Uber self-driving car in Pittsburgh

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NPR

What It's Like To Ride In A (Nearly) Self-Driving Uber
A pair of Uber technicians will ride inside each of the new self-driving cars offering rides to regular Uber users during an indefinite testing phase.
Megan Harris/WESA
Fourteen self-driving Ford Fusions idle in front of Uber's Advanced Technologies Center in Pittsburgh.

On each vehicle, dozens of stationary and spinning cameras collect 1.4 million distance measurements per second, guiding the car on its journey.

Beginning Wednesday, the cars will be deployed on Pittsburgh's streets in a striking experiment by Uber to introduce self-driving technology to its passengers.

"For me this is really important," says Anthony Levandowski, the head of Uber's self-driving car team, "because I really believe that the most important things that computers are going to do in the next 10 years is drive cars."

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Each of Uber's new self-driving, hybrid vehicles being tested on Pittsburgh's streets is outfitted with dozens of stationary and spinning cameras that watch for braking cars, crossing pedestrians, traffic lights and signage.
Megan Harris/WESA
Levandowski says the company's self-driving technology, like its ride-sharing app, will make the roads safer and less congested, make the air less polluted and increase access to transportation.

Uber and other companies creating autonomous vehicles share a grand vision of the future when people save money and time by not owning their own cars and when deaths from car crashes are few and far between.

Uber introduced the technology to journalists in advance of the rollout, taking us for a ride. It's clear the future is still a long way off.

A self-driving Fusion pulls up, with two Uber employees sitting in front. We sit in the back. On an iPad, I click on a button that says, "Let's ride." The app asks if my seat belt is fastened and tells me there is a two-rider maximum, and I push "all set."

As the car pulls out of the parking lot, the iPad shows a loose rendering of our surroundings. The road, parked cars, buildings, other cars on the road, a pedestrian crossing the street.

The ride feels pretty much like a ride in any other car — with an extremely cautious driver. We go maybe one or two miles an hour over the speed limit. Turns in particular feel painfully slow.


A self-driving car leaves Uber's newest riverside hub in Pittsburgh. Company officials say the Rust Belt city is perfect for beta testing, citing diverse topography, frequent weather maladies, near-constant construction and hundreds of bridges and tunnels.
Megan Harris/WESA
When we get to a light, the car stops. I ask the Uber safety drivers if the car will turn right on red. They say no, it doesn't do anything that might be remotely risky. And when we come up behind a car that is parallel parking, our vehicle slows down and waits, rather than change lanes to go around it.

It's a fairly straightforward situation that most human drivers could handle with no problem. And it really drives home the fact that autonomous car technology is in its infancy.

Uber is like the Wright brothers testing the world's first airplane on the coast of North Carolina. Pretty cool. But not terribly practical yet.

"This is early days for us in a lot of ways," acknowledges the director of Uber's Advanced Technologies Center, Raffi Krikorian. "We're learning every single day as we get on the road and we're driving more and more."

Pittsburgh Mayor On Driverless Cars: 'This Is Where The World Is Going'
Krikorian says they're working not so much on commonplace driving scenarios as on the rare cases: "What does a self-driving car do when a row of ducks crosses in front of the [car], for example?"

That's one of the questions Uber is hoping to answer as it expands its pilot program in Pittsburgh. A couple thousand users have been selected to participate, and the next time they request an Uber, they could end up in a self-driving car.

Along with a couple of Uber employees. In case of ducks.

Thoughts?

[Block]

The labor situation is going to get really ugly, really soon unless cities and states start planning ahead.

[Broomstick]

The labor situation is already really ugly. It's just going to get worse.

While there are some great aspects of this sort of automation it's going to result in more and more people without jobs, too. Brace for social disruption.

[K. A. Pital]

But the free market will provide. It always does, after all.

Drivers will soon become something else (burger flippers?). Except for those which are too old to adapt. The strong survive and the weak perish.

[Flagg]

Are they still going to be rape-wagons?

