
Google's driverless car is brilliant but so boring - ComputerGuru
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-34423292
======
danso
_The way Google sees it is that even with those theoretical scenarios - where
it 's forced to choose between what it thinks is the least harmful - the
Google car is still far smarter than a human, and, crucially, will save
thousands of lives by existing in the first place._

I dislike this being described as _smarter_. So far, what we've seen as
described is behavior that is more _predictable_ and consistent. In the
scenario described by the OP, in which the car slammed its brakes because of a
jogger on the opposite side of the road...that doesn't strike me as a decision
based off of what we'd traditionally consider "intelligence", but a strict
adherence to a set of rules that could use a little more refinement and
complexity.

Even if self-driving cars do dominate future roads, it's going to be an
interesting few years of transition...human drivers are going to quickly
realize that their automated counterparts are almost _always_ going to follow
the rules, allowing humans to cut them off without worry...Maybe at some
point, these incidents are going to be logged as evidence (using dashboard
cams that are almost certainly going to be standard on all driverless-cars) to
prosecute those overly aggressive human drivers?

~~~
skybrian
The trick is not caring when people cut in front of you, and even leaving
extra space for them to take if they want. I'd say that traditionally falls
under "wisdom" rather than "intelligence".

It's easier for a machine than a human, but it can be learned. I doubt it
measurably affects my commute times.

~~~
danso
I'm reluctant to call this "wisdom", though...I've learned not to be surprised
when friends and colleagues who are otherwise near-paragons in wisdom in work
and life can suddenly turn into road-ragers. For some people, getting angry in
the car is not a typical characteristic but may result after a series of
stresses that day.

So the machine isn't being "wise" when it avoids road rage, it's just being a
machine.

~~~
skybrian
I call it wisdom because the ability to remain calm and ego-less in all
situations seems to be the sort of thing taught by certain religious groups
who are big on meditation. But of course, it doesn't require that. Truck
drivers need to learn to drive this way too.

Humans seem to need some kind of training let go of our natural instinct to
punish "cheaters". A machine can just do it, as can a stone for that matter.
So: artificial wisdom.

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Animats
Ah, Google does have an "idiot detector". I knew they'd need that. I was once
thinking in terms of classifying other moving objects using RPG categories. A
bike messenger is "chaotic good" \- they may break rules but are trying to
avoid collisions. Act predictably and let them avoid you. Drunks are "chaotic
neutral" \- expect random behavior, don't try to predict their movement, allow
lots of extra clearance and leave room for evasive action. Cars or pedestrians
trying to cut you off, harass you, or cause a collision are "chaotic evil" \-
take evasive action and leave area, or emergency stop.

~~~
ionwake
So what you are you saying is... If the car is being random, expect it to be
random. If a car is going to hit you, avoid it.

You were saying...Chaotic good characters are trying to avoid collisions...
but wait...the chaotic neutrals are aswell...

I'm sorry you completely lost me with your examples.

An easier solution is just, increase the distance the higher the probability
of collision, including possible re-routing.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Chaotic classifications are character traits in Dungeons and Dragons.

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learning_still
BBC always seems to add commentary where there is no need for commentary. It's
like they are trying to stir up controversy just to sell people on the
stories. Personally, I don't think there's anything boring about a car driving
itself. The fact that it is so safe, is actually really exciting. If it is
proved that these cars are better, safer drivers than humans that is something
really exciting. Can you imagine human driving being illegal in 20 years
because it's so unsafe? How's that for excitement. There's no reason for BBC
to try so hard to appeal to our emotion. The story is great in and of itself.

~~~
mintplant
The headline is clearly written to attract clicks, but in the article body, I
felt this was more tongue-in-cheek than stirring up controversy. The author
repeatedly concludes that, though the driving style may be different, this
"boringness" is actually a very positive feature.

> _It was slow. It was cautious. It was safe, a more attentive driver than any
> human could possibly ever be._

> _And later that evening, as I snaked my way back to San Francisco on the
> four-to-five lane wide Interstate 880, I wished it was the Google car
> driving me home._

...

> _That 's a terrible complaint, isn't it? The impeccable standards are a sign
> the technology is really quite magnificent._

...

> _The way Google sees it is that even with those theoretical scenarios -
> where it 's forced to choose between what it thinks is the least harmful -
> the Google car is still far smarter than a human, and, crucially, will save
> thousands of lives by existing in the first place._

> _Riding in a Google car may be slow and boring, but the effect it will have
> on the world certainly isn 't._

~~~
learning_still
Personally, I don't think it needs to be there at all. There are other ways to
make it more interesting, like imagining a world where it's illegal for humans
to drive, than to lazily call the cars boring just to troll.

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mtgx
It's "boring" for the same reason people get "bored" in buses, subways and
trains. That doesn't mean they don't use those _because_ they are boring. If
it gets 3x cheaper to travel by self-driving taxi vs driving your own car,
people will choose them in droves.

