Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I have formally accepted the CEO job at Cruise once again

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 207 posts

Re: I have formally accepted the CEO job at Cruise once again

#161

Post by robinsoh »

stainforth wrote: post #142
walrus01 wrote: post #26

From the last time that Cruise showed up on HN a while back, I recall I made a comment based on the photos of their test vehicles that they're clearly going all-in on LIDAR + RADAR + camera for feeding data into their autonomous onboard navigation computer. This is directly the opposite of what Tesla has mandated their engineers to do, which is to be 100% reliant upon camera systems only. Somebody at Cruise commented…

> cost of LIDAR units through economies of scale Is there some cost prohibitive licensing on it that affects adoption the way e-ink patents have limited product creation?

> the way e-ink patents have limited product creation

Such incredible confidence in that statement that there is not even a hint or need to offer up any evidence or anything at all. HN is amazing. Dunning Kruger rules here.

Re: I have formally accepted the CEO job at Cruise once again

#162

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

epgui wrote: post #151
2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your examples are things that can mostly be broken down or modeled logically though. Chess are Go are hard so I guess it seems like AI for them means there some sort of fundamental break through. But consider how a human or even a dog catches a ball. You can study physics and learn that a ball will follow a parabola when thrown and the the shape of parabola is determined by the velocity as it leaves the throwers hand…

I absolutely think the type of decision we're talking about can be modelled. I'm not suggesting it's trivial, and I'm not saying there's a nice and tidy closed analytical solution, which is what you appear to be focused on with your parabola/physics-based example, but I absolutely think statistical methods (or "AI/ML" if you prefer) can be applied to the problem. It's pretty much how your brain solves these sorts of…

>I absolutely think the type of decision we're talking about can be modelled.

The possibility is not in dispute. Billions of biological organisms do these things everyday.

But this is:

>It's pretty much how your brain solves these sorts of problems too, there's no magic to intuition or human decision-making.

Is it how the brain works?

My ball example isn't about it having a closed solution. If you throw a ball I can track it with my eyes and I know it's going to follow some path. If there is a gust of wind mid flight I can even attempt to make corrections on the fly. Someone with no notion of projectile motion can do this and never come up with the concept of projectile motion.

The "hardware" so to speak figures this out on it's own and the same "system" can be applied to infinitely many problems without prior knowledge and get results. This would be like showing a Tesla some chess games, and then the car realising, this is some sort of game, and then learning how to play or inventing something new to do with the pieces.

The results so far are really terrible compared to our intuition. We have Teslas that drive straight into road barriers and can't predict that a person might reappear after moving behind an obstruction.

This is even more goal post moving and I admit it's very unfair. But I'm not baby sitting a car.

Re: I have formally accepted the CEO job at Cruise once again

#163

Post by glup »

robinsoh wrote: post #161
stainforth wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cost of LIDAR units through economies of scale Is there some cost prohibitive licensing on it that affects adoption the way e-ink patents have limited product creation?

> the way e-ink patents have limited product creation Such incredible confidence in that statement that there is not even a hint or need to offer up any evidence or anything at all. HN is amazing. Dunning Kruger rules here.

Note the question mark in the OP’s comment. Also, pretty sure the e-ink limitation is common knowledge on HN. Yep, HN is amazing.

Re: I have formally accepted the CEO job at Cruise once again

#164

Post by gcanyon »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #154
gcanyon wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A younger, stupider me was riding a motorcycle on highway 99 near Merced. It was just after dawn on a Saturday, with literally no one else on the road for miles. So as an experiment, at 70 mph I put my face down on the gas tank: I could see the highway lines on either side, but literally nothing ahead. I wanted to see how long I could hold that position without freaking out. Answer: about twenty seconds. This is far…

I have a more vivid imagination than you... I could only last about 2 seconds imagining it before freaking out :D

It was very difficult to do. I still practice this, only while walking down hallways or alleys where the worst possible outcome is stubbing a toe (or maybe banging my head on something). Interestingly it doesn't seem to matter much: 20 seconds is seemingly my limit walking or motorcycling (although I don't know what my walking limit would have been back then).

