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Amazon to pay $1B+ for Zoox

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Re: Amazon to pay $1B+ for Zoox

#141

Post by 0x8BADF00D »

wutbrodo wrote: post #140
0x8BADF00D wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Autonomous Driving hype train is slowing down, so this is the perfect opportunity for this move. Zoox in particular was a LARP of an autonomous driving company. Until any of these companies start manufacturing, they’re literally LARPing. At least Tesla shipped an actual product.

Tangentially, it seems like calling people LARPers has very rapidly become a universally-used cliche. Has anyone else noticed that? I've seen it used for months, sparingly, but in the last couple of weeks it's everywhere (I've seen it literally three times this morning, on different fora about vastly different topics).

It’s particularly applicable to startups that burn through a bunch of cash and then exit for a pittance.

Re: Amazon to pay $1B+ for Zoox

#142

Post by Judgmentality »

numpad0 wrote: post #68
jedberg wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I rode in a Zoox car two years ago. It was already at level 3, almost 4. The driver took over once but didn’t even have to. The car was about to do the same thing the driver did, he just got nervous.

Zoom is Level 4, any experimental SDCs is Level 4 and all production SDC technology is Level 2. Few manufacturers thought L3 is simple enough to at least try, but all were abandoned for above reasons. By definitions, Level 2: driver always pays attention Level 3: car pays attention, may request driver Level 4: car do not require driver This seems simple enough, but Level 3 requires car to be able to drive entirely by…

I've had to explain this aspect of Level 3 to so many people before, and in my experience few people get it. I think there's a bit more nuance to it though.

How far it has to predict something into the future is however long it takes for a person to safely take over - let's say 10 seconds. The thing is though, a Level 4 system also has to be able to predict things into the future in terms of erratic drivers and pedestrians - so the problem is surprisingly similar.

If you want to know what's really going on with self-driving, talk to the prediction teams at any of the companies. It's pure research, because how can you predict the future? And it's not a hypothetical problem, because pedestrians do weird shit and you need to predict if they're going to walk in front of you 5 seconds from now all the time (at least for urban driving). Humans do this instinctively - we slow down in uncertain situations and are constantly monitoring it for changes. When the robots try to do this, they slow down and then just stop because they can't really guess what's going to happen next. For computers, I'd argue it's roughly equivalent to solving hard AI.

Re: Amazon to pay $1B+ for Zoox

#143

Post by wutbrodo »

almost_usual wrote: post #44

So some self driving car companies might not escape Covid. Not surprising, the space is saturated, expensive, and not market ready.

Zoox was already in trouble. Covid was just the nail in the coffin. The other big names seem pretty OK so far, though that depends on how GM does and how much Cruise depends on them.

Re: Amazon to pay $1B+ for Zoox

#144

Post by wutbrodo »

hevelvarik wrote: post #107
numpad0 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zoom is Level 4, any experimental SDCs is Level 4 and all production SDC technology is Level 2. Few manufacturers thought L3 is simple enough to at least try, but all were abandoned for above reasons. By definitions, Level 2: driver always pays attention Level 3: car pays attention, may request driver Level 4: car do not require driver This seems simple enough, but Level 3 requires car to be able to drive entirely by…

Thanks for defining. I’m missing something: what is the purpose of level 3. Isn’t level 4 all you could ask for?

The difference is simply non-realtime corner cases. Most of driving is relatively straightforward processing for the human brain. But every once in a while, something weird happens: humans controlling traffic in an unexpected way, something weird happens to the road and a new emergent order arises from communication with the driver, a cop comes to the window and tells you some detail about the way the road is closed.

I don't drive much, but I still hit cases like this periodically, especially when driving through the canyons. From the user's perspective it's effectively the equivalent of taking transit, with very occasional non-realtime takeovers. By contrast, L4 can do all the things that don't require a human in the car at all, like cargo or getting to their next pickup.

Re: Amazon to pay $1B+ for Zoox

#145

Post by wutbrodo »

onion2k wrote: post #40
opportune wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always find it amazing that people like this are able to finagle their way into meaningful positions in SV (this is also partially in response to the bloomberg article sibling comment).

In the SV investor mind he went from running a company of creative people to running a different company of creative people. What those people actually do doesn't really matter. "CEO skills" transfer between companies quite well.

