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Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco

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Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco

#191

Post by dventimi »

999900000999 wrote: post #176
dventimi wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We need some type of off-ramp Now, we're talking. Often, there will be handwringing about low-wage jobs from people who wouldn't dream of working low-wage jobs and who benefit from the existence of low-wage jobs. Often, that will be invoked as a rebuke to automation. But, automation in general isn't a threat to workers or well-being. In fact it's productivity gain which benefits well-being by lowering costs and rai…

Oddly enough people are self-regulating, so few people are having children now because modern economics makes it a bad idea for most people . In my grandfather's time you could work a normal job and buy yourself a three-bedroom house in what's now one of the most expensive cities in America. If I wanted to buy the same house at the same city, me and a partner would both have to make 150k to 200k each. And even then w…

I feel you. Thing is, I think there is a solution or at least part of one, on paper. We know what to do. Trouble is, we can't do it because of politics, politics that transcends the usual divisions. It's hard to have a tech utopia and deep income inequality without policy to make it that way. Policy creates markets, and markets create and distribute wealth. How that's done, whether evenly or unevenly, is determined by politics, policy, and the market structures they create.

Patents, copyrights, subsidies, ZIRP, foreign policy, etc., even without reporting to value judgments of "good" and "bad" and sticking safely with neutral terms, all these things involve trade-offs. They have consequences. They do tend to pick winners and losers.

The point is that the shape of society is a matter of choice not chance, technology, or divine providence.

Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco

#192

Post by TulliusCicero »

singleshot_ wrote: post #150
TulliusCicero wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The obvious thing to do is to just have every Waymo robotaxi or car with licensed Waymo tech report in its daily mapping/obstacle data to the mothership, so you can get new changes almost immediately. I dunno if said data would be as high quality as dedicated HD mapping cars, but it's probably at least decent, given the variety of cameras and lidars every Waymo car has.

Further, it seems to me that if you brake hard to avoid a dog, your car should warn me as I’m approaching. I’m not sure why we are trying to teach each car to drive when we could be teaching all the cars and the road to drive.

> Further, it seems to me that if you brake hard to avoid a dog, your car should warn me as I’m approaching.

What does this mean? Electric cars are already required to emit a sound as they drive.

I guess if it has to brake hard for something, honking might be a good idea, but I wouldn't want cars to constantly be beeping at everything in their vicinity if there's no imminent crash.

> I’m not sure why we are trying to teach each car to drive when we could be teaching all the cars and the road to drive.

I'm not sure what you mean. Presumably Waymo's software is the same across its fleet. They're not training one car's model at a time.

Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco

#193

Post by TulliusCicero »

thegrim33 wrote: post #170
TulliusCicero wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla seem stuck-ish to me. They do have some incremental improvements each year, but even after several years of development, their cars want to randomly run into parked cars and other stationary obstacles on a frequent basis. We're not talking about edge cases, your cars shouldn't be regularly trying to hit a concrete wall after this much engineering effort. Waymos do occasionally screw up, but if they did it as mu…

FWIW a quick google search turns up Waymo reporting they have 0.41 incidents with injuries per million miles driven [0], whereas Tesla vehicles using autopilot had 0.152 incidents with or without injuries, per million miles driven [1]. So Waymo has 2.7 times more incidents with injuries then Teslas using autopilot have incidents, with or without injuries. Maybe if I checked more sites they'd give different numbers, b…

This is an extraordinarily disingenuous comparison. A big reason why Tesla superfans have such a poor reputation is because of bad faith arguments like this that frequently pop up in these discussions.

Tesla cars with FSD have a driver behind the wheel who can instantly take over if the car is about to crash into a stationary object. Any time a Tesla would've crashed into something an object but its human driver saved it, that doesn't count in stats like these. Many Tesla owners have reported that they have to regularly disengage FSD because it's trying to do something dangerous or looks like it's headed for a crash.

In contrast, Waymo cars do not have a human who can take the wheel if they try to run into a wall. The closest equivalent is that if Waymo cars get confused and don't know how to proceed, they can stop, then phone home and ask a human navigator to give them 'advice' or a general path; these people don't directly control the car, they're more comparable to a human navigator in the front passenger seat. It's still human assistance obviously, but it's not gonna save the car from running into an object that it didn't think was there.

Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco

#194

Post by TulliusCicero »

bangaladore wrote: post #184
TulliusCicero wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The obvious thing to do is to just have every Waymo robotaxi or car with licensed Waymo tech report in its daily mapping/obstacle data to the mothership, so you can get new changes almost immediately. I dunno if said data would be as high quality as dedicated HD mapping cars, but it's probably at least decent, given the variety of cameras and lidars every Waymo car has.

I suspect its the processing and validation, not the raw data that is difficult. At least for cities.

