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Waymo’s Backseat Drivers: Confidential Data Reveals Self-Driving Taxi Hurdles

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Re: Waymo’s Backseat Drivers: Confidential Data Reveals Self-Driving Taxi Hurdles

#11

Post by lallysingh »

moomin wrote: post #10
damq wrote: post #6

> The data provide the most detailed view yet of the passenger experience inside vehicles from Waymo, which doesn’t disclose the information even though it uses public roads as its testing grounds. What's up with this statement? Should I be forced to publicize my phone calls just because I made them while driving on public roads? It's utterly bizarre that the author thinks he is entitled to see Waymo's data.

No, because you get the use of the roads as part of paying your taxes. These are special licenses, providing resources for private research for free with the costs being borne by the public.

What costs?

Re: Waymo’s Backseat Drivers: Confidential Data Reveals Self-Driving Taxi Hurdles

#12

Post by paxys »

dumbfoundded wrote: post #8
ttul wrote: post #4

The slow progress is not an indictment of self driving. This is one of the toughest engineering challenges ever mounted by humanity.

Yeah, that's a bit of an overstatement. We created nukes, landed on the moon, took sludge out of the ground and used it to power the world. We connected this world with wires and glass fibers to build a real-time global communication system that also gathered all of the world's information in a singular and immediately accessible place. Building a self driving car is hard but really not as tough. How quickly do think…

All great achievements, but none of these is in the same ballpark of difficulty as creating a general artificial intelligence (which is pretty much what self driving cars need to achieve true level 5 autonomy).

Re: Waymo’s Backseat Drivers: Confidential Data Reveals Self-Driving Taxi Hurdles

#13

Post by ForrestN »

damq wrote: post #6

> The data provide the most detailed view yet of the passenger experience inside vehicles from Waymo, which doesn’t disclose the information even though it uses public roads as its testing grounds. What's up with this statement? Should I be forced to publicize my phone calls just because I made them while driving on public roads? It's utterly bizarre that the author thinks he is entitled to see Waymo's data.

I'm not sure if I agree with the writer's statement here, and I'm not sure the right outcome is for Waymo to share data, but I don't think your analogy works.

Your individual phone calls are made as part of your general participation as an individual in society. One of the largest companies in the world, which does its best to avoid paying taxes, is using public roads as a fundamental part of the infrastructure for a project to generate data.

Maybe a better analogy is people who grow large amounts of marijuana in national parks? Yes, it's true that the growers are part of the public, and that the public owns the land, but...

I wouldn't have a problem with stuff like this if corporations were taxed at reasonable rates, and didn't participate so wholeheartedly in efforts to corrupt our democracy. Google donates to many truly vile, despicable politicians in order to shirk accountability, hamper regulation, and accomplish just this sort of de-facto subsidy and others like it.

Re: Waymo’s Backseat Drivers: Confidential Data Reveals Self-Driving Taxi Hurdles

#14

Post by gowld »

ForrestN wrote: post #13
damq wrote: post #6

> The data provide the most detailed view yet of the passenger experience inside vehicles from Waymo, which doesn’t disclose the information even though it uses public roads as its testing grounds. What's up with this statement? Should I be forced to publicize my phone calls just because I made them while driving on public roads? It's utterly bizarre that the author thinks he is entitled to see Waymo's data.

I'm not sure if I agree with the writer's statement here, and I'm not sure the right outcome is for Waymo to share data, but I don't think your analogy works. Your individual phone calls are made as part of your general participation as an individual in society. One of the largest companies in the world, which does its best to avoid paying taxes, is using public roads as a fundamental part of the infrastructure for a…

Corporations are made of people that pay income tax and property tax

Re: Waymo’s Backseat Drivers: Confidential Data Reveals Self-Driving Taxi Hurdles

#15

Post by lallysingh »

I wonder if they spread out to more areas - where there's more variety of driving conditions - if they could start rating difficulty well enough to estimate when they would be able to operate in each one.

So maybe they could start working in 2 years in sprawled suburbs in hot areas where you don't have many cyclists or pedestrians? Or is that Phoenix already and it's still too hard?

Re: Waymo’s Backseat Drivers: Confidential Data Reveals Self-Driving Taxi Hurdles

#16

Post by gowld »

lallysingh wrote: post #11
moomin wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because you get the use of the roads as part of paying your taxes. These are special licenses, providing resources for private research for free with the costs being borne by the public.

What costs?

Passengers, who are property of the government, I guess?

Re: Waymo’s Backseat Drivers: Confidential Data Reveals Self-Driving Taxi Hurdles

#17

Post by mandelbrotwurst »

lallysingh wrote: post #11
moomin wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because you get the use of the roads as part of paying your taxes. These are special licenses, providing resources for private research for free with the costs being borne by the public.

What costs?

There's a flaw in parent's comment in that the employees are themselves tax-paying citizens, but to answer your question anyway: land use, congestion, pollution, wear and tear, etc.

Re: Waymo’s Backseat Drivers: Confidential Data Reveals Self-Driving Taxi Hurdles

#18

Post by dumbfoundded »

paxys wrote: post #12
dumbfoundded wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's a bit of an overstatement. We created nukes, landed on the moon, took sludge out of the ground and used it to power the world. We connected this world with wires and glass fibers to build a real-time global communication system that also gathered all of the world's information in a singular and immediately accessible place. Building a self driving car is hard but really not as tough. How quickly do think…

All great achievements, but none of these is in the same ballpark of difficulty as creating a general artificial intelligence (which is pretty much what self driving cars need to achieve true level 5 autonomy).

Level 5 driving doesn't require AGI at all.

It's an extremely narrow set of problems that have to be solved incredibly well. It mostly just comes down to creating an accurate 3d representation of the world from a bunch of sensors. You also have to correctly segment and label each object in that 3d representation. If you did those two things extremely well, the actual driving logic can be hardcoded.

The problem is that each of these systems has problems so they all have to improve and compensate for each other.

Re: Waymo’s Backseat Drivers: Confidential Data Reveals Self-Driving Taxi Hurdles

#20

Post by gowld »

dumbfoundded wrote: post #8
ttul wrote: post #4

The slow progress is not an indictment of self driving. This is one of the toughest engineering challenges ever mounted by humanity.

Yeah, that's a bit of an overstatement. We created nukes, landed on the moon, took sludge out of the ground and used it to power the world. We connected this world with wires and glass fibers to build a real-time global communication system that also gathered all of the world's information in a singular and immediately accessible place. Building a self driving car is hard but really not as tough. How quickly do think…

Waymo has a far better safety records than NASA, and it self driving cars. NASA is allowed to kill people. Waymo isn't. The Internet is allowed to be full of malware. Waymo isn't.
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