Self driving buses, trains, trucks etc

fly_agaric · 01-09-2017 9:01pm

Stephen15 wrote: »

How will driverless vehicles adapt to changes in weather conditions which can change suddenly...

Unfortunately there's many humans that don't adapt too well. They may carry on driving when perhaps they should have stopped and cause an accident!
The ai just has to be as good as a human (well, realistically it has to be measurably better imo to allay fears). It does not have to be infallible.

Once it gets there, the days of human controlled vehicles on the roads will be numbered. Once the human driven vehicles are gone (...a long way off yet) things should get safer as the environment will be somewhat more predictable for the ais (dealing with just counterpart ai controlling other vehicles, + the like of pedestrians, cyclists etc instead of all of this + some crazy human drivers as well).

May be dismissed as propaganda or advertorial for Google/Alphabet but thought this was interesting so will leave it here (assuming was not posted by someone already as did not read entire thread, if it was apologies).

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/08/inside-waymos-secret-testing-and-simulation-facilities/537648/

edit: There seems to be vast amounts of money, time & intellect going into efforts to crack this. Our "corporate overlords" (many of of the biggest, wealthiest companies on earth) have a hard-on to make this work and I would not bet against them succeeding.

prinzeugen · 01-09-2017 9:04pm

eeguy wrote: »

Would all 216 passengers on the Air France flight be alive if an autopilot was installed on the plane instead of the pilot?

Picking one freak example as an argument against autopilot is false. Pilot error is causes something like 3/4 of plane crashes. I'd hazard that driver error is probably much higher.

Weather conditions change suddenly? Like it rains? Autonomous cars can see far better than humans. Most weather doesn't even affect them.

The big problem is that pilots "pilot" an aircraft now rather than "fly" it.

THE pilot of the Air France jet which plunged into the Atlantic in 2009 killing 228 people – including three Irish doctors - pushed the nose upward instead of downward during a stall because of false data from sensors

Over reliance on technology and flying skills being lost is a contributing factor in some accidents.

eeguy · 01-09-2017 9:17pm

prinzeugen wrote: »

The big problem is that pilots "pilot" an aircraft now rather than "fly" it.
Over reliance on technology and flying skills being lost is a contributing factor in some accidents.

"Neither weather nor malfunction doomed AF447, nor a complex chain of error, but a simple but persistent mistake on the part of one of the pilots."
http://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/a3115/what-really-happened-aboard-air-france-447-6611877/

Modern airplanes basically couldn't fly without all this technology. To take it away would kill our ability to fly.
You can argue against it all you want but the fact is that people consistently make mistakes, and usually the same basic mistakes over and over.

Machines may make a mistake once, usually in a controlled simulated environment and they won't do it again.

Stephen15 · 01-09-2017 9:27pm

Thinking of an example a little closer to home remember the 2004 Wellington Quay bus crash where a 5 people were killed in when bus ploughed into pedestrians waiting a stop well it was proven in a court of law that it was caused by a power surge in the bus in question and the driver was proven not guilty. I would hate to what would happen if it was an autonomous and how would a driverless would react to a power surge.

devnull · 01-09-2017 9:30pm

prinzeugen wrote: »

Over reliance on technology and flying skills being lost is a contributing factor in some accidents.

The number one cause of airplane disasters is pilot error by quite some distance and most of them are controlled flights into terrain where the pilot has made a mistake, is not paying attention or is suffering from spatial disorientation or lack of situational awareness and has flown a perfectly serviceable aircraft into terrain.

In a very high number of these cases that have been investigated the flight data recorders and cockpit voice recorders have shown that the pilot or the copilot were given correct information by their systems and their instruments were working properly but they disregarded the information these systems were giving them or were not correctly monitoring it with fatal consequences.

THE pilot of the Air France jet which plunged into the Atlantic in 2009 killing 228 people – including three Irish doctors - pushed the nose upward instead of downward during a stall because of false data from sensors

Over reliance on technology and flying skills being lost is a contributing factor in some accidents.

