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Tesla driver seen asleep at the wheel. Is self-driving tech ready for sleeping drivers?
A passenger on a California freeway shot a video of a Tesla driver dozing off at the wheel.
Tesla driver filmed 'fast asleep' while car barreled down freeway
- The video shows a man sleeping at the wheel of his Tesla. Another driver said that the driver traveled more than 30 miles asleep at the wheel.
- It's not the first time a Tesla driver has been spotted dozing off at the wheel.
- In April, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said its cars would achieve full autonomy by the end of 2019, though it's unclear whether that's a realistic timeline.
A new video shows a man in the driver's seat of a Tesla "fully sleeping" on Southern California's 405 Freeway. The Tesla-owner was asleep for at least 30 miles on the notoriously busy freeway, according to Shawn Miladinovich, who spotted the sleeping driver and had his passenger shoot a video.
"I realized he was fully sleeping," Miladinovich told NBC4 News. "Eyes shut, hands nowhere near the steering wheel."
The driver's hands appeared to be loosely tied to the steering wheel, ostensibly to keep the car in autopilot mode. When Tesla drivers take their hands off the steering wheel, the car issues a series of increasingly intense alerts.
"This helps ensure you are attentive, and that the steering wheel is properly oriented in the event that you need to take over control," Tesla says on its website. "If you repeatedly ignore these warnings, then you will be locked out from using autopilot for the duration of that trip."
Miladinovich expressed concern.
"If his little thing tied around that steering wheel fell off, and he was still sleeping, he would have slammed into somebody going 65 miles per hour," Miladinovich said.
Is self-driving technology ready for us to sleep at the wheel?
Not yet. Although Tesla's Autopilot can do things like change lanes, change freeways, and take exit ramps without driver input, the company says its cars require drivers who are prepared to take over steering in the event of an emergency. The government does too: sleeping and drunk-driving in a Tesla are illegal.
The Society of Automotive Engineers has defined five levels of autonomous driving. Currently, Tesla's Autopilot falls somewhere between levels 2 and 3.
So, when will Tesla drivers be able to doze off at the wheel? Sometime in 2020, according to Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
"My guess as to when we would think it's safe for somebody to essentially fall asleep and wake up at the destination – probably towards the end of next year," Musk said in a podcast with ARK Invest in February. "That's when it's most likely. I don't know when regulators would agree."
In April, Musk said his cars would achieve level-5 autonomy by the end of 2019. Of course, that was days before the company issued its earnings report for Q1 2019, and anyway Musk is known for promising big, but not quite following through on time.
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Scientists find 16 'ultra-black' fish species that absorb 99.9% of light
These alien-like creatures are virtually invisible in the deep sea.
18 July, 2020
A female Pacific blackdragon
Credit: Karen Osborn/Smithsonian
Surprising Science
- A team of marine biologists used nets to catch 16 species of deep-sea fish that have evolved the ability to be virtually invisible to prey and predators.
- "Ultra-black" skin seems to be an evolutionary adaptation that helps fish camouflage themselves in the deep sea, which is illuminated by bioluminescent organisms.
- There are likely more, and potentially much darker, ultra-black fish lurking deep in the ocean.
