
Baidu says it's developed China's first fully autonomous self-driving car - doppp
http://venturebeat.com/2015/12/09/baidu-says-its-developed-chinas-first-fully-autonomous-self-driving-car/
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skj
And they'll actually be able to go full-speed on the highway, kill people
(less than real drivers), but still continue on in development without massive
public outcry!

I wonder, if someone could make a self-driving car that could pass a road test
(including taking verbal instructions from the tester), would people be ok
with that one being on the highways?

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intopieces
> kill people (less than real drivers)

What does this mean?

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Tuna-Fish
The moment you start mass-producing self-driving cars, people will start dying
in accidents that were caused by them. Even if they are vastly safer than
human drivers^+ , the sheer amount of cars on the highway and the varied
situations they get in will mean that there will be accidents caused directly
by bad decisions done by the computer. The legal system we have is a lot more
lenient to human error than it is to other causes, and this is a major
problem, because it means that even if going all AI cars would mean that we
lower the fatality rate by 97%, that still means a thousand deaths a year that
can be blamed on one company. That company could not possibly continue
operating, even if they would be saving 29000 lives every year.

I am generally not a fan of the Chinese government, but this is one way in
which their system is better than ours. They have people in positions where
they can do the math and decide that if some decision greatly saves lives on
the net, they can enact it even if it directly causes (less) lives to be lost.

^+ And really, that isn't a hard goal to reach. People largely don't cause
fatalities because they are bad at driving, they cause them because they are
impaired in one way or another and because the reaction times at high speeds
are too hard for humans. Most early AI cars will probably be shitty, but they
will largely be shitty in ways that don't endanger the occupants.

~~~
karmacondon
I understand your argument, but I see two other possibilities:

1) Drivers remain liable for actions taken by their car's AI. This would
encourage people to only use truly driverless AI in the safest possible
conditions, ie not on crowded streets or when its raining. This will let
market forces balance the technological development of the cars with public
adoption

2) After initial legal precedents for damages are set, some companies will
make enough money to insure a large fleet of autonomous vehicles. And again,
market forces will be able to pace the tradeoff between how "safe" the AI
technology is vs how quickly its adopted.

tldr; an authoritarian government isn't necessary to push this particular
technology forward. As much as I hate to say it, the Free Market will do just
fine in this case

~~~
jacquesm
> This would encourage people to only use truly driverless AI in the safest
> possible conditions, ie not on crowded streets or when its raining.

You just cancelled any driverless cars in NL or the UK.

Driverless cars are only useful if they have a 'backup' driving mode by a
person in the most extreme of circumstances. Under all normal conditions the
car should drive itself. Otherwise it is not a 'driverless car' but merely a
car with a software augmentation for the driver and they should be lumped in
with the regular cars.

Self driving cars should be able to move from one place to another _without_ a
licensed driver present or required in all circumstances normally encountered.

~~~
DanBC
> Driverless cars are only useful if they have a 'backup' driving mode by a
> person in the most extreme of circumstances.

This sounds terrifying. There you are, in your self-driving car, doing some
light text editing, when _BAMN_ the alarms beep and you're handed back control
of your car. Hey, try not to kill the pedestrians.

~~~
jacquesm
No, obviously not in the middle of driving.

I meant that as in after the car has been sideswiped by another vehicle or if
the batteries have been drained to the point that the on-board electronics
need work, in a garage and so on. In times when the cars self-driving
capabilities can not be relied on.

Not in normal traffic and _certainly_ not as a 'ok, I give up, you try
something' mode.

Hence the 'Under all normal conditions the car should drive itself' bit above.
That includes trying not to kill the pedestrians.

~~~
05
Is that really necessary? With a fleet car, a replacement comes soon enough,
and the towing vehicle can pick up the broken one. With personal SDCs, it's
probably the same, with the possible exception of the replacement car being
the same premium brand (and it won't be able to arrive as soon as a generic
fleet one, I guess).

