Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Another Group of Google Veterans Starts a Self-Driving Technology Company

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 80 posts

Re: Another Group of Google Veterans Starts a Self-Driving Technology Company

#71

Post by agumonkey »

harmegido wrote: post #46
ryandrake wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be honest, I don't have any idea why ANYONE keeps working after they have F-YOU money, CEOs or otherwise.

At some point, the work becomes the hobby. If you had fyou money, what would you do? Presumably not sit and stare at a wall all day. You'd do something you enjoy I assume. And for some, running one of the world's most powerful entities is enjoyable.

If your job involves hearing smart people talking to you about amazing ventures before getting into a fancy restaurant the night before you take a plane to some foreign headquarters it earned the right to be called a hobby.

Re: Another Group of Google Veterans Starts a Self-Driving Technology Company

#72

Post by yeukhon »

dagss wrote: post #67
yeukhon wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's MVP? Of course we don't have self drivinv car otherwise we wouldn't be having this discussion.

Minimum Viable Product. He means that until self driving cars are not even as good as human drivers, it is pointless to discuss features that make them even better than human drivers. I.e. "one step at the time".

Well it probably is, but it would be too late if we don't start investing into the data collection. Convincing government to build infrastructure and services what I am suggesting is going to be a long investment. I know some states are working on toward that goal, and IBM's SmartCity project is one such example experimenting how to use technology to allow services to subscribe to data.

We have a MVP. Google has a MVP, Telsa is a MVP already. I feel we focus too much on building sensors.

Re: Another Group of Google Veterans Starts a Self-Driving Technology Company

#73

Post by Retric »

yeukhon wrote: post #72
dagss wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minimum Viable Product. He means that until self driving cars are not even as good as human drivers, it is pointless to discuss features that make them even better than human drivers. I.e. "one step at the time".

Well it probably is, but it would be too late if we don't start investing into the data collection. Convincing government to build infrastructure and services what I am suggesting is going to be a long investment. I know some states are working on toward that goal, and IBM's SmartCity project is one such example experimenting how to use technology to allow services to subscribe to data. We have a MVP. Google has a MV…

With good sensors you can quickly get to good maps. But, getting to level 5 automation without good sensors and useful AI is impossible.

Re: Another Group of Google Veterans Starts a Self-Driving Technology Company

#74

Post by yeukhon »

Retric wrote: post #73
yeukhon wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it probably is, but it would be too late if we don't start investing into the data collection. Convincing government to build infrastructure and services what I am suggesting is going to be a long investment. I know some states are working on toward that goal, and IBM's SmartCity project is one such example experimenting how to use technology to allow services to subscribe to data. We have a MVP. Google has a MV…

With good sensors you can quickly get to good maps. But, getting to level 5 automation without good sensors and useful AI is impossible.

Again, I never said we don't need good sensor. I have been saying we need to start thinking outside of just sensor. The forumla can't just rely on sensors alone. I don't dispute we need to be able to recongize surroundings. Because we human drive with eyes open.

Re: Another Group of Google Veterans Starts a Self-Driving Technology Company

#75

Post by Retric »

yeukhon wrote: post #74
Retric wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With good sensors you can quickly get to good maps. But, getting to level 5 automation without good sensors and useful AI is impossible.

Again, I never said we don't need good sensor. I have been saying we need to start thinking outside of just sensor. The forumla can't just rely on sensors alone. I don't dispute we need to be able to recongize surroundings. Because we human drive with eyes open.

We humans also do fine with a our eyes, our brain, and a crappy GPS or Map. If you want to say that's not enough for computers and you need really good maps to get level 5 automation then I disagree. If you think you can be first to market with Level 5 automation while splitting your focus onto irrelevant details, again I disagree.

Re: Another Group of Google Veterans Starts a Self-Driving Technology Company

#76

Post by yeukhon »

Retric wrote: post #75
yeukhon wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, I never said we don't need good sensor. I have been saying we need to start thinking outside of just sensor. The forumla can't just rely on sensors alone. I don't dispute we need to be able to recongize surroundings. Because we human drive with eyes open.

We humans also do fine with a our eyes, our brain, and a crappy GPS or Map. If you want to say that's not enough for computers and you need really good maps to get level 5 automation then I disagree. If you think you can be first to market with Level 5 automation while splitting your focus onto irrelevant details, again I disagree.

Your view on self-driving car is different than mine. I am not sure who came up with the five levels of self-driving car automation, but let me reiterate the last time before I give up trying to convince anyone on this thread.

First, for a computer to be able to navigate safely on the road the computer needs to be able to recongize and understand its surroundings. Checked.

