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Predictions Scorecard, 2025 January 01

rodneybrooks.com

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Re: Predictions Scorecard, 2025 January 01

#131

Post by kiba »

stouset wrote: post #54
ivanbalepin wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking for one of those metro areas I'm familiar with: maybe in SF city limits specifically (where they still are half the Uber's share), but that's 10% of the population of the Bay Area metro. I'm very much looking forward to the day when I can take a robo cab from where I live near Google to the airport - preferably, much cheaper than today's absurd Uber rates - but today it's just not present in the lives of abo…

> preferably, much cheaper than today's absurd Uber rates I just want to highlight that the only mechanism by which this eventually produces cheaper rates is by removing having to pay a human driver. I’m not one to forestall technological progress, but there are a huge number of people already living on the margins who will lose one of their few remaining options for income as this expands. AI will inevitably create…

Public transit would also remove lot of jobs and yet nobody suggesting we shouldn't build more public transit because it will remove jobs.

This is just coming from using what we already know how to do better.

Re: Predictions Scorecard, 2025 January 01

#132

Post by mgfist »

Teever wrote: post #37
Animats wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solid state batteries. Prototypes work, but high-volume manufacturing doesn't work yet. The major battery manufacturers are all trying to get this to production. Early versions will probably be expensive. Maybe a 2x improvement in kwh/kg. Much less risk of fire or thermal runaway. Charging in < 10 mins.

The one thing I'm curious about with solid state batteries is if there's a path towards incremental improvements in power density like we've seen with lithium batteries? It would be unfortunate if we get solid state batteries that have the great features that you describe but they're limited to 2x or so power density. Twice the power density opens a lot of doors for technology improvements and innovation but it's sti…

For aircraft, hydrogen is the better option. Batteries are fine for very short hauls (100 miles). Beyond that hydrogen is quite good.

Re: Predictions Scorecard, 2025 January 01

#133

Post by Schiendelman »

4ndrewl wrote: post #96
sashank_1509 wrote: post #6

Feels too self-congratulatory when he claims to be correct about self driving in the Waymo case. The bar he set is so broad and ambiguous, that probably anything Waymo did, would not qualify as self driving to him. So he think humans are intervening once every 1-2 miles to train the Waymo, we’re not even sure if that is true, I heard from friends that it was 100+ miles but let us say Waymo comes out and says it is 10…

Nonsense. If you spoke about self-driving cars a few decades ago you would have understood it to have meant that you could go to a dealer and buy a car that would drive itself, wherever you might be, without your input as a driver. No-one would have equated the phrase "we'll have self-driving cars" with "some taxis in a few of US cities"

That's how all innovation works. Ford never said people asked for a faster horse, but the theory holds. It doesn't matter what benchmarks you set, the market finds an interesting way to satisfy people's needs.

Re: Predictions Scorecard, 2025 January 01

#134

Post by elicksaur »

gwern wrote: post #9
sashank_1509 wrote: post #6

Feels too self-congratulatory when he claims to be correct about self driving in the Waymo case. The bar he set is so broad and ambiguous, that probably anything Waymo did, would not qualify as self driving to him. So he think humans are intervening once every 1-2 miles to train the Waymo, we’re not even sure if that is true, I heard from friends that it was 100+ miles but let us say Waymo comes out and says it is 10…

The Waymo criticisms are absurd to the point of dishonesty. He criticizes a Waymo for... not pulling out fast enough around a truck, or for human criminals vandalizing them? Oh no, once some Waymos did a weird thing where they honked for a while! And a couple times they got stuck over a few million miles! This is an amazingly lame waste of space, and the fact that he does his best to only talk about Tesla instead of…

It’s interesting that in my reading of the post I felt like he hardly talked about Tesla at all.

He calls out that Tesla FSD has been “next year” for 11 years, but then the vast majority of the self-driving car section is about Cruise and Waymo. He also minorly mentions Tesla’s promise of a robotaxi service and how it is unlikely to be materially different than Cruise/Waymo. The amount of space allocated to each made sense as I read it.

For the meat of the issue: I can regularly drive places without someone else intervening. If someone else had to intervene in my driving 1/100 miles, even 1/1000 miles, most would probably say I shouldn’t have a license.

Yes, getting stuck behind a parked car or similar scenario is a critical flaw. It seems simple and non-important because it is not dangerous, but it means the drive would not be completed without a human. If I couldn’t drive to work because there was a parked car on my home street, again, people would question whether I should be on the road, and I’d probably be fired.

Re: Predictions Scorecard, 2025 January 01

#135

Post by mgfist »

_yb2s wrote: post #19
laweijfmvo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kobe Bryant basically commuted by helicopter, when it was convenient. It may have even taken off and landed at his house, but probably not exactly at all of his destinations. Is a “flying car” fundamentally that much different?

