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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”

#41

Post by Teever »

Gustomaximus wrote: post #25
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.

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 thi…

I think that you overlook the fact that a tremendous amount of evolution went on before humans came onto the scene ~200k years ago.

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

#42

Post by jonplackett »

I have very mixed feelings about autonomous cars. One side of me is so excited about the prospect and finds it all amazing and futuristic. I love reading about how Tesla and Waymo approach it differently.

The other side of me is absolutely not ready to trust my life to a machine - even though I know I do that all the time in other ways in modern life.

I think it will be people's emotional evaluation that will matter more than anything else and it will be a bumpy road to acceptance.

Driverless cara will probably be safer statistically but they’ll simultaneously make errors a human wouldn’t, so some people are going to die in what will seem like really dumb ways. This will be hard to accept even though that already happens with human drivers. Probably because their mistakes will be easier to identify with and explain.

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

#43

Post by anoncareer0212 »

Judgmentality wrote: post #20
anoncareer0212 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference here is that now the "public paying customers" and "full self-driving" customer groups are merged - so this means there's genuinely a paid full self-driving service launched as of today! A miracle

Calling this service public is misleading, especially since Waymo created the bifurcation between Waymo One (no NDA) and Early Riders (NDA). Both of these programs you have to apply for and be accepted, so neither is public. And Waymo has made no claim of merging these. The upcoming driverless rides Waymo refers to in this article could very well be for the Early Riders still under an NDA - which theoretically could…

The article says it's paying customers.

Sorry you felt that was disingenuous! You're right, it's not public in that anyone can take a ride, your account has to be approved.

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

#44

Post by xvector »

carlivar wrote: post #33
xvector wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Since it lets you fall asleep as long as your hand (or something) is on the wheel, I'm not sure it's the best thing you can get. Cadillac SuperCruise seems better from a driver awareness standpoint, given that this is "predictable abuse" otherwise.

I am not sure what you are talking about. Tesla autopilot regularly makes you either tug at the steering wheel or press one of the buttons on the steering wheel. Having your hand on it isn’t enough.

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

#45

Post by [deleted] »

persistent wrote: post #30
eloff wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

[deleted]

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

#46

Post by triceratops »

ipython wrote: post #21
panarky wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

Yes, even if autonomous vehicles are on average exactly as safe as human drivers, they're still worth the effort. Here are some reasons:

1. They're cheaper. This sounds crude, until you realize that this makes things like buses and shared rides far more viable. Meaning millions of people have a better commute and collectively save many lifetimes worth of time. It can also mean less air pollution, due to less traffic congestion (this only applies if congestion pricing is done), which will also save lives.

2. They can always get better over time. Humans can't.

3. Fewer parking lots are needed, which makes cities far more pleasant to live in.

4. Disabled, elderly people and children have better mobility, and aren't dependent on others to drive them everywhere.

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

#47

Post by macspoofing »

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…

>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.

I suspect that isn't true in so far that engineers will build what works. Building a complicated system like an autonomous car will necessarily involve a messy combination of a bunch of different strategies and with the result converging on a common solution.

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

#48

Post by im3w1l »

ipython wrote: post #21
panarky wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

> If so why go through all this trouble to creat autonomous vehicles?

So we can sleep in the car. Or watch netflix. Or drink. Saving 1+ million per year while you know, very nice, is not the main reason for doing this.

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

#49

Post by danso »

alasdair_ wrote: post #28
mdorazio wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Based on the description in that article, it doesn’t seem that the Tesla autonomously reacted to the stop sign, so much as it slowed to a stop before making a right turn based on its navigation system. The driver says he had to manually start AutoPilot after the stop for it to initiate the right turn:

> “The car always stops at the end of a highway exit since Navigate on Autopilot. At the stop, you just need to touch the accelerator to start Autopilot again without Navigate on Autopilot. I didn’t accelerate, you just need to touch the accelerator for less than a second and the car will do the rest at the intersection.”

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

#50

Post by eloff »

macspoofing wrote: post #47
eloff wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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. I suspect that isn't true in so far that engineers will build what works. Building a complicated system like an autonomous car will necessarily involve a messy combination of a bunch of different strategies and with the result converging…

I don't know if it's still true, but that was the state of things as of a year ago.
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