George Hotz is on a hacker crusade against the ‘scam’ of self-driving cars

Re:George Hotz is on a hacker crusade against the ‘scam’ of ... by juliangoldsmith on Friday July 13, 2018 @01:15PM (#17524806)

What would the point of current self-driving car systems be? If you can't take your attention off the road anyway, it's basically a glorified, expensive cruise control.

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Re:George Hotz is on a hacker crusade against the ‘scam’ of ... by alkonaut on Saturday July 14, 2018 @08:42AM (#17530114)

What’s wrong with good cruise control? Any modern car is already loaded with expensive cruise control, often with distance sensing, some times with lane assist etc. There is a huge market for this and a few players (such as Bosch Mobility) own the market. I don’t see why it’s a bad idea to try to enter this market as a startup. You don’t have to revolutionize or disrupt a market to have a viable product.

I think (like Hotz) that very good assist tech is the future, and dodgy self driving tech is a temporary fad.

Complete autonomy on geofenced highways may well be good enough soon that we can sleep or work for 90% of the commute because the autonomous system can give us 20 sec to take over when confused, rather than 1. And that can probably be solved with very cheap hardware (1-2 cameras, a front radar) compared to the huge expensive lidar and camera arrays you need for driving in complex scenarios.

So if someone can make a system that offers fantastic assist and limited but safe autonomy for 10% of the roads but 90% of the driving time - that’s not a bad thing.

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Re:George Hotz is on a hacker crusade against the ‘scam’ of ... by throwawayjava on Friday July 13, 2018 @08:50PM (#17528080)

Ever drive 8-12 hour days for 2 days straight? Used to do it 4-5, but sometimes up to 10, times per year. I'd pay many thousands for lane-keeping on rural interstates in a heartbeat.

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Re:George Hotz is on a hacker crusade against the ‘scam’ of ... by closeparen on Friday July 13, 2018 @08:55PM (#17528104)

Yep. I love the headspace of focusing on something so simple for so long. If I weren’t going to have the experience of driving, I would just fly.

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Re:George Hotz is on a hacker crusade against the ‘scam’ of ... by throwawayjava on Saturday July 14, 2018 @01:44AM (#17529014)

> If I weren’t going to have the experience of driving, I would just fly.

I mean, today, ditto. But for like at least 100M of the 300M+ Americans, that's not an option for various reasons...

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Re:George Hotz is on a hacker crusade against the ‘scam’ of ... by oldgradstudent on Friday July 13, 2018 @11:57PM (#17528722)

The difference is that glorified cruise control actually exists.

Real self driving cars, on the other hand, only exist in inspirational videos.

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Re:George Hotz is on a hacker crusade against the ‘scam’ of ... by wbl on Saturday July 14, 2018 @07:33AM (#17529891)

Or on dedicated tracks.

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Re:George Hotz is on a hacker crusade against the ‘scam’ of ... by nojvek on Saturday July 14, 2018 @11:43AM (#17530749)

I really don’t mind dedicated tracks. Then we just have self driving taxis/buses that service predefined points. Nothing wrong with that.

A 24/7 transport system that gets you to the last mile and is cheap is an impressive achievement.

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Re:George Hotz is on a hacker crusade against the ‘scam’ of ... by ant6n on Monday July 16, 2018 @04:23AM (#17539607)

> I really don’t mind dedicated tracks. Then we just have self driving taxis/buses that service predefined points

That's an interesting way to describe trains

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Re:George Hotz is on a hacker crusade against the ‘scam’ of ... by agumonkey on Friday July 13, 2018 @08:53PM (#17528096)

That's the hurdle that will or will not kill this wave of SDV.

You can't give bits and piece of automation for a vehicle. Mainstream tech is all about making it fool proof. Not giving warnings and calling about weighted death stats.

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Re:George Hotz is on a hacker crusade against the ‘scam’ of ... by toomuchtodo on Friday July 13, 2018 @08:43PM (#17528054)

> What would the point of current self-driving car systems be?

You’re teaching the AI in Tesla’s case. Theoretically, your drive is safer with driver augmentation safety systems in other manufacturers’ vehicles, even if they’re not contributing data back for algo refinement.

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Re:George Hotz is on a hacker crusade against the ‘scam’ of ... by commaai on Friday July 13, 2018 @09:36PM (#17528268)

We are training our AI using user data as well.

https://medium.com/@comma_ai/the-half-way-point-55662cef04f2

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Re:George Hotz is on a hacker crusade against the ‘scam’ of ... by agildehaus on Friday July 13, 2018 @11:00PM (#17528557)

You shouldn't really consider anything that isn't level 4 or above self-driving.

No level 1-3 system can get you from A to B unassisted.

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Re:George Hotz is on a hacker crusade against the ‘scam’ of ... by leesec on Sunday July 15, 2018 @02:57PM (#17536464)

The point would be to save lives. With most accidents coming from drivers being drunk/distracted, a vastly improved cruise control could prevent many deaths.

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Re:George Hotz is on a hacker crusade against the ‘scam’ of ... by airstrike on Friday July 13, 2018 @08:39PM (#17528028)

> What would the point of current self-driving car systems be?

Baby steps, man... baby steps

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Re:George Hotz is on a hacker crusade against the ‘scam’ of ... by sebastianavina on Friday July 13, 2018 @10:20PM (#17528427)

nah, if the android board fails, you get the plus of loosing the control of your vehicle...

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