Thread regarding General Motors layoffs

A realistic view on AV

Realistically in dense urban settings there are far better mass transit alternatives to moving people and goods around that AV. Ditto for EV

Long haul trucking along interstates can be more cheaply and safely be addressed with rail.

In more sparsely populated areas the insfrastructure costs for AV and EV will ensure that adoption is many decades off, if ever. The history of electricity, telephone, cable, cell coverage all following the same arc where 50-100 years pass before “technology” spreads out across the country.

Since nearly all the AV utopian schemes depend on all vehicles on the road being AV, it ain’t gonna happen in USA in most of our life times.

I write software for a living. I would not trust my fellow GM coworkers code enough to sit in an AV run by code they wrote. We do not have anywhere near the caliber of employees / quality assurance and controls that NASA had/has — and quite frankly we need to have much better than NASA employees to have a prayer of having a safe AV on the road. GM leadership is suffering from Dunning–Kruger effect. Or they know they are selling a load and and are just hoping others are gullible.

Posted originally by @YdTK6iJ-1ewy on another thread.

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| 917 views | | 10 replies (last March 29, 2019) | Reply
Post ID: @OP+YfDVNBi

10 replies (most recent on top)

A horse has built in intelligence, unless in full on panic mode, it will stop for pedestrians and make its way around obstacles. Heck it would even take its drunk owner safely home. Now if it wasn’t for the care and feeding and bodily emissions ;-(

Machines do not think for themselves or learn it is marking hype for code someone wrote that gathers data and then programmatically asserts that some new rule should be added to the rule set. Which some human can review and say yes that is a good rule.

In my youth I got caught up in one of the AI hype cycles and the inevitable disillusionment that followed. So I understand how easily intelligent people can be fooled into believing. Once the koolaid is drunk, you keep doubling down Now I know to look behind the curtain and apply critical thought.

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Post ID: @4hqd+YfDVNBi

Imagine a horseless carriage without a place to hitch horses.

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Post ID: @4nud+YfDVNBi

There isn't much that can go wrong with an electric motor, so no need for a check engine light.

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Post ID: @4gjs+YfDVNBi

Imagine one of those cars that does not have a steering wheel get a check-engine light.

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Post ID: @4pgv+YfDVNBi

The mandatory electronic chips can interface with vehicles, dispense vaccines, and reprogram your brain to believe the diversity delusion stuff that hr is pushing.

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Post ID: @3bve+YfDVNBi

2lzm - if a single city decided to go all AV - it doesn’t solve the issue of bicycles, pedestrians, pets , etc intermixing with AV. Unless we are going to require that everyone have an electronic chips embedded in them that can interface with the AV.

You would be more likely to get an entire city to go car-less - witness the recent Cyclocroft posting from Mr Money Mustache.

I concur with OP. I would not trust fellow GMers to develop software for safe AV. The software and firmware GM produces is poor quality. The processes and redtape will keep it poor.

GM would be better off to focus on ICE and some BEV, and a few decades from now buy any small company that actually gets AV to work. Billions of dollars saved that way. You gotta know your limitations.

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Post ID: @2gxy+YfDVNBi

How do you make that money back you ask? I'll tell you , Massive firings.

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Post ID: @2vpb+YfDVNBi

The problem with AVs isn't even the practicality of using them. It's the profit side of the equation.

GM is spending 2 BILLION DOLLARS EVERY YEAR on autonomous vehicles without a single dime to show for it. How do you make that money back, even if these are ready for prime time 5-10 years from now? AV will need to be much more expensive than normal vehicles in order to get that money back, OR... the vehicle that the AV tech is sitting in is going to be as cheap as can be. We may well have autonomous Yugos in our future.

Imagine the alternative where GM spent that much money every year on engineering better vehicles.

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Post ID: @2vck+YfDVNBi

Single cities could go totally AV, in much the same way that some cities (London) have sections that are restricted to EVs. That's not a big step.

Intermixing AV and human drivers will not work out well for the AVs. People are a--holes enough to fellow humans. I can only imagine the chaos of a "polite" AV trying to navigate the interstates at rush hour.

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Post ID: @2lzm+YfDVNBi

The days GM are coming to a close. They had a real opportunitie long ago to make changes to the culture and refused , now alot of people are paying with massive job losses , GM is to little to late.

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Post ID: @ouh+YfDVNBi

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