Next, for computers to be able to be good at driving, we need to train the computer both in the real world and in simulations.

Moreover, to ensure we can optimize route, plan ahead we need data about road condition far ahead of us (and sometimes behind us). To be able to make turns on an intersection safely and swiftly, unlike humans who are terrible at making turns and confusing when to turn, computers can coordinate with one another. This requires good network communication. Bluetooth is weak and unstable. In my earlier example, if an ambulance says it is driving heading my direction, my car can coordinate how to empty up a lane for the ambluance to pass. This level of automation is what one sees in a sci-fi movie, which is really what you want besides being able to avoid obstacles like Bat mobile.

My point is, we should explore how to make traffic data accessible. There is so much one can do with such data. It takes a good amount of time to get the government onboard and help them build such infrastructure. To finish off my point, meter data is not available, right now apps use crowd source to determine whether a parking spot is available or not. Instead of driving around which causes more congestion and sometimes accident, governement should make meter data available, and we can still crowd source by using driver's camera to recongize whether a spot is opened and send back to datastore.

This is essentially the goal of Internet of Things, at rhe city scale. As I mentioned, IBM's SmartCities supposed to do stuff above but I really am not sure if IBM will ever pull off given many of their projects ended up on someoen's desk covering in dust.

Re: Another Group of Google Veterans Starts a Self-Driving Technology Company

#77

Post by sytelus »

yazaddaruvala wrote: post #68
harmegido wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At some point, the work becomes the hobby. If you had fyou money, what would you do? Presumably not sit and stare at a wall all day. You'd do something you enjoy I assume. And for some, running one of the world's most powerful entities is enjoyable.

I'd just learn. Learn everything. I have a goal, it is to be better than average at every "skill".

and then what?

Re: Another Group of Google Veterans Starts a Self-Driving Technology Company

#78

Post by ubernostrum »

dragonwriter wrote: post #48
poikniok wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The logic on this statement doesn't really check out, as if this were the case it would be impossible to retain CEOs, they would all leave after a month. Yet somehow companies do so ...

> The logic on this statement doesn't really check out, as if this were the case it would be impossible to retain CEOs, they would all leave after a month. Or, CEOs don't have the same set of options engineers have, or, CEOs are drawn from a pool with different preferences than engineers have, or... Well, lots of other reasons your dismissal of the claim about engineers based on CEO behavior is unconvincing.

The general point is valid, though, and often comes up in discussions about basic income or similar programs: if the hypothesis is that someone whose needs are already met will refuse to work, then we can look at the existing population of people whose needs are already met as a way to verify the hypothesis. And we find the hypothesis is falsified by observation: some people who don't need to work don't work. Some people who don't need to work do work.

Re: Another Group of Google Veterans Starts a Self-Driving Technology Company

#79

Post by Retric »

yeukhon wrote: post #76
Retric wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We humans also do fine with a our eyes, our brain, and a crappy GPS or Map. If you want to say that's not enough for computers and you need really good maps to get level 5 automation then I disagree. If you think you can be first to market with Level 5 automation while splitting your focus onto irrelevant details, again I disagree.

Your view on self-driving car is different than mine. I am not sure who came up with the five levels of self-driving car automation, but let me reiterate the last time before I give up trying to convince anyone on this thread. First, for a computer to be able to navigate safely on the road the computer needs to be able to recongize and understand its surroundings. Checked. Next, for computers to be able to be good at…

Trafic analysis based on cellphone tracking is already part of free GPS apps like: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/waze-gps-navigation-maps-soc... Even one user per 100 drivers is plenty to locate traffic issues and we are well past that. Now sure, the situation is improvable but the reality is knowing about bad traffic is more or less solved.

For higher precision tragic flow that's going to fail while their is still a high percentage of human drivers. So sure when there are 50+% AI drivers it's a useful optimization. However, for the first decade or so it's not going to happen making it a waste of time for now.

As to finding a parking space, again mostly a non issue for self driving cars, because they don't need to park near people they are better off going to a garage which already tracks open spaces than using street level parking when it's hard to find. Can you slightly optimize this sure, but again it's not a hard problem relative to driving without a person in the car.

Re: Another Group of Google Veterans Starts a Self-Driving Technology Company

#80

Post by yazaddaruvala »

sytelus wrote: post #77
yazaddaruvala wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd just learn. Learn everything. I have a goal, it is to be better than average at every "skill".

and then what?

lol, you know its not possible to learn everything! There is no "then what?". Then entropy catches up with us all and we die eating at The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe.
Post reply on HN