<story><title>Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected</title><url>https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/2/14/21063487/self-driving-cars-autonomous-vehicles-waymo-cruise-uber</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cletus</author><text>Alternate headline: Some people overstated how simple this problem was because they didn&amp;#x27;t know what they were talking about, could promote themselves as experts, could get funding for a self-driving startup or some combination of the above.&lt;p&gt;I guess that isn&amp;#x27;t as pithy but it&amp;#x27;s closer to the truth.&lt;p&gt;When it became clear that Uber&amp;#x27;s strategy (under Kalanick anyway) was premised on replacing drivers with AIs before the cash ran out I couldn&amp;#x27;t see general self-driving vehicles coming within 20 years. I still say that&amp;#x27;s true. AI assistance? Sure. But there&amp;#x27;s an uncanny valley there too where the AI will be good enough in most circumstances that drivers lose attention and people will die. You already see this with Tesla autopilot.&lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#x27;s a simple counterexample to the idea that self-driving cars are &amp;quot;just around the corner&amp;quot;: in NYC, quite a few buildings have doormen. This is great for residents. Part of this is dealing with deliveries and so forth but there&amp;#x27;s also an issue of general security. People can sneak in (and I&amp;#x27;m sure do) but just the fact that a human is there acts a strong (but not complete) deterrent. Just like having a dog is one of the most effective burglary deterrents.&lt;p&gt;What prevents a lot of bad actions on the roads is actually fear. Fear of what other drivers might do. Fear of road rage by other drivers. That sort of thing. This is just how humans work.&lt;p&gt;Once a driver knows the car next to them isn&amp;#x27;t driven by a person it changes their behaviour. They will do things they wouldn&amp;#x27;t do if it were a human behind the wheel, particularly because they know an AI won&amp;#x27;t ram them, cut them off, yell at them and whatever. There&amp;#x27;s no fear there. Even if there&amp;#x27;s a passenger in the car, it&amp;#x27;s still (psychologically) different.&lt;p&gt;How do you program around humans changing their behaviour to take advantage of there being no driver in your car?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>technofiend</author><text>&amp;gt;Alternate headline: Some people overstated how simple this problem was because they didn&amp;#x27;t know what they were talking about, could promote themselves as experts, could get funding for a self-driving startup or some combination of the above.&lt;p&gt;I jokingly call it management myopia: anything I don&amp;#x27;t understand can&amp;#x27;t be that hard.</text></comment>
<story><title>Self-driving cars turned out to be harder than expected</title><url>https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/2/14/21063487/self-driving-cars-autonomous-vehicles-waymo-cruise-uber</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cletus</author><text>Alternate headline: Some people overstated how simple this problem was because they didn&amp;#x27;t know what they were talking about, could promote themselves as experts, could get funding for a self-driving startup or some combination of the above.&lt;p&gt;I guess that isn&amp;#x27;t as pithy but it&amp;#x27;s closer to the truth.&lt;p&gt;When it became clear that Uber&amp;#x27;s strategy (under Kalanick anyway) was premised on replacing drivers with AIs before the cash ran out I couldn&amp;#x27;t see general self-driving vehicles coming within 20 years. I still say that&amp;#x27;s true. AI assistance? Sure. But there&amp;#x27;s an uncanny valley there too where the AI will be good enough in most circumstances that drivers lose attention and people will die. You already see this with Tesla autopilot.&lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#x27;s a simple counterexample to the idea that self-driving cars are &amp;quot;just around the corner&amp;quot;: in NYC, quite a few buildings have doormen. This is great for residents. Part of this is dealing with deliveries and so forth but there&amp;#x27;s also an issue of general security. People can sneak in (and I&amp;#x27;m sure do) but just the fact that a human is there acts a strong (but not complete) deterrent. Just like having a dog is one of the most effective burglary deterrents.&lt;p&gt;What prevents a lot of bad actions on the roads is actually fear. Fear of what other drivers might do. Fear of road rage by other drivers. That sort of thing. This is just how humans work.&lt;p&gt;Once a driver knows the car next to them isn&amp;#x27;t driven by a person it changes their behaviour. They will do things they wouldn&amp;#x27;t do if it were a human behind the wheel, particularly because they know an AI won&amp;#x27;t ram them, cut them off, yell at them and whatever. There&amp;#x27;s no fear there. Even if there&amp;#x27;s a passenger in the car, it&amp;#x27;s still (psychologically) different.&lt;p&gt;How do you program around humans changing their behaviour to take advantage of there being no driver in your car?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>SilasX</author><text>&amp;gt;When it became clear that Uber&amp;#x27;s strategy (under Kalanick anyway) was premised on replacing drivers with AIs before the cash ran out I couldn&amp;#x27;t see general self-driving vehicles coming within 20 years. I still say that&amp;#x27;s true.&lt;p&gt;Even so, this never made sense &lt;i&gt;as a business strategy&lt;/i&gt;, unless Uber somehow has a comparative advantage in achieving self-driving cars and then can get a long monopoly on them.&lt;p&gt;If they don&amp;#x27;t -- if others have SDCs around the same time, then sure, their costs go way down, but they can also charge a lot less, because the competition has the same &amp;quot;advantage&amp;quot;!&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s like:&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;Hey, man, do you really think your grocery store can make those superhuge profits when you sell at the wholesale price?&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&amp;#x27;Oh, no, I have a plan. You know those barcodes they&amp;#x27;re putting on products now? I&amp;#x27;m going to invent a way to integrate that with the checkouts, and boom, I don&amp;#x27;t have to pay for people to put price tags on. Labor costs go way down!&amp;#x27;&lt;p&gt;Same problem: &amp;quot;No, you&amp;#x27;re not. Someone better at that will, and they&amp;#x27;ll sell the tech to all grocery stores.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;There was never a reason to believe Kalanick&amp;#x27;s operation as it stood in 2010&amp;#x2F;11 had that comparative advantage, so that strategy never made sense.  And today, not surprisingly, Uber is one of the worst at SDCs, and is correspondingly unlikely to have that advantage.</text></comment>