Re: I have formally accepted the CEO job at Cruise once again

#165

Post by crsnaway1234 »

walrus01 wrote: post #26

From the last time that Cruise showed up on HN a while back, I recall I made a comment based on the photos of their test vehicles that they're clearly going all-in on LIDAR + RADAR + camera for feeding data into their autonomous onboard navigation computer. This is directly the opposite of what Tesla has mandated their engineers to do, which is to be 100% reliant upon camera systems only. Somebody at Cruise commented…

This story is getting front-paged less about the tech or business aspects and more about so many in YC feeling validation through this outcome. But Kyle’s announcement is pretty minimal because it’s really more of a handoff than a validation of the YC country club.

Dan Amman’s original edict to Cruise was to Beat Uber. Uber was not just disruptive in 2016, but they really wanted everyone to feel the size of their ambition. E.g. they placed an order for 100,000 Mercedes S-Classes that ATG was going to then equip. Uber could raise billions easily, and they were culturally reckless, so the OEMs thought them a threat.

When Dan Amman took over, his pay package showed he very much wanted to be a Silicon Valley billionaire (see S-1 docs) who saved GM. And he had history with Mary. To Kyle, Mary is much closer to a boss, but to Dan, Mary is more of a colleague.

Fast forward to today and the self-driving landscape has changed a ton. Uber barfed all over themselves and COVID has changed the world. Dan Amman no longer had a case for making him a SV billionaire, and he never was able to fix Cruise’s culture problems* anyway.

So the change makes a ton of sense, and I’m sure Dan will find some other way to become as rich as sama or Justin Kan. Dan has already done a ton for GM and he’s good at what he does.

* I left Cruise a while ago and while Kyle hired a lot of good people, he also hired a ton of jerks. In some cases he did it personally. I have four different stalkers from Cruise, one who apparently slid into a panel and got me denied a job last year. Kyle, while I do think you’re the best CEO for Cruise right now, you created some culture problems that have caused lasting effects. Focus on what customers want and let the engineers get their job done.

Re: I have formally accepted the CEO job at Cruise once again

#166

Post by onethought »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #145
onethought wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's not finished. Have you asked Cruise testers how many interventions they have had to do in equivalent drives as Tesla FSD Beta? It's strange to me that Tesla who are building this in the open are criticised for being dishonest. Meanwhile ALL the competitors are closed door private development and some how we should trust them more? In an industry that is known for deceitful behaviour.

I'm not sure what you consider open about Tesla's approach. The fact that you can run updates without a license or any clue about what's changed or how it will perform in your area is exactly the issue! Tesla goes out of their way to avoid publishing actual metrics for safety, even useless ones like the annual DMV reports. Waymo, cruise etc aren't much better in public, but maybe it's a small comfort to know there ar…

Sorry you are misrepresenting things a lot.

Tesla publish autopilot data every year. Crashes per mile with AP, without AP, and with Safety assistance features, and show consistent improvement of AP. What do the competitors publish?

You are comparing AP (a traffic aware lane keeping cruise control system) to Waymo (a driverless taxi)? How about FSD Beta vs Waymo how has your experience been there?

By "in public" I mean I can go on YouTube and look up "FSD beta version 8", and "FSD version 10" and see hundreds of videos comparing both unplanned and repeated routes and see improvements and regressions. If I'm in the US I can even get the software myself and try it out (after hurdles)... how much more public could they do it?

Re: I have formally accepted the CEO job at Cruise once again

#167

Post by onethought »

bombcar wrote: post #137
onethought wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not whataboutism. - Autopilot has been "on" during 12 fatal crashes. It's a level 2 driver assist so it isn't "responsible" for those deaths, the driver is. Autopilot data shows it improves safety. Could you explain the unethical part? - The ignition recall, GM knew it was a problem, and it was. The unethical part is super clear. These aren't equivalent at all. Actually this highlights the bad faith attacks on T…

I think they’re referring to the “rolling stop” code Tesla added - which is technically an illegal maneuver but not one resulting in death as far as I know. Autodrive is going to force the actual law and the theoretical law to come into sync, otherwise automatic driving cars will cause other issues by sticking to the letter of the law when normal drivers do not.

