
Winner-take-all effects in autonomous cars - astigsen
http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2017/8/20/winner-takes-all
======
mabbo
One way to help prevent a winner-take-all situation is to have more open
protocols for some of the hard problems. An example that I feel needs to be
done right now: an open protocol for signaling intent.

Today we have left and right blinkers, brake lights, the horn, and some 'body'
language when you use the whole vehicle to show your intent. But with fully
autonomous cars, we could be giving out signals that are rich with
information.

"My exit is soon, I'd like to change to the right hand lane everybody!";
"People up ahead of me seem to be stopping suddenly, watch out as I may need
to do the same!"; "The right lane is blocked at 43.718045, -79.507663, pass
the word back to everyone so they are prepared".

If we can build an open protocol for how cars can share this rich information,
then as more and more cars are autonomous, the roads will improve
continuously. Even non-autonomous cars could start listening to this data and
sharing it with the drivers.

On the other hand, if we don't build an open protocol then we could start to
see, for example, all the Waymo cars helping each other out- but not helping
the Teslas or the GMs. There's a winner-take-all effect in action.

~~~
ruytlm
Highly agree.

While reading this article, I had a paranoid convergence of ideas.

I was reading another article the other day about stock trading strategies,
and how some particular strategies only work if a small number of people are
using them; once they go mainstream, they lose their advantage.

The example used was a whole lot of funds jumping into a particular strategy,
which then effectively killed the strategy's effectiveness, and everybody
lost.

My paranoid fear is something similar in autonomous vehicles; a vicious cycle
of systems reacting to each other, because they're not able to communicate
directly.

Like when you're walking towards someone, and you both try to step to the side
to let the other pass, but you step to the same side; then you correct by
stepping the other way, but so does the other person.

~~~
normalfaults
I wonder if there is an economic/academic term for this? Vicious Cycle?

~~~
idorosen
Tragedy of the commons?

~~~
ruytlm
Feedback loops and vicious cycles are more accurate, I'd say:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtuous_circle_and_vicious_ci...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtuous_circle_and_vicious_circle)

Also if anyone's interested, the article I was referring to is this:
[http://www.mauldineconomics.com/the-10th-man/black-
monday](http://www.mauldineconomics.com/the-10th-man/black-monday)

------
djyaz1200
Autonomous cars are going to kill people, lots of people. They are going to
kill passengers, bicyclists, pedestrians etc. It has already happened and will
continue. Even though autonomous cars will be (and Tesla argues already are)
safer than human drivers the fact that these deaths will be at the hands of
machines rather than people will outrage the public. The industry will become
even more heavily regulated, and there won't be any tolerance for testing
unproven autonomous systems in the wild soon.

Related... it will be interesting to see how well autonomous cars handle
mechanical failures as they (and their tires) age. Good drivers really
distinguish themselves in the moments where the inputs and behaviors that are
expected do not occur (ex: tire blow out).

~~~
6d6b73
>Good drivers really distinguish themselves in the moments where the inputs
and behaviors that are expected do not occur (ex: tire blow out).

Autonomous cars will be much better at handling these types of situations - in
your example, the machine will know what's going on few milliseconds after it
happens and will be able to adjust speed and direction almost instantaneously.
All you need is lots of sensors.

~~~
jcranmer
And engineers who can recognize every possible failure and make the car react
to them.

There are two things where human beings far outpace AI in competence. The
first is the ability to recognize when inputs just simply don't make sense and
thus the intended algorithm is going to return garbage results. A related, but
important issue (particularly if you talk about networking cars together) is
being able to recognize malicious inputs.

The second issue is that humans are good at higher-order planning. An example
as it relates to driving is what we do when we can't tell the state of the
traffic light (direct sunlight, say). Humans naturally look for ways to
indirectly infer the state: the status of the traffic light in the cross
direction, the current disposition of cars around the intersection.

