| "Also, the models aren't entirely freeform; i.e. engineers embed knowledge of how the world is structured into those networks." In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6. "What are you doing?", asked Minsky. "I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-tac-toe", Sussman replied. "Why is the net wired randomly?", asked Minsky. "I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play", Sussman said. Minsky then shut his eyes. "Why do you close your eyes?" Sussman asked his teacher. "So that the room will be empty." At that moment, Sussman was enlightened. (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10970937) IIRC, in the incident where the Tesla [Edit: Uber self driving car] collided with a pedestrian pushing a bicycle in Arizona, the Tesla repeatedly switched between calling the input a pedestrian and a bicycle. And took no evasive actions while it was trying to decide. |
That was Uber's self driving car program. Notably, the SUV they were using has had pedestrian detecting auto-stopping for several years, though I'm sure it's not 100%