NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF
111–120 of 348 posts
Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF
#112It's like this paragraph is obligatory: > Waymo has had fewer headline-worthy troubles. In May, one of its cars struck and killed a small dog. A few years ago, a driverless Waymo car with a human safety driver operating the wheel hit a pedestrian who needed to be taken to the hospital. After reading that reporters were explicitly instructed to go after tech[0], I just can't not see stuff like this. [0]: https://news.…
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Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF
#113> The Waymo rides were affordable, ranging from $18 to $21 Goes to show you what world these journalists are living on that think that's totally acceptable for a five mile ride. I'll stick with public transit.
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Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a kind of Rube Goldberg contraption for getting around town..... The most complex gizmo possible for the most mundane of tasks.
Moravec's paradox. The things humans do easily end up being the hardest problems for machines. Besides, you could call a smartphone a complicated rube Goldberg machine for the purpose of reading text when you could just buy a newspaper instead, but we don't because they're meaningfully different things.
It's a perception thing isn't it? Like you could imagine things for (human, machine) being (easy, easy), (easy, hard), (hard, easy) or (hard, hard). The first category will be taken for granted, and with the last category no one will fault the machine for not being able to do it. That leaves just the two middle ones as being remarkable.
Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF
#115As a programmer, I won't put myself into that thing. I'm also not happy to be an unwilling participant in this experiment. Given the state of technology and our capabilities to write bug-free software (Seriously, we can't even get things like buying airline tickets correct), I think it's way too early to approve those vehicles on city streets.
I'm with you. That's why, as a house builder, I'll never get into an aeroplane. I mean bricks are way too heavy to fly, the concrete will crack at the first sign of turbulence and how far can they really go before the mains power cables get cut? It makes no sense. At least, unless they're doing things differently.
Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah it's a good thing that cities aren't filled with retail locations that sell liquids that, if ingested, turn humans into bad drivers that think they're great drivers. And it's a good thing that those hypothetical liquids don't form debilitating addictions that make the humans want them more.
hmmm your analogy doesn't totally fit and you might have drank too much of the AI tech bro kool aid ;-) These cars can be hacked as used as weapons ... for terrorist attacks. As well malfunction and lock you in driving into the bay or off a cliff or etc. Open to your rebuttal ;-)
Rebuttal to what? You accused them of being a tech cultist and then started talking nonsense about terrorist attacks that are already performed with cars and trucks and would probably be harder to do in a self-driving world, as well as fear-mongering about "hacking" when all modern cars can be hacked by ATPs anyway, and they're the only ones who'd be capable of pulling off something like what you're talking about. Nonsense doesn't require a rebuttal and neither do insults.
Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure yet a human driver is not a device that can be hacked and then used as a weapon or weapons.
Charlottesville might have thoughts on this
That was one car. The thing with hacking is that it's incredibly scalable. Imagine a million cars going haywire at the same time. It could be worse than being hit by a nuke, and it could be dropped by a single talented extremist.
Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF
#118As a programmer, I won't put myself into that thing. I'm also not happy to be an unwilling participant in this experiment. Given the state of technology and our capabilities to write bug-free software (Seriously, we can't even get things like buying airline tickets correct), I think it's way too early to approve those vehicles on city streets.
It seems pretty clear to me (if you've been to SF recently) that autonomous cars react to pedestrians quicker and are much more careful around pedestrians than human drivers. You can certainly take the attitude "I will only agree with having autonomous cars on the street once they are provably 100000000x safer than a human" but I don't think that matches most people's view on what constitutes safety. Also, that goes…
> We already know that SUVs are more dangerous for pedestrians, but I think most of us agree that making SUVs illegal for this reason would not be a good idea, and is against the American ethos.
As a non-american that doesn't own a car it's not that unreasonable for me :) At least banning SUVs that are excessively unsafe for pedestrians in a collision. Or maybe just ban it in cities where some walkability is expected. I just don't want to die by getting hit by a car
Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF
#119> My ride was so smooth, the novelty began to wear off, turning a trip to the future into just another journey across town. This is the only nod in the article to how futuristic and revelatory this innovation. The journalists sound so bored. I wonder if this is a function of how “around the corner” this tech has felt for so long? Have we somehow become jaded to this innovation before it has even arrived? Were journal…
> I wonder if this is a function of how “around the corner” this tech has felt for so long? Have we somehow become jaded to this innovation before it has even arrived?
The end customer experience is nearly identical to having a quiet driver. A taxi is still a taxi.
Someone having their own self driving car would be a big change. Being able to not own a car because of cheap shared self driving vehicles would be interesting if economical, but does anyone really believe anymore that it will be cheap, given how expensive ride share services are?
Re: NY Times Rides in Waymo Robotaxis in SF
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a ride in a car, it's boring, even if it's driven by GPS and Lidar.
It's a kind of Rube Goldberg contraption for getting around town..... The most complex gizmo possible for the most mundane of tasks.
Driving is far from mundane. Operating a multi-ton machine at deadly speeds, surrounded by other human-operated speeding machines, engages most of our senses and requires total concentration. It's a miracle that it works as well as it does, and it's still the most dangerous activity humans perform on a daily basis. We take it for granted everytime we step into a vehicle that we'll make it out alive. The only reason this seems mundane is because of how often we do it.
So, yes, bring on the Rube Goldberg contraption, if it means it can remove the human factor from driving, and make this activity much safer.