What the report actually said

- temporary inconsistency between the measured speeds, likely as a result of the obstruction of the pitot tubes by ice crystals, causing autopilot disconnection and reconfiguration to alternate law;
- the crew made inappropriate control inputs that destabilized the flight path;
- the crew failed to follow appropriate procedure for loss of displayed airspeed information;
- the crew were late in identifying and correcting the deviation from the flight path;
- the crew lacked understanding of the approach to stall;
- the crew failed to recognize that the aircraft had stalled and consequently did not make inputs that would have made it possible to recover from the stall

I'm not saying that malfunctions do not happen, but at the end of the day the failure was not so big that it doomed the plane or anything near it, it was something that should have been recoverable but a catalog of wrong decisions by the crew ultimately doomed them and all on board.

magicbastarder · 01-09-2017 9:33pm

prinzeugen wrote: »

You still need humans. You just have to watch a few episodes of Air Crash Investigation to see that.

i keep hearing this style of defence. it's a complete and utter false equivalence. any crashes mentioned on that show are not a failure of a system designed to be fully autonomous. you are condemning a technology which was not a factor in any of those incidents

and the funny thing is, in probably the majority of those programs, the plane crashes with multiple or total fatalities. and it's regularly human error to blame.

an aside; the episode i found most interesting of air crash investigation was one where a pilot who was trained in the eastern bloc, on planes where the artificial horizon works in the opposite way to western bloc planes. in short, human error.

prinzeugen · 01-09-2017 9:36pm

eeguy wrote: »

"Neither weather nor malfunction doomed AF447, nor a complex chain of error, but a simple but persistent mistake on the part of one of the pilots."
http://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/a3115/what-really-happened-aboard-air-france-447-6611877/

Modern airplanes basically couldn't fly without all this technology. To take it away would kill our ability to fly.
You can argue against it all you want but the fact is that people consistently make mistakes, and usually the same basic mistakes over and over.

Machines may make a mistake once, usually in a controlled simulated environment and they won't do it again.

As I said, Over reliance on technology, not pilot error was to blame.

Last bit from the link you posted

But the crash raises the disturbing possibility that aviation may well long be plagued by a subtler menace, one that ironically springs from the never-ending quest to make flying safer. Over the decades, airliners have been built with increasingly automated flight-control functions. These have the potential to remove a great deal of uncertainty and danger from aviation. But they also remove important information from the attention of the flight crew. While the airplane's avionics track crucial parameters such as location, speed, and heading, the human beings can pay attention to something else. But when trouble suddenly springs up and the computer decides that it can no longer cope—on a dark night, perhaps, in turbulence, far from land—the humans might find themselves with a very incomplete notion of what's going on. They'll wonder: What instruments are reliable, and which can't be trusted? What's the most pressing threat? What's going on? Unfortunately, the vast majority of pilots will have little experience in finding the answers.

Also it was a french plane built by a french company. They have a history of altering facts to protect themselves and french industry.

One airline is starting to train its pilots on how to use sextants again for navigation at night. Using centuries old technology says tons about the confidence they have in modern stuff.

devnull · 01-09-2017 9:40pm

prinzeugen wrote: »

As I said, Over reliance on technology, not pilot error was to blame.

That's not what the official report says though, that is your opinion but it is not one that I would share and not one that the BEA would agree with either and they know far more about these things than any of us I think.

One airline is starting to train its pilots on how to use sextants again for navigation at night. Using centuries old technology says tons about the confidence they have in modern stuff.

Pilots are also trained in what to do in emergency landings or how to land in water, does it mean that they have no confidence in their planes and expect to be landing in water?

Ben D Bus · 01-09-2017 9:42pm

prinzeugen wrote: »

The big problem is that pilots "pilot" an aircraft now rather than "fly" it.

Over reliance on technology and flying skills being lost is a contributing factor in some accidents.

If this is your case then you need to show that increasing automation has reduced flight safety. Not by anecdote, but by cold hard statistics.

Honestly, most of the "it'll never happen" posts on this thread seem driven purely by fear of change and not by any real evidence.

Breakdown of air accidents by cause: (59% human error)
http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/the-one-chart-that-shows-what-causes-fatal-plane-crashes-10494952.html

prinzeugen · 01-09-2017 9:47pm

devnull wrote: »

That's not what the official report says though, that is your opinion but it is not one that I would share and not one that the BEA would agree with either and they know far more about these things than any of us I think.

Pilots are also trained in what to do in emergency landings or how to land in water, does it mean that they have no confidence in their planes and expect to be landing in water?

