Artificial intelligence still has some way to go

In a conference call with reporters, the head of Tesla, Elon Musk, said he believed the upgrades would have prevented the accident on May 7.

“These things cannot be said with absolute certainty, but we believe it is very likely that, yes, it would have,” he said. The new version of Autopilot, with its improved radar, “would see a large metal object across the road” and be able to determine that the object is not an overpass or overhead road sign that poses no threat, he said. “Impact probability would be assessed as high and it would probably brake.”

One major change is that improved radar becomes Autopilot’s main system for scanning the road. Once the update is made, Autopilot will use images from cameras to supplement the radar system. The current system uses cameras as its primary source of images, and relies on radar to help confirm what the cameras see.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/12/business/elon-musk-says-pending-tesla-updates-could-have-prevented-fatal-crash.html

"probably". lol

horseshoes, hand grenades and self driving cars

i'm giving a talk to a hedge fund about recurrent neural networks tomorrow :-(

sounds like a good working definition of hell

so....why were they not using cameras in the first place?

this seems like a bad idea:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/for-some-safety-experts-ubers-self-driving-taxi-test-isnt-something-to-hail/2016/09/11/375f980a-769a-11e6-be4f-3f42f2e5a49e_story.html

good luck Pittsburgh

my local university's engineering dept has a self-driving car project which they've been working on for a while now, since before I heard of any others iirc (or maybe about the same time as I first heard of Google's)

I've seen it a couple of times, going forwards and backwards in a straight line in an empty car park, and then stopping while people with clipboards take lots of notes

if the competition is way ahead of where they are I feel sorry for them, getting in early but just not moving fast enough

if the competition is not way ahead of where they are I feel sorry for humanity that a whole bunch of companies are now going "sure fine, just put 'em on the roads already". good luck everyone

i think the public reaction to the tesla death not making a bunch of people cancel their pre-orders or demolish stock price has provoked a better to ask forgiveness than beg permission attitude. First time one of these things go onto a sidewalk and wipe out a kindergarten class, I expect congressional hearings and a 10 year pause in development.

traditional automakers have spent a lot of time trying to determine the best way to market smart safety features to consumers as things that help you avoid accidents and keep you safer if something dangerous happens. it's a balancing act between telling people that driving is an inherently dangerous act (which people do not want to hear or acknowledge) and introducing things in ways that make them seem relatively natural and not disruptive to normal driving

tesla hasn't necessarily marketed their vehicles this way, but the general direction of press is "this thing practically drives itself, but sometimes you have to take control" which has resulted in some knuckleheads letting the car do most of the work, and when they need to take action, they're not paying attention. the self-driving tech is good, but... not that good

I believe it was Ford that was tackling this a few years back with the crash avoidance braking. They had prototypes that would work with cruise control on the freeway -- you'd set the speed you wanted, and if it saw you were approaching a slower-moving or stopped vehicle it would brake. They also had the ability to accelerate and maintain a safe distance, up to the speed you had set. They left out the second part because they found it removed too much of the driver's attention from their task.

I'm simultaneously astounded at how good the cars already are, while thinking there's no way I'm getting in one. But then I already don't drive because I'm shit at it and know I'm a danger to myself and others, so I may be an outlier here.

you're one of the good ones

more bad news for the quixotic quest to make self-driving cars - oh wait

NYT: U.S. Signals Backing for Self-Driving Cars

WASHINGTON — Federal auto safety regulators on Monday made it official: They are betting the nation’s highways will be safer with more cars driven by machines and not people.

In long-awaited guidelines for the booming industry of automated vehicles, the Obama administration promised strong safety oversight, but sent a clear signal to automakers that the door was wide open for driverless cars.

“We envision in the future, you can take your hands off the wheel, and your commute becomes restful or productive instead of frustrating and exhausting,” said Jeffrey Zients, director of the National Economic Council, adding that highly automated vehicles “will save time, money and lives.”

The statements were the most aggressive signal yet by federal regulators that they see automated car technology as a win for auto safety. Yet having officially endorsed the fast-evolving technology, regulators must now balance the commercial interests of companies including Tesla, Google and Uber with concerns over public safety, especially in light of recent crashes involving semiautonomous cars.

The policies unveiled on Monday were designed to walk that line. In a joint appearance, Mr. Zients and Anthony Foxx, secretary of the United States Department of Transportation, released the first guidelines, which outlined safety expectations and encouraged uniform rules for the nascent technology. The instructions signaled to motorists that automated vehicles would not be a Wild West where companies can try anything without oversight, but were also vague enough that automakers and technology companies would not fear overregulation.