I think the difference is that a helicopter is extremely technical to fly requiring complex and expensive training, and the eVTOL is supposed to be extremely simple to fly. Also the eVTOL in principle is really cheap to make if you just consider the materials and construction costs- probably eventually much cheaper than a car. I was curious so I looked up how much you can buy the cheapest new helicopters for, and the…

eVTOLs are going to be much more expensive to build than helicopters because they have far more stringent weight/strength requirements due to low battery energy density (relative to aviation fuel).

The idea is to have far cheaper operating costs. Electric motors are far more efficient than ICE, so you should have much cheaper energy costs. Electric motors are also simpler than ICE so you should have cheaper maintenance with less required downtime compared to helicopters.

Of course, most of this is still being tested and worked on. But we are getting closer to having these get certified (FAA just released the SFAR for eVTOL, the first one since the 1940s).

Re: Predictions Scorecard, 2025 January 01

#136

Post by skywhopper »

sashank_1509 wrote: post #11
mvdtnz wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your objection to him claiming a win on self driving is that you think that we can still define cars as self driving even when humans are operating them? Ok I disagree. If humans are operating them then they simply are not self driving by any sensible definition.

Human interventions are some non zero number in current self driving cars and will likely be that way for a while. Does this mean self driving is a scam and in fact it is just a human driving, and that these are actually ADAS. Maybe in some pedantic sense, you are right but then your definition is not useful, since it lumps cruise control/ lane-keeping ADAS and Waymo’s in the same category. Waymo is genuinely, qualit…

Some of them are scams, yes. For stuff like Waymo, it definitely doesn’t match the hype at the time he made the original predictions. As pointed out above, there were people in 2016 claiming we’d be buying cars without steering wheels that could go between any two points connected by roads by now.

Re: Predictions Scorecard, 2025 January 01

#137

Post by skywhopper »

munchler wrote: post #44
mvdtnz wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your objection to him claiming a win on self driving is that you think that we can still define cars as self driving even when humans are operating them? Ok I disagree. If humans are operating them then they simply are not self driving by any sensible definition.

You can make exactly the opposite argument as well: You think that we can still define cars as human-driven even when they have self-driving features (e.g. lane keeping). If the car is self-driving in even the smallest way, then they simply are not human-operated by any sensible definition.

No one is making predictions or selling stock in the amount of “fully human controlled” vehicles.

Re: Predictions Scorecard, 2025 January 01

#138

Post by skywhopper »

Animats wrote: post #10

> That being said, we are not on the verge of replacing and eliminating humans in either white collar jobs or blue collar jobs. Tell that to someone laid off when replaced by some "AI" system. > Waymo not autonomous enough It's not clear how often Waymo cars need remote attention, but it's not every 1-2 miles. Customers would notice the vehicle being stopped and stuck during the wait for customer service. There are m…

He’s saying AI can’t do the work of humans, not that dumb executives won’t pretend it can.

Re: Predictions Scorecard, 2025 January 01

#139

Post by skywhopper »

Mistletoe wrote: post #58
lolinder wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I believe some devs were probably replaced by AI, but not a large amount. I'm not even sold on the idea that there were any . The media likes to blame AI for the developer layoffs because it makes a much more exciting story than interest rates and arcane tax code changes. But the fact is that we don't need more than the Section 174 changes and the end of ZIRP to explain what's happened in tech. Federal economic pol…

But I see so many devs typing here saying how vital AI is to their writing code efficiently and quickly now. If that is true then you need way less devs. Are people just sitting idle at their desks? I do see quite a bit of tech layoffs for sure. Are you saying devs aren't part of the workers being laid off? >In 2024: At least 95,667 workers at U.S.-based tech companies have lost their jobs so far in the year, accordi…

It just isn’t true that AI has made developers more efficient. Some might claim such on this site, but the vast majority of developers aren’t using it, or they find it to be a drag on their productivity (because for most tasks the median software engineer has to do, it actually can’t help), and the ones that do use it are (unknowingly maybe) exaggerating its impact.

Devs are getting laid off, yes. AI is not the reason. Executive/shareholder priorities are the reason.

Re: Predictions Scorecard, 2025 January 01

#140

Post by AlotOfReading »

riffraff wrote: post #81
AlotOfReading wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The public area is SF to Daly City. The employee-only area runs down the rest of the peninsula. Both of them together are the operational area. Waymo's app only shows the areas accessible to you. Different users can have different accessible areas, though in the Bay area it's currently just the two divisions I'm aware of.

Why would you consider the employee-only area? For that categorization to exist it must mean it's either unreliable for customers or too expensive cause there's too much human drivers on the loop. Either way it would not be considered as an area served by self driving, imo.

There are alternative possibilities, like "we don't have enough vehicles to serve this area appropriately" or "we don't have statistical power to ensure this area meets safety standards even though it looks fine", and "there are missing features (like freeways) that would make public service uncompetitive in this area" to simply "the CPUC hasn't approved a fare area expansion".

It's an area they're operating legally, so it's part of their operational area. It's not part of their public service area, which I'd call that instead.

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