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GM's Cruise alleged to rely on human operators to achieve "autonomous" driving

nytimes.com

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Re: GM's Cruise alleged to rely on human operators to achieve "autonomous" driving

#101

Post by icedistilled »

wolverine876 wrote: post #20

> Two months ago, Kyle Vogt, the chief executive of Cruise, choked up as he recounted how a driver had killed a 4-year-old girl in a stroller at a San Francisco intersection. “It barely made the news,” he said, pausing to collect himself. “Sorry. I get emotional.” ... > Cruise’s board has hired the law firm Quinn Emanuel to investigate the company’s response to the incident, including its interactions with regulators…

People like to say self driving cars are safer than human drivers - but the human drivers that tend to do the most unsafe antics seem to be the humans that are least likely to make use of self driving cars.

Re: GM's Cruise alleged to rely on human operators to achieve "autonomous" driving

#102

Post by AlotOfReading »

_boffin_ wrote: post #97
cheeselip420 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

remote operation of vehicles often makes a lot of sense economically, since you can effectively decouple drivers from vehicles/riders. As you pointed out, this means you can shift to deal with peak loads and all of that - great. Given everything you know now, was it wise to push for expansion over improvements to safety and reliability of the vehicles? On one hand, there is certainly value in expanding a bit to uncov…

The first thing that came to my mind after reading, “… makes a lot sense” was the latency overhead that’s incurred when RA is activated and associating it with drunk driving due to the increased response time. Maybe the article answers the following, but don’t know since I haven’t read it yet. - median, p95, p99 latencies for remote assistance - max speed vehicle can go when RA is activated.

I think a lot of the confusion here is over what's meant by "RA". This isn't a remote driving situation. It's like Waymo, where the human can make suggestions that give the robot additional information about the environment.

Re: GM's Cruise alleged to rely on human operators to achieve "autonomous" driving

#104

Post by cheeselip420 »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #102
_boffin_ wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first thing that came to my mind after reading, “… makes a lot sense” was the latency overhead that’s incurred when RA is activated and associating it with drunk driving due to the increased response time. Maybe the article answers the following, but don’t know since I haven’t read it yet. - median, p95, p99 latencies for remote assistance - max speed vehicle can go when RA is activated.

I think a lot of the confusion here is over what's meant by "RA". This isn't a remote driving situation. It's like Waymo, where the human can make suggestions that give the robot additional information about the environment.

Exactly. Not all remote assists need a low-latency connection.

Re: GM's Cruise alleged to rely on human operators to achieve "autonomous" driving

#105

Post by averageRoyalty »

monero-xmr wrote: post #67
kvogt wrote: post #60

Cruise CEO here. Some relevant context follows. Cruise AVs are being remotely assisted (RA) 2-4% of the time on average, in complex urban environments. This is low enough already that there isn’t a huge cost benefit to optimizing much further, especially given how useful it is to have humans review things in certain situations. The stat quoted by nyt is how frequently the AVs initiate an RA session. Of those, many ar…

Huge cojones on the CEO to risk public statements given the enormous legal and regulatory pressure being applied. I certainly wouldn’t recommend this tactic!

I would. This is the correct step forward to building public trust, which is incredibly essential to this industry and onboarding a critical mass.

Re: GM's Cruise alleged to rely on human operators to achieve "autonomous" driving

#106

Post by pauljurczak »

haltist wrote: post #78
ra7 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain how this supports your assertions? Because this doesn’t say they can take over control of the vehicle or prevent an emergency in the first place. They clear the cars by plotting a new path.

You seemed very certain that I was completely incorrect. My point is that you should consider that you might not have all the details and if you haven't actually worked at an AV company then you do not know what capabilities are granted to remote operators in emergency and non-emergency situations.

