I'll never forget I almost got murdered terminator style by a Cruise while riding my bicycle around SF... hopefully they figured that out.
That's awful. I am almost murdered daily and I live in a city without self driving cars.
Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco
61–70 of 691 posts
Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Disclosure: I work at Waymo. At least the current fleets of AVs (Waymo, Cruise, etc.) are "obviously" potentially autonomous. I'm honestly more cautious now as a pedestrian when I see a Tesla coming after the FSD videos. I wish I could know "Is that Tesla owner using the FSD mode?"...
> "obviously" potentially I count three distinct hedges there :) It's cool tho, congrats on the expansion!
I'm really bad at hedging and parenthetical remarks! (I guess I should add "quotes", too!)
Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco
#63> We can’t wait to hear from more San Franciscans as they experience the Waymo Driver themselves. Beginning later today, San Franciscans can sign up for the Trusted Tester program and help us shape the future of mobility in this city. Just download the Waymo One app to get involved. Anyone else got this to work? I only see a message that says "It looks like you're not in our service area..."
Perhaps they really do mean, "Beginning later today" and it will be available for your area later today?
Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco
#64It's fantastic to see Waymo's progress. SF is a real nightmare to drive. If they can nail it there, that's 2/2 for busy, urban street driving (SF) and "boring" suburban driving (Chandler, AZ). They've been quietly very confident of their tech, but this is a real test. Tangentially, I've also noticed that Waymo has picked up pace ever since the recent leadership changes. They are publishing more blog posts, offering m…
It may not scale to rural areas though. There are some roads were you don't need to look at the road in front of your: it is there and nothing else is. Instead you need to watch the ditches in a wide area around because that is where wildlife will jump out of in front of you.
So they’d need more training data. It doesn’t sound difficult to get.
Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco
#65Kind of interesting to consider how this adjusts priors on these outcomes: - Self driving is not possible - Self driving is not possible anytime soon - Self driving is possible, but requires LIDAR - Self driving is possible, and can be done with normal cameras I've engaged with a lot of people who presume self-driving reduces onto AGI, therefore it will not be achieved anytime soon if ever. I wonder which of their as…
Waymo already "self-drives" today, it just is extremely slow at making turns when the road is busy, and if there is any kind of unusual obstacle on the road (such as construction cones that require you to drive partially in another lane) it just stops completely and has the rider wait for twenty minutes for a manual operator to come and take over.
Those two obstacles won't be overcome until AGI. At best their frequency will be brought down a bit but not by nearly enough orders of magnitude.
Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco
#66What's the biggest technical challenge that they have right now? And how much time and effort will it take to overcome?
I feel like there is a lot of disconnect between the different media pieces and opinions I come across specifically when it comes to Waymo's self-driving - from "we're already there" to "it won't happen in the next 10 years".
Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco
#67It's fantastic to see Waymo's progress. SF is a real nightmare to drive. If they can nail it there, that's 2/2 for busy, urban street driving (SF) and "boring" suburban driving (Chandler, AZ). They've been quietly very confident of their tech, but this is a real test. Tangentially, I've also noticed that Waymo has picked up pace ever since the recent leadership changes. They are publishing more blog posts, offering m…
> SF is a real nightmare to drive.
'cause they decided not to build most of the roads: https://www.cahighways.org/maps/1955trafficways.jpg
Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco
#68I'll never forget I almost got murdered terminator style by a Cruise while riding my bicycle around SF... hopefully they figured that out.
Can you elaborate more on how?
HN is getting to reddit's status where people make comments and everyone just upvotes because it sounds good to them.
Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco
#69> We can’t wait to hear from more San Franciscans as they experience the Waymo Driver themselves. Beginning later today, San Franciscans can sign up for the Trusted Tester program and help us shape the future of mobility in this city. Just download the Waymo One app to get involved. Anyone else got this to work? I only see a message that says "It looks like you're not in our service area..."
Perhaps they really do mean, "Beginning later today" and it will be available for your area later today?
I skimmed past that detail. Thanks!
Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco
#70Kind of interesting to consider how this adjusts priors on these outcomes: - Self driving is not possible - Self driving is not possible anytime soon - Self driving is possible, but requires LIDAR - Self driving is possible, and can be done with normal cameras I've engaged with a lot of people who presume self-driving reduces onto AGI, therefore it will not be achieved anytime soon if ever. I wonder which of their as…
Yeah it's been really odd to see the take that self-driving must require strong AI. It needs to be done carefully, but it's clearly a manageable engineering problem if you have good sensors.