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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

#181

Post by mrshadowgoose »

ThalesX wrote: post #171
mrshadowgoose wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and the methodology I've described (whole brain emulation/WBE) is the worst-case, brute-force, but guaranteed approach. The following diagram captures the expected growth rate of computing power, and contrasts it with several thresholds (in blue) for emulation fidelity ultimately required: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_uploading#/media/File:Who... The human brain works, therefore this technique will work, i…

Would it not be feasible yet for very simple organisms?

It's currently being worked on [1]. It's only recently that we've managed to capture the complete nervous system connectivity of C. Elegans, one of the simplest organisms with a nervous system. [2]

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenWorm

[2]https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1352-7

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#182

Post by csours »

Disclaimer, I work for GM, not on SDC; anything expressed here is solely my opinion.

I think SDCs (self driving cars) are great, and will be available in some capacity in the very near future, BUT I think we are at least one more paradigm change away from the dream of SDC.

Take for instance liability. It seems quite likely that manufacturers will want to disclaim liability for SDCs. It is easy to see the roots of that in current driver assist features. They are very careful to call out in the documentation (if not in the naming and presentation) that the human driving is responsible for safety.

If this liability was not an issue, SDCs in hands-off, eyes-off, brains-off mode would be available today, right now.

So how will the paradigm of liability change? Or will it?

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#183

Post by mrshadowgoose »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #132
endisneigh wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

No, it's not remotely true. Roughly equating neurons to petaflops, counting flops, drawing the best fitting straight line, and then announcing a date where the line gets high enough is not a remotely reasonable way to estimate a "worst case guarantee" date. It's not impossible that some sort of thing would happen, but anyone who tells you that it can't possibly fail to be achieved in the next 80 years is lying, eithe…

Please suggest an alternative estimation technique then.

There is a certain # of calculations/s necessary to meaningfully emulate a neuron. We currently have no idea what level of fidelity is required, but we can make guesses for each of the levels of fidelity that might be required.

The estimates that assume the highest (and likely unnecessary) level of fidelity currently top out at 2100.

For the record, I never claimed that failure was impossible, I used the phrase "on track". It's totally possible that there might be some surprise quantum weirdness going on that would be intractable to emulate with classical computers, but we've found no evidence of that to date.

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#184

Post by slfnflctd »

gota wrote: post #33
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…

I think there's a crucial issue with sensoring. Companies are tackling the problem mainly using sensors that are contained within the car. Even with LIDAR (and not just cameras) it is very hard to "sense" the full scene[1]. What if our roads were built to communicate with the cars? What if there were only AVs on the street and they communicated with each other? What if every bicycle, school backpack, shopping cart di…

Oh definitely, I've been convinced sensors distributed in the environment are the only way forward for FSD with current tech since about 2017. Do a test run with a dedicated road/lane for a while, gather data, improve the system and then gradually roll it out elsewhere.

It's clearer and clearer that self contained 'autopilot' units are going to keep failing in scenarios involving unpredictable people & situations. They don't have enough data and never will (without AGI, anyway). So we need to spoon feed them that data by tagging everything & everyone around them.

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#185

Post by ilrwbwrkhv »

dealforager wrote: post #174
ChuckMcM wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> $20M/year really is a waste of time for a $200B/year business. That's the thing though, it isn't a waste of time. One can hear very similar logic from people with investments. They will say "The stock market is returning X% / year and is way better than those bonds with only 3%/year. Investing in bonds is a waste of time." They say that because they have yet to internalize the value of having a diversified their in…

$900M/year is If something happened to their core business, it's unlikely that those tiny projects ( What you said is mostly correct and is exactly what they are doing. The only problem is that at the scale of a trillion dollar company, they need 10, 20, even 30 business lines generating $XB - $XXB of revenue each.

Yup this is also the final thrashes of a dying company. Slow but surely Google will die and I can't wait to see other companies which are born. It's just evolution.

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#186

Post by KirillPanov »

liaukovv wrote: post #137
lumost wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sounds to me like what they shoukd be doing is instead of trying to "reinvest" profits from ads instead pay them out to shareholders so they can more efficiently redistibute it to multiple smaller businesses

But that would shrink the empire.

The kind of people drawn to "chief" positions are not interested in shrinking their empires.

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#187

Post by avidiax »

echelon wrote: post #165
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…

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.

I think it will happen, but in China. We are trying to solve the wrong problem.

When cars were introduced, people kept getting hit in the street. "Jaywalking" as a crime was created to shift the blame away from the technology (cars) to the victims (pedestrians).

For self-driving vehicles, it suffices that we outlaw the edge cases, and enforce it to make them insignificant. The Uber ATC crash? Blame the jaywalker. Kid chasing a ball in the street? Blame the parents. Treat self-driving cars the same way that we treat trains: get out of the way, or you've no one to blame but yourself.

What that leaves practically is preventing crashes with the static environment, self-driving cars, and "normal" road users (i.e. ones that can't be blamed if a collision occurs). This is much easier than the plastic bags and animals and cyclists and jaywalkers and wacky drivers that form most of the remaining unhandled 1%.

The only country that can pull this off, IMO, is China. The mix of authoritarianism plus technical prowess allows the missing 1% of cases to be bulldozed in the name of progress.

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#188

Post by bombcar »

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…

Autoland is impressive but it really is more equivalent to a system (in a car) that automatically applies the brakes than to a full self driving system.

Autopilot is simple and a solved problem. Self driving is not either.

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#189

Post by 0xEFF »

echelon wrote: post #165
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…

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.

I'd consider taking the bet, but only against, "We'll be on Mars before we have generally available self-driving cars that do not require humans."

Both seem unlikely.

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#190

Post by KirillPanov »

snide wrote: post #136
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…

I was talking with a friend who worked at IBM in the heyday. He mentioned that a lot of the time, it wasn't so much that talent got used, it was that talent was not used elsewhere. Stiffing innovation is just as effective as breeding it when you're already on top.

Bell Labs was pretty explicit about this being the reason they existed.

It was also the reason they filed patents. Like the answering machine patent: to prevent it from existing (commercially) for as long as possible.

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