[Simon_Jester]

Are they going to be insured properly? If so, that's one improvement over existing Uber cars.

I wonder if Uber's original plan was to develop a fully automated taxi service all along, and the top management viewed its existing "taxi service that ignores taxi regulations" business model as a transitional phase while it got all the pieces of the system working...

[His Divine Shadow]

Stuff like is making me wonder where this will lead eventually, not just like what the immediate reactions will be. But far in the future. Say we assume a future were all jobs have been automated away decades ago.

What's left for humans then? What will we do with our lives aside from hedonism? AI does everything for us. Would we even bother sending people to school any more? Why study for years for a job you will never have or need? Today we drop things from the curriculum the moment a skill is not needed or obsolete. What will we do when having skills become obsolete (and yes I am convinced that's a point we'll eventually reach, I don't think humans have anything going for them that an AI will not eventually be able to do better)?

Do we even need to teach people to read or do maths in such a place? Eventually I wonder what would be the point of humans in this system and what the long term effect would be on us from an evolutionary perspective, also how it would mentally affect us.

[Dragon Angel]

I still have hopes that we can become a post-scarcity society like the Federation, where people studied what they were closest to. However, the Federation's mindset is something we'll still need a radical shift in society to accomplish, i.e. no more demonization of anything even close to socialism.

I'm sure people would still learn what we learn today; we still need foundations for understanding how the world works, and human curiosity will still exist. If most or all jobs were to become automated, however, and the economy doesn't adapt toward humans no longer being necessary, then there certainly will be a massive conflict that I wonder if it'd end well at all.

[Broomstick]

Stuff like is making me wonder where this will lead eventually, not just like what the immediate reactions will be. But far in the future. Say we assume a future were all jobs have been automated away decades ago.

What's left for humans then? What will we do with our lives aside from hedonism? AI does everything for us. Would we even bother sending people to school any more? Why study for years for a job you will never have or need? Today we drop things from the curriculum the moment a skill is not needed or obsolete. What will we do when having skills become obsolete (and yes I am convinced that's a point we'll eventually reach, I don't think humans have anything going for them that an AI will not eventually be able to do better)?

How are people going to survive? The current paradigm is that the vast majority work for a living and if there is no work there is no means of exchange by which to get food, water, shelter, and clothing much less anything else. Impoverishing and then locking into poverty and hopelessness a large swath of the population will NOT end well. I don't know any group of people that will quietly go off to die in a corner because they're now an annoyance to the elites.

[The Romulan Republic]

I still have hopes that we can become a post-scarcity society like the Federation, where people studied what they were closest to. However, the Federation's mindset is something we'll still need a radical shift in society to accomplish, i.e. no more demonization of anything even close to socialism.

I'm sure people would still learn what we learn today; we still need foundations for understanding how the world works, and human curiosity will still exist. If most or all jobs were to become automated, however, and the economy doesn't adapt toward humans no longer being necessary, then there certainly will be a massive conflict that I wonder if it'd end well at all.

Increasing automation eliminating jobs basically makes socialism of some sort a necessity.

Certainly the Right wing status quo of "everyone should support themselves, if you don't have a job you're a parasite" is not going to be viable.

Edit: This is actually probably one of the reasons I backed Sanders, and changed from identifying more as moderately liberal to identifying as a democratic socialist.

[Flagg]

Stuff like is making me wonder where this will lead eventually, not just like what the immediate reactions will be. But far in the future. Say we assume a future were all jobs have been automated away decades ago.

What's left for humans then? What will we do with our lives aside from hedonism? AI does everything for us. Would we even bother sending people to school any more? Why study for years for a job you will never have or need? Today we drop things from the curriculum the moment a skill is not needed or obsolete. What will we do when having skills become obsolete (and yes I am convinced that's a point we'll eventually reach, I don't think humans have anything going for them that an AI will not eventually be able to do better)?