Navigation goes over water. They end up going round in circles untill they run out of fuel.

A sextant would give them an idea of position. It was in one of last months aviation magazines (sorry I am one of the people that use Easons as a library. I can not remember which mag as I skimmed through a few)

devnull · 01-09-2017 9:48pm

magicbastarder wrote: »

and the funny thing is, in probably the majority of those programs, the plane crashes with multiple or total fatalities. and it's regularly human error to blame.

an aside; the episode i found most interesting of air crash investigation was one where a pilot who was trained in the eastern bloc, on planes where the artificial horizon works in the opposite way to western bloc planes. in short, human error.

I noticed that virtually all of the crashes that feature on there are normally the result of a chain of events, there normally isn't one single thing that can bring down a plane which happens in the air, normally it's a chain of events which come together which finally form an accident.

CFIT is by far the most common one, spatitual disorientation and loss of situational awareness normally come in shortly behind, then you often see other human error (maintenance, air traffic control, weather) and only after that generally are some kind of plane defect or malfunction and even a lot of them cannot bring a plane down on their own.

On another sidenote, did you see the episode about the Russian hockey team that let a kid in the cockpit?

magicbastarder · 01-09-2017 9:58pm

a friend of mine designs processes and UIs, and he cites a couple as being of interest to him - one was a flight where the weather was a major distraction during preflight, as well as an issue which caused the plane to have to return to the gate - and in all the fuss, the crew missed the part where they had to extend the flaps for low speed flight - so took off with the flaps fully retracted and couldn't gain lift. NASA were brought in to investigate and make recommendations, and designed a preflight check system which allowed the crew to track more easily what had or had not been done in case of distraction. simple stuff in reality, so simple no one had thought to make it robust before that.

prinzeugen · 01-09-2017 10:01pm

Ben D Bus wrote: »

If this your case then you need to show that increasing automation has reduced flight safety. Not by anectdote, but by cold hard statistics.

Honestly, most of the "it'll never happen" posts on this thread seem driven purely by fear of change and not by any real evidence.

Breakdown of air accidents by cause:
http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/the-one-chart-that-shows-what-causes-fatal-plane-crashes-10494952.html

You are only looking at fatal accidents.

There are 1000s more where there was no loss of life because the pilots used knowledge and skill to get the plane on the ground.

Its not fear of change. Its fear for my life.

Plenty younger people that rely on tech to do everything for them wont have a problem, but I, and many others do.

magicbastarder · 01-09-2017 10:03pm

anyway, back to the human factor in the technology - one thing i was mulling over was, if this *does* lead to a drop in private car ownership and a greater takeup of car pooling (not in the 'let's all share a car together' sense, but the 'i'll use a car someone else finished using 30 minutes ago' sense); will this lead to a reduction in car sizes in urban areas?

most people buy five seaters for the 10% of times they might have people sitting in the back - but if it's just one person needing to get from stoneybatter to merrion square, why would a car pool company not maintain a fleet of single seaters for this purpose?

eeguy · 01-09-2017 10:07pm

prinzeugen wrote: »

You are only looking at fatal accidents.

There are 1000s more where there was no loss of life because the pilots used knowledge and skill to get the plane on the ground.

Its not fear of change. Its fear for my life.

Plenty younger people that rely on tech to do everything for them wont have a problem, but I, and many others do.

Ah yes, all the 'minor' accidents that are never reported so your point can't be backed up.
As I said before, the only reason we fit so many places in the sky without them all crashing is through advances in technology and taking decision out of the hands of pilots.

If 60% of crashes are due to pilot error then we could more than halve the chance of crashing with autonomy.
What will bringing less automation result in?

devnull · 01-09-2017 10:08pm

prinzeugen wrote: »

There are 1000s more where there was no loss of life because the pilots used knowledge and skill to get the plane on the ground.

There are a load of technological solutions and systems on board which have stopped pilots making mistakes as well and have made aviation safety and without them we'd have many more incidents.

A massive one is GPWS for example.

Its not fear of change. Its fear for my life. Plenty younger people that rely on tech to do everything for them wont have a problem, but I, and many others do.

