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The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has sent a letter demanding George Hotz's company comma.ai provide information pertaining to the safety of their system (https://www.scribd.com/document/329218929/2016-10-27-Special-Order-Directed-to-Comma-ai).
This morning [28 Oct], Ars Technica reports that George Hotz tweeted from Shenzhen that the comma one was now cancelled (https://twitter.com/comma_ai/status/791958413345382400).
comma.ai had just received a $3.1m investment from Andreessen-Horowitz in April (http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/04/technology/george-hotz-comma-ai-andreessen-horowitz/index.html).
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George Hotz's Comma.Ai Cancels Comma One
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Remember Darwin; building a better mousetrap merely results in smarter mice.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tftp on Tuesday November 01 2016, @07:39AM
Obviously, Mr. Hotz never dealt with lawyers. I am not one of them, but I read the letter and the questions, and none strike me as unreasonable. The agency wants to know what is it that Comma.ai is trying to sell, and when it is going to be selling.
The letter included a list of several questions about the functionality of the Comma One system, and it requested Comma.ai respond to the inquiries by November 10, 2016 or face civil penalties of up to $21,000 per day.
And? Big deal. You have a whole week to make up a few pages of a relatively honest text and send it in. As the product is still in development, just do your best. Besides, if you don't /already/ have those answers written at least for internal consumption, what are you doing in autonomous driving market? The agency is very clear that the consumer /will/ abuse the system, and the government wants to know what is being done to stop the people from killing themselves and others. It's not a joking matter. You cannot just hot-glue a few cameras, whip up an application in Rust and depart on an autonomous trip around the country. Our computers and our AI systems are nowhere that good. We cannot tell them, Star Trek style, "Computer, do this" and it magically happens. We have to code the knowledge bit by bit, explicitly, by hand - and that takes MLOCs, and with every LOC you get a small probability of a bug.
IMHO, though, there are two possibilities: either all vehicles switch overnight to computer control (and cooperative driving,) or we will need a true AI to drive our cars. Without an AI a computer will be a poor driver among humans, as it won't be able to /understand/ what is happening. Such as if five cars in front of you leave their lane and then return, chances are that there is a couch in the road (been there, seen that) and you'd better do the same. Will a modern computer be smart enough to predict that? If not, I don't want it as a primary driver in my car. Too often it is necessary to guess intentions of others by subtle hints.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 01 2016, @07:44AM
The larger is issue is that all the software must be Free Software, or else the cars abuse users and cannot be even remotely trusted. We have enough DRM, software that violates your privacy, and software that the user can't modify as it is; we don't need vehicles filled with that garbage.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday November 01 2016, @08:23AM
I agree with your views regarding open source - but it will not happen.
No federal department will approve a system that can be readily changed by the user which might then turn the car into a potentially lethal threat to other road users. They will want it locked down tight [1] with someone responsible for ensuring that the code meets whatever tests were agreed before the software was approved for public use.
[1] For some arbitrary definition of 'tight'
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 01 2016, @09:59AM
I agree with your views regarding open source - but it will not happen.
Then self-driving cars should not happen, and certainly no laws mandating that car drivers use them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 01 2016, @10:27AM
If you don't want Panopticon, driverless cars, and digital systems, then you don't want to live in America. As much as I would like to see these things quashed so we can leave a modestly free life of liberty, neither freedom nor liberty exist in America without money, connections, or corrupt power.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by FatPhil on Tuesday November 01 2016, @08:27AM
Quite how Geohot could stand on a stage on September 13th this year in front of a slide that said "shipping by the end of the year" when he hadn't even talked to the regulators yet is astonishing. He is clearly unprepared to work in the automotive domain. (Or expecting to just cheat and lie, like others do, but either way, he shouldn't be in that domain, and the regulators should hold their ground.)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Insightful) by SunTzuWarmaster on Tuesday November 01 2016, @01:19PM
Seriously, if you were looking for a deathtrap, "aftermarket, unregulated, untested, self-installed, self-driving mode not calibrated for you 2001 Honda" would be it.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 01 2016, @05:21PM
Quite how Geohot could stand on a stage on September 13th this year in front of a slide that said "shipping by the end of the year" when he hadn't even talked to the regulators yet is astonishing.
That's what got me. I could see legitimate reasons for wanting to withhold information on projects that are many years away from release (who knows where that information goes after the Feds get it), but not talking to regulators three months before a release of a product in a heavily regulated market? I would call it a scam. After all, one doesn't want federal-level supervision when you're bilking investors and customers.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Wednesday November 02 2016, @07:47AM
The agency wants to know what is it that Comma.ai is trying to sell, and when it is going to be selling.
They're not the only ones. WTF is comma.ai and Comma One? A reboot of the Comma 64 and Comma Amiga?