jadu

iTrader: (42)

^^^ good one! self driving cars needs a poop sensor

KahnBB6

iTrader: (5)

This never surprised me, nor have the swift advances in machine learning associated with self-driving cars. The advancements in miniaturizing bulky sensor arrays that are coming in the next 1-3 years doesn't surprise me either and nor do announcements in the last couple of weeks about NVidia significantly shrinking the size of bulky microprocessor units used in current test cars and Samsung announcing the possible rollout of quantum microprocessing in self-driving cars.

The things will work eventually. Not at this very moment but they will. And they will be very useful while at the same time being disruptive.

The concern I have is why enthusiast car owner groups aren't already banding together to have more unified voices when it comes to standing up to any legislation that might push away the ability to choose to drive your own car and legally keep registered a unique manually driven vehicle. We think nothing of that right now but that will become a concern for enthusiasts. It might still become more financially difficult to do given enough years but preserving the privilege to be able to *choose* to drive in the future should be taken more seriously.

Beyond this is the oft attached theory that no one will own cars as self-driving hits critical mass. Barring legislative action to say that people can't, I don't see that 100%. There are also many niche private vehicle use scenarios that will not all be addressed by the "Want to go somewhere? Pay X fare or subscription to get there and thanks for letting us track your travel habits, destinations, routes and other metadata" model.

Sometimes some people even like to drive themselves to no place in particular for no particular reason seeing where a road might take them. Some people also like to own certain cars and personalize them. Maybe even a high percentage of those types will welcome a vehicle they don't care much about that drives their annoying commutes for them but outside of those scenarios some people like to drive their own vehicle for enjoyment on their own time. Autonomous and non-private cars and the mantra that human driving and manual cars are soon to be irrelevant don't really address those things.

Transportation jobs in the market... I'm not sure much can be done to change that tide as it grows over time (although at this moment in time it hasn't hit yet). With only some exceptions that will get hit in the largest areas quite a bit. But only once proven Level 5 self-driving has been demonstrated to work in many conditions. Once that happens though, the transportation job market will shrink except in exceptional niches.... and whatever niches survive initially might still be not long for the world.

twsti321

Please start soon, so the cars can be cheaper to buy.

comotiger

The first fully self-driving cars with no test driver have been introduced in Chandler, AZ by Waymo.
http://money.cnn.com/2017/11/07/tech...ers/index.html

mmarshall

They'll find a willing test-driver if they search hard enough.

lexicanto

I don't know where self driving vehicles well take us. I am very suspicious of them. It's probably unavoidable, but as former GM vice chairman Bob Lutz noted cars will soon be outlawed. I honestly don't know what to make of it. May be very soon cars will fly?

MattyG

In the world of aviation, planes that carry passengers fly at 500 mph at 25,000 to 45,000 feet. They frequently criss-cross with each other. Much of that flying is automated. The pilots are merely the supervisors of the systems. You may not know it, but a computer has been flying you around the country for a long time. The pilots are just there to deal with unusual issues.

The closing speed of two jets approaching or criss-crossing would be beyond human comprehension.

ABC

Nice video on some of the ethical options that can be coded into autonomous cars

KahnBB6

iTrader: (5)

I read that article and what's strange is he's not the only one who has mentioned a similar timeframe number. Steve Wozniak was another. How can either of them be so certain about an arbitrary number with so many other variables in the mix?

I am not saying I am unconcerned about this possibility-- I am. I'm also totally fine with autonomous cars coexisting with manual cars-- go for it and let people decide for themselves if they want to drive or not. But I do wonder how they both arrived at the same number of years when discussing a ban on manual driving, albeit mentioned to the press a couple of years apart from each other. Maybe Lutz is just parroting something he heard from Wozniak or someone else?

The incredible aspect of all this is why anyone would need to bother banning manual driving at all if it's such a niche and still highly regulated privilege in the future. What's the point of that if the majority of people use self-driving cars and a smaller number of licensed people drive cars themselves? That only leaves people who actually want to drive and are forced to take it seriously... ie driving enthusiasts... or they would lose their license, I assume.

