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Waymo to customers: “Completely driverless Waymo cars are on the way”

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Re: Waymo to customers: “Completely driverless Waymo cars are on the way”

#21

Post by ipython »

panarky wrote: post #12
dev_dull wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the 80/20 principle says it's going to be a long, long time before level 5 autonomy is reached. That's 100% in all conditions. In fact, I would say it's more theory than attainable. There's a reason they're testing in Phoenix. It has almost no Inclement weather. Throw a little snow, mud, or sleet in there and it gets hairy fast. Level 2 is basically the 20% of effort in 80/20. It's exponential effort from then on out…

We shouldn't set a dramatically higher safety standard for autonomous drivers than human drivers. When autonomous drivers have the same or fewer injuries per billion miles driven as human drivers, then for all practical purposes it doesn't matter if it's level 4 or level 5.

So it’s ok to have 1+ million dead per year? [0]

If so why go through all this trouble to creat autonomous vehicles? I, for one, am glad this was not the prevailing attitude when commercial airliner regulatory bodies were set up.

[0] https://www.asirt.org/safe-travel/road-safety-facts/

Re: Waymo to customers: “Completely driverless Waymo cars are on the way”

#22

Post by bduerst »

semiotagonal wrote: post #8
dev_dull wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same with best uber drivers.

Any human is the product of eons of natural selection honing our perception and reflexes. The process was unpleasant.

But only two or three generations with automobiles

Re: Waymo to customers: “Completely driverless Waymo cars are on the way”

#23

Post by semiotagonal »

braythwayt wrote: post #16
semiotagonal wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any human is the product of eons of natural selection honing our perception and reflexes. The process was unpleasant.

I think if you look at evolution more closely you'll see that it is messy and is constantly creating dead-ends. Mammals were insignificant until an extinction event occurred. It's not like we were superior and displaced the dinosaurs. We have lots of errors and junk DNA. We make all kinds of mistakes. Perhaps not fatal ones yet, we'll see how climate change plays out. As for our perception and reflexes... I wouldn't…

> I think if you look at evolution more closely you'll see that it is messy and is constantly creating dead-ends.

That's my point. The natural selection process for self-driving automobiles is just beginning, as they meet the challenge of the real world. I'm concerned that it is going to mirror the messiness that biological evolution involves.

Re: Waymo to customers: “Completely driverless Waymo cars are on the way”

#24

Post by mdorazio »

gfodor wrote: post #2

So sounds like we'll get level 4 autonomy in 2020. Once that happens the discussion around the nature of the approach to level 5 (which is probably asymptotic) will be a welcome change vs today where people are questioning if we'll ever have a consumer successfully use an autonomous vehicle.

Operating domain is the key concept with Level 4 and Level 5. Level 4 any time anywhere is not a 2020 goal, but Level 4 in specific locations and conditions is on the way. Same with Level 5. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a Waymo car without a steering wheel driving people around Phoenix in 2025, but a Chicago winter is a different story.

Re: Waymo to customers: “Completely driverless Waymo cars are on the way”

#25

Post by Gustomaximus »

semiotagonal wrote: post #8
dev_dull wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same with best uber drivers.

Any human is the product of eons of natural selection honing our perception and reflexes. The process was unpleasant.

Sure there is ~200,000 years of natural selection. That probably 10,000 generations of learning assuming 20 years.

But computers can run 10,000 simulations to learn in minutes. And obviously we are not going to create a autonomous driving ability in minutes but we can speed up the learning evolution significantly in machine world vs humans that have 10-50 years per evolutionary learning event.

My view is the hard thing about autonomous driving will be the change in style of accidents. Even if autonomous driving has half of human accidents we will probably see things that to the human eye seem really obvious so people will be 'if it can't predict that why should I trust it' type thing. But we won't see the many accidents a computer avoids that a human would make or finds obvious.

I'm positive about it but suspect we will see the roll out take many decades as it starts in cities with the right conditions, moves to trucking routes but will probably take some time for national metro coverage.

