The Driverless Car From Google

[pokeplayer984]

Do you know how often I nearly get run over?  Nearly every single day because someone doesn't pay attention to me LEGALLY crossing the street.  I have to pay attention when crossing because the one turning towards me isn't!

It's even more upsetting since my home state has one of the highest number of accidents per year in the whole freaking nation.  So, how do we fix such a problem?

Google's answer is to remove the driver behind the wheel.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J17Qgc4a8xY

Considering the state I live in, I'm behind this 100%.  If we can't be safe behind the wheel, perhaps it's better to have something else behind it.

[jansenov]

Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.

These machines still have trouble driving over bad terrain or in bad weather, but if Moore's law holds, they will become better than human drivers. And then they will eliminate professional drivers' jobs. Four million of them in the USA alone.

http://earlywarn.blogspot.com/2012/04/glob...population.html

Considering the exponential growth of the robot population and of their abilities, by 2030 the vast majority of mankind will be unemployed.

This doesn't necessarily have to be a problem. If the real wealth the robots create is distributed to the masses, then it will fuel the growth of new services which people, now with real money from the robot's labour, will buy from each other.

The wealth doesn't even need to be distributed fairly, if there's enough energy around to fuel economic growth. A rising tide lifts all boats, and eventually people will develop new needs, and some of these needs only humans will be able to fulfill. This is how our diverse society developed out of the Industrial Revolution.

However, if economic growth cannot be guaranteed, and if the wealth remains in the hands of the machine owners, then there will be a small class of ultra-rich that can't possibly need the services of all of the unlucky billions. So, almost all of these billions will be struggling for survival. What could come out of this is anybody's guess.

So, bring the robots, but only if you'll be able to pay the full price of using them.

[Kor]

Cars may well be robotic and able to drive themselves, but like an article in popular science I read a while back said they would likely have a manual overide so that a human can drive the car instead of the car driving itself.  So accidents will still happen due to this, and computer problems like viruses, and worms as well as other problems.  & some folks may well keep a human driver because they either prefer one, or as a status thing.  At first having a robot car may be a status thing but it may, over time, switch to where paying a human to drive may be a status or thing some folks do for various reasons.  It may reduce accidents but I don''t think it'll totally eliminate them.

[jansenov]

At first having a robot car may be a status thing but it may, over time, switch to where paying a human to drive may be a status or thing some folks do for various reasons. It may reduce accidents but I don''t think it'll totally eliminate them.

Exactly. In a world where robot cars are ubiquitous, only the rich are able to afford services of a human. But really, if robot drivers indeed become far superior to human ones, there will be no reason to have the manual override option, at least not in a regular car. In such a world, if you want to drive the car yourself, you will likely have to pay exorbitant insurance rates so that other drivers can be compensated for any accidents you may cause.

[WeirdRaptor]

And if the A.I.s turn out ot be faulty and accidents turn out to increase ten fold. Yeah, sorry, the idea of a engineerless train was scary enough, but I sure as hell AM NOT going to trust machines to drive on our roads.

The idea of robots unemploying most of humanity is ridiculous. Yeah, not going to happen, because I guarantee you that if it comes to that, the unemployed will rise up as one and crush their lifeless replacements, and I'll be amongst those rioters.

[F-14 Ace]

I saw something on the Military Channel once about an experimental aircraft that was designed to eliminate human error by overriding the pilot's input if the computer detected something was amiss.  Well, it turns out that the computer malfunctioned and detected that the aircraft was flying too fast so it cut the throttle, taking control away from the pilot.  This caused the plane to drop out of the sky like a rock and the pilot had to eject.  

This car is no different.  I don't trust some machine to drive my vehicle for me.  I'm perfectly capable of driving my truck on my own, thankyouverymuch.  I'm not going to be force to become dependent on a automated machine to drive me from Point A to Point B just because there are idiots out there who refuse to obey traffic laws.  

Just another example of people becoming overly dependent on technology.  Next thing you know they'll invent automatic spoons because they think people can't feed themselves, resulting in the further sissification of the human population.

[jansenov]

And if the A.I.s turn out ot be faulty and accidents turn out to increase ten fold. Yeah, sorry, the idea of a engineerless train was scary enough, but I sure as hell AM NOT going to trust machines to drive on our roads.