~~~
jacquesm
Yes. After all a driverless car could be stuck in such a way that it is
blocking traffic and a 'jog mode' would allow you to get it out of the way,
just like you would with a normal car. 'Soon enough' may cause a 20 km traffic
jam or even an accident.

~~~
05
FWIW Google already has a patent[1] on remote assistance that would cover that
scenario

[1]
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2015/09/0...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2015/09/09/how-
googles-self-driving-cars-may-handle-the-toughest-situations/)

~~~
jacquesm
I'm sure they do. Wonder how they plan on using that trick on a car that has
it's radio and/or sensors disabled and where the 'remote operator' has no clue
what is going on to bystanders.

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steven2012
I would love to see it actually try to drive in a city like Beijing or
Shanghai. I've been to both cities several times for work, and I can say that
if it can drive in conditions like that, then it can drive anywhere.

~~~
SimpleMinds
According to other sources, they did drive it in Beijing - and in bad
conditions [1]

"We’ve tested the car at night and day, as well as in medium rain, and – since
this is Beijing – in smog of course."

[1] [https://www.techinasia.com/baidu-autonomous-car-hits-
roads-c...](https://www.techinasia.com/baidu-autonomous-car-hits-roads-china/)

~~~
lukewrites
Beijing covers a very large area, including isolated (if not deserted) country
roads and massive amounts of highway. It's much more likely that they drove in
a rural area (or in a deserted corner of Zhongguancun) than on any road inside
the fourth ring road.

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dujiulun2006
Baidu also claims innovation is their source of power (or some crap like
this).

Even though it's most famous for showing fake hospitals' ads for 1000 Yuan per
click.

~~~
tajen
I wonder what is in common between a search engine and a driverless car. Apart
from creating a Google copycat. I'm persuaded they did reinvent all the
internals of the car, so when you're at that point of innovation, why copy
Google's list of departments?

~~~
golergka
Top software engineers, especially in the field of machine learning and AI in
general.

~~~
skj
Yeah, I think it's more accurate to say that both Baidu and Google got their
lists of departments from the same source: academic machine learning.

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mchahn
I'd much rather be driving next to a car that can see 360 degrees and respond
in milliseconds than next to a human. The sooner this happens the better.

~~~
balls187
In this scenario, you as a human driver is still a fundamental flaw.

~~~
skj
Herd immunity. If 90% of cars are super predictable autonomous vehicles, the
10% remaining will be very safe.

Unless they're teenagers. God help us.

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varjag
Same Baidu that just cheated on machine learning contest? K I'll pass..

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grondilu
That's the kind of claim that is difficult to believe unless we have a footage
of the driving from inside the car or something like that.

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ttflee
There must be some subtle differences in the definition of China's first fully
autonomous self-driving car:

[https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=zh-
CN&u=http...](https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=zh-
CN&u=http://scitech.people.com.cn/GB/15248973.html&prev=search)

~~~
codeulike
A fully autonomous self driving car is pretty easy. Making one that doesn't
crash is the hard part.

You can wedge a brick on the accelerator pedal and call that autonomous. Its
autonomous for the whole 10 seconds before it hits a wall.

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est
BIDU launches one or two vaporwares every year and this is one of them.

~~~
est
okay, since someone is probably pissed at this comment, to clarify, this
sentence is a quote from @Fenng here
[http://weibo.com/1577826897/Czz1zj82y](http://weibo.com/1577826897/Czz1zj82y)

Let's see how many vaporware were released by BDIU in 2014:

[http://tech.sina.com.cn/i/2015-01-08/16219941986.shtml](http://tech.sina.com.cn/i/2015-01-08/16219941986.shtml)

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dibujante
Andrew Ng works for Baidu now, so I'm not surprised.

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iofj
Keep in mind this is Baidu.

This baidu: [http://dswalter.github.io/blog/machine-learnings-first-
cheat...](http://dswalter.github.io/blog/machine-learnings-first-cheating-
scandal/)

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saintfiends
And yet still their search engine does not support indexing HTTPS content.

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eccstartup
hahaha

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mosselman
I find it comical that they used a BMW to do this rather than a Chinese car.

~~~
olalonde
And Google using Toyota instead of an American car... It's almost as if mega
corporations didn't care about this kind of stuff.

~~~
casion
Toyota's sold in America are largely American. Currently the Toyota Camry is
the 'Most American Car'.

Though, the prius is made in Japan currently with plans to move production to
the US.