Unfortunately the stats are not on your side, technology has made the skies safer, not more dangerous.

magicbastarder · 01-09-2017 10:13pm

anyway, the topic of autonomous planes and autonomous ground based vehicles are two very different things. concerns about one do not necessarily reflect on concerns about the other.
i was once talking to someone who had an 'interesting' flight on a cargo plane in the 70s, and when i asked him if it made him more nervous of flying, he said, no, it made him more nervous of driving. because at least in a jet plane, you know the crew are trained professionals.

prinzeugen · 01-09-2017 10:14pm

magicbastarder wrote: »

anyway, back to the human factor in the technology - one thing i was mulling over was, if this *does* lead to a drop in private car ownership and a greater takeup of car pooling (not in the 'let's all share a car together' sense, but the 'i'll use a car someone else finished using 30 minutes ago' sense); will this lead to a reduction in car sizes in urban areas?

most people buy five seaters for the 10% of times they might have people sitting in the back - but if it's just one person needing to get from stoneybatter to merrion square, why would a car pool company not maintain a fleet of single seaters for this purpose?

Bring back this.. No need for AI or Google cars.

https://www.lanemotormuseum.org/collection/cars/item/peel-p50-1964

This is the thing about the whole AI think that does not make sense.

You will still get phantom traffic jams on motorways, trucks will still need to be diesel powered, and at the end of the day they would be banned from college green anyway!

Maybe in a 100 years.

prinzeugen · 01-09-2017 10:23pm

eeguy wrote: »

Ah yes, all the 'minor' accidents that are never reported so your point can't be backed up.

'Minor' accidents??

BA009

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-431802/The-story-BA-flight-009-words-passenger-dreads-.html

Canada Air 624

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Canada_Flight_624

Flight 243

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloha_Airlines_Flight_243

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TACA_Flight_110

Is that enough for you?? How could AI have ever got these planes down with all crew/passengers surviving?

magicbastarder · 01-09-2017 10:29pm

the first link i clicked:
"Moody took drastic action: to prevent his passengers dying of oxygen starvation, he went into a nosedive, dropping 6,000ft in one minute, to an altitude where there was enough oxygen in the outside atmosphere to fill the cabin once more.

And quite unexpectedly, this action almost certainly saved the lives of every person on board."
so it was not skill of the pilots, but luck.

magicbastarder · 01-09-2017 10:30pm

second link:
"The final report was released in May 2017, finding Air Canada crew procedures to be the primary cause of the accident."

magicbastarder · 01-09-2017 10:32pm

prinzeugen wrote: »

There are 1000s more where there was no loss of life because the pilots used knowledge and skill to get the plane on the ground.

god be with the days when real men flew airplanes, not computers, and planes never crashed.

eeguy · 01-09-2017 10:33pm

magicbastarder wrote: »

the first link i clicked:
"Moody took drastic action: to prevent his passengers dying of oxygen starvation, he went into a nosedive, dropping 6,000ft in one minute, to an altitude where there was enough oxygen in the outside atmosphere to fill the cabin once more.

And quite unexpectedly, this action almost certainly saved the lives of every person on board."
so it was not skill of the pilots, but luck.

3 stories from the 1980's and plane in the 2015 story was 24 years old.

I think technology in general has moved on to stop these incidents happening.

Ben D Bus · 01-09-2017 10:33pm

prinzeugen wrote: »

Plenty younger people that rely on tech to do everything for them wont have a problem, but I, and many others do.

That's a telling comment tbh. Most people are comfortable with technology that arrived when they were younger but have a fear of technology that came later.

Change is the issue, not technology. I say this as someone approaching 50. I expect the fear to set in soon

devnull · 01-09-2017 10:37pm

The Daily Mail is hardly a great source! )

Nobody says that there are not incidents where there are not faults which happen with aircraft but these causing accidents alone are much lower than those which are caused by human error as shown by the various statistics on what causes fatal accidents.

GPWS alone has probably stopped huge amounts of accidents because it gives warnings of when a plane is close to terrain even if the pilot cannot see, we have no way of knowing exactly how many lives it has saved.

The Air Canada flight link you give says: "The TSB stated that there were no mechanical or maintenance faults uncovered with the aircraft and "Air Canada crew procedures to be the primary cause of the accident"

The Aloha flight that you mention is not a mechanical failure due to plane malfunction as such, it's the result of shoddy and improper maintenance according to the final repost by the NTSB.

prinzeugen · 01-09-2017 10:45pm

eeguy wrote: »

3 stories from the 1980's and plane in the 2015 story was 24 years old.

