[brooksby]

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jun/09/tesla-autopilot-crashes-investigation-nhtsa

[quote]

US federal regulators are deepening their investigation into Tesla’s Autopilot function after more than a dozen Tesla cars crashed into parked first-responder vehicles over a period of four years.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said on Thursday it was upgrading its preliminary investigation, which launched last August, to an “engineering analysis”, which is taken before the agency determines a recall.

The investigation covers all four Tesla vehicles – Models Y, X, S and 3 – representing about 830,000 vehicles that have been sold in the US.

[/quote]

Topic

[John Stevenson]

hawkinspeter wrote:

This is why I hope that some day we’ll have open source autonomous driving software powering (public) vehicles. Open source has the ability to go beyond just the economic needs of the vehicle manufacturers.

Car makers should be obliged to open-source the control software for self-driving cars anyway, and offer a hefty bounty for bugs, so knowledgeable people can check it for errors.

This is an industry that’s demonstrated over and over again that it can’t be trusted, yet people think it’ll manage to create safe autonomous vehicles. Pardon the hollow laughter.

[John Stevenson]

Rich_cb wrote:

Rich_cb wrote:

Just to clarify there are no *actual* laws requiring pedestrians *and* cyclists to “keep out of the way”? Autonomous vehicles are already a reality and the level 4 vehicles have, AFAIK, operated without any fatalities or serious injuries.

What part of “de facto” are you struggling with?

You don’t need actual laws when the reality of the behaviour of law enforcement is that when cyclists get hit they are punished for it.

[hawkinspeter]

Rich_cb wrote:

Rich_cb wrote:

That’s where the money is so I don’t think level 5 autonomy will ever exist as there’s simply no profit to be made in developing it.

This is why I hope that some day we’ll have open source autonomous driving software powering (public) vehicles. Open source has the ability to go beyond just the economic needs of the vehicle manufacturers.

[AlsoSomniloquism]

Although of course driving

Although of course driving without any headlights on wasn’t an issue for the Robot, it was just lucky someone not “seeing the car” at night didn’t come across it before the Police did.

[hawkinspeter]

I think you’re making

I think you’re making assumptions about how autonomous systems can be made to work. It’s entirely possible to have AI systems within a framework of rules and they can be programmed to slow down and stop if a situation strays out of known parameters.

The Elaine Herzberg case shows the major problem of having systems that rely on the driver being constantly alert and ready in case the system suddenly decides that it doesn’t know what’s going on. I believe the safety system was also disengaged as they had problems with phantom stopping, but that’s an implementation issue they had rather than a problem with all autonomous systems.

[Rich_cb]

Just to clarify there are no
Just to clarify there are no *actual* laws requiring pedestrians *and* cyclists to “keep out of the way”?

Autonomous vehicles are already a reality and the level 4 vehicles have, AFAIK, operated without any fatalities or serious injuries.

[John Stevenson]

Rich_cb wrote:

Rich_cb wrote:

Level 4 vehicles operating right now in the US with no laws requiring pedestrians/cyclists etc to “keep out of the way”.

Pedestrians are required to keep out of the way of motor vehicles in the US already, or did you forget the offence of jaywalking?

And many US jurisdictions have de facto the same requirement for cyclists, as can be seen by the way NYPD has a crackdown on cyclists every time one is killed by some gimboid in an SUV.

[Rich_cb]

Personally if the car drives
Personally if the car drives itself with no input required from its passengers then I’d say it’s fully autonomous. Level 4 autonomy meets those criteria in my opinion.

Level 4 vehicles operating right now in the US with no laws requiring pedestrians/cyclists etc to “keep out of the way”.

Level 4 autonomy will allow the automation of all inter and intra city transport. That’s where the money is so I don’t think level 5 autonomy will ever exist as there’s simply no profit to be made in developing it.

[John Stevenson]

hawkinspeter wrote:

I don’t see why that’s the case. By following current trajectories, it’s easy enough to extrapolate and anticipate possible collisions.

That’s not how machine learning works. It’s probablistic: “Based on previous movements, if I make this manoeuvre I have Y% chance of a collision.” You can’t set that percentage to zero because the vehicle would then never move, so you set a level of risk you’re willing to accept. Problem is, when the vehicle encounters something outside context it’ll plough on regardless, as we saw in the death of Elaine Herzberg.

Also, that implies that all drivers are mindful which I think we can find enough evidence to disprove.

I’m not implying that, as it’s obviously untrue. However, despite all the obvious problems of having a couple of pounds of distractable meat in control of a vehicle, drivers go an average of 18 years between crashes in a complete range of conditions. That’s largely because being human, they can predict what other humans are likely to do in a way that goes beyond machine-learning systems can do.

I think Tesla are approaching it from entirely the wrong direction by having a fast car and then gradually adding self-driving features to it. It makes more sense to have slow moving autonomous vehicles (without any driver assistance) and learn about their failure modes before then grappling with the extra problems from travelling at speed.

Agreed, and Musk has made the situation many times worse by constantly saying Tesla’s would have full self-driving Real Soon Now for several years, giving Tesla owners the impression that surely Real Soon Now has arrived and they can have a snooze or watch TV.

 

[John Stevenson]

Rich_cb wrote:

Rich_cb wrote:

Level 4 has several meanings. One of which is ‘Full autonomy within a defined area’.

Ah we’re dealing the cloning machine’s lawyers now are we? If the hedge is ‘within a defined area’ then that’s still not full autonomy is it?

Within a decade I expect most major cities and all motorways will have autonomous vehicles being used routinely.

If that happens it won’t be because the problems have been solved it’ll be a combination of car industry lobbying/bribing politicians and laws that oblige pedestrians and cyclists to keep out of the way of snake-oil powered vehicles. 

[hawkinspeter]

John Stevenson wrote:

Because driving in current conditions requires theory of mind to predict what the other idiots on the road are going to do.
 

I don’t see why that’s the case. By following current trajectories, it’s easy enough to extrapolate and anticipate possible collisions. It’s similar to how a dog can catch a ball without needing to know about air resistance and gravity. Also, that implies that all drivers are mindful which I think we can find enough evidence to disprove.

I think Tesla are approaching it from entirely the wrong direction by having a fast car and then gradually adding self-driving features to it. It makes more sense to have slow moving autonomous vehicles (without any driver assistance) and learn about their failure modes before then grappling with the extra problems from travelling at speed.

It’s like teaching a learner driver – you don’t go full speed and then hand the controls over to a learner.

[Rich_cb]

Level 4 has several meanings.
Level 4 has several meanings.

One of which is ‘Full autonomy within a defined area’.

That is what the taxi services in Phoenix and San Francisco represent.

Nobody sits in the drivers seat and the passenger is never required to take over.

Within a decade I expect most major cities and all motorways will have autonomous vehicles being used routinely.

[mdavidford]

John Stevenson wrote:

hawkinspeter wrote:

Self driving certainly seems like a tough problem, but I don’t see why it would require “strong AI”

Because driving in current conditions requires theory of mind to predict what the other idiots on the road are going to do.

To be fair, we don’t seem to require that of human drivers.

[John Stevenson]

hawkinspeter wrote:

Self driving certainly seems like a tough problem, but I don’t see why it would require “strong AI”

Because driving in current conditions requires theory of mind to predict what the other idiots on the road are going to do.

[John Stevenson]

According to this, that’s not

According to this, that’s not full autonomy,

Level 4 (High Driving Automation)

The key difference between Level 3 and Level 4 automation is that Level 4 vehicles can intervene if things go wrong or there is a system failure. In this sense, these cars do not require human interaction in most circumstances. However, a human still has the option to manually override.

[Author]

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