
GM exec calls Elon Musk claim of Level 5 driving without lidar 'not possible' - kposehn
https://www.autoblog.com/2017/10/16/gm-exec-calls-elon-musk-full-of-crap-autonomy-claims/?ncid=edlinkusauto00000016
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dpark
> _to say you can be a full Level 5 with just cameras and radars, is not
> physically possible._

Of course it’s possible. Humans manage to drive just fine without even radar.
Optical recognition is _clearly_ sufficient.

With that said, we clearly have not solved self-driving cars and it’s very
possible that better sensors will improve the tech faster than smarter
computing.

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dingo_bat
WOuldn't that logic suggest that self-driving tech dependent only on image
recognition has a hard-limit at around the human driving expertise-level? If
we truly want super-human driving skills (as everyone seems to expect from
future cars), wouldn't that mandate a richer and better quality of data?

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dpark
Not really. Dogs have _roughly_ the same visual capacity as humans but are
really shitty drivers nonetheless. Visual acuity doesn't necessarily correlate
tightly with driving ability. It's possible that human-level driving is as
good as it can get with just optical vision, but there's no evidence to
support that. There may be vast untapped potential from pure optical vision.
Honestly, if we just got self-driving cars as good as non-distracted, expert
human drivers, they'd already look super-human compared to the average human.

Still, it's very likely that we can improve faster with better sensors.

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jsjohnst
> Dogs have roughly the same visual capacity as humans

While I more or less agree with the rest of your post, source needed on the
quoted part. From everything I’ve read on the topic, there is significant
differences in dog perception over humans (FoV, depth perception, motion
detection, flicker fusion, etc).

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dpark
Hence _roughly_. (Call it order of magnitude.) The primary limitation on dogs'
driving ability is not their vision.

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jsjohnst
> The primary limitation on dogs' driving ability is not their vision.

Actually, I’d argue that it is, but maybe my definition of “vision” is overly
pedantic.

 _Vision_ is to _seeing_ as _listening_ is to _hearing_ for me.

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alistproducer2
With the current state of computer vision and AI, I would agree with GM.
There's a lot of fast and loose talk about what AI can and can't do, but the
reality is we're not even close to having general intelligence which would, at
least in a rudimentary form, be necessary to safely navigate a car using only
optical recognition.

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tabeth
How can someone say that Level 5 driving without lidar is impossible? How
exactly are humans driving then? Ridiculous.

I'm still skeptical that it can be implemented successfully, though, given
that we still don't have Level 5 with lidar.

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theyregreat
Yup. GM jealousy FUD.

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tfolbrecht
Level 5 possible without lidar: Tesla has a potentially less expensive
driverless system

Level 5 impossible without lidar: Tesla licenses the tech and buys the
hardware like everyone else

Looks like two upsides on this bet.

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dstroot
Umm... not without losing bet number one and the associated brand and image
impact of selling thousands of cars that were sold as self-driving capable.

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tfolbrecht
Tesla has back peddled on so many deadlines and claims without killing
themselves yet, so we'll see.

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fred_is_fred
This is like Lockheed/Boeing execs saying that landing a rocket booster and
reusing it was impossible. There's a clip of that somewhere which I can't seem
to find right now.

