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Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco
101–110 of 691 posts
Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco
#102I'm curious how Waymo deals with the human aspects of cab hailing. With a human driver, you can say "hey looks like traffic is bad between where the car currently is and the pick up spot, can I meet you at X instead and save us both 10 minutes?"
To "good morning dear, do you think you could help me load my bag in the trunk"
All the way up to completely degenerate scenarios like "my friend was drunk and tried to take over command of the car to see if it would work" or "I had to call customer support because when my ride arrived to pick me up, there was a homeless guy hogging the backseat and cursing at me".
Surely there's more to commercializing the tech than just not killing pedestrians. The absence of a driver should create some new weird dynamics.
IIRC Uber et al spend a considerable amount on customer support. I wonder if Waymo can break free from Google's bad reputation on that front.
Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco
#103This is both incredibly exciting and a little terrifying. As a pedestrian, I'm still a little weary around these cars.
Malcolm Gladwell did a podcast[1] on Waymo and their self-driving cars.
He speculates that something very different will happen. He thinks that self-driving cars that follow the laws and unerringly yield to pedestrians will transfer ownership of the streets from cars to pedestrians. Perhaps travel through cities in self-driving cars will be tedious and slow because pedestrians will jaywalk fearlessly and the cars will always yield. It's an outcome I never really considered before.
Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco
#104It is heartwarming to see that Google is doing its part to solve San Francisco's homelessness problem.
Well, yes https://blog.google/inside-google/company-announcements/1-bi...
That announcement was from 2019. Honest question, how can I see the progress made from this investment? Did they build any, some or all of these homes yet? It does sound great though, I hope they did.
Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco
#105elon in shambles
Waymo and Tesla have very different approaches to autonomy. I think both are valid avenues, but it's fascinating to watch them develop in parallel. You don't have to make it into a spiteful contest.
Most people in the Tesla camp (like George Hotz) believe Waymo is destined to fail.
Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco
#106> 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..."
I was able to complete the signup process: requires a gmail account, email link to a qualtrics survey which asks things like name, age, where you live (if SF proper, neighborhood?). (I do live in SF and gave it location access)
Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco
#107I wonder if the cars will always have a human chaperone. Not as a safety driver, but to prevent riders from trashing the car.
There are plenty of rail-based transports that have no driver (Vancouver's SkyTrain is the largest iirc). They seems to get by without being ripped apart by passengers.
Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco
#108Last week Waymo said they are driving 100,000 miles per week in San Francisco. That figure is just bonkers. SF MTA only operates about 450,000 miles per week, and that was before COVID-19 shut them down. When one is on the streets of San Francisco does a Waymo Jaguar just drive by every couple of minutes? I honestly haven't been over there in a few months.
Anecdotally I've seen many more of them in Chinatown in recent weeks, it's not particularly rare to see multiple Waymo Jaguars at the same intersection waiting for the lights to turn green.
They seem to have taken over a previously public parking lot at Pacific and Sansome in the city. There are often 20/30 of these cars parked up there.
I've never seen one without a driver, but occasionally when I look at the steering wheel it is turning independently and just being monitored by the driver.
Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco
#109Kind 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…
The big concern is that driving as a human skill is reactive and adaptive, whereas ML (and software in general) models are pre-baked. If something happens outside the car's model, it will react unpredictably, and strange circumstances can arise while driving. AGI, as based on human cognition, would have the capability to adapt to as-yet-unseen circumstances.
I would suggest visiting r/idiotsincars sometime. Humans are terrible at reacting to situation outside of their experience, and essentially do random things all the time.
If an AI system's default response is "come to a stop safely" then it's going to be way ahead of a lot of human "unexpected situation" handling in cars.
Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
You seem to assume there is unmet demand that you can meet cheaper with automation than with human drivers. I agree there may be unmet demand but I don't see you get automation to be cheaper than a $10 an hour cab driver. I mean if automation was cheap and easy then our factories would all be automated before something quixotic like a car. It is frankly absurd.
> a $10 an hour cab driver Well, for one thing, I don't want anyone in populated parts of the US to live on $10 an hour, not even a cab driver. What happens when we double that? Cost of living goes up over time, but cost of technology goes down. When do we reach the tipping point? Have we already?
No. Look into. Supply and demand.
If wages go up to $20 an hour, then maybe there is general inflation and robotics goes up to $200 an hour. In the world today we have cheap labor and expensive energy. That is why automation is not replacing humans. Look into the history of the British industrial revolution.