How are people going to survive? The current paradigm is that the vast majority work for a living and if there is no work there is no means of exchange by which to get food, water, shelter, and clothing much less anything else. Impoverishing and then locking into poverty and hopelessness a large swath of the population will NOT end well. I don't know any group of people that will quietly go off to die in a corner because they're now an annoyance to the elites.

Robots.

[The Romulan Republic]

Stuff like is making me wonder where this will lead eventually, not just like what the immediate reactions will be. But far in the future. Say we assume a future were all jobs have been automated away decades ago.

What's left for humans then? What will we do with our lives aside from hedonism? AI does everything for us. Would we even bother sending people to school any more? Why study for years for a job you will never have or need? Today we drop things from the curriculum the moment a skill is not needed or obsolete. What will we do when having skills become obsolete (and yes I am convinced that's a point we'll eventually reach, I don't think humans have anything going for them that an AI will not eventually be able to do better)?

Do we even need to teach people to read or do maths in such a place? Eventually I wonder what would be the point of humans in this system and what the long term effect would be on us from an evolutionary perspective, also how it would mentally affect us.

Well, potentially we'd end up as effectively pets/an animal preserve cared for by AIs.

But I can't see us all resorting to pure hedonism quickly, if at all. Some might choose to live their lives that way, and as long as they're not hurting anyone, that's fine. But I imagine some would pursue education, or some form of work or creative endeavour, because that's what they enjoy doing with their life. Ie, the Federation ethos.

I imagine some people would also want to choose to live more "traditional" life styles (see the Amish). I can see a niche market emerging for "authentic" human-made goods and services.

I don't think we'll ever be entirely obsolete.

Edit: For my part, if I lived in a utopia where no one had to work, I'd probably want to pursue writing and acting regardless.

[K. A. Pital]

The futures discussed in this thread look dystopian and do not resemble a utopia even slightly, no more than an animal farm with well-fed pigs can be described as utopia.

[The Romulan Republic]

The futures discussed in this thread look dystopian and do not resemble a utopia even slightly, no more than an animal farm with well-fed pigs can be described as utopia.

Well, hopefully the AIs won't be eating us.

But I think I get the point.

Still, my hope is not that people will be lazy, hedonistic animals, but that they will find purpose in life other than mere subsistence.

[Flagg]

The futures discussed in this thread look dystopian and do not resemble a utopia even slightly, no more than an animal farm with well-fed pigs can be described as utopia.

Poor Trotsky Squealer...

[cosmicalstorm]

Holding it out for genetic IQ modification in human adults. Brain-Computer Interfaces should be coming soon too. But self driving will be on top of us real soon, even something like strapping trucks to one driver truck trains seems like it could eliminate half or one third of all trucker jobs within a double digit month time-frame.

It's hard to be optimistic.

The Cyberdynian swarms of automated robots flying, driving and swimming.

[Broomstick]

Brain-Computer Interfaces should be coming soon too.

So.... the bullshit I now contend with on my hardware can move to my wetware? No thanks!

[Alferd Packer]

Yeah, the taxi thing is bad, but no so bad. Trucking has the potential for disaster, just because (safe) self-driving trucks are so clearly superior to human-driven ones that there's going to be absolutely no disincentive to adopt them.

[His Divine Shadow]

The futures discussed in this thread look dystopian and do not resemble a utopia even slightly, no more than an animal farm with well-fed pigs can be described as utopia.

It's just that they all seem to turn out like that when I think about it...

[K. A. Pital]

Yeah, the taxi thing is bad, but no so bad. Trucking has the potential for disaster, just because (safe) self-driving trucks are so clearly superior to human-driven ones that there's going to be absolutely no disincentive to adopt them.

There's no incentive to maintan human drivers in taxis either, taxi drivers are often among the most reckless and dangerous drivers (not to generalize the experience, but when I see a taxi on the road, I instinctively try to stay clear, and this is not something you would acquire a feeling for unless you'd be seeing multiple times how they actually drive). Driverless taxis would drive safely, which would improve passenger safety, bystander safety and safety of other drivers massively. The only disincentive is that people would distrust automatic cars - but this distrust will quickly vanish after established companies start working with fleets of driverless cars.

