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CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

blog.waymo.com

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Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#161

Post by solutron »

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…

This is why full self driving coming from a company like Tesla matters. It's vertical integration with hardware, manufacturing, battery and chip production makes it so they don't need any of the OEM legacy auto companies. They are already building the best electric cars available. Nobody comes close. When FSD 9.x is released the zero-to-one moment happens and there'll be no going back. The other companies are going to do nothing but play catch-up and many will go bankrupt.

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#162

Post by bobsil1 »

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…

Last .01% = “assume AGI…”

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#163

Post by bobsil1 »

solutron wrote: post #145
Laremere wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really depends on what you mean by "full self driving". Eg, I wouldn't consider the stuff Tesla is doing as self driving at all. I have significant worry because to reduces attention while still requiring it for safety. If you're talking "Hail robocab, don't touch a steering wheel, arrive at your destination", then Waymo is already there: https://blog.waymo.com/2020/10/waymo-is-opening-its-fully-dr... You might me…

Waymo has to learn the exact space it's going to drive in ahead of time, and then have high resolution lidar maps generated to assist. It's currently limited to use in grid-like pre-mapped areas like Phoenix AZ. Tesla is building a general learning solution such that you can take the vehicle anywhere, and not have the requirement that the area be pre-mapped or 'learned' by Tesla beforehand. Tesla has orders of magnit…

Yep, Waymo approach is brittle

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#164

Post by ra7 »

chubot wrote: post #115
mrshadowgoose wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can, today, go to Pheonix Arizona, download the Waymo One app, and summon a full self driving vehicle. This happened silently at the end of 2020, and was overshadowed by the ongoing pandemic doom and gloom. https://blog.waymo.com/2020/10/waymo-is-opening-its-fully-dr... On the subject of danger. Literally everything we do is dangerous to some degree. Everything. Self-driving does not need to be perfect, but only…

Can you really? I remember that announcement and there was a lot of fudged language. You have to be a "member of the public service". You can download the app because it's in the app store, which is not the same thing as hailing a driverless vehicle. It's not clear that member of the general public can actually sign up for it. Has anyone done that and taken a driverless ride in Phoenix? Happy to get more updated info…

In that 50 sq mile Chandler area, anyone can download the app and hail a ride. I don’t live in AZ, but I’ve seen several YouTube videos and r/selfdrivingcars posts/comments that can confirm it.

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#165

Post by echelon »

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…

I'm willing to longbets $5000/20 years:

We won't have self driving cars that replace 30% or more of driving on existing roads and highways by 2040.

The problem is too hard and everyone's drunk the ML kool-aid. (Just like everyone is drinking the NFT kool-aid right now.)

Hype, unrealistic dreams, and spin.

We'll be on Mars before we have generally available self-driving cars that do not require humans.

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#166

Post by nonameiguess »

endisneigh wrote: post #83
mrshadowgoose wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can, today, go to Pheonix Arizona, download the Waymo One app, and summon a full self driving vehicle. This happened silently at the end of 2020, and was overshadowed by the ongoing pandemic doom and gloom. https://blog.waymo.com/2020/10/waymo-is-opening-its-fully-dr... On the subject of danger. Literally everything we do is dangerous to some degree. Everything. Self-driving does not need to be perfect, but only…

> On the subject of automation. Humanity is on track to have the computational power to perform whole brain emulation decades before 2100. Even if we don't solve the general AI problem through other pathways, we will solve it through this path. Ethical problems aside, once this is achieved, everything will be automatable at a human level of competence. Is this actually true? I haven't heard of this. You're saying we…

This is the kind of thing that is very misleadingly true. If you simply take growth in computing power and extrapolate to the end of the century, and compare it to the current best estimate of human brain computing power, then yes, we'll get there.

But 1) that is an estimate of human brain computing power, based on number of neurons and possible connections. We have no idea if that is really a valid unit of computing "power." Do brain only compute things via voltage thresholds across synapses? Then yes, maybe this is an accurate estimate. But there are a whole lot of subcellular signal cascades happening at molecular levels we can't even begin to count and we have no idea whether or not those are also computing something accessible to the rest of the brain. 2) Matching the computing power of a brain doesn't mean you can emulate it. Emulating something requires knowing the target architecture and software. It is possible we can figure out exactly what a brain is doing to an accurate enough level to emulate it by the end of the century, but we certainly don't know how to do that right now, even if we had the computing power. Remote imaging techniques are not nearly good enough (because again, so many of the processes are subcellular) and you can't open up a brain without destroying it. This is actually a much broader problem in biology and we have figured out ways to partially dissect some animals while still keeping them alive long enough to figure out how a system works in vivo, but doing that with a brain is not something we have ever come remotely close to doing and there isn't really any ethical way to even think of how we can try to figure it out.

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#167

Post by joe_the_user »

lumost wrote: post #128
joe_the_user wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This describes 99% of ML projects in industry.

This may well be true given how fragile a construct most deep learning systems are.

But there are still substantially different deployment issues for different systems. Google can deploy a question-answerer or a search-by-image-description system and lowered accuracy in practice doesn't really do much damage. Google can't deploy a self-driving car with low safety in the same way.

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#168

Post by bumby »

kungito wrote: post #70
roughly wrote: post #48

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've seen a lot of goalpost moving in the other direction on this one, to be honest - Self Driving Cars started as "never have an accident again!" and have slowly migrated to "look, you suck at driving, the robot sucks less, so stop bitching when the robot runs over grandma"

*runs over grandma who us trying to ilegally and suddenly cross the street right in front of the car

Is your bar that the environment should adapt to the tech rather than the other way around? If so, I’d encourage you to take a course in human factors engineering

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#169

Post by bumby »

anyfoo wrote: post #122
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…

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 r…

Also, the operating environment is rather stable for aircraft. You won’t find thing’s like construction cones blocking off airspace that was once available. Even if airspace availability was changed, its not likely to create an immediate hazard (with some caveats like military testing ranges)

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#170

Post by bumby »

mrshadowgoose wrote: post #76
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…

You can, today, go to Pheonix Arizona, download the Waymo One app, and summon a full self driving vehicle. This happened silently at the end of 2020, and was overshadowed by the ongoing pandemic doom and gloom. https://blog.waymo.com/2020/10/waymo-is-opening-its-fully-dr... On the subject of danger. Literally everything we do is dangerous to some degree. Everything. Self-driving does not need to be perfect, but only…

>On the subject of danger. Literally everything we do is dangerous to some degree. Everything. Self-driving does not need to be perfect, but only better than human drivers.

The problem is this statement is written like a technocrat wrote it rather than someone who makes public policy. From an engineering perspective, it’s true that it would only need to be better than a human driver. To be implemented though, it needs approval in the public sphere and not just engineers. This presents a very real publicity problem.

You are correct that everything in life contains risk. Risk is defined as severity x probability. While the severity may be the same, I think humans judge the probability very different between human and autonomous drivers.

I think it’s rooted in the need for humans to understand what’s under the hood (no pun intended) to trust the decision making capability. We already have this with human drivers through the tool of empathy evolved over millions of years. We can reasonably assume we know what humans will do. (Incidentally it’s also why witnessing someone with mental illness puts us on edge). We have no such ability to decipher an autonomous car, especially for the layman. So this distorts the uncertainty in the risk assessment and any accident can disproportionately cause our assumption of risk to elevate.

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