
Steve Wozniak says he does not expect fully autonomous cars 'in my lifetime' - AndrewBissell
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/apple-co-founder-steve-wozniak-says-he-does-not-expect-n1071436
======
mindcrime
I'm a little younger than Woz, and I am skeptical we'll have truly autonomous
self-driving cars in my lifetime.

Three thoughts:

1\. Any of us who work in software development know that "getting to 90% done
is easy... it's the second 90% that gets you". And I believe that to the
extent that we may seem to be 90% of the way to self-driving cars, it's
definitely the "first 90%" not the second. The devil truly is in the details.

2\. From what I've seen / heard, it seems that most of the testing done to
date has been done in day-time, on limited access, smooth, flat, straight
roads, OR urban surface streets where traffic speeds are relatively slow. I
believe the leap from either of those environments to "any arbitrary twisty,
curvy, back-country road, at night, when it's foggy and snowing", is quite
substantial. And I don't consider a car truly autonomous unless it can handle
those conditions at least as well as a human (to be fair, humans don't always
handle those conditions well, so _maybe_ this bar isn't as high as it seems).

3\. I've developed software for 20 years... knowing how the sausage is made,
seeing the compromises that are made in order to "hit the ship date", the bugs
that are swept under the rug, the boundary conditions that are assumed away as
"impossible", etc., I won't be trusting any self-driving car anytime soon.

~~~
pkulak
I think we're at least one CS breakthrough away, and how do you put a timeline
on that?

Kinda like how speech recognition was just almost there for decades until
modern ML made it actually as good as a human being.

~~~
ozten
> ML made it actually as good as a human being

How ML made it usable in some cases, would be more accurate. I still can't ask
Alexa to play specific albums or tracks most of the time.

I don't want that level of accuracy driving cars on the road.

~~~
shsjxjbsbs
Google seems to have no trouble playing music from Spotify for me. It can even
manage it while I yell my song requests from the shower.

~~~
rsj_hn
The only thing I have ever wanted from phone assistants is to tell me whether
a coffee shop was open or not, or what the closing time is. I still can't get
this info, nor is this question understood. I still have to stop, launch a
browser, navigate to the site, and dig around their website for opening hours,
or in the worst case find a phone number and call to ask them.

~~~
adriftincode
What phone assistants are you using? I’ve never had this problem.

~~~
rsj_hn
Siri

~~~
adriftincode
Same here, Siri solves this problem.

Me: “Hey Siri, how late is x open?”

Siri: One possibility is on x street, does that sound good?

Me: Yes

Siri:

“X is open from y-z.”

~~~
rsj_hn
I just tried it and you're right, it works. Well, it didn't used to work so I
stopped using Siri. I regret the error.

~~~
shsjxjbsbs
I wonder if people assume Siri failed to understand the query when they hear
its request for clarification. I think it should include some context, eg:
“Which x do you want opening hours for?”

------
aedanman
Is this because he doesn't expect to live much longer? He is an overweight 69
year old.

~~~
m463
Woz aside, I don't think people realize the increased mortality of being on
the upper end of the (literal) scale.

Here's a journal article:

[https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo...](https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1001673)

but to summarize BMI vs years lost:

    
    
      BMI   40-45  45-50  50-55  55-60
      men   -6.5   -10.8  -10.6  -17.0
      women -6.9    -9.1  -10.3  -13.1

~~~
kwhitefoot
For my height 1.7 m I would have 10 weigh 115 kg to have a BMI of 40. Bloody
hell, I count myself as overweight at the 74 kg I weigh now, BMI 26. Just
can't imagine carrying an extra 41 kg!

Doesn't surprise me at all that it would shorten my life. Never mind that but
the life one has must be worse as well.

~~~
rwmurrayVT
I just did that same calculation. My god. Would I even want to go 10 more
years weighing 300 lbs?

I know BMI isn't 'perfect'. I think once you reach a certain weight class it
becomes more and more relevant. There's no way more than a few fringe cases of
people are 6'\+ and 350+lbs of primarily muscle. Even NFL linemen are on
average 6'4" and around 300lbs.

Edit: That linked article is incredible. It shows the primary driver of the
increased mortality is from heart disease and diabetes. 5x more deaths from
diabetes, 3x from heart disease, and 2x from digestive neoplasms, 16x lower
respiratory, 5x liver disease. I'm going to continue my good exercise and
dieting...

~~~
officeplant
>My god. Would I even want to go 10 more years weighing 300 lbs?

As someone who's dropped from 430 to 330 (6'3" 31). This is always a difficult
question. The struggle is real, but even trying to hit the "healthy" weight
for my height according to BMI is another 140lb away.

~~~
rwmurrayVT
You're going the right way and that is something to be very proud of for
yourself. It didn't happen overnight so it won't go away overnight.

Seriously, you should be very proud and I truly commend you. I was 133 pounds
when I stopped running track and field. I went up to 200 pounds with some
ease. It's been a struggle to return to 150 pounds.

------
todaysAI
I agree, not because of technical issues but because we will never be able to
get past the 'Trolley Problem'.

~~~
nradov
I don't expect level 4+ autonomous vehicles any time soon, but the "trolley
problem" is an irrelevant distraction. It's not something that comes up in
real world collisions. There's never an even choice between hitting one of two
targets. Other factors are always present and dictate the safest course of
action.

~~~
todaysAI
I don't agree. The problem of least 'harm' will come up continually.
Moralistic decisions must be made by the car. And even if those incidents do
not occur, the software will have to be programmed for these types of
decisions.

------
abduekejfidj
Full self-driving requires artificial general intelligence and I don't think
that will be around for at least another 100 years, if ever.

It is truly amazing how much hype FSD has generated, even among smart
technically-savvy people.

------
rdlecler1
This is why I’m perplexed by the concerns around AI. what is more likely to
happen is that we’ll start evolving the infrastructure to support driverless
cars in the same way paved roads enabled the automobile.

------
ksaj
I think he literally means nothing more than "Apple isn't making a car OS."
Their focus is your pocket and other carry-alls, and not at all interested in
your car outside of how those pocket and carry-all devices can connect to it.

Hell, their focus is only barely on the desktop anymore. For the same reason.
Tracking is way more interesting when not anchored to a desktop, and other
companies already got the car thing going.

------
kwhitefoot
Clarke's first law comes to mind. Not an exact fit but pertinent nonetheless:

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible,
he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he
is very probably wrong.

------
jmpman
DARPA Grand Challenge was started in 2004, so it’s been 15 years of constant
research to get this far. We have at least another 15 to go.

------
kd3
Woz is expecting to die within 5 years.