In fact, look at self-driving taxis or cars as your personal and private "bus"
or limo, if you will.

~~~
brianstorms
I'd rather see self-driving buses and trains that run on clean renewable
energy than self-driving cars. But Google won't do that because there's no
individual trackability with mass transportation. And remember, Google is an
advertising media company, and their business is individual surveillance of
all human behavior. Hard to do in mass transportation. Easy to do, in fact, a
bonanza, when done in individual vehicles. I fully expect Google to pursue
this vigorously: target who's in these cars, where they're going, what their
life history is, interests, aspirations, friends, etc, and then upsell the
hell out of them while the car's moving -- hey, we're about to ride by your
favorite store and we know you've been searching for prices on XYZ, well this
store will offer you and you alone a special 20% off if we pull over now. In
fact they'll run out to the car and hand an XYZ to you, you can go home with
it today, and hey we'll take care of the credit card transaction, what do you
say? Shall we swing by and get that XYZ you've been after for 1.6732 years?
Tap here for yes, or here for no.....

~~~
withdavidli
Why do you think it's harder to track mass transportation? Things like clipper
cards, credit cards, etc will be able to log the data. If they also offered
wifi it will help as well.

Don't know why they didn't do mass transportation, but my guess is legislation
and unions. Getting rid of personal cars and human driving taxis is private
industry. Mass transportation will have a large percentage be public sector
workers and union workers.

If this is the path of least resistence and is proven to work, they will most
likely go after mass transportation as well.

~~~
Symbiote
Google don't need to do trains because other companies have been progressing
this since the 1960s — the Victoria Line on the London Underground opened with
the first automatic train operation in 1968. There are now many similar
systems.

Buses are more complicated than cars (city driving, people at stops etc), so
doing cars first makes sense.

~~~
withdavidli
Agree on the buses vs trains. Infrastructure is already there for modern train
systems to be automated.

>Buses are more complicated than cars (city driving, people at stops etc), so
doing cars first makes sense.

I don't think this is a valid argument. I see self driving cars operating in
Mountain View (a city, albeit not a crazy driving city like SF or Boston),
these cars are aware of people as stated in the article, the condition of
people at stops can start with stopping at... well stops ->recognizing people
that are waiting there. Maybe prepayment to figure out how many people should
have boarded.

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acdha
Boring is perfectly acceptable as long as it's predictable. I live in DC where
the traffic is terrible – and in the smartphone era people often express a
preference for public transportation because it's when they catch up on
Facebook, play games, etc. The transit agency has been making a concerted
effort to spoil that through poor safety and reliability but I think whoever
comes up with a self-driving car will sell a LOT of them around as long as
they come with a gadget charger and maybe wifi or a larger screen.

This might also be a good intro for fuel efficient vehicles and alternative
fuels: human drivers demand acceleration and avoid slower vehicles (never mind
that 80% of their time will be going 13mph in traffic) but someone who's
teleworking, playing a game or watching Netflix won't care since they'll get
to work at the same time either way.

~~~
curiousjorge
about predictability, how would driverless car deal with situations like a guy
with a chainsaw running towards your car in an intersection or being trapped
by motorcycle gang?

What if you were being pursued by an unknown organization, could the
driverless car perform evasion driving techniques and safely get it's occupant
out of harms way?

There's so many edge cases.

~~~
acdha
How often does that happen outside of Hollywood? Most carjackings already
happen when the vehicle is already stopped and I'd bet that the fact that a
self-driving car will have 360° video streaming to the police will do more to
keep the occupants safe than your video game-honed fantasies.

~~~
krapp
>I'd bet that the fact that a self-driving car will have 360° video streaming
to the police will do more to keep the occupants safe than your video game-
honed fantasies.

You realize you're debunking one fantasy with another, right?

~~~
acdha
1\. Self-driving cars have cameras 2\. Once #1 is known, the odds of someone
not adding the ability to record video and send it over OnStar, et al. will
approach zero as soon as the insurance companies hear about it.

In fact, it's unlikely that the manufacturer wouldn't do it directly since
they're going to have to survive the first wave of lawsuits any time someone
gets in a crash and tries to claim it was a software bug. We've already seen
this with Google's use of footage to demonstrate that crashes were caused by
the other driver – I find it hard to believe they'd risk losing a lawsuit over
a few dollars worth of flash memory?

~~~
krapp
>I find it hard to believe they'd risk losing a lawsuit over a few dollars
worth of flash memory?

Do you find it hard to believe a car manufacturer would risk losing far more
than a mere lawsuit by cheating emissions tests, despite the inevitability of
getting caught? Or would design their cars in such a way as to allow the
brakes to be tampered with over an open internet connection? Or would
willingly allow cars on the market with a fatal mechanical flaw, because the
calculus tells them paying out death settlements would cost less than a recall
and redesign? Auto manufacturers consider the cost of human life and breaking
the law as a matter of course, and there is always an acceptable amount of
death and illegality they're willing to risk.

Nothing about this scenario requires autonomous cars anyway. They could
already be packed with cameras, and streaming panoramic video to the police,
yet they aren't. That 'few dollars of flash memory' would have to scale up to
a few million dollars or more of something far more persistent and regulated
to even be relevant - otherwise the volatility of the memory itself becomes a
legal liability. It would also eat bandwidth and require infrastructure and
maintenance, all of which would add to the cost of the vehicle, and subtract
from its profitability.

While it may be a plausible attempt at futurism, it is far from being certain.

