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Waymo CEO dismisses Tesla self-driving plan: “This is not how it works”

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Re: Waymo CEO dismisses Tesla self-driving plan: “This is not how it works”

#111
post #92
post #35

I worked with a self-driving product team a couple of years ago. Tesla's approach was looked upon with suspicion and often openly mocked. Tesla's entire self-driving strategy is led by Karpathy, who while brilliant, is an under-experienced researcher with a narrow expertise in large scale 2D CNNs. Tesla (and Comma.ai ?) seem to be the only groups that find Lidar unnecessary for L5 self-driving. I completely agree wit…

> Either I am in control or I am not. Anything in between is a recipe for distraction, and by proxy, disaster. That's why I disable the anti-locking brake system and only drive a car with a manual transmission.

That is an entirely unfaithful reading of what I said.

Convenience features that always work are good. Cruise control and lane keep assist frequently fail, and take control away from you in a way that disallows you from maneuvering to safety.

I can't think of a single instance where Automatic transmissions or ABS misbehave. If my transmission or braking failed in 1/100 instances, then I'd stop using them too.

Re: Waymo CEO dismisses Tesla self-driving plan: “This is not how it works”

#112

Not buying the storyline. Certainly Tesla will have to keep upgrading its systems to achieve true FSD. They could even decide that LIDAR has become cheap enough to use anyway. What they have is cars on the road collecting data. They'll have to collect new data and develop new algorithms on that data but that path is not excluded from them. > "It is a misconception that you can just keep developing a driver assistance…

The proposition that is being discussed is not whether Tesla as a company will get to autonomous driving, it’s whether Tesla’s current suite of sensors and its “HW 3” inference engine will get there. Keep in mind, Tesla has taken thousands of dollars from customers with the promise that they will deliver them “full self driving” in the near future (or actually in the past, as it was promised by 2018). If Tesla revise…

Why? You can argue that CV is enough for SDC AND add extra LIDAR sensors to make it even better/safer (esp if the cost curve of the sensors make sense for consumers).

Just because I can ride a bike doesn't mean I shouldn't wear a helmet

Re: Waymo CEO dismisses Tesla self-driving plan: “This is not how it works”

#113
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FSD rollout is purely driven by Elon’s ego. He’s addicted to fame and power, and that comes from image he created of himself being an Iron Man. I’m pretty sure he got to a point where he believes in it, and thinks he’s invincible and can solve any problem, because he’s so much smarter than everyone. Stock bubble making wealthiest man only helped to solidify that.

I don't know, I don't get that feeling. What makes you think that? I don't know much about Elon, but I listened to one of his interviews with Rogan, and he struck me as extremely optimistic, but also grounded and not arrogant. (I do agree partial-self-driving just seems like a terrible idea. I guess crash stats can reveal if this is true or not, but are perhaps not available.)

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Re: Waymo CEO dismisses Tesla self-driving plan: “This is not how it works”

#114

Anyone wanna bet me that Tesla will be first to full level 5 self driving? Seems to be a lot of anti-Tesla folks here, put your money where your mouth is.

Agreed. The only company with actual autonomous driving hardware at a scale of a Million+ cars on the road right now.

The "autonomous driving hardware" they have is about the same as anyone else. It's just that those other companies advertise it truthfully as a safety feature rather than pretending you have R2D2 as a chauffeur.

Re: Waymo CEO dismisses Tesla self-driving plan: “This is not how it works”

#115
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, I don't get that feeling. What makes you think that? I don't know much about Elon, but I listened to one of his interviews with Rogan, and he struck me as extremely optimistic, but also grounded and not arrogant. (I do agree partial-self-driving just seems like a terrible idea. I guess crash stats can reveal if this is true or not, but are perhaps not available.)

his covid comments last year were beyond the pale. The low point for me was when Shannon Woodward, who played a scientist on TV and to my knowledge isn't one, had to explain to him that tests are indeed not a big pharma conspiracy https://twitter.com/shannonwoodward/status/13275176940992757...

I don’t see any explaining going on in that thread?

Re: Waymo CEO dismisses Tesla self-driving plan: “This is not how it works”

#116
I have a model Y and what it has today is 80% as useful as a completely self driving car. It’s mostly self driving on the highway, and the situations it can’t handle are very predictable: toll booths, stopped cars in the middle of the road, things like that. You need to available to drive but you always have plenty of warning before you need to take over.

Re: Waymo CEO dismisses Tesla self-driving plan: “This is not how it works”

#117
post #51

"I watched a few hours of early unedited footage posted by Tesla owners who received the new software. The software made a number of mistakes, including two incidents where a Tesla seemed to be on the verge of colliding with another vehicle before the driver intervened." What, Tesla still can't detect big, obvious obstacles reliably? That's pathetic. A half-dozen cases of running into stationary obstacles at full spe…

What you're saying is not a capability that even most commercially available automatic braking systems can do well. Several studies have pitted the half-dozen or so cars available with automatic emergency braking systems on them, and they've all been just about the same. Apologies for a lack of citations on this since I have to run, but we at least have to compare Tesla to the rest of the industry, or compare their actual AV solution (FSD, which is in limited beta and only has been for just a month or two).

Re: Waymo CEO dismisses Tesla self-driving plan: “This is not how it works”

#118
post #14

He seems so obviously correct that I can’t fathom how any engineer could see things otherwise.

Musk seems more of a marketer than an engineer to me, even though he's always characterized as one.

Musk has no engineering training whatsoever.

Re: Waymo CEO dismisses Tesla self-driving plan: “This is not how it works”

#119
TSLA and Comma.Ai aren't only ones. Ghost (https://driveghost.com/) is funded by top VCs (incubated at sutter hill ventures, same firm that incubated Snowflake) with a highly technical second time founder in John Hayes (first company is the public company Pure Storage).

They're taking the same bet (i.e. CV + ML advances on a large and high quality enough data set are enough). After listening to Hoetz on podcasts, I wouldn't underestimate this approach. People trying orthogonal technical approaches win surprisingly often.

Re: Waymo CEO dismisses Tesla self-driving plan: “This is not how it works”

#120
post #23

drivers came to trust it way too quickly. Drivers who were supposed to be closely monitoring the system instead spent their time looking at their phones, putting on makeup, and other distractions. Really hope no one dies because of Tesla's autopilot. This is a real risk. Quoting from below: if the car does it right 99% of the time it's just human nature to stop paying attention. The article makes a great point that s…

People die all the time, there are even higher profile cases like the Apple Engineer who slammed in the barriers at full speed: https://www.kqed.org/news/11801138/apple-engineer-killed-in-... There are some spectacular failures that are very scary because the car does something that a person would never do, unless unconscious, like this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfmAG4dk-rU You don't hear much about it pro…

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