I think technology in general has moved on to stop these incidents happening.

How would AI handle all 4 engines going on a 747?? Reboot while the plane plunges?

Would AI know about a closed airfield?

Would AI be able to glide a plane to flattish strip and land?

It was human actions that saved these planes.

AI could hot have done it.

The Air Canada was human error in fuel loads, however if it was not for human knowledge, ie the pilot knowing that was there, the the outcome could have been very different.

magicbastarder · 01-09-2017 11:23pm

and this is relevant to landing a self-driving car in a disused airfield?

prinzeugen · 01-09-2017 11:23pm

devnull wrote: »

The Daily Mail is hardly a great source! )

Nobody says that there are not incidents where there are not faults which happen with aircraft but these causing accidents alone are much lower than those which are caused by human error as shown by the various statistics on what causes fatal accidents.

GPWS alone has probably stopped huge amounts of accidents because it gives warnings of when a plane is close to terrain even if the pilot cannot see, we have no way of knowing exactly how many lives it has saved.

The Air Canada flight link you give says: "The TSB stated that there were no mechanical or maintenance faults uncovered with the aircraft and "Air Canada crew procedures to be the primary cause of the accident"

The Aloha flight that you mention is not a mechanical failure due to plane malfunction as such, it's the result of shoddy and improper maintenance according to the final repost by the NTSB.

You are missing the point of my posts.

There have been 1000's of incidents with aircraft in which human knowledge and skill has prevented loss of life.

AI would not be able to understand what has gone on.

Would AI know if there was a hydraulic leak from xx part? Can AI look out the window and look?

Or does the plane need a person. A person that knows how the plane works, so that when the AI stops working, could step in?

Oh wait. We have them already.

prinzeugen · 01-09-2017 11:31pm

magicbastarder wrote: »

and this is relevant to landing a self-driving car in a disused airfield?

No. Just proving self driving planes/cars etc have issues.

With the way google and other sat navs work there is every chance the will end up on a disused runway.

Unreliable. My street, been here since 1896, does not show on sat navs.. South Dublin.

So how are these cars going to work??

magicbastarder · 01-09-2017 11:32pm

prinzeugen wrote: »

You are missing the point of my posts.

There have been 1000's of incidents with aircraft in which human knowledge and skill has prevented loss of life.

there have been thousands of incidents caused by human failure. you referenced 'air crash investigation' earlier. knock yourself out reading how many people have died as a result of human error:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mayday_episodes

devnull · 01-09-2017 11:41pm

prinzeugen wrote: »

You are missing the point of my posts.

There have been 1000's of incidents with aircraft in which human knowledge and skill has prevented loss of life.

There have been thousands more incidents where automation and tech systems have warned humans of an upcoming disaster which they otherwise would have not known was about to happen without it and the disaster would have happened and everyone would be dead without any doubt.

If a pilot cannot see but the plane has detected that there is terrain approaching and warns the pilots without that warning there would be a crash. If a plane did not have anti stall systems and warnings pilots would stall their plane more often which would also lead to more crashes.

There's also systems that do not allow certain parameters to be put in to flight computers or prevent pilots from taking unsafe actions by both issuing a warning and preventing something from happening by simply refusing to do it in the interests of safety of passengers and those people who are on board.

If you go and watch Air Crash Investigation and a lot of episodes you will see lots of experts on aviation on there and pretty much every time they all agree that automation and systems like these which are put in place have vastly improved standards of safety in the skies.

prinzeugen · 01-09-2017 11:42pm

magicbastarder wrote: »

there have been thousands of incidents caused by human failure. you referenced 'air crash investigation' earlier. knock yourself out reading how many people have died as a result of human error:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mayday_episodes

Take the blinkers off. Stop looking at fatal accidents only!

Air crashes only make the news when people die.

Things like this get little attention. Undercarriage failure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPqFxdurLmw

Would AI have been able to tell all the passengers to move to the left of the plane?

devnull · 01-09-2017 11:49pm

prinzeugen wrote: »

Would AI have been able to tell all the passengers to move to the left of the plane?

Would a human be able to tell you terrain was below them or that they are about to crash into a bunch of trees or a mountain if they cannot see anything from the window because their vision is blocked by weather?