Agreed, but having the raw data is still useful, especially for less-used routes where it's not economically feasible to send out dedicated mapping cars all the time.

Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco

#195

Post by JumpCrisscross »

a_c_s wrote: post #59
Turing_Machine wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the future, when you're old and quite possibly disabled, you might rethink the whole "walkable cities" thing. I mean, it's easy to say "just walk (or ride a bike)" when you're 22 years old and in prime health, but the population in most First World countries is rapidly aging.

The biggest reason people loose muscle mass as they age is due to lack of use, so a built environment that encourages walking is going to help keep people in shape to walk as they age.

> a built environment that encourages walking is going to help keep people in shape to walk as they age

It's the reason New Yorkers live longer [1].

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/04/29/health/life-e...

Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco

#196

Post by TulliusCicero »

Bluecobra wrote: post #144
TulliusCicero wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm typically very skeptical of Tesla's strategy here, but to play devil's advocate for a moment: Waymo has shown they can make robotaxis work, but the big catch so far is that it takes them a long time to open in a new city. They have several phases before they open fully, from what I've seen it seems to be: safety driver no passenger testing, safety drivers with employee passengers, driverless with employee passeng…

As a potential customer, Waymo's careful approach seems much more appealing to me. I don't want to ride in a move fast and break things robotaxi when it's snowing in Chicago.

Same, though playing Devil's Advocate some more, I can certainly see why "everywhere all at once" sounds more appealing to many people than "incremental rollout to major metros". While I'm guessing that eventually Waymo will cover pretty much any paved public road, that's not actually certain, let alone when it would happen.

Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco

#197

Post by renewiltord »

jeffbee wrote: post #125
999900000999 wrote: post #61

This is both amazing and horrifying. I'm actually confident this automation will save lives. Well of course any system can fail, Uber drivers are often distracted by 30 things, they're fiddling with the app, on personal calls, while navigating tricky traffic situations. However I predict within a decade or so we're going to get to a point where gig work is no longer feasible. It'll take a bit of trickery, but I'm sur…

Gig work is already not feasible. The only reason anyone undertakes it is financial illiteracy. Uber is largely funded by the irrational sacrifice of numerous individuals of the residual value of their own cars.

It's quite feasible. The cost structure only permits those e-bike riders in SF to do it reasonably. But it's feasible.

Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco

#198

Post by mlyle »

bangaladore wrote: post #183
rootusrootus wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> humans rely on two eyes in the driver seat Eyes which are orders of magnitude capable than the best cameras, and Teslas come with mediocre cameras, not the best. Eyes which are connected to a brain, and ML is a looooong ways from rivaling that. > That's a reality of life that robotaxis do not need to solve. Robotaxis do not need to account for things jumping out unexpectedly in front of them?

Again, another claim that a brain or AGI is required to drive a car. Does anyone have any research to cite that establishes this seemingly known fact?

I am not sure that the vision in Teslas is adequate with -any- amount of processing to drive a car. Spatial resolution is limited, as is seeing distant vehicles during merges, etc.

Secondarily, there is no guarantee that the amount of processing is enough, because the extant human systems use much more.

“Cheating” by using more sensors to simplify out complexities and to cover for the shortcomings of other sensors in the suite seems wise.

Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco

#199

Post by mlyle »

mike_hearn wrote: post #178
rootusrootus wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> humans rely on two eyes in the driver seat Eyes which are orders of magnitude capable than the best cameras, and Teslas come with mediocre cameras, not the best. Eyes which are connected to a brain, and ML is a looooong ways from rivaling that. > That's a reality of life that robotaxis do not need to solve. Robotaxis do not need to account for things jumping out unexpectedly in front of them?

Orders of magnitude more capable than the best cameras? I wish. I need corrective lenses for my eyes to even work at all. With that fixed they feed my brain an image that's upside down, black and white except in the centre, which is covered in blood vessels and which has a blind spot. They also take a long time to adjust to sudden changes in lighting conditions, don't do any true depth sensing, suffer frequent frame…

The cameras we are talking about have poor angular resolution, worse dynamic range than the human eye, and don’t do any direct depth sensing either.

Re: Waymo One is now open to everyone in San Francisco

#200

Post by ModernMech »

prasoonds wrote: post #14

I highly recommend everyone try it out if you're in SF. It's an incredibly smooth and sure ride. The cars are really nice too (Jaguar I-Pace electric cars), clean and spacious. The first time you ride in one, it feels truly sci-fi. But within 5 minutes, you're almost bored of it - that's how good it is. If I had to choose between an Uber of questionable cleanliness and driver temperament and a Waymo with a slightly l…

I’d say the same, maybe. But yesterday I had an Uber with a guy that had a degree in history and a love for SF lore, and told me about the tomb of Starr King, and then I went on a quest to find it with my friend. Just saying that there’s magic out there that’s not technological.
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