The idea of robots unemploying most of humanity is ridiculous. Yeah, not going to happen, because I guarantee you that if it comes to that, the unemployed will rise up as one and crush their lifeless replacements, and I'll be amongst those rioters.

I wouldn't trust the current models to drive me around either, but as I said, if Moore's law holds in the future, the robots are bound to become a lot more capable than now.

And I wouldn't say the idea of most of humanity becoming unemployed is ridiculous. I agree with you that there would be riots, huge ones. But could they topple such a system? I'm afraid that's far from guaranteed. First, what would unite all the rioteers into a single force? What ideology? The most suitable and most potent ideology for this purpose, Marxism, has been thoroughtly discredited in Europe and North America, in the USA in particular. That leaves us with possible Marxist revolutions in Latin America and India, and a reversion to Marxism in China.

Second, what kind of protection the elites have? If they are protected by human policemen and soldiers, there's a high chance of their forces changing sides. However, what if the elites are protected by robotic armies?

Of course, this is all under the assumption that CPU processing power will double every two years to 2030 and beyond. By that time some supercomputers should be able to  execute 10^24-10^26 operations per second, that is, they could simulate the human brain, atom by atom (the human brain is estimated to execute some 10^16-10^20 operations per second).

However, if Moore's law breaks down in 2020 or even closer, then robots will never progress beyond anything more than being rather clever tools.

I wish for Moore's law to hold as long as possible, because there are some really complex problems that need huge amounts of computing power to solve. I believe that we are smart enough to use those machines safely. I also believe the same for nuclear power. I maybe in for a rude surprise, though.

I saw something on the Military Channel once about an experimental aircraft that was designed to eliminate human error by overriding the pilot's input if the computer detected something was amiss. Well, it turns out that the computer malfunctioned and detected that the aircraft was flying too fast so it cut the throttle, taking control away from the pilot. This caused the plane to drop out of the sky like a rock and the pilot had to eject.

This car is no different. I don't trust some machine to drive my vehicle for me. I'm perfectly capable of driving my truck on my own, thankyouverymuch. I'm not going to be force to become dependent on a automated machine to drive me from Point A to Point B just because there are idiots out there who refuse to obey traffic laws.

Just another example of people becoming overly dependent on technology. Next thing you know they'll invent automatic spoons because they think people can't feed themselves, resulting in the further sissification of the human population.

Keep in mind that we are already greatly "sissified" compared to our Stone Age ancestors.

But these are still good points. Eventually we will reach a point where we'll have to say that enough is enough.

[Littlefoot Fan]

Sounds really cool, I'm all for it! This is the kind of stuff that should have been looked into a long time ago

[Blais_13]

I also believe the same for nuclear power.

Well,i heard about a car,which is fuelled with nuclear energy.It's called Cadillac World Thorium.Just imagine a little accident in the engine.The whole car would explode with half of the city,if the core is damaged,and of course it's radioactive.I think It's very dangerous.


By the way,I belive that in the future we will use anti-materia for making energy instead of nuclear energy.If I'm right,a little spoon of anti-materia can make fifteen times bigger energy than an atom bomb.


As for the robot driver I think It's not a bad thing if the human can controll the car too if he wants instead of the robot.A lot of unexpected thing can happen in the roads,and humans are better in solving unexpected things.

[jansenov]

^A thorium reactor in a car? Well that sounds very fanciful. And impractical.  Not to mention dangerous.

I didn't make myself clear enough. I don't think nuclear cars are a good idea. I was thinking of nuclear energy as a reliable and cheap source of electricity. If you have plenty of cheap electricty, you put fuel cells or batteries into cars, or build electric rails everywhere.

And antimatter is not an energy source, only an energy carrier. You still need to spend energy to produce the antimatter, or to collect it in the upper atmosphere. With our technology, producing antimatter is horribly inefficient. The most efficient process to date, that of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, has an effciency rate of 0,0007%, which means you need 140,000 times more energy to produce antimatter than the antimatter contains.




But back to the topic. Humans are definitely better at solving complex problems now, but if computing power doubles for the same amount of energy every two years or so, and material constraints can be overcome (billions are poured into solving that problem), don't you think that robot cars would eventually have much better reactions than human drivers? Our brain power, while huge, is not limitless. And futhemore, the brain must concern itself with myriads of tasks, while the car AI needs to concern itself only with driving.