Autonomous cars will only be better at handling these situations if the
engineers are aware that these situations need to be handled and take measures
to make the cars aware of them. And history suggests that is sufficiently
unlikely to happen to make me fearful of the future.

~~~
6d6b73
You're giving us humans superhuman abilities. How many people are prepared for
tire blowout? Have you ever had your wife calling you asking what is this red
light on the instrument panel? Heck I myself questioned myself when ABS light
turned on in a middle of my trip.. Should I continue? Pull over? Will my
breaks work? When the autonomous vehicle gets that signal it will most likely
play it on a safe side, pull over and call service, all automatically. Me? I
just kept driving...

And yes, we can deduct light color from other clues, but we can also go
through a red light because we were preoccupied with our cellphones. AV will
on the other hand have access to multiple cameras, looking at the light from
multiple angles, possibly with some polarizing filters that will make this
non-issue.

------
Animats
There's considerable wishful thinking about autonomous cars. Not about the
technology; that's coming along fine. (I used to work on that stuff.) About
the business possibilities. There's a fantasy that there's a high-margin
business opportunity in there somewhere.

The most likely outcome in the near term is that self-driving is an auto
accessory you can order for a car. That's what the car-makers have in mind,
and most of them are talking about shipping it for the 2020-2021 model year.
In that business model, it's not a big money-maker for whoever sells the self-
driving technology. They get to be a Tier I auto parts supplier, squeezed hard
on price.

There's a lot of noise about "transportation as a service". Remember that Uber
loses money, even after squeezing its drivers really hard and making them buy
and maintain the cars. Actual "transportation as a service" is going to look
more like car rental and Zipcar, and will probably come from companies that
already operate fleets of cars. They already have "rent by the hour, day,
week, or month". They're just adding "rent by the trip". Also, bear in mind
that "transportation as a service" requires level 5 autonomy - no driver
required - so the vehicles can move around empty to pick up a passenger.
That's going to come a few years after Level 4.

Autonomous cars don't require car to car communications. They don't need to be
"connected" at all. Chris Urmson pointed that out when he was heading Google's
self-driving effort. From a safety perspective, it might be better if they're
not connected. The enthusiasm for car to car communications is coming from the
infotainment and advertising people.

~~~
Judgmentality
> There's a lot of noise about "transportation as a service". Remember that
> Uber loses money, even after squeezing its drivers really hard and making
> them buy and maintain the cars.

Uber loses money because it pays the drivers - if you eliminate the driver you
eliminate most of the cost. And if you can use simpler electric vehicles which
are cheaper to drive and maintain, then you have yet another significant
advantage.

I don't think anybody knows what exactly will happen, but there is clearly an
enormous opportunity. The trucking industry alone in the United States is
nearly a trillion dollar market. Of course when you add in all the
complexities of actually scaling the business it doesn't become pure profit,
but I'd be amazed if you couldn't print money if the technology worked.

~~~
deafcalculus
Eliminate the driver and Uber loses the already weak marketplace network
effect. Why would a taxi fleet service come to Uber rather than having their
own app?

~~~
d0lph
I think still the marketplace is pretty useful, especially if a taxi service
is competing with people renting out their autonomous car to uber while they
work or aren't using it. It would also be annoying to have to find an app for
every city you're traveling in.

------
joewadcan
This is a great write up but misses how gov't regulation could actually force
a winner-takes-all distribution. States (like CA and NV) have already started
to draw up their own autonomous driving regulations and the DOT is planning to
support this evolution with Federal standards.

It's reasonable to assume that these standards will get more stringent over
time as accidents, insurance, and compatibility become forced issues (likely
though lawsuits). The companies that have the data and systems to meet these
standards will be able to keep up but it'd be hard (read: impossible) for a
new entrant to catch up after the initial players are further down the
evolutionary curve.

~~~
Tiktaalik
The government regulatory standards could be so tough that there would be no
real quality differentiation between autonomous car vendors, as all vendors
would have to meet the same incredibly high standards of safety.

An outcome could well be that both Tesla and Google both meet the high
government standards, but in doing so they've had to create such high
performing autonomous systems that the consumer can't tell the difference.
They both work equally perfectly because they have to be to be allowed on the
road.

If this is the case then the autonomous system becomes a non-factor in the
purchase of a car. Either you're in the market for an autonomous car or you're
not.

------
salt-licker
This write-up overlooks that hardware integration is neither free nor easy.
Tesla has a huge advantage over an 'autonomy in a box' model because 1. It
only has to support 2 or 3 car models and 2. It has full control over all
design decisions.

Imagine trying to calibrate your third-party self-driving software for every
different car geometry, sensor placement, transmission system, and steering
sensitivity across a few different car manufacturers. If you screw it up for
one car model, people die and it's your fault.

Now let's say waymo chooses a sole partner to avoid this, GM, for example. Now
waymo and GM have to work together to build a car, with a huge expertise
barrier between the two teams. Will GM be willing to redesign their decades-
old electronics platform around Waymo's self-driving system? Will Waymo put in
the effort to make their sensors easily maintainable by GM mechanics? If the
relationship doesn't last forever, much of this effort is wasted.

Tesla has expertise on both sides and has a mandate across the organization to
make the integrated system work. Not to mention a huge head start handling UX
and safety regulations in the field. They may not have a monopoly, but I
expect them to be the first to level 5 and the leader in autonomous driving
market share for years to come.

