CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving • Hacker News Board

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#121

Post by jpm_sd » Fri, Apr 02, 2021, 9:21 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #102

Having read hundreds of these sorts of CEO leaving letters I'm a bit jaded and cynical. If you're interested in what I see when I read that message, I rewrote it[1] in more plain language. Google demands a lot of its "other bets" companies. Some might say it asks too much. Mostly it seems to me that they want a 'moonshot' company that has the original profitability of search advertising, full stop. And while it would…

This is fantastic.

You accurately describe the Other Bets climate when I left X in 2015, and I hear it's even worse these days from friends who recently left when Loon shut down.

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#122

Post by anyfoo » Fri, Apr 02, 2021, 9:23 PM UTC

tialaramex wrote: post #34

endisneigh wrote: post #6

That's sad. I must be the only one who thinks full self driving will not happen before year 2100. Is there an example of anything that's completely automated that's dangerous? I cannot think of a single thing. At best things are partially automated and need humans still. The thing is, if you have "partial" self driving, you might as well just drive yourself IMHO. The consequence of being wrong with a car is literally…

> Is there an example of anything that's completely automated that's dangerous? I think this is just the usual goal post moving, if a machine does it then we decide it wasn't really dangerous for a machine to do it. Garmin Autoland will take a plane which is otherwise working and is in the sky and put it back on the ground because the pilot has a problem (e.g. your plane nut husband finally has another stroke† while…

It is so, so much easier to have a computer land a plane than to travel through a road infrastructure made for humans.

There are no roads, no obstacles, usually not even other planes constraining your plane for any autopilot situation. With autolanding, "other planes" might start becoming an issue, but it's still a vastly different level from the momentary and immediate coordination necessary between cars on public roadways.

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#123

Post by lumost » Fri, Apr 02, 2021, 9:23 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #102

Having read hundreds of these sorts of CEO leaving letters I'm a bit jaded and cynical. If you're interested in what I see when I read that message, I rewrote it[1] in more plain language. Google demands a lot of its "other bets" companies. Some might say it asks too much. Mostly it seems to me that they want a 'moonshot' company that has the original profitability of search advertising, full stop. And while it would…

I swear that there is a resource curse for businesses with a singular "successful" product line. In order to expand the business and not have people sucked into the "successful" part, the teams need to be split. Once the teams are split the "successful" team wonders why the "new" team sucks.

In the case that the successful business is Ads/Search... it's tough to compete. I'd imagine even within Ads/Search there is a resource curse between AdX/AdWords/Youtube and every other ad business.

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#124

Post by ilyaeck » Fri, Apr 02, 2021, 9:24 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #102

Having read hundreds of these sorts of CEO leaving letters I'm a bit jaded and cynical. If you're interested in what I see when I read that message, I rewrote it[1] in more plain language. Google demands a lot of its "other bets" companies. Some might say it asks too much. Mostly it seems to me that they want a 'moonshot' company that has the original profitability of search advertising, full stop. And while it would…

Nice rewrite, now I no longer need to bother reading the original!

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#125

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Apr 02, 2021, 9:25 PM UTC

Syonyk wrote: post #96

tialaramex wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there an example of anything that's completely automated that's dangerous? I think this is just the usual goal post moving, if a machine does it then we decide it wasn't really dangerous for a machine to do it. Garmin Autoland will take a plane which is otherwise working and is in the sky and put it back on the ground because the pilot has a problem (e.g. your plane nut husband finally has another stroke† while…

> Garmin Autoland will take a plane which is otherwise working and is in the sky and put it back on the ground because the pilot has a problem... Indeed. For reasonable values of "land" and "on the ground." It's better than a non-trained pilot, but it also relies heavily on the concept of "emergency" in aviation, in which everything else is put on hold and everyone else gets out of the way. It has basically nothing t…

[deleted]

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#126

Post by jpm_sd » Fri, Apr 02, 2021, 9:25 PM UTC

modeless wrote: post #54

I still think it was a mistake to hire this guy and partner with the auto industry dinosaurs. Should have kept going down the path of being independent and building their own cars without steering wheels. I never liked "Waymo" as a brand either. Maybe just retrofitting off the shelf cars made sense if they thought they needed hundreds of thousands of cars ASAP, but it turns out they would have had plenty of time to d…

You are very, very wrong. I saw the sausage being made. The "koala" car was ... not a success.

Building a car is so hard. And Google mostly sucks at hardware manufacturing. There are good reasons why their market share of Chromebooks, Android phones, etc. is vanishingly small.

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#127

Post by anyfoo » Fri, Apr 02, 2021, 9:27 PM UTC

nsp wrote: post #42

endisneigh wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think this is just the usual goal post moving, if a machine does it then we decide it wasn't really dangerous for a machine to do it. I strongly disagree. Most machines are not capable of killing you because it makes a mistake. Do you have an example of something humans did that could kill them that was automated completely that still can kill them, but generally does not anymore? An elevator is one example, but…

Fully automated train systems? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automated_train_system... Not nearly as complex a problem as self driving cars, but I'd still rather not get hit by a train

Yes, not nearly. Not anywhere close to the complexity needed for self driving cars. Trains run on closed, limited, well-signaled infrastructure, which (comparably) makes it fairly easy to "avoid other trains" (as long as the signaling, coordinated externally, works--if it doesn't the train is likely programmed to just stop until it does again).

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#128

Post by lumost » Fri, Apr 02, 2021, 9:27 PM UTC

joe_the_user wrote: post #110

choppaface wrote: post #82

All of the big players in self-driving have shown that while they can try to solve the tech problem, nobody can solve the team problem. Self-driving brings together people with very diverse backgrounds (perception, planning, controls, hardware, safety, rideshare product, etc), very diverse incentives (established automakers vs start-up founders vs VC investors), and throws them in a pot with a huge amount of money an…

This seems like a cause and effect confusion. Because no one can solve the tech problem, no one wants to stick around for the point where the failure is obvious. Especially, for a while, self-driving cars have been at the level that impressive demos are possible but actual deployment isn't. So a fine career move is sticking around for long enough to create a demo and then leaving and blaming the failure on your succe…

This describes 99% of ML projects in industry. There is a reason the incentives are such that a science team creates a solution and then a theoretical engineering team deploys it. The Science team gets credit for the analysis/prototype but the prototype is so delayed getting to production that only the engineers take the blame or the scientists have moved on.

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#129

Post by senkora » Fri, Apr 02, 2021, 9:30 PM UTC

stefan_ wrote: post #79

slibhb wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A interesting analogy is the Washington DC Metro, which was automated but now isn't due to a significant accident in 2009 which killed 9 people. That's a train on rails. We have much less tolerance for computers killing people compared to people killing people.

You would think that but then that Uber car ran over a pedestrian in the middle of a typical ultra wide deserted American throughfare with perfect lighting and.. kinda nothing happened? My pulse still rises when I think of that dashcam video they released that predictably shows nothing to blame that lady their negligence killed. Maybe the common denominator is just cars. The regulators are fully absent - they care ab…

That incident basically ended Uber ATG. I wouldn’t say that nothing happened.

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#130

Post by solutron » Fri, Apr 02, 2021, 9:32 PM UTC

I don't wanna be 'that guy' but the news of this on the same day of Tesla's Q1 p/d beat speaks volumes about who's winning in this space. Watch the FSD beta vids, especially the Weimo & Tesla comparison in Phoenix. It's clear who's going to dominate this space.