<p>A team of marine biologists has discovered 16 species of "ultra-black" fish that absorb more than 99 percent of the light that hits their skin, making them virtually invisible to other deep-sea fish.</p><p>The researchers, who published their findings Thursday in <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2020.06.044" target="_blank">Current Biology</a>, caught the species after dropping nets more than 200 meters deep near California's Monterey Bay. At those depths, sunlight fizzles out. That's one reason why many deep-sea species have evolved the ability to illuminate the dark waters through bioluminescence.</p><p>But what if deep-sea fish don't want to be spotted? To counter bioluminescence, some species have evolved ultra-black skin that's exceptionally good at absorbing light. Only a few other species are known to possess this strange trait, including birds of paradise and some spiders and butterflies.</p>
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzQ4MDU4Ny9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0NDYzNjM2Mn0.k6jg2-EPVkICcGqH-HrmfT5pOtXFkzhgqMnWLZ6Y1Io/img.jpg?width=980" id="ebb94" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="7a35766115dfb990d09e0c97b757c361" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="Ultra-black fishThe Pacific blackdragon" data-width="1200" data-height="800" />
The Pacific blackdragon
Credit: Karen Osborn/Smithsonian
<p>When researchers first saw the deep-sea species, it wasn't immediately obvious that their skin was ultra-black. Then, marine biologist Karen Osborn, a co-author on the new paper, noticed something strange about the photos she took of the fish.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"I had tried to take pictures of deep-sea fish before and got nothing but these really horrible pictures, where you can't see any detail," Osborn told <em><a href="https://www.wired.com/story/meet-the-ultra-black-vantafish/" target="_blank">Wired</a></em>. "How is it that I can shine two strobe lights at them and all that light just disappears?"</p><p>After examining samples of fish skin under the microscope, the researchers discovered that the fish skin contains a layer of organelles called melanosomes, which contain melanin, the same pigment that gives color to human skin and hair. This layer of melanosomes absorbs most of the light that hits them.</p><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzQ4MDU4OC9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY3Mjc2NjEzOX0.rfvIgQdHNWhKRw2-M3Kl_zsoiv4HyUdw2D8IwT_Y5Pc/img.jpg?width=980" id="3ff90" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="7c6a84471af0dc875c4746f6e2f193e1" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="Ultra-black fish" data-width="1024" data-height="683" />
A crested bigscale
Credit: Karen Osborn/Smithsonian
<p style="margin-left: 20px;">"But what isn't absorbed side-scatters into the layer, and it's absorbed by the neighboring pigments that are all packed right up close to it," Osborn told <em>Wired</em>. "And so what they've done is create this super-efficient, very-little-material system where they can basically build a light trap with just the pigment particles and nothing else."</p><p>The result? Strange and terrifying deep-sea species, like the crested bigscale, fangtooth, and Pacific blackdragon, all of which appear in the deep sea as barely more than faint silhouettes.</p><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yMzQ4MDU4OS9vcmlnaW4uanBnIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0ODEwNjk2NH0.z5sUB6JLzBURu8UbO90bXRbN73gYheaNeSPqIXLONFY/img.jpg?width=980" id="c9453" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="60cab829961aa7377fc08b10e0e1aa10" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" alt="Ultra-black fish" data-width="1920" data-height="1008" />
Pacific viperfish
David Csepp, NMFS/AKFSC/ABL
<p>But interestingly, this unique disappearing trick wasn't passed on to these species by a common ancestor. Rather, they each developed it independently. As such, the different species use their ultra-blackness for different purposes. For example, the threadfin dragonfish only has ultra-black skin during its adolescent years, when it's rather defenseless, as <em>Wired</em> <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/meet-the-ultra-black-vantafish/" target="_blank">notes</a>.</p><p>Other fish—like the <a href="http://onebugaday.blogspot.com/2016/06/a-new-anglerfish-oneirodes-amaokai.html" target="_blank">oneirodes species</a>, which use bioluminescent lures to bait prey—probably evolved ultra-black skin to avoid reflecting the light their own bodies produce. Meanwhile, species like <em>C. acclinidens</em> only have ultra-black skin around their gut, possibly to hide light of bioluminescent fish they've eaten.</p><p>Given that these newly described species are just ones that this team found off the coast of California, there are likely many more, and possibly much darker, ultra-black fish swimming in the deep ocean. </p>
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'Deep Nostalgia' AI brings old photos to life through animation
Using machine-learning technology, the genealogy company My Heritage enables users to animate static images of their relatives.
03 March, 2021
Deep Nostalgia/My Heritage
Technology & Innovation
- Deep Nostalgia uses machine learning to animate static images.
- The AI can animate images by "looking" at a single facial image, and the animations include movements such as blinking, smiling and head tilting.
- As deepfake technology becomes increasingly sophisticated, some are concerned about how bad actors might abuse the technology to manipulate the pubic.