[Starglider]

Holding it out for genetic IQ modification in human adults.

Unlikely given how incredibly difficult it would be to move the needle versus AGI. Genetic engineering to identify, combine and insert the most effective existing human genes at increasing intelligence, yes. Coming up with major improvements to the brain from scratch, biochemistry + genetics + expression, and having that actually work in the majority of subjects without accidentally causing a slew of major mental disorders, no. Not without the help of radically transhuman intelligence at least, at which point anything you can do to intelligence with genetics would be pretty much moot.

Brain-Computer Interfaces should be coming soon too.

This is a much more scalable, ethical and practical way to significantly augment intelligence, in the sense of 'I want to be orders of magnitude more intelligent but still have a human body'. As seen in assorted hard sci-fi e.g. 'Schild's Ladder' where most of the humans migrate to artificial brains, still implanted in organic human bodies. Although likely if you actually did that, you'd need direct brain networking as well to avoid getting bored with the limitations of having a single platform in a single place with only (near) human speed, senses and manipulative ability.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

The strong conservative streak in the U.S. means that it could be a bad place to live when AI starts obsoleting entire industries faster than they can be replaced. In theory, the efficiency gains mean that the perpetually unemployed could be granted a basic guaranteed income and the wealthy and still-employable would have higher after-tax income and wealth than they do now, but the "anyone who doesn't work is a bum" mentality is so deeply entrenched here that we would probably be the last developed nation to adopt such a system, and perhaps only after years of suffering through increased poverty, desperation, crime, and domestic terrorism. On the plus side, I've always liked Vancouver...

[Lagmonster]

The futures discussed in this thread look dystopian and do not resemble a utopia even slightly, no more than an animal farm with well-fed pigs can be described as utopia.

Meh. The way I always bet on the far, far future is: Humans almost certainly go extinct, and their children - the AI - take a shot at colonizing the universe.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

Thoughts?

It's not bad enough that Uber wants to eliminate anything that might benefit their drivers. They have to go that one shitty step further and eliminate the drivers. Fuck me.

If this is the future of capitalism, the working class is history.

[Simon_Jester]

Holding it out for genetic IQ modification in human adults. Brain-Computer Interfaces should be coming soon too.

Neither of those is reliably likely to make humans get smarter as fast as AIs can get smarter.

Improving a human's ability to solve problems quickly would require significant, massively detailed alterations in brain structure- alterations that will leave you crazy at best and a drooling moron at worst if something goes wrong.

Improving an AI's ability to solve problems quickly is a matter of bolting another bank of computer hardware to the equipment rack.

But self driving will be on top of us real soon, even something like strapping trucks to one driver truck trains seems like it could eliminate half or one third of all trucker jobs within a double digit month time-frame.

Truckers are likely to protest that a bit.

That being said, truck trains sound spectacularly unsafe on the road. Having one vehicle slavishly following another is a great way to end up in an accident.

It's hard to be optimistic.

Eh, it's simple. At some point in our lifetime, either the economic paradigm will break, or people, collectively, will break. My bet is on the people surviving and breaking the paradigm, because people are more resilient than economic structures.

The wild card is the potential for a hard takeoff of artificial intelligence- a computer that starts improving itself, and gets smarter and so figures out better ways to improve itself, and grows in intellect and power at an exponential rate. Such a computer might do, essentially, anything for all we know, and we can't predict its actions in advance.

Thoughts?

It's not bad enough that Uber wants to eliminate anything that might benefit their drivers. They have to go that one shitty step further and eliminate the drivers. Fuck me.

If this is the future of capitalism, the working class is history.

Alternatively, if this is the future of the working class, then capitalism is history. When the peasants have nothing to eat, they will storm the Bastille.