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

Waymo Via

waymo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 277 posts

Re: Waymo Via

#221

Post by kortex »

disueebrb3 wrote: post #183
notatoad wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a potential arms race but it's currently solved by one guy sitting in a truck, so it's not really a potential arms race that can escalate too far before you fall back to the one guy sitting in a truck. worst case scenario, you replace a driver with an actual security guard who is trained as a security guard and can focus on security instead of driving.

A human solution does seem like the real solution to the current shortcomings of automated driving but security guard seems like too narrow of a role. If you could have a shepard whose job was to sit in a lead vehicle that identifies, tags, and issues orders for avoiding obstacles in real-time for the automated herd trucks then the problem is 99% finished as far as creating a new business model goes. City streets are…

This is how automation actually progresses. It's not bam, one day, truckers are replaced with AI that's equally competant at driving. Rather, day by day, the amount of freight moved, per unit cost/human effort, slowly decreases.

Much of this efficiency has already occured in terms of routing optimization.

Re: Waymo Via

#222

Post by lmm »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #82
markstos wrote: post #23

As a bike/ped advocate, I believe self-driving cars will ultimately be safer than humans. Yesterday I was nearly hit crossing street twice: once by an inattentive driver and once by an intentionally reckless speeder. Oh the other hand, my brother has done a fair amount of truck driving and I'm aware it's a common job in the US. Maybe now that Bloomberg has dropped out he get together with Yang and use his billions to…

> use his billions to start providing a basic income to displaced truck drivers? Are there no other viable options to "truck drivers being replaced by automation" than basic income? I've read a lot of pushback about basic income online.

You're talking about a demographic that is largely old, in poor health, and with few other skills. They're not going to see a huge RoI from training/education, and they're not attractive to employers. At the moment, their value proposition is that they're doing an unpleasant, unhealthy job that not many other people want to; it's hard to see how that would translate into good employment opportunities in other sectors, or even if we should want it to.

Re: Waymo Via

#223

Post by Eridrus »

umeshunni wrote: post #31
justicezyx wrote: post #11

Everyone (Pony.ai started trucking as well) is converging to trucking as the canonical use cases. Let's see how this affect the existing self-driving firms.

In hindsight, trucking seems on the more obvious usecase for autonomous vehicles rather than daily commutes or ridesharing. 1. Most time spent and miles driven are on freeways rather than city streets. Last mile can still be done via human drivers meeting at an off-freeway ramp hub. 2. The cost and availability of labor is a significant damper on trucking. Remember during the oil boom in Alberta, Canada, how truckers…

There's still no federal autonomous vehicle legislation.

The ramp hub is also infrastructure that needs to be built.

Re: Waymo Via

#224

Post by thedance »

paxys wrote: post #206
thedance wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been wondering for years why nobody mentions this. I saw them on the road in Sunnyvale in 2018. Maybe people assume they are just regular trucks used to transport Waymo cars or something.

Maybe it was actually a self driving truck transporting a self driving car.

Well I did find this 2017 article so I guess they have been covered a bit.

https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/27/these-are-the-autonomous-t...

Re: Waymo Via

#225

Post by coral-snake »

Copy nit:

> We’re currently testing our fleet of trucks in California and Arizona, and we’ll soon expand to Texas and New Mexico in the near future.

"soon in the near future" is a weird structure. It's repeating itself, which either comes across as poorly constructed or _really_ emphasizing. I doubt it is the latter....but if it were, I'd expect waymo to announce Texas/NM support within a few weeks. (Which begs the question of "why publish this blog now, instead of in 1-3 weeks when Texas/NM support launches?")

Re: Waymo Via

#226

Post by stopads »

ckmiller wrote: post #41

I competed in the DARPA Urban Challenge, back in 2007. While we were watching the finalists trying to sort out the world's first fully-automated traffic jam, the conversation turned to how easy it is to manipulate these vehicles. Imagine a remote stretch of highway frequented by automated 18-wheelers. All that's required to bring the truck to a screeching halt is a bedsheet and some decent timing, at which point the…

Yes, after we eliminate all the trucking jobs in the county which are one of the last remaining decent jobs for unprivileged people, then the robberies will really take off. Better come up with a log(n) solution to those dirty poor people with bedsheets before prioritizing anything else, because there will surely be robberies.