<p>A new service gives new life to the past by using artificial intelligence to convert static images into moving videos.</p><p>Called <a href="https://www.myheritage.se/deep-nostalgia" target="_blank">Deep Nostalgia</a>, the service creates animations by using deep learning to analyze a single facial photo. Then, the system animates the facial image through a "driver" — a pre-determined sequence of movements and gestures, like blinking, smiling and head-turning. The process is completely automated, and the service enhances the images to make the animations run more smoothly.</p><p>Launched in February by the Israeli genealogy company My Heritage, some of Deep Nostalgia's early results are impressive.</p>
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTcxMjYwNi9vcmlnaW4uZ2lmIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY3NjU0MTA1Nn0.YtmzhaxuspC1IgzqIxmil5KWE_J-pdttmIlhZZgu2BI/img.gif?width=980" id="da492" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="e17271ac382d6059e2118920788f3167" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="600" data-height="338" />
My Heritage/Deep Nostalgia
<p>But that's not to say the animations are perfect. As with most deep-fake technology, there's still an uncanny air to the images, with some of the facial movements appearing slightly unnatural. What's more, Deep Nostalgia is only able to create deepfakes of one person's face from the neck up, so you couldn't use it to animate group photos, or photos of people doing any sort of physical activity.</p><img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTcxMzA5Ni9vcmlnaW4uZ2lmIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTY0NDk0ODUzNH0.037klDGjbuVpSI7zd_dSoM6HmYE7jDoWuCQ-49tmvpI/img.gif?width=980" id="e1991" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="fde2943845c0ef3eb36ccc7d90d950f5" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="600" data-height="400" />
My Heritage/Deep Nostalgia
<p>But for a free deep-fake service, Deep Nostalgia is pretty impressive, especially considering you can use it to create deepfakes of <em>any </em>face, human or not. </p><div id="fd951" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="8bcc9aa2fcf223a596bd91cb8e7633ea"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1366315861548572672" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">I just ran the @Warcraft cover through the Deep Nostalgia Tool, and this happened... https://t.co/1eD3bb7fAN</div> — Solitaire #The06 (@Solitaire #The06)<a href="https://twitter.com/SolitaireYTG/statuses/1366315861548572672">1614590060.0</a></blockquote></div>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="nl" dir="ltr">H. erectus<a href="https://t.co/sS9eVT1Iu0">https://t.co/sS9eVT1Iu0</a> <a href="https://t.co/CguYm9zm8T">pic.twitter.com/CguYm9zm8T</a></p>— Fake History Hunter (@fakehistoryhunt) <a href="https://twitter.com/fakehistoryhunt/status/1366374349146628099?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 1, 2021</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<div id="82ea4" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="337617b6bc536b1cb8fb8b2fa799d1b4"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1365574843027124227" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">Generated with MyHeritage.
#DeepNostalgia https://t.co/gNX3wLHsS8</div> — Andrey Frolov (@Andrey Frolov)<a href="https://twitter.com/kznsq/statuses/1365574843027124227">1614413388.0</a></blockquote></div><p>So, is creating deepfakes of long-dead people a bit creepy? Some people seem to think so.</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"Some people love the feature with Deep Nostalgia ™ and consider it magical while others think it is scary and dislike it," My Heritage wrote on its <a href="https://www.myheritage.se/deep-nostalgia" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">website</a>. "In fact, the results can be controversial and it is difficult to be indifferent to this technology. We invite you to create movies using this feature and share them on social media to see what your friends and relatives think. This feature is intended for nostalgic use, that is, to give life back to beloved ancestors."</p><p>Deep Nostalgia isn't the first project to create deepfakes from single images. In 2019, researchers working at the Samsung AI Center in Moscow published a <a href="https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.08233" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">paper</a> describing how machine-learning techniques can produce deepfakes after "looking" at only one or a few images. Using a framework known as a generative adversarial network, the researchers trained a pair of computer models to compete with each other to create convincing deepfakes. </p>
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="5c794ffe2841f3fb0080fba58910efa7"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/p1b5aiTrGzY?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span><p>While the results from the Samsung researchers were impressive, the Deep Nostalgia project shows how deepfake technology is advancing at a rapid pace. As these tools have become increasingly sophisticated, <a href="https://bigthink.com/technology-innovation/deepfake-images-presidents" target="_blank">media experts have raised concerns</a> about how bad actors might use deepfakes and "cheap fakes" to manipulate the public. </p><p>My Heritage seemed to sense Deep Nostalgia's potential for abuse, writing:</p><p style="margin-left: 20px;">"Please use this feature on your own historical photos and not on photos of living people without their consent."</p>
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When does an idea die? Plato and string theory clash with data
How long should one wait until an idea like string theory, seductive as it may be, is deemed unrealistic?
