Skip to main content

Again: Self driving cars

This is my third commentary about self driving cars, see here and here for my previous write-ups. Since then there has been several autopilot accidents, and at least one death (the driver).  Now the issues are interesting, insofar as the driver who died (and had been a well known early adopter of Tesla autopilot feature) was killed because the software could not recognize what it saw (the side of a truck).  The single most important need for generation 4 or level 4 autonomous driving (where there is no need for an operator) is that the computer needs to recognize what it sees.  

Five years ago, the hardware needed to understand the real world was almost a super computer, today its a chip!  NVIDIA created a $200 chip that is actually better at recognizing the real world than humans are able to do, a major shift in the ability of machines to recognize the real world -- and adapt.

An article by Chris Dixon here says about the same thing I wrote a few months ago.  I think where is argument is the strongest is autonomous driving for long distance trucking.  Two reasons:  (a) it is incredibly borring task that requires very little mental agility (but a lot of concentration), (b) there is a real shortage of drivers -- its long hours and meagre pay are not incentives in an economy where unemployment is low (around 5%).   The drivers that will remain will be better paid, because they will do more difficult drives that the autodrive system cannot perform well.  Where in fact, humans are the necessary ingredient.

As for the rest of the article, I though that Dixon was a bit pie in the sky.  First off, those who do not drive automatic cars will still need parking for years.  Granted congestion will drop, and if the bulk of these autodrive cars are electric then there should be a huge impact on city pollution. 

What are the missing ingredients for utopia; in no particular order we have: 
  • (a) legislation -- but I suspect it will be a competition from city and states to be "the first", with certain car centric states being the last, 
  • (b) level 4 autodrive vehicles; we are still a few years away from that; currently only about 1 million miles have been driven by autonomous vehicles, while this may seem like a lot, its not,
  • (c) infrastructure  is still far from adequate; there are far too few charging stations in urban environment to allow this "great leap forward" to occur.   In addition the implication for electricity demand is enormous and largely unaddressed
In fact, 90% of what is needed to make this reality happen is still missing...so the early adopters love the the technology, and it works better than advertised (remember google glasses, anyone?).  Of course there have been some real problems, and also so BS, from people who still don't understand how much information is available to Tesla after an accident...in one case the guy basically lied he was driving the car manually, but tried to blame the autopilot feature...dumbass!





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ok so I lied...a little (revised)

When we began looking at farming in 2013/14 as something we both wanted to do as a "second career" we invested time and money to understand what sector of farming was profitable.  A few things emerged, First, high-quality, source-proven, organic farm products consistently have much higher profit margins.  Secondly, transformation accounted for nearly 80% of total profits, and production and distribution accounted for 20% of profits: Farmers and retailers have low profit margins and the middle bits make all the money. A profitable farm operation needs to be involved in the transformation of its produce.  The low-hanging fruits: cheese and butter.  Milk, generates a profit margin of 5% to 8%, depending on milk quality.  Transformed into cheese and butter, and the profit margin rises to 40% (Taking into account all costs).  Second:  20% of a steer carcass is ground beef quality.  The price is low, because (a) a high percentage of the carcass, and (b)...
Post a Comment
Read more

Spray painting Taylor Swift G650 aircraft (updated)

 First, a bit of paint will not harm anyone.  These climate activities are going to learn two things in the next few days:  (1) Trespassing at an airport is a felony almost anywhere in the world.  That means criminal prosecution.   (2) removing paint from an aircraft is expensive.   So these climate activists are about to find out the reach of the British criminal system and it will not be pleasant, the UK has very strict laws about that, I would be surprised if cleaning the aircraft of all the paint will cost less than $100,000.     I am sure that when they planned (premeditation) this little show they had a very valid logic to doing this.  Tonight, they are probably realizing the depth of their troubles.   I understand that in the UK it's a minimum one-year jail sentence.    Also, good luck travelling with a criminal trespass charge against you.  I am relatively certain that the airline industry will ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Janet Yellen from China supporter to Hawk...

There is rarely serious news in the world these days, it seems that most newspapers are filled with headlines and little else, and then Ms Yellen went to China.  Secretary Yellen has long been known in the Biden administration as the voice of moderation when dealing with China, yet as her trip which concluded yesterday a hawk was born:  She warned the Chinese against dumping goods in the United States.    fighting words! The American administration is very concerned about the lack of Chinese domestic consumption.   Even before the COVID-19 epidemic, there were already the beginning signs of a slowdown, automobile sales were off.   China is facing domestic deflation (a clear sign of collapsing demand) China imports few consumer goods, they import raw materials and intermediary goods.   It seems that the American administration is concerned that the Chinese administration will dump consumer goods abroad to keep its manufacturing machinery ...
Post a Comment
Read more