[F-0X]

I think I am going to side with VW on this. I have always been skeptical of fully autonomous vehicles, and I do not believe they will _ever_ exist on the roads that currently stand. Driving safely in all conditions without aid from a human is simply too complex a task for code that can be audited and verified. If some AI model that's been trained on a billion years of driving experience shows promise, but it is some incomprehensible black box of weights, I won't be getting in that car.

Autonomous vehicles will only ever truly exist upon infrastructure literally designed to aid them, greatly simplifying how they need to interact with the environment, thus making the problem tractable with code we can prove works. I really think it will take more than putting markings on existing roads. It is going to take new roads full stop, probably with various wireless checkpoints built into them.

[jsolson]

You may not be getting in that car, but I certainly will.

After all, every driver on the road today is an incomprehensible black box where not only do we not know the parameters, we don't even know the function they're parameterizing. Every instance functions differently, and our testing procedures have woefully low coverage.

[darkerside]

When one of those black boxes malfunctions it gets taken off the road. When the AI malfunctions, are we going to shut down entire classes of vehicles until the problem is confirmed fixed?

Not to mention that most software fixes cause other bugs...

[_red]

how do you see insurance working? why would drivers be responsible to have insurance when the car is completely controlled by bigcorp programmers?

[grey-area]

but it is some incomprehensible black box of weights, I won't be getting in that car.

You don't understand the complex weighted probabilities in your doctor's head either, but you trust them to diagnose cancer (which incidentally machine learning is beating humans at). None of the algorithms in doctors' heads can be formally proved to work in all circumstances, nor can the code that runs medical equipment.

A full understanding of complex systems (machine or human controlled) is not possible today in many domains, that's why we measure results. If the data shows that self-driving cars are safer, we will switch. At present, that's what it shows.

As to special roads/markers, these would make the technology less effective at dealing with the unexpected (crash ahead, moose on road, cyclist in the lane etc), and many of the leading companies don't think they are necessary. I can see cars forming networks which report danger, or adding more sensors, but don't think our roads will have to change for self driving, which will be prevalent within the decade IMO without infrastructure changes.

[rorykoehler]

5g networks could greatly help bridge the technical gap. A good example of unforeseen consequences similar to smartphones and 4g transforming society.

[supertrope]

I don't understand how a vehicle or any other real time system can rely on 5G. For example, electrical utilities have such a critical responsibility for matching supply to demand and maintaining exactly 50/60Hz that the landline phone network is not good enough, they have to maintain a private signaling network. Cellular networks are notoriously unreliable with dead zones, dropped calls, congestion, power failure, etc. Millimeter wave 5G is even worse with line of sight coverage zones measured in meters.

[fastball]

"I'm going to agree with the side I already agreed with."

... ok.