The life-or-death case for self-driving cars

msn.com ^

[9YearLurker]

“new data from the autonomous vehicle company Waymo”

I detect a problem here.

And good luck once Big Brother can shut down your ride whenever and wherever it wants. (Or take you wherever Big Brother wants.)

[DIRTYSECRET]

There’s more. Driverless cars could have reserved downtown parking spaces just like the EV charging stations. More productive I’m sure.

[dfwgator]

I want a car that folds up into a briefcase, like on The Jetsons.

[Alberta's Child]

Go out today and look inside a typical SUV or minivan that is being fueled up at your local gas station.

Notice all the things in there that aren’t passengers and didn’t come with the car when it was driven off the dealer lot when it was new — child seats, coffee mugs, golf clubs, clothing, etc.

I can assure you that the owner of that car has no interest in your silly, delusional “everybody shares rides and cars never have to park” business model.

[DIRTYSECRET]

Lets see. On your way yo your destination the car gets a signal to pick up another passenger. It’s not out of the way. What’s the problem?

[Breitbart was right]

The ability of a computer to drive a vehicle in the center of the road is not new. But what is new is the ability of AI to operate a vehicle safely in real world traffic and and ever changing road conditions. Until a couple of years ago I had exactly the same view of the new "self driving cars" as you. Advanced AI changes everything, unfortunately. We are just reaching the level of AI that can almost perfectly simulate human intelligence for driving in all conditions. The fact that it is artificial intelligence (simulated, not natural) does not change the fact that it is very, very good. It will very shortly (this year) surpass human level driving in that AI self-driving will be safer (less accidents), more economical in the way it brakes and accelerates, and faster over all.

There will be massive economic incentives for self driving cars. I believe there will be a huge demand for Tesla's Cybercab or similar cars. It will fundamentally change public transportation. There are minibus versions already in service in China. It will be like LED light bulbs: It will make too much economic sense to resist.

Self driving electric semi-trucks will also be too profitable to resist. Semi-trailers will be covered with low cost solar cells, greatly increasing the range of the truck and reducing operating costs. Because they will not be limited to 11 hours of driving time a day, and can operate on weekends and holidays, there will be a huge demand for driverless over the road trucks.

Just as we are seeing first trickle of job losses among computer programmers this year, next year we will see a small net loss in jobs for truck drivers, with the deluge to begin in earnest by 2027. Taxi drivers in San Francisco and Austen, Texas are also going feel a little competition this year and lot more pressure in the next couple of years. Tesla will be only one of the companies selling these cars and trucks.

A lot of good people will lose their jobs to AI self-driving technology. And yes, a few people are going to make a lot money in this field, but at the end of the day, it is going to hurt the average working person a lot more than it helps them.

[Breitbart was right]

I have watched the Waymo taxis in the San Francisco business district interact with regular traffic and they do just fine. Their safety record has already surpassed human level. Advanced Artificial intelligence is here, and at first it is going to seem beneficial to most people, but if we keep going it is literally a dead end road for humanity.

[Alberta's Child]

I’m not sure what this means in the context of my prior post.

[Alberta's Child]

The only real incentives for AV technology right now are for applications where two things are currently in place:

1. The driver doesn’t own the vehicle.

2. The driver is being paid to drive the vehicle.

This is why the applications you describe are limited to things like taxi cabs and trucks. Those economic forces to reduce or eliminate labor costs will always be there, and AV technology is just one more of those ideas that may or may not work.

Trucking has its own challenges. The biggest one right now is that this technology can only be used for domestic hauls inside a single state. That’s because federal regulations require a CDL driver to do dozens of tasks in addition to driving over the course of an interstate trip — like pre-trip inspections, load stability checks, etc. By the time the AV truck manufacturer adds all the instrumentation that is needed to replace all of THOSE tasks, I’m not convinced the automated truck will be any less expensive to operate anyway.

And if you think this is a simple matter that can easily be changed through new federal regulations, I’ll point this out about two different regulatory issues in play right now: At the same time the Federal Highway Administration and NHTSA are trying to figure out how to regulate trucks with NO drivers, the Federal Railroad Administration is under constant pressure to adopt a requirement for all freight trains operating outside rail yards to have TWO crew members in the locomotive — even though railroads operate on closed systems and are much more conducive to automatic operation.