the public. These cars and are already out are responding more efficiently than humans and successfully reacting to multiple unpredictable stimuli at the same time. This is not a 10 year thing, it's a now thing. Level 5 autonomy is a 5 year thing. In 10 years they will be common.

In ten years, they will just be rolling out the technology. Consider the amount of processing power it will require to anticipate every imagine imaginable condition. As well as the costs.

And this stuff is all still fairly new. My 2016 Acura is a "Level 1" and some of the more expensive/ premium cars are Level 2's with some Level 3 features; Tesla's Autopilot for example that steers people into lakes.

Autonomous Cars Will Move to Level 4 in 2018

Still, the latest Level 4 advancements don’t necessarily change the timetable for Level 5. Level 5 is still a decade away, according to experts. Automakers and analysts alike say that while today’s autonomous vehicles may be able to handle 99% of the potential on-road situations facing autonomous cars, that’s simply not enough. Engineers will need years to feel confident enough to release a Level 5 vehicle.

Level 5 means it has to operate fully independent under every imaginable condition,” Abuelsamid said. “We don’t expect to see that until the late 2020s at the earliest.”

https://www.designnews.com/electronics-test/autonomous-cars-will-move-level-4-2018/175488520357946