It is definitely not "unethical" to have an AV drive just like a human does... Unlawful, perhaps.

Re: I have formally accepted the CEO job at Cruise once again

#168

Post by robinsoh »

glup wrote: post #163
robinsoh wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the way e-ink patents have limited product creation Such incredible confidence in that statement that there is not even a hint or need to offer up any evidence or anything at all. HN is amazing. Dunning Kruger rules here.

Note the question mark in the OP’s comment. Also, pretty sure the e-ink limitation is common knowledge on HN. Yep, HN is amazing.

You've misunderstood his sentence then if you think the question mark is justifying the e-ink claim about patents. And if you look at my comment history, you'll see that this repeated claim/statement about patents vs electrophoretic products is unsubstantiated and no one has been able to provide any factual support for it. I stand by my claim that HN seems to have a lot of Dunningites when it comes to electrophoretics.

Re: I have formally accepted the CEO job at Cruise once again

#169

Post by onethought »

waffle_maniac wrote: post #130
onethought wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's not finished. Have you asked Cruise testers how many interventions they have had to do in equivalent drives as Tesla FSD Beta? It's strange to me that Tesla who are building this in the open are criticised for being dishonest. Meanwhile ALL the competitors are closed door private development and some how we should trust them more? In an industry that is known for deceitful behaviour.

> Last year, Waymo logged 29,945 autonomous miles between reported disengagements. https://twitter.com/TaylorOgan/status/1458169984987942913 > Cruise drove 41,719 miles in autonomous mode per disengagement. > Waymo drove 2.36 million miles autonomously with one accident that was the vehicle's fault. https://twitter.com/TaylorOgan/status/1495801454111727616

Q4 Tesla Safety Report[0]:

> In the 4th quarter, we recorded one crash for every 4.31 million miles driven in

> which drivers were using Autopilot technology (Autosteer and active safety

> features). For drivers who were not using Autopilot technology (no Autosteer and

> active safety features), we recorded one crash for every 1.59 million miles driven.

That's 1 quarter and the numbers dwarf the combined total of all the competition. It's also a safety report they put out every quarter rather than an adhoc tweet.

How many crashes have occurred on FSD Beta? 0. [1]

[0] https://www.tesla.com/en_AU/VehicleSafetyReport

[1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1482817514476347392

Re: I have formally accepted the CEO job at Cruise once again

#170

Post by adrr »

onethought wrote: post #166
AlotOfReading wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you consider open about Tesla's approach. The fact that you can run updates without a license or any clue about what's changed or how it will perform in your area is exactly the issue! Tesla goes out of their way to avoid publishing actual metrics for safety, even useless ones like the annual DMV reports. Waymo, cruise etc aren't much better in public, but maybe it's a small comfort to know there ar…

Sorry you are misrepresenting things a lot. Tesla publish autopilot data every year. Crashes per mile with AP, without AP, and with Safety assistance features, and show consistent improvement of AP. What do the competitors publish? You are comparing AP (a traffic aware lane keeping cruise control system) to Waymo (a driverless taxi)? How about FSD Beta vs Waymo how has your experience been there? By "in public" I mea…

All the self driving car data is public in California.

https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicle-industry-services/auto...

I would love to see disengagement reports for autopilot and FSD. I can't go more than 50 miles without having to takeover for autopilot. Like hitting the gas when it phantom brakes. You can't even use autopilot at night any more due phantom braking issues. I don't even use Navigate on autopilot because it literally tried to kill me on multiple occasions by trying to change lanes into a concrete barrier. Want to see funny. Use smart summon. I wish i could use smart summon and my phones video at the same time.

Post reply on HN