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Uber’s First Self-Driving Fleet Arrives in Pittsburgh This Month

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Re: Uber’s First Self-Driving Fleet Arrives in Pittsburgh This Month

#161

Post by technofiend »

aetherson wrote: post #153
technofiend wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I literally had an Uber driver this morning who didn't speak enough English to take the route I requested. She knew "Hello", and "Have a nice day." No harm done if she's a competent driver. Would I devote hours being behind the wheel? No. I would try to find a job UNIXing for food because that's what I know. But we're not talking about me. We're talking about folks who have a driver's license, a clean driving record…

First, I note that you've got from "far less" to "downward pressure." Are you modifying your claim? I think that there is a considerably more colorable argument that it might shave 5 to 10% off the wages of a driver than that it might shave 50% off the wages of the driver. While shifting the costs of vehicle purchase and maintenance from the driver to Uber is a factor, it's not enough to make driver wages "far less,"…

Sadly there is no RemindMe for ycombinator, but yes I believe "far less" is still my conclusion here. I didn't quantify far less and I'm not sure exactly how much it means? Thirty percent less? Fifty percent less? Not sure but yes I expect it'll be more than a 5 to 10% haircut you cited. And more importantly - profits will be far less if Uber adopts a taxi-like model of supplying the hardware and charging drivers a use fee.

Re: Uber’s First Self-Driving Fleet Arrives in Pittsburgh This Month

#162

Post by tlrobinson »

speleding wrote: post #84
nkoren wrote: post #15

Ubiquitous comment, as a person within the industry: there's a big difference between cars that have a hands-free driving mode, and cars that do not have a driver. The latter will be an absolute game-changer; the former can yield some marginal gains in safety and congestion, but does not really shatter any paradigms. This is the former. The latter will certainly happen eventually, but is orders of magnitude more chal…

We don't need to jump to completely driverless right away, there is a convenient intermediate step: The passenger can be the passive driver, and the car would drive to the pickup location empty. As soon as regulation allows, that step already gets you the major benefit of not having to "pay for the other dude in the car".

"We don't need to jump to completely driverless right away" ... "the car would drive to the pickup location empty"

You don't consider a car that can drive itself to the pickup location empty to be "completely driverless"?

Re: Uber’s First Self-Driving Fleet Arrives in Pittsburgh This Month

#164

Post by azinman2 »

speleding wrote: post #84
nkoren wrote: post #15

Ubiquitous comment, as a person within the industry: there's a big difference between cars that have a hands-free driving mode, and cars that do not have a driver. The latter will be an absolute game-changer; the former can yield some marginal gains in safety and congestion, but does not really shatter any paradigms. This is the former. The latter will certainly happen eventually, but is orders of magnitude more chal…

We don't need to jump to completely driverless right away, there is a convenient intermediate step: The passenger can be the passive driver, and the car would drive to the pickup location empty. As soon as regulation allows, that step already gets you the major benefit of not having to "pay for the other dude in the car".

If you have full autonomy to get to the passenger, then you don't need them once you've picked them up.

Never mind the fact that now you have to worry about drunks, making sure insurance is cleared and people have perfect records (and know how to drive), want to drive at all (I don't -- isn't that what I'm paying for?), etc.

Re: Uber’s First Self-Driving Fleet Arrives in Pittsburgh This Month

#166

Post by munificent »

davidiach wrote: post #60
nkoren wrote: post #15

Ubiquitous comment, as a person within the industry: there's a big difference between cars that have a hands-free driving mode, and cars that do not have a driver. The latter will be an absolute game-changer; the former can yield some marginal gains in safety and congestion, but does not really shatter any paradigms. This is the former. The latter will certainly happen eventually, but is orders of magnitude more chal…

I'm also skeptical that we will reach the point where cars will not need a driver at all in the near future. I might be wrong but it seems to me you need something close to AGI to have a fully autonomous car. And with current approaches to self driving cars you need lots of data, sensors, fast and reliable internet connection, accurate maps and so forth, all of which are not at the level needed to have autonomy on al…

> I might be wrong but it seems to me you need something close to AGI to have a fully autonomous car.

Consider that we used to let horses do most of the steering and low-level control of our road-based vehicles.

Re: Uber’s First Self-Driving Fleet Arrives in Pittsburgh This Month

#167

Post by CardenB »

gmisra wrote: post #140

> "Supervised by humans in the drivers seat" Ah, borrowing from the Musk marketing playbook, just say "self-driving" often enough, and enough uninformed people who have never seen contemporary luxury assisted-driving features will be impressed. Calling out Autopilot as "souped-up cruise control" is a nice touch. > For now, Uber’s test cars travel with safety drivers, as common sense and the law dictate. These profess…

The level of autonomy exhibited by these vehicles are much greater than that of the Model S

Re: Uber’s First Self-Driving Fleet Arrives in Pittsburgh This Month

#168

Post by fweespeech »

adrianN wrote: post #66
jayjay71 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it actually doesn't make that much difference. The problem, I believe, is that people are used to rapid advances in software. Lots of small iterations can take you a long way, but sometimes you just reach a hurdle which requires a breakthrough. A fully self-driving car would need a huge breakthrough in perception (which most people categorize under AI) in order to work. Computer vision actually started out in…

Last time I checked Google's self driving car was doing pretty well already without major breakthroughs. I suppose there still are problems when the weather conditions are less than ideal, but you can't compare it to /r/shittyrobots.

Many places have "less than ideal weather conditions" for 100+ days a year.

Re: Uber’s First Self-Driving Fleet Arrives in Pittsburgh This Month

#169

Post by eric_cc »

gambiting wrote: post #119
puranjay wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much has the recent interest and investment in self-driving cars impacted this estimate? 5 years ago, I would have said that level 4 automation is 20 years away. With all these billions pouring in, I'd cut that projection in less than half. I'm certain that I won't be driving a car ever in 2030

And interestingly, seeing challenges ahead, I don't think we will have 100% autonomous cars before 2050, if not later. 50 years ago, we were certain that perfect image recognition is just few months of work away, or at least enough money poured into it will solve the problem. It's 2016 and our best of the best image recognition algorithms can't even tell a zebra and a sofa in a zebra print apart. Since automatic cars…

People like you are the best because it really adds to the enjoyment of great achievements when there are a healthy amount of naysayers to point out. Thank you, naysayer.

Re: Uber’s First Self-Driving Fleet Arrives in Pittsburgh This Month

#170

Post by msoad »

nkoren wrote: post #15

Ubiquitous comment, as a person within the industry: there's a big difference between cars that have a hands-free driving mode, and cars that do not have a driver. The latter will be an absolute game-changer; the former can yield some marginal gains in safety and congestion, but does not really shatter any paradigms. This is the former. The latter will certainly happen eventually, but is orders of magnitude more chal…

That's correct. Most of "self-driving" press out there is just press and not something as you said paradigm shattering!

But Uber need the press more than ever after losing China and having to have a growth story for their large valuation.

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