Posted on 10/01/2016 11:35:32 AM PDT by nickcarraway
This might sound like a really terrible idea, but let’s give Nvidia the benefit of the doubt for now. They’re letting their AI-driven car learn solely by watching humans drive.
Nvidia calls their prototype vehicle BB8, and while that name might be more befitting, say, a Volkswagen Beetle, it’s actually a Lincoln MKZ. Apparently even AI drivers want to feel like Matthew McConaughey diving backward into a rooftop pool when they’re out cruising around.
While you can pick up a Lincoln that’s loaded with near-autonomous driving features, Nvidia shut them all down in their test vehicle. They wanted the car to use its neural network to figure out how to drive.
That meant observing human drivers on the road. Sounds like they’re setting the poor AI up to fail, right? Our streets are, after all, teeming with drivers who run red lights, stop in crosswalks, turn without signaling, go left of center, and text the entire time they’re driving.
Fortunately, Nvidia had a more sane plan in mind. They mounted cameras to other test vehicles and then took them out on the road. The video footage they recorded was then handed over to BB8 so that the AI could analyze it and figure out how to reproduce the behaviors it observed.
Neural action shot showing how BB8 analyzes its surroundings to figure out where to drive
The results are pretty impressive. Sure, BB8 mows down a traffic cone at the start of the video, but it handles plenty of real world situations — including driving on dirt roads and driving in the dark — with ease. Again, it’s doing this all without ever being explicitly told anything like how to identify the edge of the road or what another car looks like.
So they'll be weaving, texting, cutting me off, and driving 40 mph in the fast lane, and staying put when the light turns green.
Great. So now cars will be flipping us off and cussing us out?
Starman: Okay?
Jenny Hayden: Okay? Are you crazy? You almost got us killed! You said you watched me, you said you knew the rules!
Starman: I do know the rules.
Jenny Hayden: Oh, for your information pal, that was a *yellow* light back there!
Starman: I watched you very carefully. Red light stop, green light go, yellow light go very fast.
Perfect!
Beat me to it! I was going to reference Starman!!
When does it start honking the horn, slamming on the brakes, trying to ram the backend of the vehicle in front of it, and running red lights and stop signs?
it's exactly how living things learn. this is a rudimentary true AI. “rudimentary” because it does 1 simple function but true nonetheless
As long as the drivers are from somewhere that actually trains people to drive (ie, not America) it’s not a bad plan. I suppose you could use American drivers as negative training.
As bad as it’s gotten here, there are worse drivers in the world, believe it or not.
I wonder if it is learning the “wife advice” mode.
Let’s hope not Italian drivers!
Yup. The speaker is in the back seat.
Guess you haven’t done many third world excursions. How about France or Italy?
The US has decent drivers once you get out of whatever state you live in. Lol
The third world is... well the third world. We expect things to be bad there. American licenses come out of crackerjack boxes. Everybody I know that went from America to Europe failed the Euro driving test at least twice, and everybody I know that came the other way was shocked by how basically non-existent our driving tests our. There’s a reason we have the highest vehicle fatality rate of the civilized world.
“learn solely by watching humans drive”
Sorry, but that won’t work. To understand what a human is doing requires another human. Not a program written by a human.
This whole autonomous car thing is just annoying to me. Let’s get the trains in the northeast corridor to run autonomously and safely first and go from there. We have the technology and can’t even get that implemented. This whole self driving car B.S. stinks of a globalist agenda.
OK. I vented now I feel better.
American licenses come out of crackerjack boxes.
I’ve always said they should just tattoo our drivers license numbers on the back of our lip at birth.
Trains aren’t running autonomously because the unions won’t allow it. So we have this “almost autonomous” system which they’re deliberately delaying putting in place. Nothing globalist about self driving cars, just identifying the weakest link.
I passed the European test first time out. German drivers are good, but my anecdotal experience was their fatality rate was much higher per accident. IE: fewer accidents, but very bad ones. Germans also follow rules in general. They don’t drive 80 klicks in the left lane. They also pay exorbitant taxes, have extreme fuel prices, and numerous options for public transportation that we don’t. They also drive fewer miles than we as their countries are smaller than our states.
You’re obviously one of those elitists who think only competent people should drive. Lol
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