The task of a CEO in a pre-product research company is pretty different, I'd imagine. The fact that he was replaced is weak Bayesian evidence in that direction.

Re: Amazon to pay $1B+ for Zoox

#146

Post by wutbrodo »

0x8BADF00D wrote: post #141
wutbrodo wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tangentially, it seems like calling people LARPers has very rapidly become a universally-used cliche. Has anyone else noticed that? I've seen it used for months, sparingly, but in the last couple of weeks it's everywhere (I've seen it literally three times this morning, on different fora about vastly different topics).

It’s particularly applicable to startups that burn through a bunch of cash and then exit for a pittance.

Sure, I wasn't trying to make any point about your comment. I just thought it was a really fascinating example of how language spreads and evolves,slowly at first then all at once. Please excuse the musing haha

Re: Amazon to pay $1B+ for Zoox

#147

Post by treis »

numpad0 wrote: post #68
jedberg wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I rode in a Zoox car two years ago. It was already at level 3, almost 4. The driver took over once but didn’t even have to. The car was about to do the same thing the driver did, he just got nervous.

Zoom is Level 4, any experimental SDCs is Level 4 and all production SDC technology is Level 2. Few manufacturers thought L3 is simple enough to at least try, but all were abandoned for above reasons. By definitions, Level 2: driver always pays attention Level 3: car pays attention, may request driver Level 4: car do not require driver This seems simple enough, but Level 3 requires car to be able to drive entirely by…

There's gotta be a level 3.5 here. Cars almost always don't require a driver and can safely stop and transfer to a driver when they do.

Re: Amazon to pay $1B+ for Zoox

#148

Post by [deleted] »

csours wrote: post #126
goshx wrote: post #83

> Zoox has been by far the most ambitious self-driving tech company as it's been working on developing a fully integrated vehicle, not just the core autonomous technology. > Zoox planned from the beginning to develop the technology, build a car and operate a robotaxi service. Not even Waymo is trying to bite off that much (although Cruise is). Is Tesla intentionally omitted or am I missing something?

Disclaimer up front: I work for GM, this is solely my opinion and it is my opinion alone. I think the tech press doesn't believe that Tesla is building a self-driving product. I don't know if camera based computer vision by itself will ever be enough for full self driving. I think we can demonstrate that it is not enough at this time, and we can also demonstrate that human vision also fails at times; human vision has…

[deleted]

Re: Amazon to pay $1B+ for Zoox

#149

Post by Lavery »

whoisjuan wrote: post #6

Zoox raised almost a billion so terrible exit for the investors, who basically just parked their money for several years. Zoox likely ran out of money and nobody wants to keep dumping money in this space given the anemic progress in the last couple of years. But here is an interesting take. Amazon is an formidable acquirer and probably the only big-tech that knows how to squeeze from their M&A activity. They probably…

>Amazon is an formidable acquirer and probably the only big-tech that knows how to squeeze from their M&A activity.

Not really sure how you're using "squeeze" here, but Instagram and Whatsapp were both, with the benefit of hindsight, phenomenally successful acquisitions.

Re: Amazon to pay $1B+ for Zoox

#150

Post by goshx »

csours wrote: post #126
goshx wrote: post #83

> Zoox has been by far the most ambitious self-driving tech company as it's been working on developing a fully integrated vehicle, not just the core autonomous technology. > Zoox planned from the beginning to develop the technology, build a car and operate a robotaxi service. Not even Waymo is trying to bite off that much (although Cruise is). Is Tesla intentionally omitted or am I missing something?

Disclaimer up front: I work for GM, this is solely my opinion and it is my opinion alone. I think the tech press doesn't believe that Tesla is building a self-driving product. I don't know if camera based computer vision by itself will ever be enough for full self driving. I think we can demonstrate that it is not enough at this time, and we can also demonstrate that human vision also fails at times; human vision has…

To me, it seems someone from Zoox wrote the article.

There are many tech and non-tech press which didn't believe in anything posted on the "master plans" published by Tesla, and they are still in denial.

Meanwhile, Tesla has been making huge leaps of progress and collecting billions of miles worth of data to improve their systems. What is available right now, and has been so for a couple of years, is unmatched by any of their competitors.

I am interested to see how Zoox and others will compete against massive amounts of data on corner case scenarios and real-world driving.

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