The new guidelines on Monday, which stopped short of official regulations, targeted four main areas. The Department of Transportation announced a 15-point safety standard for the design and development of autonomous vehicles; called for states to come up with uniform policies applying todriverless cars; clarified how current regulations can be applied to driverless cars; and opened the door for new regulations on the technology.

there seem to be a lot of knee-jerk negative reactions to even the idea of self-driving vehicles around here. in a sense i understand because for the most part i view the thought of advancing AI with helplessness and a bit of dread. i think they'll end up taking a lot of jobs, and i'm not confident in the ability of lawmakers to respond with appropriate policies to help the people who will be fucked.

but self-driving cars? you can argue about whether or not they're possible in the short-term (the smart money seems to be that they are), but i don't understand rooting against the entire idea. around 1/3 of americans know someone that either died or were severely injured in a car crash. it would be really, really great to eliminate a significant amount of those 30-40K deaths per year in the U.S. alone. yes, there will still be incidents where something goes wrong and the tech can't recognize it, and it will lead to an epic lawsuit. but goddamn i'll take that any day to get old friends back, and i think most other people would too. i'm rooting for the tech, the sooner the better.

I'm not sure there is much "rooting against the entire idea" of self-driving cars going on here, so much as a certain skepticism that self-driving cars can cope well with the current chaotic hazards caused by the multitudes of human-driven cars that would constitute the crazy environment that AI cars would have to flourish within: tailgaters, speeders, distracted drivers, drivers crossing the center line, poorly maintained vehicles, road debris -- the gamut of lurking dangers that challenge all us human drivers -- and we humans at least have highly integrated psycho-motor skills to assist us in discriminating between a paper bag blowing across the road and a chunk of tire tread that just flew off a truck.

but even in that example, the drawback of AI would be that the car would react by slowing down in both situations (errantly, in the bag). also, when i think about automated cars, i don't think about the pilot/early days, where 1 out of 10 (or 100, or 1000) cars on the road are automated, but instead the vision of a road populated almost entirely with automated cars. in that version, the automobiles are all synced up and communicate with each other; one may errantly get freaked out by a low-flying bird swooping across a highway and slow down, but the only negative is that the closest car slows down and the cars behind it automatically slow down in response. that seems ok to me. i can deal with that. there are also examples like the tesla incident with the white truck crossing the road, but if most of the cars were automated, the truck wouldn't have crossed the road in the first place, right? i suppose that idea could sound ludicrous, but...it doesn't seem far away to me. at all. i don't expect that any kid i might have would ever drive.

the drawbacks to me have more do with a certain loss of a kind of freedom of movement and exploration. the american obsession with the car has caused a lot of harm, but i can't deny that when i was a teenager that was nothing better in the entire world than just driving around the backcountry with friends, and there's this certain feeling you get when you're driving late at night with the perfect song - it's cheesy but i think people understand what i mean. that feeling and freedom is hard to describe but it's real. at the same time, though, most people don't have a car (i haven't since 2006) and they survive.

around 30% of driving fatalities involve drunk drivers (2013 data). if nothing else, i'm pretty sure the wide adoption of automated cars would greatly reduce that number. occasionally there might be a well-publicized incident where something goes chaotically wrong, but that happens on a daily basis in real life, with manually driven cars.

i need to digest your posts more fully but car autopilot is the only part of the future i'm excited about

goole, do you need a hug

i might yeah, but i meant "the future" like pew pew lasers and stuff

why would anybody make stinky lasers?

no that's le pew lasers

“The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me.” ― Ayn Rand.

le Pew/Rand slash, it's gotta be out there

iirc Rand's main enemies were the gradual introduction of amphetamine criminalization and her romantic partners discovering "polygamy for me, none for you" was not optimal

you can argue about whether or not they're possible in the short-term (the smart money seems to be that they are), but i don't understand rooting against the entire idea.

I don’t think anybody is “rooting against the entire idea.” We’re skeptical that we’ll see anything resembling a self-driving car in the short-term.

And smart money? We’re talking about Tesla who licenses their extremely limited technology (and is being sued by the licensee for improper use) and the bro who cracked the original iPhone. Nobody else is shipping anything.

in that version, the automobiles are all synced up and communicate with each other; one may errantly get freaked out by a low-flying bird swooping across a highway and slow down, but the only negative is that the closest car slows down and the cars behind it automatically slow down in response.

I love you. But I think you’re over-estimating our ability to engineer.

still kind of convinced that apple has seen how lucrative owning the patents or critical parts of a supply chain can be when it comes to bringing products to market and they don't want to build cars -- they just want to be the supplier of components and technologies that everyone has to use to stay competitive

still kind of convinced that apple has seen how lucrative owning the patents or critical parts of a supply chain can be when it comes to bringing products to market and they don't want to build cars -- they just want to be the supplier of components and technologies that everyone has to use to stay competitive

Apple abandoned a self-driving car, they didn’t abandon their automotive work altogether.

the press claimed they were working on a full car, then claimed they abandoned said project

like idk if you were building all that shit you'd have a test bed that you could bring to market, but it doesn't mean you're making the finished product

my main question w/r/t auto driving cars (which i never plan to own because i am a control freak) -- no more need for liability insurance, if you're not the driver? who's going to be responsible? the auto manufacturers?

also, if a self-driving car still needs constant attention from the passenger, what's the fucking point? a self driving car is worthless unless you can get in it drunk and get home safe, or fall asleep and be assured you're not going to wake up plowing into a ditch.

who knows?