If it proves to be impossible for a machine to be smarter than a human no matter how much computing power it has, that would be evidence that something supernatural is at work in humans, and would be pretty solid evidence for the existence of a soul. This is one of those really complex problems I was talking about in my previous posts that I would like to see solved, and only really powerfullcomputers can help us.

[Blais_13]

The most efficient process to date, that of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, has an effciency rate of 0,0007%, which means you need 140,000 times more energy to produce antimatter than the antimatter contains.

Yeah,producing aniti-materia is very difficult with nowday's technology.I heard that the scale of successfully creating it is like 1:1000.I mean,if somebody discover a more effective way to creat it,than it would be good.

don't you think that robot cars would eventually have much better reactions than human drivers?

In the future I think robot cars will have definitely better reactions,but I still think there should be a chance for the human to drive the car instead of the robot.There are people,who sometimes enjoy driving   .

If it proves to be impossible for a machine to be smarter than a human no matter how much computing power it has

That's an intresting topic.I heard about a case,where programmers instead of making a program for a problem,they creted an evolution like program (only the fastest survive,others will be deleted),and they let it creat the program.The final program was freakin fast,and nobody knows how it works.So,actualy the program was smarter,but only in making programs.It's still can't do anything other than that.But becose of this,It think there's a chance that we can creat a robot which can evolve itself into a very complex thing,maybe we can call it life?

[bushwacked]

I think I'd be very nervous about getting in a car that's driven by an A.I, especially when I think about all the bugs and glitches that could occur. When it happens on a computer it's annoying, if it happened while you were taking a drive along the motorway you, and many others, could die. It isn't worth the risk.

[pokeplayer984]

Well, we may as well get used to it being around.  Nevada just gave it's first license to the car.  So long as there are two people in the front seats of the car, it is allowed on public roads.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_...-05-07-16-58-47

[DarkHououmon]

I don't mind the concept of driverless cars so long as they still have the option for manual driving. Being electronic, something can still go wrong and the AI driving the car could malfunction. This would be what drives the need for manual overdrive and have a human take control to try to steer the car to safety. It's like with airplanes; they're capable of driving themselves, but something can always go wrong and the autopilot will not work; resulting in the need of a human pilot.

[Cancerian Tiger]

I'm sorry, but I don't care much for where this technology is headed.  Aside from things already mentioned, we are already WAY too dependent on technology.  I bet most of America alone wouldn't even know where to begin if all our technology one day failed on us, because we don't even know the basics of survial like our ancestors knew.  One example is a GPS.  I can't stand using one of those.  I grew up knowing how to read an atlas or a map, and that is how I still get around.  GPS threw me off one too many times (seven hours out of my way, to be exact ).  Like DH said, as long as there's a manual driving option, then I won't mind so much.  On top of that, if I'm driving, I want to be in control of the vehicle and the safety of myself and passengers.  The best computer is the computer between your ears you were born with, not some manmade piece of equipment that could come with potentially fatal glitches.

Pokeplayer began this topic with the issue of being a pedestrian and almost getting run over.  Guess what I notice about most pedestrians?  They don't even look before they cross the road!  They just take for granted that the car has brakes and will stop so they don't think they have to be cautious.  C'mon people, it only takes a second to look BOTH ways before crossing a street, and that could save everybody trouble.  And unless you're using a crosswalk, motorists don't have to legally stop for pedestrians.  

I think unfortunately this is another way of humankind trying to make up for its own ignorance instead of addressing the original issue, which is lack of common courtesy and respect for others.  This is how our society has become, sadly.  Seeing celebrities and famous figures not have accountability for their actions isn't helping the cause either, because especially younger people learn by that example.

[DarkHououmon]

I have a more positive outlook on technology. Maybe at one point, I was more pessimistic. But nowadays, I welcome the technological advances. I think it's a bit silly to constantly fear where technology might take us. So far, it has done a pretty good job at helping us live longer, becoming more aware of our world, etc.

I do still like nature, though. Nature is all around us and nothing can change that. But we don't need to squander tech advancement to protect nature. I think it is possible to fuse both worlds together, figuratively speaking, for a positive future.

The best way I could explain this would be Roger Dean's Willowater, a small car-free village that basically looks like it came out of Lord of the Rings, with grassy mound homes. But it would also have advanced technology powered by wind and water, resulting in the village being very clean and pristine.