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Uber wants to turn its drivers into a sensor grid for self-driving companies

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Re: Uber wants to turn its drivers into a sensor grid for self-driving companies

#101
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Waymo might very well be missing specific kinds of data (e.g more incidents/accidents, near-collisions etc) Also, Uber’s data might be useful for eval, not training (e.g « here is how Waymo would behave vs human drivers therefore it is safer »)

> Waymo might very well be missing specific kinds of data (e.g more incidents/accidents, near-collisions etc) Accidents and near-collisions are exactly the kind of scenarios perfect for simulation. You don't test them out in the real world and risk injuries/deaths. You need to have confidence they're handled before you deploy.

Again, how do you know you've handled it correctly without ground truth? Simulation without ground truth is a garbage in garbage out situation.

Re: Uber wants to turn its drivers into a sensor grid for self-driving companies

#102

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.

Just a bunch of sophisticated if statements, I guess.

Re: Uber wants to turn its drivers into a sensor grid for self-driving companies

#103
post #32

> 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…

> The best example of why data collection isn’t the bottleneck is Tesla.

Exactly. plus any delivery company/dashcam company can provide a bunch of data where ever there is any sizeable population.

About 8 years ago, that data would have been really valuable, but at best its nice to have.

the only thing that is valuable is the breadth of different cars, but even then its not that much of a differentiator.

Re: Uber wants to turn its drivers into a sensor grid for self-driving companies

#104
post #100
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> or the new lane paint. I'd be surprised if this is a thing outside the biggest US (and European, for that matter) cities, judging from Google StreetView there are lots of streets in US cities/towns with almost no paint lines at all.

Do you mean in the API? I live in an European country and I don't think I ever saw an asphalt road without paint lines. This varies a lot between countries though.

Many American roads don't have lines. Residential roads, parking lots, many business driveways have limited markings.

Then there's roads with just the center line markers with no road should markings.

Then there's a whole class of roads of lines over "demarked" old lines that weren't demarked well, or lines fading that should've been painted a long time ago.

I'm surprised you've never seen a non-perfect road?

Re: Uber wants to turn its drivers into a sensor grid for self-driving companies

#105

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'…

>You need boots on the ground, so to speak, to see that new speed limit sign or the new lane paint. It'll shock you to know that you can simply get this from governments, some even provide this in API form

no visual data, you need picture data for that. companies like NC tech do it for like $1m a city. or thereabouts.

Re: Uber wants to turn its drivers into a sensor grid for self-driving companies

#106
post #2

I'm old. Was anyone else's reaction to wonder what Uber was doing for audio-video companies? The original title says "self-driving" and that's much more clear.

Superficial comment

Pithy reply

Re: Uber wants to turn its drivers into a sensor grid for self-driving companies

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So yes humanity is demonstrably composed of egoist consuming hedonists Okay. How does this advance the discussion? Obviously then that means opposing that means being anti-human.

There's no advancement of the discussion to be had. If I may play his game: He writes to boost his own ego. By way of making his claim, he seeks to appear wise and wizardly, for who else but he could have made such an astute observation and present it with such confidence; it must certainly be true and he must certainly be better than us. And who would make such a claim, but the one who is pure enough to see through…

He’s a weirdo who’s literally a nobody in real life. He needs a reality check. So does that crisscross dude tbf. Comical to read the bluster in their posts. Like who are you? You’re literally no less common than the rest of us.

Re: Uber wants to turn its drivers into a sensor grid for self-driving companies

#108
post #88
post #32

> 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…

I find the idea of learning from simulated data so unintuitive. How can you radically improve your model with just your model? I take it people do it, so it must work, but i just don’t understand it at all.

I think people are skipping over the fact that Google has had cars driving around taking photos for 20 years. I imagine that was used to build the world model in the first place.

Re: Uber wants to turn its drivers into a sensor grid for self-driving companies

#109
post #32

> 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…

> The best example of why data collection isn’t the bottleneck is Tesla. They boast about billions of miles of data, yet they’re struggling to put out fully autonomous vehicles. Well, TBF, the tesla data was complete garbage with earlier vehicles. They had cheap and somewhat bad cameras in the earlier vehicles that was only somewhat recently updated. And even then, I don't think Tesla is at the end of their hardware…

> And even then, I don't think Tesla is at the end of their hardware journey.

I dunno about that. Tesla seems completely adrift, pretending to pivot with random forays into humanoid robotics or whatever, to the point that I wouldn't be surprised if they exited the consumer vehicle space altogether within the next decade. They have no answer for Chinese competitors.

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