Dec 17 2024
#4: The truth behind self-driving cars - Missy Cummings
We sat down with Dr. Missy Cummings, who served as one of the U.S. Navy’s first female fighter pilots and now works as the director of George Mason University’s Autonomy and Robotics Center. Cummings, an engineer, has been studying autonomous systems for years – today, we break down the autonomy challenge in self-driving cars: how they work, their enormous limitations and a path to a feasible self-driving future. Episode Links: Lidar breaks down in the rain: https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/24/10/2997?utm_source=www.thedeepview.co&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=openai-launches-o1-unveils-200-subscription-tierGeorge Mason’s Autonomy and Robotics Center: https://marc.gmu.edu/Waymo’s self-driving statistics: https://www.thedeepview.co/p/the-complicated-statistics-behind-safe-self-driving-carsWaymo’s steady expansion: https://waymo.com/blog/2024/12/next-stop-miami/All the investigations into Tesla’s systems: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/12/09/tesla-accused-of-fraudulent-misrepresentation-of-autopilot-in-crash-.htmlA breakdown of why AI confabulates: https://mitsloanedtech.mit.edu/ai/basics/addressing-ai-hallucinations-and-bias/Outline: 1:39 – From airplanes to AVs3:57 – What makes self-driving cars tick9:00 – The risk of edge cases12:49 – The hallucination problem18:36 – How do we verify if a self-driving car is safe, in a safe way? 24:02 – Waymo and the scaling of safety data29:40 – The hardware behind self-driving31:33 – Limitations of Lidar37:57 – The misconceptions of self-driving cars40:16 – A self-driving futureGet The Deep View — your daily source for in-depth, fact-based reporting on artificial intelligence — in your inbox every morning. Subscribe here!Connect with us on X, TikTok and Instagram. Artificial intelligence is a complicated topic, bound by a number of complex threads — technical science, ethics, safety, regulation, neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, investment and — above all — humanity. On The Deep View: Conversations, Ian Krietzberg, host and Editor-in-Chief at The Deep View, breaks it all down, cutting through the hype to make clear what's important and why you should care.