Maybe instead of intentionally creating a nightmarish hellscape so we can fix the robbery problem we just take a step back for a minute? What are we actually building? For whom?

Re: Waymo Via

#227

Post by harikb »

gretch wrote: post #45
ckmiller wrote: post #41

I competed in the DARPA Urban Challenge, back in 2007. While we were watching the finalists trying to sort out the world's first fully-automated traffic jam, the conversation turned to how easy it is to manipulate these vehicles. Imagine a remote stretch of highway frequented by automated 18-wheelers. All that's required to bring the truck to a screeching halt is a bedsheet and some decent timing, at which point the…

You can already do this to humans pretty much just as easily, I just need some orange cones Then what? You have 20 palettes of dog chew toys or asian pears....? Some of the goods have serial/tracking numbers. The reason people don't rob 18 wheelers or trains is because it's not a good criminal enterprise

Or it is their lucky day and full of N95 masks and hand sanitizer bottles!

Re: Waymo Via

#228

Post by Gatsky »

ckmiller wrote: post #41

I competed in the DARPA Urban Challenge, back in 2007. While we were watching the finalists trying to sort out the world's first fully-automated traffic jam, the conversation turned to how easy it is to manipulate these vehicles. Imagine a remote stretch of highway frequented by automated 18-wheelers. All that's required to bring the truck to a screeching halt is a bedsheet and some decent timing, at which point the…

It’s a good point. However, I doubt anyone will be transporting high value items in autonomous vehicles for quite a while, as insurance will be expensive initially.

Re: Waymo Via

#229

Post by jwilber »

notatoad wrote: post #152
ckmiller wrote: post #41

I competed in the DARPA Urban Challenge, back in 2007. While we were watching the finalists trying to sort out the world's first fully-automated traffic jam, the conversation turned to how easy it is to manipulate these vehicles. Imagine a remote stretch of highway frequented by automated 18-wheelers. All that's required to bring the truck to a screeching halt is a bedsheet and some decent timing, at which point the…

Why does this sort of critique keep coming up in HN threads on autonomous vehicles? have autonomous cars really gotten so good that "what if violent criminals try to attack it" is the only criticism left? I'm pretty sure not hitting cyclists is still a much larger problem than accidentally wandering into the plot of an action movie. less interesting, i guess. theft is an insurance problem. If there's no human driver…

If we’re assuming these vehicles are FULLY autonomous, a simple fix for this is to add a manual override that allows the driver to drive for themselves. Then the heist is basically as effective as it’d be today. (To be honest, I’d be surprised if such a feature isn’t required by law).

Though off-topic, the conversation of vehicle-feature-defect-related heists reminds me of Jaime Zapata, a US agent killed in Mexico after his SUV doors automatically unlocked when parked. (Though it’s unclear if locks would have made any difference in the outcome).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaime_Zapata

Re: Waymo Via

#230

Post by [deleted] »

riversflow wrote: post #185
gwern wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then, I don't know, it seems to me like people just love to come up with imaginary reasons why self-driving cars/trucks can't work. The way I like to put it ( https://www.gwern.net/Complexity-vs-AI#technology-forecastin... ) is: 'The critic asks “can I think of any reason this system might not work?” and stops as soon as they find one excuse, but the forecaster needs to ask, “can I think of any system like this whi…

I don’t think this is a fair characterization of adversarial attacks on AI. People on hacker news are simply forecasting the future of hacking. People aren’t really saying ‘it won’t work, forget about it!’ they are simply pointing out that historically technology and criminal enterprise have followed a similar pattern to the garter snake and the rough skinned newt[1]. The more sophisticated deterrents evolve, the mor…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN