131–140 of 152 posts
> “The bottleneck is data.” This seems to be wishful thinking on the part of Uber, and also Tesla. Google StreetView data is probably sufficient. Waymo's expansion into new cities does not seem to be delayed much by the need for more data. Most of the reported problems with self-driving come from transient situations. More mapping data will not help with those. China has the Beijing High-level Autonomous Driving Demo…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess once they demonstrate it working smoothly and profitably in cities like Boston, NY, Detroit, etc. I'll be more concerned? Given that it doesn't really even work too well in places with good signage, lane markings, etc--not to mention no weather--I'm not worried yet. And frankly I'm done with "the future". If it doesn't deliver results now, it's not real. Until it's real, it's nothing to get alarmed about.
> cities like Boston Couldn't come soon enough [1]. > Given that it doesn't really even work too well in places with good signage, lane markings, etc Works fine in Phoenix, Miami and Los Angeles. Plenty of neighbourhoods there have non-existent, defaced and degraded signage and markings. > Until it's real, it's nothing to get alarmed about I don't think there is anything to be alarmed about, period. Driving is a sill…
I'm having trouble parsing this. If I understand correctly, you're taking skepticism that AV's work as somehow reinforcement that they do work? I have no idea what "limited local opposition can be preempted" means either.. I guess to me it seems the problems are pretty real? Like, police departments are struggling to figure out how to deal with all the Waymos that just randomly tweak out and block traffic, or violate the rules of the road. This is what happens when a bunch of silicon valley con artists try to sell some half-baked plan--it's all about forcing it down everyone's throats and making it "uncool" to be opposed to it for any reason at all. Not merely fake it til you make it, but gaslight everyone into believing anyone who doesn't play along with the fantasy is wrong. Is that what you mean by "preempting local opposition"? Because that's super fucked up.
> Driving is a silly job when you think about it.
OK, so, literally everything that makes your life good you owe to these "silly" workers. Truck drivers make your life possible. You should probably think about that for a bit. Yes, it's a hard job. It's not a particularly fun one. It's dangerous. But it's absolutely necessary because despite the fantasists' and charlatans' claims it absolutely cannot be automated. For all we know, it may never be. That's not to say there's no reason to try--I would love to see road transport be made safer. But there's no clear path from where we are right now to that future, and to claim it's "obvious" or "inevitable" is simply to lie.
> The insight driving the program, Naga said, is that the limiting factor for AV development is no longer the underlying technology. “The bottleneck is data,” he said. “[Companies like Waymo] need to go around and collect the data, collect different scenarios. You may be able to say: in San Francisco, ‘At this school intersection, I want some data at this time of day so I can train my models.’ The problem for all the…
Problem 1: Cost and privacy constrain limit data collection.
Problem 2: It makes not much sense to collect and store data that you already have. Yet you don't know that when collecting if it is useful or not.
Problem 3: P2P in urban setting fails at edge cases which by definition are rare to collect.
All of these problems limit AV scaling.
> “The bottleneck is data.” This seems to be wishful thinking on the part of Uber, and also Tesla. Google StreetView data is probably sufficient. Waymo's expansion into new cities does not seem to be delayed much by the need for more data. Most of the reported problems with self-driving come from transient situations. More mapping data will not help with those. China has the Beijing High-level Autonomous Driving Demo…
Unlike web services that giants like google provide (e.g search), waymo and other AVs essentially cannot fail. Like at all. It is suspectible to ‘randomness’ of nature that can be the difference between life and death.
A lot of so called ‘smart’ people are going to find themselves getting humbled by the real world.
Humans are able to make sense of the world around them through things like intuition. Machines do not possess this characteristic.
> “The bottleneck is data.” This seems to be wishful thinking on the part of Uber, and also Tesla. Google StreetView data is probably sufficient. Waymo's expansion into new cities does not seem to be delayed much by the need for more data. Most of the reported problems with self-driving come from transient situations. More mapping data will not help with those. China has the Beijing High-level Autonomous Driving Demo…
Context is super important. Unlike web services that giants like google provide (e.g search), waymo and other AVs essentially cannot fail. Like at all. It is suspectible to ‘randomness’ of nature that can be the difference between life and death. A lot of so called ‘smart’ people are going to find themselves getting humbled by the real world. Humans are able to make sense of the world around them through things like…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Context is super important. Unlike web services that giants like google provide (e.g search), waymo and other AVs essentially cannot fail. Like at all. It is suspectible to ‘randomness’ of nature that can be the difference between life and death. A lot of so called ‘smart’ people are going to find themselves getting humbled by the real world. Humans are able to make sense of the world around them through things like…
(in Homer Simpson voice) Machines do not possess this characteristic SO FAR.
> “The bottleneck is data.” This seems to be wishful thinking on the part of Uber, and also Tesla. Google StreetView data is probably sufficient. Waymo's expansion into new cities does not seem to be delayed much by the need for more data. Most of the reported problems with self-driving come from transient situations. More mapping data will not help with those. China has the Beijing High-level Autonomous Driving Demo…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> When they want data about a school intersection in SF at a certain time of day, they just... synthetically generate it and simulate I think it's more about detecting changes to the world. You need boots on the ground, so to speak, to see that new speed limit sign or the new lane paint. The Waymo vehicle can no doubt react to changes in the world when it encounters them, relaying them back to the mothership, but it'…
That’s dumb then. It shows it’s just brute force rather than AI. A human doesn’t need to be shown every single road that exists in order to drive.
One example, from the end of the journey: knowing in advance where the actual entrance to the business is, or the specific curb cut that leads to the residence, makes it easier and far less error prone to decide exactly where the journey should end. Even humans have a hard time figuring out the right access point for a business or residence. This is a job for an offline process, fed by as many data sources as possible.
> “The bottleneck is data.” This seems to be wishful thinking on the part of Uber, and also Tesla. Google StreetView data is probably sufficient. Waymo's expansion into new cities does not seem to be delayed much by the need for more data. Most of the reported problems with self-driving come from transient situations. More mapping data will not help with those. China has the Beijing High-level Autonomous Driving Demo…
One question I am genuinely wondering about is whether a self-driving car _is_ cheaper than a human driver, once all of the externalities are priced in. In SF right now a Waymo is typically priced a little under an Uber (actually quite a bit under if you count that no one has got around to asking for tips for AIs yet). I am sure the running costs of each Waymo vastly exceed the costs of a human driver to Uber...
There's also a huge sunk R&D cost and an ongoing R&D cost that probably dwarfs operating costs. But the per-car cost drops as more cars are deployed.
On the other hand, robot vehicles can have higher utilization than single-owner vehicles. They can be on the road as long as there are customers. Observation of their parking lots indicates most of the cars are out on the road about 12 hours a day.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
One question I am genuinely wondering about is whether a self-driving car _is_ cheaper than a human driver, once all of the externalities are priced in. In SF right now a Waymo is typically priced a little under an Uber (actually quite a bit under if you count that no one has got around to asking for tips for AIs yet). I am sure the running costs of each Waymo vastly exceed the costs of a human driver to Uber...
Good question. We know that Waymo has about one remote operator/customer service rep per 40 vehicles. Waymo also operates vehicle garages for charging, cleaning, and maintenance. Those probably all add up to roughly what it costs a rental car company to operate a car. Maybe more, because there's more complex maintenance, maybe less, because they park themselves. There's also a huge sunk R&D cost and an ongoing R&D co…
What I noticed about China is that they employ a lot of people to stand around in nice looking government (non-police) uniforms and do various menial work or not much at all.
The US does this to a perhaps a lesser extent with jobs like TSA agents.
Sure, I guess you can do UBI, but what if that’s less efficient overall?
Example given with made up numbers:
Status quo, an Uber driver makes $20/hour out of a revenue of $50/hour total covering vehicle operating costs and platform fees.
Self-driving cars: self-driving cars cost $40/hour to operate, UBI pays someone a wage of $20/hour since there’s no job available. This basically means that rideshares now cost $10/hour more to operate than before.
Or, maybe that person on UBI makes $10/hour instead of $20/hour and gets a worse job to cover the difference.
Obviously there are many flaws and assumptions with the way I present this scenario but it’s a really good question to bring up whether putting everyone out of work is actually going to be a net positive.
Regarding what you said about driver hours, it’s not unheard of to run multiple drivers on multiple shifts with the same vehicle. Not all rideshare drivers own the vehicle nor use it as a personal vehicle. But the other factor is that the drivers who do use personal vehicles effectively subsidize the fact that they can only drive it for a human-length shift. Waymo has to buy every car (more expensive than a normal car) and use it only for business purposes while an uber driver can just use the same used Toyota Prius they use to take their kids to soccer practice.