There are so many warnings and restrictive systems now in the cockpit that the automation means that if a pilot does something wrong the automation will tell them and/or try and stop and correct the actions that they are taking.

You won't read about that online because of the fact the automation has saved the pilots skin because it realised what a mistake they made. A lot of the pilot error incidents are in relation to loss of situational awareness and spatial disorientation where the automation and systems have screamed at them they are doing things wrong but they just ignore them time and time again until it's too late. =

Ben D Bus · 01-09-2017 11:49pm

So let's say there are some accidents prevented by human intervention, and some prevented by total automation.

Which is likely to result in less injury to people, whether in the air or on the roads? Statistics and the history of technology suggest that sooner or later (probably sooner), automation will, on balance, be the safer option.

magicbastarder · 01-09-2017 11:51pm

this is fundamental - your examples are all examples where something has already gone wrong. you are using examples where *the failure has already happened*.
you're refusing to take into consideration the examples where the same automation you hate so much has prevented accidents, simply because *nothing happened* that was noteworthy.

it's like the issue with changing to permanent DST that the UK has mulled over - the tabloids will jump on the people who died during the darker mornings, and not the `(greater number of) people whose lives were saved during the brighter evenings. precisely because the latter have stories that are simply mundane - 'i could have died but came out without a scratch' doesn't sell newspapers, but people dying does.

devnull · 01-09-2017 11:52pm

prinzeugen wrote: »

Things like this get little attention. Undercarriage failure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPqFxdurLmw

Would AI have been able to tell all the passengers to move to the left of the plane?

Human (maintenance) error again:
http://avherald.com/h?article=47f7b9f9&opt=0

On Oct 8th 2015 the AAIB released their bulletin into the serious incident reporting that it turned out the right hand main gear hydraulic retract actuator had been incorrectly installed.

magicbastarder · 02-09-2017 12:05am

again, trying to get this back on track - would be interested to know how many trucks are delivering a complete (20KG? is a 50 ton truck full of gravel the archetypal maximum?) load from A to B, and the full load being onloaded at A, and fully offloaded at B. loads where there's a string of deliveries from a loaded truck would imply someone to manage the load, i guess? e.g. last time i had a truck come to the house, it was a mattress delivery, which required two people - not something which could be skimped on, even if the truck drove itself.

in short - how many truck journeys don't require someone to oversee what's taken off the truck?

Stephen15 · 02-09-2017 12:11am

magicbastarder wrote: »

there have been thousands of incidents caused by human failure. you referenced 'air crash investigation' earlier. knock yourself out reading how many people have died as a result of human error:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mayday_episodes

And who are controlling the technology behind these autonomous humans. Technology can only be as itelligent as the humans who create it all humans make errors no matter how inteligent they are. There is no such thing as AI as humans are behind it so it is not artificial intelligence, electronic itelligence would be a more accurate name for it.

Why is everyone here so pro driverless vehicles at the end of the day thousands of people are going to be left unemployed and mostly working class people who have no other formal qualifications other their trade or indeed their driving licence. These people are our truck drivers, taxi drivers, train drivers, chauffeurs, bus drivers and our mehanics all these will more than likely join the dole queue why is everyone so anti the people I mentioned are they not entitled to make a living for what they do and do well.

The way technology is going or the way some people here think it is will just replace all mehanical jobs. This will only end up leading to a working class revolt.

prinzeugen · 02-09-2017 12:14am

devnull wrote: »

Human (maintenance) error again:
http://avherald.com/h?article=47f7b9f9&opt=0

On Oct 8th 2015 the AAIB released their bulletin into the serious incident reporting that it turned out the right hand main gear hydraulic retract actuator had been incorrectly installed.

So is AI going to fit it right?? Do you think a robot could have avoided that situation?

Is AI going to design, build and fly/drive stuff for us?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsUndkXAQ_8

Google cars have privacy issues as well. This "recommended" stuff will happen.

