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Comment by maym86 | Hacker News Reader

This guy is all talk and represents one problem with Silicon Valley. There are a lot of people now who can talk the talk and get the attention needed to get money but with no ability to deliver. Stop giving him attention until he actually shows something that matches even a little bit of what he is promising.

People who know what they're doing technically are deeply aware of the issues with their technology. Anyone in this area knows how hard it is to make these vehicles work. He is finding out the reality of what he promised two years late and is spinning it to get more attention.

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You are aware we are giving away open source software that will control your car, right? It's online today! And it's on par with the best systems money can buy, Tesla Autopilot and GM Super Cruise.

https://github.com/commaai/openpilot

No ability to deliver?

Not disputing your claim, but how did you determine the comma Ai system was on par with that of autopilot and super cruise?

In general, are there any standardized tests for self driving cars, like car safety ratings but for the driving part? Basically, is there even a way to measure how good a driving system is?

Not really. It's mostly subjective, but a good metric is time between user action needed. We did 2 hours of press demos on highways without a single one. (usually it's about an hour)

In addition to us, we have a community of users on slack with thousands of miles of experience with each system. I think most would generally agree with the quality assessment. You'll also find a bunch of YouTube videos comparing them.

A good metric would be collision avoidance in a multitude of realistic tests, simulating all kinds of dynamic obstacles and vehicle error modes.

So you test the system with human drivers for a few miles, and if none of them dies then it's secure ? You actually rely on the subjectivity of uninformed users to assess the reliabilty of a safety-critical system ?

>> Not really. It's mostly subjective.

No. The quality of a safety-critical system is not subjective.

>> I think most would generally agree with the quality assessment.

You are not qualified to make that claim, and neither are your users.

Self driving systems is in its very early days and commaai is one of the open ones i.e you can take the software and verify under the hood. commaai isn’t also lying that it’s a glorified cruise control.

Unlike crash safety, crash and burn, topple etc, there are no open tests or third party certifications that can verify that car model X is subjectively this safe and passes this scenarios.

The big cos are notoriously secretive and throwing a lot of marketing money to create hype.

I’m just glad that certain states have allowed such cars to be tested on the streets.

We have to start somewhere.

Tesla and Uber did seriously disappoint. It's even below that but still. I'm dubious about the capabilities of comma.ai system and calling it on par with Tesla after dissing it is a bit disingenuous.

I still consider geohot too egotistical in his approach, and that it will not bear fruits. That big commercial companies are pulling bad tricks is one thing but that doesn't mean one lone motivated (and talented) wolf can reach the goal.

Try to poach some waymo guys or some robotics to team up.

comma.ai poached an engineer from Tesla[0]

I think they are very capable. Maybe their tech is not ready now, but who knows in 2-5 years where they will be.

[0] https://www.theverge.com/2016/4/18/11454858/george-hotz-self...

I meant waymo because they have a less commercial approach compared to Tesla (which might taint this engineer view [or not])

I believe the only way out of the security pit is to double down on rigorous physics and not rapid ML

One example that I like to give is a downed power line. This is something that happens often. Try solving it with rigorous physics.

A purely physical approach is just a design paradigm in how to use other sensors (with or without ML), having this means uncertainty would be correlated with momentum and anything causing doubt (a power line down) would mean reducing the internal energy of the system to give ability to either stop to a halt, enter a safe configuration or assess the situation deeper/differently to decide.

So far what we see about Tesla and the likes is that they jumped early on the ML fad as very naive feedback loops on basic car controls (estimate lanes -> center the car. estimate obstacle distance -> adapt speed). It's not physics first.

The problem is, you'd be hitting all these pesky corner cases, with some of them requiring active avoidance - downed power lines, water on the road, vehicles on fire, other traffic participants. My guess, it is hard to engineer a system that could handle the long tail of making decisions under uncertainty with "purely physical approach". You'll run out of complexity budget.

it's certainly full of dimensions. I may be a ideal-extremist here, and business probably doesn't like being overly cautious, but at least that would be a vehicle I'd trust no to endanger anybody (in or out), even if it looks underperforming compared to autopilot~.

Well, usually driving over one with rubber tires causes no problem. One in the air would be detectable, no?

It is hard to even recognize it. On the road it looks exactly like a crack. For a case of a low hanging one - it is invisible by LIDAR or radar, on the camera the difference between a regular one and a low hanging one is very subtle.

And the requirement is not just braking action, like with a railroad crossing it is active avoidance.

https://www.pge.com/en_US/safety/electrical-safety/what-to-d...

My point is - corner cases like these tend to create "IF" statements in a "pure physics model" that is used for decision making under uncertainty. And engineering such models without "ML fad" is difficult.

Waymo is the pinnacle of commercialized FSD. Have you seen their ads with actors? Tesla does ZERO marketing.

Waymo is taking their sweet time, Tesla is aggressively talking about autopilot. Far from Zero.

Send me a link to a Tesla Autopilot video or graphic brochure that is produced by the Tesla marketing team. I'll wait..

Meanwhile there are a few of these: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HrN12WG-2Q

what about musk tweets about it and vehicle presentations about autopilot 2 ?

It is an impressive hack. But you are not building something that is useful. Build a small component that follows safety standards - this will be useful.

Ask our users if they feel similarly about it not being useful. https://slack.comma.ai

Yes, I understand that. And my perspective is different from your users. It is that of someone who is seeing (and attempting to help) big automotive companies. Companies in the shadow of Waymo, that had recently reached $135B valuation. It is also that of someone, who had been hacking code for medical equipment at 13, some 25 years back.

Do as you wish.

edit: correction. out of your project we are probably having more hackers that understand at least some aspect of the problem - you still might be doing something very useful.

Waymo's valuation is based on hype. They have no revenue.

We aren't trying to help big automotive companies, they are our competition. We are trying to disrupt them.

Help automotive companies? They have been sitting idle for decades and would rather spend their resources on flashy marketing, rather than innovate.

Car companies, even luxury brands like MB, BMW, and Audi are akin to cell phone companies running Symbian, Windows Mobile, Palm OS, and Symbian before the iPhone came along.

Now we have innovators like Tesla and open source DIY stuff from comma.ai which can churn out great tech in a very short amount of time, without the need for getting a new year model vehicle.

Software that can't pass automotive safety standards.

> Hotz has been teasing a $1,000 after-market kit called Comma One that would let customers transform their dumb cars into smart, self-driving ones. But after a sternly worded letter from the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration last year, Hotz abandoned those plans

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-selfdriving-safety-idUSKCN...

Sounds like you have a nice demo in a controlled known environment. It's a far way off the promise made previously about building a self driving car, a claim which is now being retracted. Best of luck turning it into a product. Watch out for those edge cases.

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