~~~
Eridrus
> Now let's say waymo chooses a sole partner to avoid this, GM, for example.

I think it depends a lot on the specific partner. Noticeably WayMo has
partnered with Chrysler, rather than Ford, and Chrysler seems in a position
where they would retool to do what WayMo told them to do, because they have no
self-driving effort of their own, so WayMo is their only hope if this becomes
real. WayMo might just buy Chrysler at that point.

------
dgregd
So much talk about LIDAR and other sensors. Why nobody talks about obvious
idea of Road Object Message Bus? ROMB is a protocol where each road object (a
traffic light, a sign, a car, etc.) can transmit info about itself. A car
could broadcast its direction vector, intention to turn, any non ROMB moving
object it sees. A traffic light could broadcast current state and when it is
going to change. That additional information would greatly enhance overall
security, especially during rain and snow conditions.

Self-driving is such important (just after eliminating combustion engines)
that we could upgrade existing cars with cheap ROMB boxes. Vehicle GPS
tracking system costs about $30. ROMB box would cost about $60.

Let's say a car ROMB received info about the white truck, while your car
cameras and vision recognition systems see just a cloud and any truck in 50 m
range, that conflicting info should cause the car to slow down.

~~~
rad_gruchalski
And when something goes wrong with the infrastructure - chaos.

~~~
new299
Are there any reports showing what happens when all the traffic lights in a
city stop working? I would guess it would be similarly chaotic.

The infrastructure would need to be designed such that large scale outages are
unlikely I guess.

------
ghaff
This makes sense--and is quite consistent with what I've heard around some
efforts being far more open (ahem) to open sourcing their code than their
data.

A lot probably comes down to the size of the moat. If some fairly modest
dataset is "good enough" that implies needed data will be widely available can
be used by anyone for their automation algorithms. (Regulation could also
force some level of standardization at this layer.)

Alternatively, truly vast data sets could turn out to be the difference
between decent assistive driving systems, autonomy on highways, and more
broadly useful and enabling self-driving technology. Such data sets could end
up being outside the capabilities of a few companies who got there first.

~~~
microcolonel
> _A lot probably comes down to the size of the moat. If some fairly modest
> dataset is "good enough" that implies needed data will be widely available
> can be used by anyone for their automation algorithms. (Regulation could
> also force some level of standardization at this layer.)_

Given that humans do without detailed data of this sort, I think it should be
okay to leave manufacturers and service providers to figure out how
proprietary or standardized the datasets should be.

I personally might never trust/desire an autonomous car, especially one
connected to the internet, a phone network, or a car-to-car network. In a
world where everyone has your best interests at heart, it seems like a nice
feature; in the one world we've got, it doesn't.

~~~
olivermarks
Made me think of Michael Hastings demise...
[https://youtu.be/7zakBULPETo](https://youtu.be/7zakBULPETo)

~~~
microcolonel
The real point is that it is possible.

Any specific suspicious death may come and go, but the fact that something
like this is believable with conventional networked cars is enough reason to
be very skeptical of security and government access (and criminal access)
claims of manufacturers, no matter how well-meaning.

~~~
putsteadywere
If I had a level 5 autonomous car that was compromised by someone who wanted
to kill me, they probably could. Or they could just push me down a flight of
stairs.

Ultimately, I am alive because nobody cares enough to murder me.

[https://www.xkcd.com/538/](https://www.xkcd.com/538/)

~~~
microcolonel
"Why lock my door, people will open the door if they want to, or break the
window."

I don't see what's wrong with having fewer things in your life which can
silently kill you.

If you get in a new car, you are now completely at its mercy. There are few or
no precautions you can take; you might as well lay on your back, and strap
your arms down so your belly stays up.

What you're really doing is making it cheaper and easier to kill, misdirect,
or trick you. This means that people who wanted to do these things before, but
couldn't afford it, now can.

------
stephengillie
Given the lack of network effect in cars already, it's not likely we'll see a
huge explosion of inter-car connectivity anytime soon. Even Tesla see their
cars largely as individual machines, and not nodes on a highway network.

Example: Driving with cruise control on at 60 mph. The car in front is going
~59.5 mph, so you slowly gain on them. Why do the cars not communicate their
speed, so your car can adjust speed to maintain a safe distance? Even cars of
the same brand can't do this today. What will be the catalyst for this
changing?

