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Comment by xHopen | Hacker News Reader

How many years till will won't need drivers?

Tesla should just kill driving and go fully autopilot, it's insane that a human has to drive a truck from point A to B, is just a waste of time and extremely dangerous.

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You want to trust an 80k lbs semi in driving rain and sleet on a frozen mountain pass?

There are tons of conditions that even the best autonomous systems are no where near ready for.

It’s going to be a while.

Yes I trust more computer calculations than humans, way more. It will take a while, but It will happen. Anyway, I think there will be better ways to transport than trucks and cars.

Yes I trust more computer calculations than humans, way more

So you're saying you trust code written by humans way more than humans? That doesn't make any sense.

As a developer I was about to give you an elaborated reply but I'm gonna simplify it.

Do you trust more your calculator when you have to perform simple operations like sums , multiplication or square root , or you trust your self with a paper and pen more?

The calculator is a board with written code by humans. Then please, do you think Space X does all their calculations by hand or base on computer simulations using well known and tested algorithms

Do you trust more your calculator when you have to perform simple operations like sums , multiplication or square root

I trust the calculator sure, but I try to always understand enough about the problem at hand to know when the numbers don't make sense - bad data, keying error, edge case, numeric overflow, wrong units, yadda yadda. Punching numbers in and blindly writing down what you get out is a recipe for disaster. When I did engineering it wasn't unusual for people to do the same calculations on an HP and a TI just to make sure - and bugs in calculators weren't unheard of.

base on computer simulations using well known and tested algorithms

SpaceX same as everyone else who actually does this, combines simulations and actual experiments. Noone flies anything built off simulations alone, and I can't see that happening for a looooong time. And even then, things still sometimes go wrong. Computers are not a magic silver bullet, they are just a tool like a spanner or a hammer.

Didn’t NASA land a robot in mars without testing just base on simulations and law of physics , mainly because they couldn’t do in other way. Of course computers are a tool and not a silver bullet , but I trust more the computational power of a computer and the path taken base on algorithms in dangerous situations than a fragile human being

citation needed

Instead of designing cities (the world) base on cars , we will design cities base on the next transportation method, which in my opinion will be autonomous. we won't own cars, for what do you want a car? you won't need it. I think is obvious it just needs someone to push the rest, will be tesla? I don't know, but the car (truck) economy is not sustainable in my opinion.

Can you cite one case where a loaded semi is driven on an icy road? Or a company that promises to achieve that within 5 years?

5 years seems like... short time, as a reminder, 16 years ago the best video game system was Nintendo 64, in 2006 mobile phone were anything near what we have today, Tesla autopilot was first offered in 2014, 3 years ago. I wouldn’t be surprised if by 2019 full autopilot is a everyday thing

Yes.

Because when the autonomous systems are trained on how to handle adverse conditions, its the sum of the knowledge of all machines that build how to handle these conditions. Whereas each human has to learn it individually. And given how bad people drive even with rainstorms, I'd put the money on the computers.

And frankly, we can also discuss if "driving in rain/sleet on frozen mountain pass" is even a good idea. Because computers can also provide data like "Estimated chance of wreck is X%", and decisions can be made using that.

Tl;Dr. One machine learns and can share with all nearly instantaneously. 1 human learns and that's it.

I couldn't agree more

In that case program to accept loss of vehicle/loss of cargo as the failure mode if recovery is not possible, assuming there is no other road directly beneath it which it would land on.

> And given how bad people drive even with rainstorms, I'd put the money on the computers.

In the long term, yes, definitely. And I am looking forward to the day.

But it is going to be a while, and it is going to be a while longer until all the politicians and insurance companies are convinced of that, too.

I can easily see insurance companies being convinced of that a lot sooner. Why, you might ask?

An "auto" will have less incidence of wrecks and drive provably safer. And the "auto" will also record everything as proof, so if there is a wreck involved, it's a simple "download and review the footage". Guilt is now easy to prove as well as trivial to exonerate.

And all of those things will bring the cost of insurance down for the insurance companies. And many of them will then lower their rates appropriately given very high standard of proof they provide.

After all, insurance is heavily based in the sciences and mathematics. If they weren't, insurance companies wouldn't last very long at all.

Now, I have no clue on how to get politicians to understand science. I'm not sure if that's even possible, as science can easily go against an ideology - and thusly their political stance.

I think that your thinking is too shortsighted. Autonomous driving, if it's going to be as rosy as you and I both think, is going to be what kills much of the auto insurance industry. What we have now are more serious and more frequent accidents compared to the ideal future, yielding higher premiums. Higher premiums --> higher cashflow --> higher profitability for insurance companies. Sure, they want to see fewer accidents - but if it's to an extreme to the point where competitive forces dramatically bring premiums down, the insurance business won't be so great. I see insurance companies lobbying very strongly against autonomous driving in the near future.

Interesting thought.

To be honest, once autonomous driving systems become so good they are provably and reliably better than humans, insurance companies will probably charge a premium for the privilege of driving your car yourself.

I am just not sure when autopilots will become that good. OTOH, I did not expect to see self-driving cars arrive during my lifetime, and now it looks very strongly like I will. ;-)

> Now, I have no clue on how to get politicians to understand science.

Given the kind of political influence car manufactures have (at least here in Germany), I think that will not be too much of a problem once the demand is there.

Perhaps it might be a good rule of thumb that no human be allowed to drive a 40 ton semi in conditions under which we don't trust an autonomous system.

No human is ready for driving anything on any road. I do it often, but I know I'm taking a risk and I don't like it. I know a lot of tricks that help, but the fact is it is not possible humanly to do this task to do this task. Any icy road just makes it worse.

This is not in any way realistic. Autopilot failed to notice a semi trailer at a 90 degree angle barely over a year ago. Real world highway conditions have a ton of edge cases, inclement weather, etc etc that automation is simply not ready for. Eventually, we will be there, Tesla is doing great work, but full automation isn't happening anytime soon and until that point, the feedback of those who are actually doing the job is extremely valuable if Tesla wants to make a competitive product. Fanboy screeching about how Tesla can do no wrong is not helpful.

If we ask for 0 margin error , well It won’t happen. If we ask to have less accidents than humans, we are already there.

You say Tesla should "just" implement self-driving trucks, then in the next reply you say "it will take a while". For goodness sake, I wish self-driving/Tesla groupies would think before they spout this glib time-wasting stuff that they wont even stand behind after one objecting reply. Debate honestly.

It will take a while, as I said, because people won't trust it. then you need sometime for humans to see it as normal, and comprehend than a computer is better than them at driving, and is safer for them if they don't drive.

If people get mad at uber for killing taxi, imagine how mad they will be when uber will kill taxi drivers, probably in less than 5 years. Now imagine Tesla telling us, you know what? you don't need Truck drivers anymore, which we don't. Then the rage would be ...

Las Vegas recently debuted an autonomous shuttle. It experienced its first accident within two hours.

The road to trust could be long and bumpy.

It will, but how many accidents per minute are there by drivers in the world? And we don’t say, puff I don’t trust drivers. Somehow we accept dying by human errors better than by a computer, somehow I always hear, look the computer failed , like if you in that situation as human wouldn’t have done it. I don’t know, I embrace the future , if compouters tomorrow are able to code and My job as a engenieer becomes obsolete, welcome.

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