03 March, 2021
13-8
- How far should we defend an idea in the face of contrarian evidence?
- Who decides when it's time to abandon an idea and deem it wrong?
- Science carries within it its seeds from ancient Greece, including certain prejudices of how reality should or shouldn't be.
<ul class="ee-ul"></ul>
<p>From the perspective of the west, it all started in ancient Greece, around 600 BCE. This is during the Axial Age, a somewhat controversial term coined by German philosopher Karl Jaspers to designate the remarkable intellectual and spiritual awakening that happened in different places across the globe roughly within the span of a century. Apart from the Greek explosion of thought, this is the time of Siddhartha Gautama (aka the Buddha) in India, of Confucius and Lao Tzu in China, of Zoroaster (or Zarathustra) in ancient Persia—religious leaders and thinkers who would reframe the meaning of faith and morality. In Greece, Thales of Miletus and Pythagoras of Samos pioneered pre-Socratic philosophy, (sort of) moving the focus of inquiry and explanation from the divine to the natural. </p><p>To be sure, the divine never quite left early Greek thinking, but with the onset of philosophy, trying to understand the workings of nature through logical reasoning—as opposed to supernatural reasoning—would become an option that didn't exist before. The history of science, from its early days to the present, could be told as an increasingly successful split between belief in a supernatural component to reality and a strictly materialistic cosmos. The Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries, the Age of Reason, means quite literally 'to see the light,' the light here clearly being the superiority of human logic above any kind of supernatural or nonscientific methodology to get to the "truth" of things.</p>
<blockquote>Einstein, for one, was a believer, preaching the fundamental reasonableness of nature; no weird unexplainable stuff, like a god that plays dice—his tongue-in-cheek critique of the belief that the unpredictability of the quantum world was truly fundamental to nature and not just a shortcoming of our current understanding. </blockquote>
<p>To what extent we can understand the workings of nature through logic alone is not something science can answer. It is here that the complication begins. Can the human mind, through the diligent application of scientific methodology and the use of ever-more-powerful instruments, reach a complete understanding of the natural world? Is there an "end to science"? This is the sensitive issue. If the split that started in pre-Socratic Greece were to be completed, nature in its entirety would be amenable to a logical description, the complete collection of behaviors that science studies identified, classified, and described by means of perpetual natural laws. All that would be left for scientists and engineers to do would be practical applications of this knowledge, inventions, and technologies that would serve our needs in different ways.</p>
<p>This sort of vision—or hope, really—goes all the way back to at least Plato who, in turn, owes much of this expectation to Pythagoras and Parmenides, the philosopher of Being. The dispute between the primacy of that which is timeless or unchangeable (Being), and that which is changeable and fluid (Becoming), is at least that old. Plato proposed that truth was in the unchangeable, rational world of Perfect Forms that preceded the tricky and deceptive reality of the senses. For example, the abstract form <em>Chair</em> embodies all chairs, objects that can take many shapes in our sensorial reality while serving their functionality (an object to sit on) and basic design (with a sittable surface and some legs below it). According to Plato, the Forms hold the key to the essence of all things.</p>
<img type="lazy-image" data-runner-src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8yNTcwODg5Ni9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTYzNDA3OTQzNX0.Fy8WPmFn0mT0fy5e3Qq3HN70lzJ7Epk2iICVl6BwM_Q/img.png?width=980" id="4f64f" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="5a29206a396ef429914fa48a441c00be" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" data-width="782" data-height="1024" />
Plato used the allegory of the cave to explain that what humans see and experience is not the true reality.