Here is a quote from https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/a0w3nb/way...:

"Back in the Waymo office, a “remote assist driver” can view the feeds of eight of the vehicle’s external- and internal-facing cameras and a dashboard showing what the software is “thinking,” such as if it is preparing to stop, or the position of other objects around it. The remote drivers can monitor multiple vehicles at once. If a vehicle gets stuck, the remote assist driver can tell the car how to drive around a construction site or some other obstacle by using their computer to manually draw a trajectory for the car to follow."

Re: GM's Cruise alleged to rely on human operators to achieve "autonomous" driving

#107

Post by Rebelgecko »

tcoff91 wrote: post #87
amluto wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? 100% is scalable, and it’s the common case today. 2% scales just as linearly as 100% does.

That 2% is not the person in the vehicle, it’s cruise employees. It doesn’t scale because it is paid employees intervening instead of the customer driving. It scales in comparison to ride sharing competition but not in terms of people owning the vehicles.

They'll just do what the robo-food delivery startups are doing and outsource the driving to people in other countries who make $5/day

Re: GM's Cruise alleged to rely on human operators to achieve "autonomous" driving

#108

Post by wolverine876 »

pj_mukh wrote: post #36
wolverine876 wrote: post #20

> Two months ago, Kyle Vogt, the chief executive of Cruise, choked up as he recounted how a driver had killed a 4-year-old girl in a stroller at a San Francisco intersection. “It barely made the news,” he said, pausing to collect himself. “Sorry. I get emotional.” ... > Cruise’s board has hired the law firm Quinn Emanuel to investigate the company’s response to the incident, including its interactions with regulators…

Hmm? I saw it exactly the opposite. A lot of people in the autonomous driving industry are driven by exactly what Vogt describes (little girl in the stroller etc.). See also Chris Urmson of Waymo fame's TED talk, he talks about a similar motivation[1]. Its a fallacy everyone conveniently ignores. The woman the Cruise car ran over was actually first hit by a human driver who is still at-large , not a peep about him. T…

> A lot of people in the autonomous driving industry are driven by exactly what Vogt describes (little girl in the stroller etc.). See also Chris Urmson of Waymo fame's TED talk, he talks about a similar motivation[1].

To me, that's evidence that it's performative. First, it's a talking point; it looks, smells, walks and talks just like typical corporate/industry framing and messaging, with even a 'think of the children!' line, and the redirection (from the safety of autonomous cars, the topic, to whatabout something else). Second, its repetition by Urmson is further evidence - that's how talking points work. Third, the public's reptition of it, in surprising detail, such as in your comment, is also what we'd expect. Finally, throw in some tears, 'I get emotional' lines, etc. (per the NYT article), and I don't know how it can be missed.

Could it all be legit? Anything is possible - including fully autonomous cars!

Re: GM's Cruise alleged to rely on human operators to achieve "autonomous" driving

#109

Post by wolverine876 »

pests wrote: post #79
wolverine876 wrote: post #20

> Two months ago, Kyle Vogt, the chief executive of Cruise, choked up as he recounted how a driver had killed a 4-year-old girl in a stroller at a San Francisco intersection. “It barely made the news,” he said, pausing to collect himself. “Sorry. I get emotional.” ... > Cruise’s board has hired the law firm Quinn Emanuel to investigate the company’s response to the incident, including its interactions with regulators…

> performative charade How is it performative? Is it not sad that a 4-year-old girl in a stroller got killed by a car? That it barely made the news? Or is that just not sad and is normal these days?

Lots of sad things happen. Why is a sophisticated public communicator taking the time to tell this very self-serving story, tear up about it, etc.? It's not incidental; he prepared it.

Spare me your trolling.

Re: GM's Cruise alleged to rely on human operators to achieve "autonomous" driving

#110

Post by wolverine876 »

raldi wrote: post #46
wolverine876 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I'll clarify.

What would it have looked like if it had been sincere?

The first thing? He wouldn't have mentioned it at all. He would discuss the benefits and costs, without this now cliche talking-point framing that they repeat incessently. See my other comment for some quick explanation of talking points.
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