The most telling aspect with regards to the parlous state of current self driving technology is found in the following statement which has to be born out of complete despair as to the adequacy of present technology to achieve what the likes of Tesla, Google, Baidu etc; have predicted:
"Andrew Ng — a former Baidu executive, Drive.AI board member, and one of the industry’s most prominent boosters — argues the problem is less about building a perfect driving system than training bystanders to anticipate self-driving behavior. In other words, we can make roads safe for the cars instead of the other way around. As an example of an unpredictable case, I asked him whether he thought modern systems could handle a pedestrian on a pogo stick, even if they had never seen one before. “I think many AV teams could handle a pogo stick user in pedestrian crosswalk,” Ng told me. “Having said that, bouncing on a pogo stick in the middle of a highway would be really dangerous.”
“Rather than building AI to solve the pogo stick problem, we should partner with the government to ask people to be lawful and considerate,” he said. “Safety isn’t just about the quality of the AI technology.”"
The fact that someone could suggest that education of the public is the answer denies the reality of 40 kilometre speed zones around schools because education has failed to eliminate risk taking behaviour by children.
The fact is that our present system of vehicle management works because it is prefaced upon placing the onus on the driver of a vehicle to exercise care when encountering other road users whether they are on a pogo stick, pushing a bike, chasing a ball, suffering from mental illness, affected by drugs and or alcohol or diminished by the effects of old age or just simply not paying attention.
It is delusional in the extreme to suggest that the world will accept that children, the mentally ill, the infirm etc; can be treated as expendable in order that the AI dreamers can sit in the back seat of their car and read their kindles.
I sat through Peter van der Made's presentation at the AGM. If what he said transpires and AKIDA can do what it is supposed to then it just might be the answer that is needed to progress the dream of self driving vehicles. It is only a very short wait to find out.
Expand
(20min delay)