"google car take me to a place that serves ice cream"

"taking you to Iceland. journey time 123 hours. here are your flights"

magicbastarder · 02-09-2017 12:16am

Stephen15 wrote: »

Why is everyone here so pro driverless vehicles at the end of the day thousands of people are going to be left unemployed and mostly working class people who have no other formal qualifications other their trade or indeed their driving licence.

this is the problem with this thread. there's a genuine discussion to be had about the above issues, but the people who want to have the discussion keep bringing it back to a technological argument (one which cannot be won, imho) rather than a human one. they're picking the wrong battle.

magicbastarder · 02-09-2017 12:20am

'my phone can't understand my voice, therefore self drive cars cannot work'.

have you given up debating, and are just making up nonsense now? whatever legitimate argument you're trying to make, you're doing a gross disservice to it.

devnull · 02-09-2017 12:23am

Stephen15 wrote: »

Why is everyone here so pro driverless vehicles at the end of the day thousands of people are going to be left unemployed and mostly working class people who have no other formal qualifications other their trade or indeed their driving licence. These people are our truck drivers, taxi drivers, train drivers, chauffeurs, bus drivers and our mehanics all these will more than likely join the dole queue why is everyone so anti the people I mentioned are they not entitled to make a living for what they do and do well.

Times change and progress is made and the workforce has to change to take account of that, there are people who used to work as book binders and also worked in telephone exchanges, manually connecting all calls because of the fact there was no automation.

If it wasn't for progress and using machines and automation to do things that were previously done manually you wouldn't be typing your message right now on an internet message board beause the internet wouldn't exist and we'd all be using pen and paper to keep all the postmen in a job.

Since society began there have always been jobs which have been replaced by machines, this is not something new it's been going on since time begun, things progress and it means some jobs are no longer in high demand and other jobs are created.

We'd also have conductors on every bus and we'd have someone writing out a ticket for every passenger that comes on we'd have no ticket machines at train stations because we're doing ticket staff out of a job, we'd have no barriers as we're doing station staff out of a job, we'd have no internet sites as we're doing customer service clerks out of a job and we'd have no online banking, because we'd be doing bank clerks out of a job etc. It can go on and on.

Stephen15 · 02-09-2017 12:38am

devnull wrote: »

Times change and progress is made and the workforce has to change to take account of that, there are people who used to work as book binders and also worked in telephone exchanges, manually connecting all calls because of the fact there was no automation.

If it wasn't for progress and using machines and automation to do things that were previously done manually you wouldn't be typing your message right now on an internet message board beause the internet wouldn't exist and we'd all be using pen and paper to keep all the postmen in a job.

Since society began there have always been jobs which have been replaced by machines, this is not something new it's been going on since time begun, things progress and it means some jobs are no longer in high demand and other jobs are created.

We'd also have conductors on every bus and we'd have someone writing out a ticket for every passenger that comes on we'd have no ticket machines at train stations because we're doing ticket staff out of a job, we'd have no barriers as we're doing station staff out of a job, we'd have no internet sites as we're doing customer service clerks out of a job and we'd have no online banking, because we'd be doing bank clerks out of a job etc. It can go on and on.

Before it was niche jobs being done away with such as switchboard operators and book binders but now it is a very broad group of people who drive or work with vehicles in their current form its a long list of people that would make millions worldwide and ten of thousands nationally.

As regards to what you said about bus conductors the truth is they should be done away with now with leap cards when everyone was paying in cash to the driver ten years they would have come in handy. It wasn't technology that got rid of them it was cutbacks.

eeguy · 02-09-2017 1:20am

Stephen15 wrote: »

And who are controlling the technology behind these autonomous humans. Technology can only be as itelligent as the humans who create it all humans make errors no matter how inteligent they are. There is no such thing as AI as humans are behind it so it is not artificial intelligence, electronic itelligence would be a more accurate name for it.

This isn't true anymore. If you look at the recent AI that beat theGo masters, the AI used strategies that no human has ever used before.
It wasn't programmed in. The AI learned it by playing millions of games with itself.

Stephen15 wrote: »

Why is everyone here so pro driverless vehicles at the end of the day thousands of people are going to be left unemployed and mostly working class people who have no other formal qualifications other their trade or indeed their driving licence. These people are our truck drivers, taxi drivers, train drivers, chauffeurs, bus drivers and our mehanics all these will more than likely join the dole queue why is everyone so anti the people I mentioned are they not entitled to make a living for what they do and do well.

The way technology is going or the way some people here think it is will just replace all mehanical jobs. This will only end up leading to a working class revolt.

