Tony.Williams wrote: ↑Mon Aug 14, 2017 8:37 am
I'd be curious to know the extent to which autonomous driving systems can anticipate problems. For instance, if we are driving along a suburban street, with cars parked on either side, and a ball suddenly bounces across the road in front, we automatically assume that a small child might well be in hot pursuit, so we slow down and prepare to brake violently if required. If, in addition, we see a child running in the direction of the street, we brake before the child even reaches it.
Does an autonomous system recognise a ball, and understand the implications? Can it take into account what is happening off the road? Or does it just react when someone suddenly appears right in front of it?
I guess the major recent developments in machine learning is that we not longer attempt to program artificial intelligence (or whatever you'd prefer to call them) but we train then. So the degree to which these autonomous systems will know to react to balls, ices cream trucks or similar will, much like us, depend upon the degree to which they've been experienced such things. And just as we are encouraged to experience low frequency high stakes events like a ball bouncing into the road, in a simulated scenario like a public service announcement so too can autonomous driving systems be exposed to these situations without actually putting real footballs at risk (or indeed children)
One advantage they might potentially have is that they might be able to pool the driving experience of many thousands of other vehicles. Just check the privacy option saying "Send data back to Telsla to help to improve this product" It would be interesting to see if the AI learns to react negatively to a particular type of vehicle e.g. Jaguars or BMWs
https://www.national.co.uk/blog/britains-worst-drivers
Where the human driver would have the edge would be in breadth of of experience. For example lets suggest that the next big thing after all our kids get bored of their fidget spinners is a small tethered mini copter. A human might experience these at the park or their own gardens and learn to associate them with children at play. Unless deliberately trained, autonomous vehicles would have less opportunity to learn about this new class of object in a safe environment.
However I think that in terms of boredom and fatigue, humans have the potential to be by far the worst drivers. And once humans are eliminated from the road systems the whole thing could become both safer and far more efficient.