Motorcycles are a niche appeal. I suppose even if the U.S. were to go to the extreme of adopting a graduated power level licensing model (like Japan for instance) would even that would be deemed too uncivilized for society?

Lutz goes as far as to suggest that all racetracks will dry up as well. It's funny though... I still see many horse trails and many horse owners in certain areas. Caring for a large animal is arguably a totally different responsibility than maintaining a trailered racetrack car. You can't ignore the needs of the living thing for which you are responsible. A track car is a purely inanimate electro-mechanical contraption that can be left to sit until it is used.

I expect many changes in the future of course but at a certain point I have to wonder why it would be so important as to ban people from driving themselves on the road if they want to go through the licensing and insurance process and own and maintain a vehicle of their choosing. Further, you can't tell me nobody would use racetracks even if electric powertrains are eventually all that are allowed on even those. People still ride horses and attend equestrian events with them. It's a very niche and expensive hobby (because you're responsible for the care and well being of one or more large living creatures) but people still do it. Why would there be no people doing effectively the same thing with vehicles on dedicated tracks?

Conversely, we now have autonomous racing vehicles that run on tracks. Why? What's the point of them? What personal interest and passion for racing can a computer possibly have? Autonomous cars don't care about anything at all related to racing and they aren't self-aware entities. They just follow complex logic and programming and solve complex problems presented to them. Human beings do things such as inventing, coding, mechanical design, writing, poetry, painting, sculpture, filmmaking, music and singing, theater, competitive sports events and, yes... vehicle racing all because they feel they want to. Career comes into that secondarily perhaps but the initial impetus for those things is that you WANT to for some personal reason. An A.I. doesn't care about any of those things. It just follows programming and logic rules with the help of powerful microprocessors. Given that... who is going to care in a few years if a bunch of computers race each other? There will be little interest from human beings because it's just machines following code rather than real people whom can be identified with on a human level.

And before anyone says it, robot and machine events such as what Survival Research Laboratories used to do (look them up) are still highly human orchestrated events entirely built from the whimsical ridiculousness of their creators who were operating their contraptions via remote controls all to follow mostly pre-determined scripts for each spectacle event. Competitive sports and racing events are a different thing from examples of machine vs machine events such as those.

MattyG-- yeah, if you think about it flight being 3-D travel is extremely complex and highly regulated. Even when you move from very automated commercial style aircraft that are "flown" by their pilots basically on takeoff and landing and in emergency scenarios you are still dealing with a very pre-determined route that your air traffic controller expects to follow if you are piloting a small private light aircraft with a prop engine. If changes are made you still clear it with the air traffic controller. If an emergency happens you are on the radio informing them of what is happening and your intentions or their recommendation for where to land (if your malfunctioning plane will still allow you do follow their instructions).

Flying is way more complex and precarious than driving a land vehicle. It would be chaos if flight movement, large aircraft automated control, modern instrumentation, modern sensors for autopilot systems and the redundancy in automated flight control weren't what they are today.

oldcajun

I think he passed me this afternoon in Tucson.
Steve

bitkahuna

iTrader: (20)

i don't believe they will be outlawed entirely, just that few will be able to afford the cost including huge insurance costs.

KahnBB6

iTrader: (5)

That would be a marginally better scenario than a ban on manual driving but still not a good one at all. Driving yourself should not be a privilege reserved only for the very wealthy. It's on you to procure the vehicle and to go through whatever driver training and vetting is required but to otherwise make it virtually impossible for anyone who isn't rich to do it is not a good future outcome.

Still, that would be a universe better than outright saying no one is allowed to.

bitkahuna

iTrader: (20)

it will start in cities. We can see how even today citiy governments hate cars - they have more and more sections that are pedestrian only, where parking availability sucks, and in cities like london they have fees for the privilege of bringing your car in. So as self driving uber cars emerge it will be pointless, stupid, and problematic to 'drive' there and then those cars will be banned. But it will be a long time until farmer joe doesn't drive his old f150 somewhere although even there, joe may have more knowledge than we realize because self driving tractors are already out there. https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-t...ving-tractors/

UDel

They are not off to a very good start.
https://hothardware.com/news/las-veg...r-of-operation

bitkahuna

iTrader: (20)

That bus wasn't even moving.