Credit: Gothika via Wikimedia Commons CC 4.0
<p>When scientists and mathematicians use the term <em>Platonic worldview</em>, that's what they mean in general: The unbound capacity of reason to unlock the secrets of creation, one by one. Einstein, for one, was a believer, preaching the fundamental reasonableness of nature; no weird unexplainable stuff, like a god that plays dice—his tongue-in-cheek critique of the belief that the unpredictability of the quantum world was truly fundamental to nature and not just a shortcoming of our current understanding. Despite his strong belief in such underlying order, Einstein recognized the imperfection of human knowledge: "What I see of Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility." (Quoted by Dukas and Hoffmann in <em>Albert Einstein, The Human Side: Glimpses from His Archives</em> (1979), 39.)</p> <p>Einstein embodies the tension between these two clashing worldviews, a tension that is still very much with us today: On the one hand, the Platonic ideology that the fundamental stuff of reality is logical and understandable to the human mind, and, on the other, the acknowledgment that our reasoning has limitations, that our tools have limitations and thus that to reach some sort of final or complete understanding of the material world is nothing but an impossible, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01K2JTGIA?tag=bigthink00-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">semi-religious dream</a>.</p><p>This kind of tension is palpable today when we see groups of scientists passionately arguing <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0316013331?tag=bigthink00-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1" target="_blank">for</a> or <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1541646762?tag=bigthink00-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1" target="_blank">against</a> the existence of the multiverse, an idea that states that our universe is one in a huge number of other universes; or <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0735223793?tag=bigthink00-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1" target="_blank">for</a> or <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0465092764?tag=bigthink00-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1" target="_blank">against</a> the final unification of the laws of physics.</p><p>Nature, of course, is always the final arbiter of any scientific dispute. Data decides, one way or another. That's the beauty and power at the core of science. The challenge, though, is to know when to let go of an idea. How long should one wait until an idea, seductive as it may be, is deemed unrealistic? This is where the debate gets interesting. Data to support more "out there" ideas such as the multiverse or extra symmetries of nature needed for unification models has refused to show up for decades, despite extensive searches with different instruments and techniques. On the other hand, we only find if we look. So, should we keep on defending these ideas? Who decides? Is it a community decision or should each person pursue their own way of thinking?</p>
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="fa3185b1f66d82d9e77023abfa9da5bf"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YSWd21z2qqE?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span><p>In 2019, I participated in an interesting <a href="https://www.worldsciencefestival.com/programs/loose-ends-string-theory-and-the-quest-for-the-ultimate-theory/" target="_blank">live debate at the World Science Festival</a> with physicists Michael Dine and Andrew Strominger and hosted by physicist Brian Greene. The theme was string theory, our best candidate for a final theory of how particles of matter interact. When I completed my PhD in 1986, string theory was <em>the</em> way. The only way. But, by 2019, things had changed, and quite dramatically, due to the lack of supporting data. To my surprise, both Mike and Andy were quite open to the fact that that certainty of the past was no more. String theory has taught physicists many things and that was perhaps its use. The Platonic outlook was in peril.</p><p>The dispute remains alive, although with each experiment that fails to show supporting evidence for string theory the dream grows harder to justify. Will it be a generational thing, as celebrated physicist Max Planck once quipped, "Ideas don't die, physicists do"? (I paraphrase.) I hope not. But it is a conversation that should be held more in the open, as was the case with the World Science Festival. Dreams die hard. But they may die a little easier when we accept the fact that our grasp of reality is limited, and doesn't always fit our expectations of what should or shouldn't be real.</p>
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Coronavirus
Can you still spread coronavirus after getting the vaccine?
The vaccine will shorten the "shedding" time.
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