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Lyft Self-Driving

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Re: Lyft Self-Driving

#161

Post by nojvek »

alexbeloi wrote: post #86
andy_ppp wrote: post #80

Has anyone seen anything to suggest this will happen for sure in 10 years? I’m sure there will be improvements in safety with these features but there are basically zero AI demos out there that are what I’d call good. For example Siri and even Google Assistant quickly show how limited they are after years and years of real world use. If these rely on the same Deep Learning technology won’t it just be the same limits…

Siri/Alexa/GoogleAssist etc. work well in constrained situations (e.g. changing music, turning stuff on/off, pop culture quiz questions), they have trouble parsing more general/complex questions. Many researchers I've talked to believe the initial self-driving car deployments to the public will be have to be very constrained: fixed routes, possibly isolated self-driving car lanes, only allowed in clear/daytime condit…

And its probably going to be here earlier than we think.

Essentially train carriages on tarmac :)

Re: Lyft Self-Driving

#162

Post by Danihan »

kelnos wrote: post #146
Jedd wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Won't accept which - that computers only have to beat human fatality rates to be preferable, or that the ratio will be 10:1 (or better) in favour of computer-driven cars in terms of fatalities? I'd agree that if we aren't seeing better fatality numbers, people won't accept it -- but there's little to suggest that humans are a difficult target to beat. Especially in the US, where car-related fatalities are so numerous…

Not the OP, but: I don't believe people will accept that computers only have to beat human fatality rates to be preferable. People have this weird psychological effect around control . They will accept higher failure rates if they believe (correctly or otherwise) that they have control over a situation. Or rather, they will believe that they can beat the statistics at least for themselves, as long as they believe the…

Well, half of people are above-average though. Maybe the people who you talk to are just all above-average.

Re: Lyft Self-Driving

#163

Post by pwaai »

fragmede wrote: post #157
pwaai wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes me think and I'm pretty excited about it... How far off/difficult would it be for Tesla to create their own ride sharing app? I mean both Lyft and Ubers "moat" seems to be their app which is not defensible against a market leader in autonomous cars that can simply switch on a new marketplace for its userbase and whole lot of other folks that can't afforda tesla but wants to be picked up and dropped off by…

> How far off/difficult would it be for Tesla to create their own ride sharing app? Tesla's suburban HQ in the hills may be less appropriate (due to lack of density), or possibly more (easier to drive in suburbia vs the city), but at least one other manufacturer - Cruise, now owned by GM, is running internal trials, with hopes of opening it up soon. https://readwrite.com/2017/08/10/cruise-self-driving-app/

so not very difficult and not far off either it seems. It must've been an existential crisis for Uber to go as far as try and steal it from Waymo, allegedly. It seems they underestimated just how difficult and expensive it can be....perhaps that $2 billion dollar burn rate could've been allocated better.

Re: Lyft Self-Driving

#164

Post by jsjohnst »

visarga wrote: post #106
jsjohnst wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct, but how many cars does Goog/Cruise/Uber have on the road daily collecting this high data rate? 1k? Let’s be overly optimistic and say 10k. Remember, normal driver driven cars don’t apply here generally, just the research cars. Tesla on the other hand has hundreds of thousands of cars on the road and is rapidly on their way to 1M cars. Data won’t be as raw and abundant, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t potentia…

The kind of data Tesla collects is useful for general self driving, less so for solving hard cases. For that we need simulations and real life enactment, like Google does. We already have the basic data, we need the special case data now, or we could use the driving data from Tesla to discover new special cases. Simply putting more SDCs on the road does not guarantee they will focus on the data they need.

> Simply putting more SDCs on the road does not guarantee they will focus on the data they need.

Agree completely

Re: Lyft Self-Driving

#165

Post by lgas »

sumedh wrote: post #122
lgas wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why they would have to lower prices just because they bought more efficient machines. That defeats the point (as mentioned) but has two obvious solutions that I can think of: keep prices flat, or raise prices.

They have to lower prices because their competitors buy the same machines and thy pass on the savings to the customers, xo your company needs to do that as well. That is the problem with commodity business because consumers dont care where there corn or cloth material comes from. Consumers will go for the cheapest option.

It doesn't make sense that they would refuse to buy the efficient machines then... because they would be forced out of the market by people who did.

Re: Lyft Self-Driving

#166

Post by losteric »

sandworm101 wrote: post #150
kelnos wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is suggesting that there aren't special cases where using a car is the right move. But the vast majority of cases where people take cars, replacing that experience with better public transit is entirely reasonable. Hell, improving public transit would improve your use-case as well; you'd have less traffic to compete with while driving.

Unless the goal is to pay for public transit by making car travel more expensive/painful. Then it is unfair to force all the carpenters to cover the costs for the office workers.

That's an incomplete view of the problem.

Public transportation is used by people from all walks of life. Not just office workers - cooks, nurses, artists, school teachers, police officers, even employees of trade companies... and every citizen benefits from reduced traffic, lower infrastructure costs, and better health.

Using car taxes to fund public transportation would not materially impact the carpenter. They'd just charge a little more. An absurdly high $1000/year tax spread across 50 clients is merely $20 per job - a more realistic $200/y tax would add $4 per job. Considering that public transportation increase average disposable income, the market can easily absorb that cost.

Re: Lyft Self-Driving

#167

Post by michalnaka »

"Last year, nearly 6 million Americans sold their cars and switched to ride sharing. This year, almost 6 million plan to do the same thing."

No source citied on this or any of the other assertions made on the landing page.

Re: Lyft Self-Driving

#168

Post by sandworm101 »

losteric wrote: post #166
sandworm101 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless the goal is to pay for public transit by making car travel more expensive/painful. Then it is unfair to force all the carpenters to cover the costs for the office workers.

That's an incomplete view of the problem. Public transportation is used by people from all walks of life. Not just office workers - cooks, nurses, artists, school teachers, police officers, even employees of trade companies... and every citizen benefits from reduced traffic, lower infrastructure costs, and better health. Using car taxes to fund public transportation would not materially impact the carpenter. They'd j…

>> They'd just charge a little more.

And so too can the office workers. To charge one group for the benefit of another, based solely on the manner of their employ, is the definition of unfair. This is what progressive taxation is for, not use taxes.

Re: Lyft Self-Driving

#169

Post by [deleted] »

kelnos wrote: post #146
Jedd wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Won't accept which - that computers only have to beat human fatality rates to be preferable, or that the ratio will be 10:1 (or better) in favour of computer-driven cars in terms of fatalities? I'd agree that if we aren't seeing better fatality numbers, people won't accept it -- but there's little to suggest that humans are a difficult target to beat. Especially in the US, where car-related fatalities are so numerous…

Not the OP, but: I don't believe people will accept that computers only have to beat human fatality rates to be preferable. People have this weird psychological effect around control . They will accept higher failure rates if they believe (correctly or otherwise) that they have control over a situation. Or rather, they will believe that they can beat the statistics at least for themselves, as long as they believe the…

[deleted]

Re: Lyft Self-Driving

#170

Post by fatbob »

notatoad wrote: post #114
fatbob wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buses are not always full. Their average capacity does not have an order of magnitude advantage.

neither are roads. it doesn't matter how full the bus is when the road is empty, but the number of cars that a bus is taking off the road at peak road usage time is pretty close to the full capacity of the bus, in any bus system i've ever ridden.

Good point - maybe buses will stay around just for peak usage, but will be replaced by rented, right-sized self-driving cars for the rest of the time.
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