and no true self-driving car exists -- I commented earlier, that's the quandary right now where companies have put a lot of work into marketing things as safety features and decided not to bring certain features to market because the technology does not exist to create a car that can safely drive itself and by putting in certain features, it gives the impression you don't need to pay attention

a car that drives itself is a legal nightmare in the current licensing/regulation/insurance landscape and nearly as much work will have to be done in those areas as in self-driving tech

tbh I expect regulation to start leaning heavily on the way tesla markets shit due to the fact dumbasses are watching harry potter instead of driving

I mean, that doesn't stop someone I know from hacking the nav unit to play video while he's driving and I fully expected for a few years to hear he was found unconscious off the side of the interstate while dave matthews live at the gorge was still playing on the screen and blasting through the speakers

Unexpected blowback effects on the way...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/01/22/how-driverless-cars-could-kill-the-speeding-ticket-and-rob-your-city/

Take the nation's capital, which operates the most speeding and red-light cameras of any city in the country. In 2014, the District issued an average of 773 tickets a day from its speeding cameras alone — adding up to roughly $37.5 million worth of fines, according to the latest figures from AAA Mid-Atlantic. Since 2007, speed cameras have been a cash cow for the city's police, resulting in nearly $357 million in revenue, AAA said.

Last year the city pulled in less money from parking tickets, partly due to new, smartphone-compatible parking meters that allow drivers to keep track of their status online. And driverless cars will only accelerate that trend, said John Townsend, a spokesman for AAA Mid-Atlantic.

"If you have one of these vehicles, your propensity for getting a speeding ticket or red-light camera ticket will be greatly diminished," said Townsend. "It'll be another step in the long progression of technology and how it is changing the outcome in the number of people who get tickets."

Washington isn't the only city that reaps financial rewards from ticketing drivers. Chicago is looking at more than $1 billion alone in outstanding parking tickets, speeding tickets and red-light violations. New York drivers owe the mayor some $756 million, while the city of Los Angeles is owed $285 million, according to a Freedom of Information Act request by the local news site DNAinfo.

The scale of the problem balloons in some smaller municipalities. That's because these jurisdictions may lack other meaningful sources of revenue. The town of Mountain View, Colo., made up 53 percent of its budget with tickets in 2013. Mountain View is a bit of an outlier — tickets account for less than 4 percent of the budget in many other Colorado towns — but it's hardly unique in its approach to budgeting. In Waldo, Fla., (population 1,015) tickets written by its seven police officers are said to account for half of the town's revenue and nearly two-thirds of the police department's budget.

James Tignanelli is president of the Police Officers' Association of Michigan. He says police officers in many jurisdictions are being ordered to write tickets, sometimes despite their vocal objections.

"We're the only revenue producers in town, once you get past the water department," said Tignanelli. "That's how it is here, anyway."

Driverless cars hold some important potential cost-savings for cities, too. Fewer accidents means cities can spend less responding to incidents. And police officers normally detailed to guide traffic or patrol for speeders could productively be deployed elsewhere. Of course, added Tignanelli, if driverless cars seriously start depriving city coffers of ticket revenue, it will likely prompt top officials to pressure police into whipping up new fees and fines.

another good reason to legalize weed imo; gonna need revenue streams from somewhere!

If you have some CNN experience and you’re looking for an internship, the GOOG research group my lab collaborates with is looking.

It’d likely turn into a full-time position.

DM me on Twitter (or whatever).

(I think the location is Cambridge, Mountain View, or New York. But I’m not 100%.)

http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/26/13055938/ai-pop-song-daddys-car-sony

I can't see that story without thinking of Jamie Liddell's song "Daddy's Car" which... lol

please make a recording of an AI singing the Lidell one

etaeoe what is your twitter?

0x00B1. :)

oh

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMjM1MzczMDgwOV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMDM4NjM2OQ@@._V1_UY1200_CR89,0,630,1200_AL_.jpg

i am in the expo hall at strata and i thought of this thread

https://twitter.com/fart/status/781180708953829376

http://www.theverge.com/a/luka-artificial-intelligence-memorial-roman-mazurenko-bot

I'm not here to judge but this seems ghoulish

yyyyeah i will bet we'll be seeing a lot more of that in the all too near future.

https://electrek.co/2016/10/28/george-hotz-cancels-his-tesla-autopilot-like-comma-one-after-request-from-nhtsa/

LOL

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/28/donald-trump-will-win-the-election-and-is-more-popular-than-obama-in-2008-ai-system-finds.html

https://deepmind.com/blog/deepmind-and-blizzard-release-starcraft-ii-ai-research-environment/

http://kotaku.com/blizzard-wants-to-know-if-googles-deepmind-ai-can-conqu-1788615284

It may surprise some, but despite being able to perform more actions per minute than a human player, the bots still have sub-par micro-management. Bots have faster individual unit control which allows them to use hit-and-run techniques [dealing damage then moving out of harm’s way], but deciding where/when/how to attack/retreat is still a problem.

"It may surprise some"

CHECK YOUR APM PRIVILEGE FAST PEOPLE
A BOT KNOWS YOUR NAME