It's the way of the world now that people are required to keep learning.
40 years ago you were snapped up by an bank or the civil service if you had a leaving cert. Now you'd be hard pressed to get a job in McDonalds with it.

If your job is routine or procedural then it'll be automated within 20 years.

Stephen15 · 02-09-2017 1:46am

eeguy wrote: »

It's the way of the world now that people are required to keep learning.
40 years ago you were snapped up by an bank or the civil service if you had a leaving cert. Now you'd be hard pressed to get a job in McDonalds with it.

If your job is routine or procedural then it'll be automated within 20 years.

So according to you most of the country who aren't tech wizkids like yourself are going to be out of work in 20 years time. The majority of jobs are routine and procedural so most will be on the dole in 20 years time if they have no other qualifications.

The world is currently in the best way it has been for a long. I believe there should be progression but only to keep us where we are currently ie reduce our carbon footprint improve healthcare to eliminate certain illnesses so people will live longer, make the world more substainable. I fail to how complete automation will do any of the above.

jackofalltrades · 02-09-2017 2:48am

It's very easy to criticise human pilots for failing at a job that a computer can't do.

the_syco · 02-09-2017 3:42am

bk wrote: »

Sure, I agree on the first point, but on the later point, nothing stopping freight companies from using rail today, yet rail freight continues to be less then 1% of all freight carried in Ireland today.

The reality is even having a driver in the cab today is quiet a good bit cheaper then rail freight in Ireland for a variety of reasons.

Road freight companies would be looking to reduce this cost even further from their already lower cost base.

Another strong possibility is remotely operated trucks. A "driver" sitting in an office somewhere, remotely controls the truck when it is in the docks, remotely drives it out through the city onto the motorway and then leaves it go into self driving mode until it hits the next city where he takes over control again. Obviously the one remote driver would be switching between multiple trucks.

The way I see it is that major roads will become the railways; you join the motorway, and your truck goes into a lane at the maximum economical safe speed, and you stay in that lane until you get to the destination that you selected. Likewise with cars. Cheaper than laying down physical track, and it allows cars to use the other lanes. This could also minimize accidents on major roads.

eeguy · 02-09-2017 9:11am

Stephen15 wrote: »

So according to you most of the country who aren't tech wizkids like yourself are going to be out of work in 20 years time. The majority of jobs are routine and procedural so most will be on the dole in 20 years time if they have no other qualifications.

The world is currently in the best way it has been for a long. I believe there should be progression but only to keep us where we are currently ie reduce our carbon footprint improve healthcare to eliminate certain illnesses so people will live longer, make the world more substainable. I fail to how complete automation will do any of the above.

Not according to me. According to anyone who deals with the topic.
https://www.google.ie/amp/bigthink.com/philip-perry/47-of-jobs-in-the-next-25-years-will-disappear-according-to-oxford-university.amp

mickoneill31 · 02-09-2017 9:25am

This article is interesting in relation to driverless vehicles putting people out of jobs.
http://www.economicshelp.org/blog/6717/economics/the-luddite-fallacy/

According to that, every advance so far hasn't caused unemployment numbers to grow. I suppose if you don't change skills (e.g. miners in the last 30 years) and your job goes away you will be unemployed but other jobs spring up to replace them. Thats obviously of no use to the miner that only knows how to mine.

In my lifetime, when I was a kid my dad used to come home telling me that computers were putting people out of jobs. And they were but the jobs that have sprung up since then hugely outnumber the jobs that were lost and have made a huge impact on how we live our lives. It was probably the same of the industrial revolution (I wasn't around then) and whatever other major advances have been in between.

I've some small idea of the efficiencies that driverless vehicles will bring but I'd imagine that we've only scratched the surface and in 20 years we will be doing stuff that we had no idea was viable or possible today.

mickoneill31 · 02-09-2017 9:29am

Stephen15 wrote: »

The world is currently in the best way it has been for a long. I believe there should be progression but only to keep us where we are currently

I'd say if you'd said that 10 or 20 or 30 ...... or 100 years ago (well maybe not exactly 100 with the war) it would have been an argument that some people would have believed. And I'd say in 20 years from now you could use the same argument.

That's not the way the world works though. If any country or bloc thought like that, they'd be left behind or more reliant on the countries that were advancing.

Self driving buses, trains, trucks etc

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