
Apple scientists disclose self-driving car research - rbanffy
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-autos/apple-scientists-disclose-self-driving-car-research-idUSKBN1DM08H?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=Social
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menacingly
There was a time when I thought of regulations as progress killers, but I find
myself shifting on that and getting nervous every time I hear about self-
driving tech.

It's great stuff, but I really do not want my family to be the brave eggs we
had to crack to get to the omelet of a driverless future.

I now _like_ that someone somewhere has a book listing chemicals that aren't
allowed to be shipped on an airplane, and I wish there were a way to jump
right to that mired, bureaucratic point in car tech.

Similarly, I used to view lawsuits as a menace to free enterprise, but I'm a
tiny bit comforted by the fact that everyone working on car tech knows they're
extremely exposed to litigation if they aren't diligent.

The idea of code from Apple or Google driving on my roads is switching me from
classical liberalism to "help me, big government!"

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ghostbrainalpha
I know you just want to keep your family safe, me too.

But consider my case. I have NO traffic tickets on my record, but I recently
started taking a medication that could cause sudden blackouts. I am still
allowed to drive.

I also have an ADDICTION to mobile games. I try to limit my playing to stop
lights, but if traffic seems light, I will try to get away with crushing a few
candies while driving. Studies have shown this is MORE dangerous than drunk
driving, but I don't feel like it is because again, I don't even have any
tickets on my record.

Yes, I have had a few close calls, and hit a few curbs, but I'm not stopping
what I'm doing anytime soon. In fact I just got a mount for my dashboard so I
can watch Youtube videos while I drive, so the problem is getting worse.

I consider myself a good person, and a responsible person in general, but I
will probably be responsible for a horrible accident at some point before I
actually change my behavior. I'm hoping the self driving cars get here before
that happens, because my attention holding skills and driving ability are on a
serious downward trajectory.

EDIT: To the people who got upset by this. I am sorry. This was Trollish
behavior. I took patterns that I am seeing, and tried to personify them to
make it more effective.

You can see from some of my past posts, I have real concern about where smart
phones are taking us, and I took my argument too far. I really did lose
someone close to me because they were hit by a driver that was looking at a
dick pic and not paying attention to the road. This has permanently effected
my perspective on this issue.

Also... the medication I was referring to was a normal SSRI Anti-depressant.
These don't have any warnings about "operating heavy machinery", and are
totally legal to take while driving. They don't cause black outs, but actual
seizures in some people.

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xr4ti
A big difference is accountability. If you get into an accident and kill
someone while playing a mobile game or taking a medication that says, "do not
operate heavy machinery while taking this," it's clear who is at fault, and it
is relatively easy for the state and injured parties seek sanction and redress
through the justice system.

So what about an algorithm that has been given the regulatory green light and
fails under some edge case or adversarial attack? How about something like the
Tesla situation, where they advertise "self-driving" capabilities while
tucking in some liability limiting fine print about how the driver should be
alert and ready to take over control at all times?

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eru
Google says they want to be on the hook for their self-driving cars. (And they
don't want humans to be able to take over in the first place.)

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xr4ti
Sure. That way they can partner with insurers to offer lower rates to people
who buy their tech. Pretty sound business strategy.

I understand that this is a pretty cynical view, and to be fair all the
Googlers I've spoken with are true believers in their tech (perhaps a little
too much). But don't underestimate the power of ego and financial incentives
to constrain ethical/moral calculus.

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eru
Oh, it makes perfect business sense for Google to ask to be on the hook: less
hassle for the customers means a bigger market for the product.

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shas3
Every paper that comes out of Apple gets disproportionate coverage! If
nothing, their secrecy is helping in generating good publicity.

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ramzyo
I definitely agree with you, but have to add that my (amateur's) take is that
this paper has actually contributed a lot. Not only have they shown marked
improvements in detection accuracy, but also come up with a trainable
model/framework for object detection/classification using only LIDAR point
clouds (i.e. without the addition of additional sensor data such as RGB
overlays). Not relying on a second (or 3rd, or nth) sensor or hand-crafted
features is very impactful to the field.

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dogruck
I wonder if companies, like Apple, will segment their tech stack to extract
areas where one could argue that it’s not ethical to have an intellectual
advantage. Perhaps pedestrian detection is one such area.

If two autonomous car companies are competing, it makes sense to fight on many
feature sets. It feels wrong to compete on “ability to detect a bike rider.”

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ajnin
Historically competition has been one of the best ways to foster innovation,
and as a society achieving a good "ability to detect bikers" is probably
something we want in an automatic car.

However, it is relatively wasteful since many resources need to be allocated
to do the same thing several times. Alternatives could be : 1) deals between
companies to not innovate in those specific areas, 2) a workgroup formed by
companies working together on that subject 3) a government program to research
that specific area.

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ashark
> 2) a workgroup formed by companies working together on that subject 3) a
> government program to research that specific area.

Part of Japan's postwar economic miracle involved doing both of these things
at once: "hey three giant Japanese companies making products using [some
technology], here's a pile of money, if you each also contribute a pile of
money, we'll run some R&D on [some technology] to make it better, more
efficiently than if the four of us spent the same money separately, and you
can _all three_ use it to compete with foreign companies"

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calvinbhai
So Project Titan is not really 'dead'?

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harigov
I think Apple would much rather buy an existing car company than build one
from scratch. I don't see them leaving that market because there is a lot of
money to be made and they want to be there everywhere in your life.

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gok
See also discussion on the actual paper:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15756020](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15756020)

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ChanningAllen
Self-driving cars are high up on the morally-urgent technology list: car
crashes cause more than 2% of annual deaths worldwide.

So good on Apple. I hope they get good PR on this, and I hope regulators
factor in the very real human cost of gumming up the works. Don't get me wrong
— they ought to do their due diligence, but they ought to do it swiftly.

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karmapolic
how do you convince the midwest to use self driving tech? maybe start with
nascar?

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xr4ti
It's actually probably an easier sell outside of major population centers,
especially if marketed as an advanced form of cruise control, which people
already use on long, straight shots down country highways.

I think people would be much more inclined to trust self driving tech in these
scenarios than in congested traffic with complex intersections and people
unexpectedly darting this way and that with little to no warning.

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ghaff
That's more or less where the major auto manufacturers are all headed in the
near- to mid-term. I realize a lot of people don't get excited by something
that _isn 't_ on-demand door-to-door transportation. But it seems fairly
obvious that full highway self-driving, especially limited access highway
driving, is a much easier problem that is mostly solved today. It could end up
being decades ahead of general-purpose everywhere/when autonomy. The only real
question in my mind is when you transition from systems that are at least
nominally assistive to hands off the wheel under certain conditions.

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agumonkey
> region proposal network (RPN)

sorry RPN is already taken !

~~~
amdavidson
Do you mean: Risk Priority Number? Reverse Polish Notation? Registered
Psychiatric Nurse? Radio Philippines Network?

Surely you're aware that acronyms are sometimes domain specific and have
multiple meanings.

