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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

#221

Post by sudosysgen »

anyfoo wrote: post #198
bombcar wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Garmin Autoland is much more than "apply the brakes", as I understand. But it's still guiding your plane through an essentially empty environment, not something in the same ballpark as autonomous driving.

Well, more or less, the "apply the brakes" system still has to detect obstacles and calculate the optimal way to brake and so on. So it has to deal with dynamic environmenrs. Autoland, not so much.

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#222

Post by sudosysgen »

thu2111 wrote: post #95
stefan_ wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then we can just build trains instead. Perfectly automated today.

No, the physics of that don't work at all. Trains for example cannot handle gradients that cars manage with ease.

Not true. Not every train uses steel wheels, you know.

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#223

Post by sudosysgen »

thomasikzelf wrote: post #93
joefourier wrote: post #50

Some comments are saying self-driving cars are not currently possible and that Waymo isn't successful, but aren't they currently available to the public in some areas in Phoenix, with no safety drivers? There may be many limitations, but self-driving in sunny flat suburban areas would already cover a decent portion of the American market. Sure they might not be ready for chaotic, busy city centres or regions with har…

More context on the -no safety driver- issue. "Eliminating the safety driver is an important step toward making Waymo's service profitable. But it may not be enough on its own because Waymo says the cars still have remote overseers. These Waymo staffers never steer the vehicles directly, but they do send high-level instructions to help vehicles get out of tricky situations. For example, a Waymo spokeswoman told me, "…

As long as you can get a good ratio, says 10:1, that sounds workable as a robotaxi, actually.

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#224

Post by nickik »

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…

Do you know how insanely expensive building cars is? Waymo is already bleeding money. If they were making their own cars, they would be bleeding billions, maybe billions per quarter.

Are you following the car industry? Car startups get crushed regularly, and almost non are successful. Pretty much all of them bleed money like crazy.

Tesla went almost bankrupt over and over again.

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#225

Post by nickik »

foobiekr wrote: post #218
solutron wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Tesla's FSD doesn't work and they basically admit it is a level 2 system and may never be more. It's been Elon with the football and Charlie Brown running for the kick over and over.

The only thing they said is that in California its a Level 2 system for now. Their long terms strategy is the same it has always been.

The idea that they believe it will never be more then Level 2 is factually wrong. You might believe that, but they don't.

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#226

Post by Laremere »

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…

I think you're highlighting the difference in approach instead of pointing out a fatal flaw in Waymo's strategy.

Tesla is focusing on data because they believe they can machine learn through the problem.

Waymo has a lot of data, but is also focusing on better sensors, augmenting them with maps, and ML perception feeding into more traditional programing doing the actual control and decision making.

It's kind of like Tesla and Waymo are both learning basket ball. Tesla believes that if it just plays a lot of games of basket ball, that is the best strategy. Waymo think that playing some games is good, but it should also do things like practice free throws and weight train.

Also, a few misconceptions:

1. Waymo currently only has public service in Arizona, AFAIK. However they are testing in San Fran, Seattle area, and Michigan. Easiest first doesn't mean later is impossible.

2. pre-mapping is NOT a blocker of automated service. Consider how much effort goes into making each section of road. Driving a car by a few times is a trivial cost in comparison. This is further shown by the fact that Google has been doing street view for well over a decade. Also I'd like to see Tesla demonstrate they can drive with the road covered in snow and still know where they are without a map.

3. CEO departures can be a red flag. They can also be a completely benign changeover, or even green flag that the board identified others would perform better in the CEO position. The leaving announcements are always fluff about spending time with family, so it's really hard to tell what's going on from the outside. If this is followed by more leadership leaving Waymo, then I'd be concerned.

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#227

Post by choppaface »

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…

“Mostly it seems to me that they want a 'moonshot' company that has the original profitability of search advertising, full stop.”

Well, when Larry page wrote “we also like that it means alpha-bet”[1], a lot of readers in tech probably mistook him at his word. When it comes to investing, “alpha” means winner. As in somebody else loses. As in what gets optimized is _the investor_, not necessarily the community. The analogy to investment return above benchmark is a trademark Googley delusion—- it’s rationalizing a position using math or science even when the position (applauding investing culture) is exclusionary or even toxic to a substantial segment of the population (e.g. the 99% who either don’t invest or who form the ETF benchmark). Larry isn’t talking about excellence, he’s talking about dominating, and slipping that through with a cute abc.xyz domain name.

While it’s very interesting to hear these stories about Google, perhaps the lesson learned is just how blind people are to Google’s greed when technical adventures are dangled in front of them.

[1] https://blog.google/alphabet/google-alphabet/

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#228

Post by spoonjim »

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…

The fact is that in a company in Google’s position, management attention is a scarcer resource than money. The CEO can only manage about 10 people so each of them has to manage at least $20 billion in business and grow it $2 billion a year. So at 2000 work hours a year, every meeting they take needs to have at least $10 million of impact. Typically the only such meetings will be regarding the company’s main business line, because creating $2 billion of business in a year is impossible unless you are tweaking a $200 billion business. Which is what causes big companies to keep their heads straight ahead focused on what’s already working for them, and what creates opportunity for the next generation of startups.

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#229

Post by choppaface »

jeffbee wrote: post #114
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…

Don't these facts prove the opposite of your claim? You want to build a company with a culture that extends beyond individuals. All of these people left Waymo and the project is still robust. That's exactly what you want! Did you think Google was dead when Craig Silverstein left?

A lot of Googlers left Google for Facebook and yet Search is still robust. And Google still has revenue! Though Facebook is growing faster...

I’m not saying Waymo is dead, I’m saying creating a sustainable work culture for self-driving is really hard and Waymo evidently don’t have a solution for that. I actually thought Krafcik would be a balancer, but seems things didn’t work. That said, Waymo has made some other major HR mistakes... they hired (and soon fired) Tawni Cranz, one of the most toxic HR heads you could find...

Re: CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving

#230

Post by wetpaws »

layoutIfNeeded wrote: post #32
tdhz77 wrote: post #21

Self driving is not possible without changes to infrastructure. We know this because NHS tried in 1960’s and was able to succeed with this approach. Government will have to solve problem first. How? Installing sensors on our highways that cars can use. Anything this big in scale can’t be solved by the private sector alone, you also need better infrastructure.

>Self driving is not possible without changes to infrastructure Humans seem to be perfectly capable of doing it though.

Humans are probably the single worst possible candidate for handling a car
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