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There's a saying that neural networks are the second-best way to do everything. Don't be disappointed when their trajectory flattens out.

And, as for their role in autonomous vehicles, I don't think they play a primary role (although I don't design autonomous cars so I wouldn't know for sure.) You can see in this Tesla video that a lot of the computer vision isn't even reliant on neural networks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLlwm5Dq7Is

Why do you think that video shows that Tesla isn't reliant on neural networks? Neural nets outputting bounding boxes is pretty normal.

Despite NVIDIA's papers, end-to-end neural nets for self-driving cars are dumb, but for the initial perception based on sensor data, neural nets are the only game in town.

I was looking at the optical flow indicators and the road-tracking. Afaik any NN solution to those are immature if they work reliably at all. Your probably right that that the bounding boxes are probably NNs.

There's a saying that neural networks are the second-best way to do everything. Don't be disappointed when their trajectory flattens out.

Outstanding quote! I'm going to reapply it.

Frankly you're overstretching. If you've ever driven in India you'd be questioning the very basis of humanity.

> The closest thing I can think of is Watson from IBM.

What are you imagining Watson is? Watson is not a singular entity that decides whether to play Jeopardy or analyze medical records or whatever. It's a brand.

The comparison that comes to mind is Colonel Sanders.

Sometimes with the accidental (and non-accidental) encounters between bikes and cars show that the value of the life of the biker isn't really valued that highly.

People often take the minimum as the representative statistic. The article implies the mean event for self-driving cars is much worse than that for human drivers.

Yes, I bike, so I know the worst of the worst. I also remember a few courteous encounters, but probably many fewer due to negativity bias.

I think NNs would work well to solve the bicycle problem with some more data -- maybe a lightweight sensor of some sort on bikes, or a device that could communicate on a public VANET - That would be a safe long term solution, but obviously many years out.

I haven't yet seen a NN that can beat people at chess, recognize faces, drive, and make coffee, or more importantly, decide when to do one or the other.

These are the sorts of things humans struggle with too. It could be argued that we, also, don't have one neural net that does all these things but rather a variety of specialised brain regions. It would then make sense that a computer might run specialised programs to deal with different tasks.

Anyway, self driving cars and bicycling can be fixed with a simple engineering solution: separate the two with barriers. This is what we should do anyway.

As someone who had their bike destroyed in a high speed car vs. bicycle collision, and was lucky to walk away with a broken thumb and sprained ankle: cycling on roads is insane.

> cycling on roads is insane.

How is it that people in developed countries across the world have learned to do this, and we haven't?

That said, the relative health benefits of cycling outweigh any risks 7-to-1 for an average human. Cycling for an hour, even with American road infrastructure, actually results in a net increase in the average person's lifespan of over an hour. Seems like maybe it isn't so insane after all.

Do you have a source for your claims in the last paragraph? It would be an interesting read.

There I googled it for you, so spend at least 10 minutes reading it now. Please.

But it is common sense, we know that excerise prolong your life, doing it regularly in modest proportions is best. Using a bicycle for transport to work means you are exercising twice daily, maybe 10-20 minutes for lunch as well. It is obvious that this kind of exercise will do you good.

For me it's one to two hours of exercise per day, it's hard to beat those health benefits.

http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2015.3... https://www.uu.nl/en/news/dutch-bikers-live-six-months-longe...

I haven't yet to be hit may be out of luck, but in my city, I don't have the option to be separated if I want to get everywhere. Instead, there are a plethora of "share the road" signs everywhere.

I'm okay with the separation if I get the same access as everyone else...and I am not blocked by slow bikers. Of course, I don't need to ride on highways/freeways (nor do I want to).