Re: Waymo to customers: “Completely driverless Waymo cars are on the way”

#26

Post by paxys »

grecy wrote: post #9
persistent wrote: post #7

Waymo is so far ahead in this game. Tesla has the biggest online cheerleading section and an "autopilot" that behaves as a low-budget adaptive cruise control with lane keeping that sometimes works, and a pretty big body count. Uber has a dead pedestrian and a major lawsuit. Cruise has a lot of people on staff but virtually nothing to show for it. Lyft exists. Waymo is in production revenue service.

> Tesla has the biggest online cheerleading section and an "autopilot" that behaves as a low-budget adaptive cruise control with lane keeping that sometimes works, and a pretty big body count I don't think you're being very accurate there. There are lots of videos of people commuting 50+ miles to and from work every day without touching anything while on the interstates, including interchanges. It's doing a lot more…

Freeways are a very ideal environment - wide, clearly marked lanes, no traffic lights, no pedestrians/bikes, no random stops, no navigation ambiguity. Unless Tesla has self driving cars on city roads (which all of the others so), they can't really be part of the same conversation.

Re: Waymo to customers: “Completely driverless Waymo cars are on the way”

#27

Post by xvector »

persistent wrote: post #7

Waymo is so far ahead in this game. Tesla has the biggest online cheerleading section and an "autopilot" that behaves as a low-budget adaptive cruise control with lane keeping that sometimes works, and a pretty big body count. Uber has a dead pedestrian and a major lawsuit. Cruise has a lot of people on staff but virtually nothing to show for it. Lyft exists. Waymo is in production revenue service.

While Tesla is far behind Waymo and probably never will catch up, especially because of CAPTCHA, I think your description is unduly harsh. Autopilot works much better than every other TACC out there and is the best thing on the market you can get.

Re: Waymo to customers: “Completely driverless Waymo cars are on the way”

#28

Post by alasdair_ »

mdorazio wrote: post #17
grecy wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tesla has the biggest online cheerleading section and an "autopilot" that behaves as a low-budget adaptive cruise control with lane keeping that sometimes works, and a pretty big body count I don't think you're being very accurate there. There are lots of videos of people commuting 50+ miles to and from work every day without touching anything while on the interstates, including interchanges. It's doing a lot more…

I disagree. It’s completely fair. Handling basic tasks on nice freeways is exactly what adaptive cruise control + lane keeping is for. Last I checked, autopilot couldn’t even stop for a stop sign unless you count “shadow mode” claims.

>Last I checked, autopilot couldn’t even stop for a stop sign unless you count “shadow mode” claims.

Perhaps you should check more frequently? Here is a video of a Tesla on Autopilot stopping for a stop sign:

https://electrek.co/2019/05/29/tesla-autopilot-stop-sign-mak...

Re: Waymo to customers: “Completely driverless Waymo cars are on the way”

#29

Post by Gustomaximus »

seibelj wrote: post #13

I guess they are fundraising right now? Not sure why they would keep promoting something that won’t happen for a decade.

1) A decade? It's happening right now.

2) Check Alphabets/Googles bank balance. They have a few bucks they can invest for now.

Re: Waymo to customers: “Completely driverless Waymo cars are on the way”

#30

Post by persistent »

eloff wrote: post #18
persistent wrote: post #7

Waymo is so far ahead in this game. Tesla has the biggest online cheerleading section and an "autopilot" that behaves as a low-budget adaptive cruise control with lane keeping that sometimes works, and a pretty big body count. Uber has a dead pedestrian and a major lawsuit. Cruise has a lot of people on staff but virtually nothing to show for it. Lyft exists. Waymo is in production revenue service.

I used to think that, but now I agree with George Hotz. Tesla uses machine learning to map inputs to control outputs. Google is using it just to build a model of the world and then use program logic to decide the control action to take. The problem with the latter approach is the long tail of real life variety doesn't lend itself to a fixed set of programmed rules. You'll always have more edge cases. I think Waymos a…

Not sure there is enough evidence in support of those claims about Tesla. Tesla doesn't collect anywhere near enough data from its customer fleet to support the kind of massive training being claimed. In contrast Waymo and Cruise vehicles are regularly in the depot where each car offloads terabytes of data. Who has the bigger training set?
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