~~~
tomsthumb
> Why do the cars not communicate their speed, so your car can adjust speed to
> maintain a safe distance?

How do you deal with spoofing info for/from another vehicle?

What happens when someone decides to see what happens when they
`inter_car_radio.broadcast(myspeed=0)` or
`inter_car_radio.broadcast(myspeed=120)` when the speed limit is 80?

~~~
colejohnson66
The naive solution would be to make it illegal to modify the communication
system of your car, but wouldn't just making it illegal to broadcast false
data be enough? And then if an accident is caused because of that, you can
tack on some other charge like an autonomous version of reckless driving.

~~~
sah2ed
A better solution would be to provision each car with its own key pair and the
car maker's root CA just before it rolls off the factory floor, that way it
can constantly beam 2 signals:

\- a signed (regulator-mandated) signal for cars from other manufacturers;

\- an encrypted signal intended for cars from the same manufacturer.

The first signal would be signed by the root CA of the car maker to indicate
that its communications can be trusted.

The encrypted signal would of course carry an information-rich payload for
coordinating a convoy to travel at the same speed, brake, signal a turn, etc
simultaneously, for instance.

~~~
icebraining
Signed messages only ensure that they weren't modified by a MITM. If the
attack controls the sending vehicle, the signature doesn't help.

~~~
colejohnson66
Tamper proof modules that store the key? Like Secure Enclave?

------
dalbasal
Interesting questions posed, and relevant. Centralizing forces like network
effects can be very powerful in technology fields, and they're constantly
evolving. We don't have generations of experience to draw predictions from,
like traditional manufacturing. Data aggregation advantages seems to be
something companies believe in, and are pursing.

From full-autonomy onwards, it is very hard to predict anything. There will
still be manufacturers of course, but the manufacturer-consumer structure of
the market could completely change. I think there's a decent chance personal
ownership will decline.

Removing drivers from ride-services will drive down costs, a lot. Probably
enough to change ownership incentives and market dynamics.

If that happens, 2nd order effects will also be big. People act very
differently when they pay per-km explicitely, even at reduced rates. Tolls
(economists love tolls, btw) become more palatable when rolled into a per km
price. There might be fleets of little, light cars servicing city centres.

In this chaotic context, I think it's hard to predict anything about market
structure.

------
mikhailfranco
Combining maps with road journey data is already an oligopoly, based on: first
mover advantage, economies of scale, network effects, satnav products/apps,
in-car systems, mobile device OS oligopoly, fleet management data and value
added data analytics.

The 3+1 companies of sufficient scale to dominate the market are: Google
(Android), HERE (was Navtek, was Nokia), Tom Tom (Apple iOS), and Inrix
(startup) - which does not create its own maps, but has captured enough
driving data to compete with the Big 3.

The only other major map provider is Microsoft Bing, but it does not (AFAIK)
have significant products based on driving data, although it does have
'T-Drive' and various other research efforts. Losing the battle for mobile
OSes has crippled its efforts.

------
anovikov
Important point is that software for self-driving is subject to virtuous cycle
because the more it is in use, the more information it collects and the better
it becomes. Which in turns means more use... And it can go out of control with
one supplier dominating the market completely.

------
petra
Let's say you're a strong company ,one that can manage to achieve a lead of,
say 5 years over competitors with the tech. Does anybody think you won't(most
likely) manage to bind yourself to a stable competitive advantage in this
industry, if such exists ?

~~~
icebraining
That's called the first-mover advantage, and history is littered with examples
of companies failing to take advantage of it.

------
amelius
> winning LIDAR doesn’t give leverage at other layers of the stack (unless you
> get a monopoly)

Patents are effectively a grant of monopoly.

Also strong vertical integration can still ruin the market.

------
nostrademons
Planet Labs is the big wildcard in mapping. When Google first mapped the
world, they had to hire thousands of contractors to drive cars down every
street, and even pretty metropolitan areas would be updated once or twice a
year. Now, there's a company with a fleet of a couple hundred satellites
that's imaging the whole world _every day_ , with a resolution of about 10
feet. Not sure on their pricing - I think it's a lot - but the capital cost of
building an accurate physical map has gone down dramatically.

