this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2024
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Technology
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so much money pumped into a pipe dream, when tech just isn't there yet. It doesn't matter how many AI models and image recognition systems you use, sometimes you just can't plan for every case. Driving is an incredibly complex task, that to us humans makes sense and we can easily adjust to. Snow covering the lanes? Slow down, take it extremely cautiously, and find out where the road is.
But we know what it really is all about - selling more cars. Even if the tech isn't there the illusion that it's just a few years away keeps people buying it. Modern AI is only fueling that techbro BS that it's almost here.
When really, trains. Trains are relatively (to cars) easy to automate and make run safely, can move way more people. I'm still extremely salty that Musk tried to derail California HSR with his stupid Boring company just to sell more Teslas.
It isn't even about selling more cars at this point, it's about selling securities. Their market cap dwarfs their total sales. Their P/E ratio is 67.67x, meaning they could sell cars for 67 years and still not make as much money as their stocks are worth today.
The real product is the rising stock price. The factories are just a front.
Very true. Cars are a secondary venture, the stock is the true product.
Aside from driving being an activity that, in my opinion, will require something approaching AGI, there are other issues to consider. Self driving cars will be completely unable to make difficult decisions reliably. How, for example, do they deal with a robbery where you just have someone stand in front of the car to immobilize it and then have the folks inside the car at your mercy? I have to imagine that either you're producing pedestrian murder machines or serving up passengers on a silver platter.
exactly, I'm trying to think of all the crazy things I've encountered while driving, and the many many things that I've seen online. Remember the meteor in Russia about 10 years ago? How would a self driving car react to all of it's sensors being so bright it can't see anything? I've had children run into the street, things fly off of cars ahead of me, people driving in 2 lanes, just yesterday I was almost smashed by a gasoline tanker who didn't see me.
There's so many one-off variables that you just can't make a model for, there's not enough data in the world for every case that it may come across.
My concept of self driving cars has always been external navigation from a grid.
An individual car self driving is useless for all of these reasons mentioned. However, a self driving car that is controlled as part of a wider grid? Now we're talking. You input your destination and relative to everything currently on the road you are moved. If a wider issue like a meteor comes in, the grid goes down and traffic stops safely. If someone tries to game the system by standing in front of a car, the grid has control of the other vehicles as well. Some other benefits could be redesigning the use of tires for fewer microplastics, and there would have to weigh out the difference of gas vs. electricity costs. Ideally, each vehicle is powered by the grid so no more gas stations, but electricity comes from somewhere, so unless we move towards renewables then it may not have less emissions.
Obviously the drawback to this is the insane privacy imposition of the grid controlling where you go. The infrastructure would also be likely impossible as it would be the grid and the vehicles. But, if we were going to do it I feel like this would be on track towards the right way.
Now that I'm grown, I feel like a more feasible version of this is this sort of grid for local busses, as well as trucking and long-distance travel (aka trains) and getting local towns and cities to focus more on walkability. This works towards solving the problem of getting fewer vehicles on the road while not limiting people's freedom to travel. Unfortunately it's the same problem of infrastructure and no one will invest in this.
We could have global train network taking cargo and passengers from China all the way to Europe, but instead these people are focusing on the hardest feats possible. All because they read about it in a book and think it's within arm's reach. We could be living in unpolluted cities with free public transport and maybe even UBI. Instead we have to settle for this...
Anti Commercial-AI license
We've already automated trains. In Australia, the mines have trains travelling hundreds of kilometres with no pilot
Navigating a road is a lot more complex than navigating a rail.