~~~
acdha
> Do you find it hard to believe a car manufacturer would risk losing far more
> than a mere lawsuit by cheating emissions tests …

That's an unrelated discussion. We're talking about whether to add an
additional benefit to work which they already need to do and which is both
obviously a simple addition and a benefit to both the manufacturer and
purchaser, not to mention the their insurance company.

> Nothing about this scenario requires autonomous cars anyway. They could
> already be packed with cameras, and streaming panoramic video to the police,
> yet they aren't.

They haven't been in the past because those would be new, otherwise
unnecessary equipment. You're forgetting that any self-driving car _must_ have
the cameras built in to work at all, which means that instead of adding a
bunch of cameras you're only adding enough storage to retain footage for some
time period.

Similarly, the cost of adding a cellular connection might deter some people if
this was the only use but since that's rapidly becoming a common feature
you're really only adding the cost of using some extra bandwidth when someone
hits a panic button and it's unlikely that anyone is going to begrudge the
$0.02 that'll cost in any scenario where this would be relevant.

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tankenmate
I suspect that the fact that it is boring will mean that eventually it will
prevail.

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other_herbert
As a cyclist I cannot wait for all cars to be self driving... I think that
will give people far more confidence that they won't be plowed down by anyone
on the road

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nolok
Interesting question I read in another thread on this. Suppose a driverless
car is going for a collision scenario, and its computer gets the choice
between hurting the driver but no one else, or protecting the driver but
hurting several people. What should it take ? Does your car have a
responsibility toward you its owner, or should it go for "the greater good" of
saving the most lives possible ? And what if it's not your car but one you
rent per use "a la Uber", which will probably come to exists rather soon ?

It does not apply to the google car since the way I understand it their
maximum emergency level is "full stop", but it's something that would probably
come up at some point, and I'm not sure what the "right" answer is, if there
is even one.

~~~
notatoad
It seems like there's a pretty simple solution to this, based on the
definition of "ownership" that so many products are trending towards lately:
you don't own the car. Even if you've technically purchased it outright, all
you really have is a perpetual and transferable license to use a car that's
really owned by google. The car has a responsibility toward its true owner -
google - to do the least damage to their reputation and their company, so if
it has to choose between killing its occupant or killing four other potential
google customers, it's going to choose the occupant.

~~~
Steko
This just sidesteps the question because Google won't be the only
manufacturer. If Toyota's self driving car and Google's self driving car are
headed into a collision and Google's AI says "kill Googlecar occupant" and
Toyota's AI says "kill Googlecar occupant" then no one's going to buy licenses
to drive Googlecars.

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mc32
Well, it is a prototype, afterall. That being said, I'd like to see manual
override (joystick, yoke, etc.) for when you do need to manually manoeuver
difficult terrain. And, I'm sure people will mod their vehicles to suit their
tastes.

At long last we'll have "auto"-mobiles!

~~~
_up
Is Google selling you it's search engine, so you can mod it? No. And I don't
think they will sell their cars either. They will probably offer free Ubers to
select destinations. And what class of car you get, depends on how much money
the "destination" pays them to deliver you.

~~~
chipperyman573
Yeah, but you don't have access to any of their search engine. Unless google
has invented a way to prevent any modification of any kind to a physical
object, you will be able to modify it if you know what you're doing.

~~~
michaelt
Some people expect many self-driving cars to be owned and operated as a
service by a big company, rather than being owned by the users. Like riding a
bus or train, they won't let you take a wrench to it.

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ionwake
My only question is whether one will be allowed to fraternise during transit

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curiousjorge
I think manufactured driverless car would be Uber's undoing. Think of Uber as
Google's trojan horse. Get people used to the idea of trusting a network
outside of taxi monopoly, use uber's billion dollar war chest to twist arms of
city policy makers, and flood the network with Google's driverless cars. I
think this is Google's last mover advantage, this is where I think 'software
is eating the world' moment comes to play, a search engine company sweeps rug
under taxi monopoly globally. I'd be shit scared if I was some big
conglomerate with multiple monopolies under attack from tech giants.

I think a truly revolutionary driverless technology would be if you could buy
sensors and a DIY kit from walmart, hook it up to your car to turn it into a
driverless car.

A pickup truck from 1970s could be soon be driverless. Let a human drive when
he feel like it but let the computer take over in dangerous and emergency
situations where the human mind would be overloaded with sensory information
and slow reaction speeds and lack of rational thinking could cause danger.

It reminds me of the new recovery systems being implemented in F-16s, when the
pilot is passed out and plane sees imminent terrain danger, it will perform a
recovery maneuver automatically.

This is the future, where AI does every possible thing for us. Even thinking.
Every whim, every desires, every material can be experienced virtually via
haptic controls, androids, 3d printed food of any taste and texture. We live
in truly exciting times.

~~~
max-a
> I think 'software is eating the world' moment comes to play this moment made
> me think that strict software/hardware division is getting pretty obsolete

