Re:Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders
by Noos on Tuesday April 25, 2017 @06:19PM
(#14198657)
I don't think so. I think when you introduce computers to anything, you add more edge cases, not less. They are just different ones though. And I'm also skeptical about the quality of this software once it hits an actual mass-market. People here are assuming high levels of rigor when for all we know, it could be similar to Android in the long term.
Re:Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders
by jdietrich on Tuesday April 25, 2017 @07:22PM
(#14199126)
>I don't think so. I think when you introduce computers to anything, you add more edge cases, not less.
That's sort of my point. Accidents are rarely caused by edge cases, but by predictable human failures. All the information needed to avoid the typical accident was plainly available, but the driver just didn't see it, process it or react to it appropriately. Driving is generally very predictable, but human attention and perception is hugely fallible. An AI that gets the basics consistently right but occasionally freaks out in an unpredictable situation would be a huge improvement over human drivers.
Re:Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders
by path411 on Friday April 28, 2017 @07:18PM
(#14223961)
Cars are already full of software.
Re:Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders
by foota on Wednesday April 26, 2017 @03:09AM
(#14201061)
One potential flaw here is that our current driving experience is based on humans. Perhaps humans are relatively good at handling unexpected situations, meaning they don't cause many accidents. Isn't it possible that by switching to AI we shift from mundane accidents to unexpected situation accidents?
Re:Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders
by projectorlochsa on Tuesday April 25, 2017 @06:18PM
(#14198650)
The main approach of how AlphaGo went around the issue of never seeing the positions and playing good moves is search (monte carlo tree search).
In the same way, if the world is modelled accurately and succintly, can a car predict the various scenarios and adapt, even if the current sitation was not seen before (extremely high speeds or unusual number of cars, etc.)
You're operating on a completely archaic understanding of AI. Modern systems can and do adapt to situations on-the-fly. What's more, they can adapt on aggregate - the experiences gathered by a single car can be shared to all cars. Very quickly, every car in the fleet will have billions of hours of cumulative driving experience.
The overwhelming majority of motor vehicle accidents aren't weird and unpredictable edge cases. They're tragic but mundane events that result from a handful of root causes - inattention, excess speed, poor judgement and unnecessary risk-taking. "Driver/rider failed to look properly" is the key contributory factor in nearly half of road traffic accidents. Computers utterly dominate humans in this respect. For every accident caused by some bizarre and unpredictable set of circumstances, there are thousands caused by someone doing something obviously stupid.
A computer can be programmed to be ultra-cautious in difficult situations. A computer can maintain 100% vigilance 100% of the time. Humans can't. Self-driving cars will undoubtedly fail in new and unexpected ways, but it's abundantly clear that they'll fail much less often than humans.