
Waymo CEO: Autonomous cars won't ever be able to drive in all conditions - sethbannon
https://www.cnet.com/news/alphabet-google-waymo-ceo-john-krafcik-autonomous-cars-wont-ever-be-able-to-drive-in-all-conditions/
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tlb
People also can't drive in all conditions, so it's kind of a trivial
statement.

I learned to drive around Ottawa, where freezing rain and white-outs happened
occasionally. At some point the wise choice was to put the hazard lights on,
pull to the side of the road, and wait for it to be over.

Presumably self-driving cars will also be able to do that. So it's not clear
what the difference will be, other than that self-driving cars are likely to
be more analytical about the risks of proceeding vs. stopping.

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chubot
Many people have been trumpeting "superhuman" performance of deep learning on
narrow tasks, and extrapolating that to a future where self-driving cars are
ubiquitous and saving our lives routinely.

That performance is technically true, but unfortunately it doesn't translate
to real-world engineering problems like driving cars.

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stcredzero
The question isn't if computers will be able to drive motor vehicles like the
best people. The question is if computers will be able to drive well enough to
make companies money and save companies money. If the answer to both of those
is yes, then autonomous cars are inevitable.

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bufferoverflow
"Ever" is a long time. I'm certain it's a matter of time before an AI drives
better than an average human in all conditions. And then after a few years it
will drive better than the best humans.

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chubot
I believe solving level 5 self-driving is equivalent to solving AGI -- i.e.
it's "AI-complete".

In that case, there will be a lot of other things to be excited about besides
self-driving -- it will basically be the equivalent of aliens landing on
Earth.

Also, while I agree "ever" is a long time, "a matter of time" doesn't tell me
very much. That is, wouldn't surprise me if it were 100+ years away, in which
case there other things we should be talking about instead.

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sunstone
While this comment is strictly true. Once self driving cars become common in
cities, cities will start modifying roads to be more accessible to self-
driving cars. This will result in "close to perfect" self driving cars in
urban areas within a decade or two.

On the other hand, driving on remote country roads in ice storm conditions is
something that self driving cars are never likely to be ready for, at least
until tires come with automatically deployable half inch studs.

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samstave
We should have self driving car F1, ralley and nascar races... with betting on
who's going to win - and the proceeds going to fund the research further for
the winners.

but wait until the scandal comes out that one of the winners was actually
being remotely piloted by a real person :-)

(AI Doping)

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thejrk_
I could get behind that. Let race teams develop virtual weapons to use during
the race too!

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samstave
that actually sounds fun. jam the others control signals.

