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The Waymo World Model

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Re: The Waymo World Model

#151

Post by permenant »

seanhunter wrote: post #40
NullHypothesist wrote: post #16

I wonder if they can simulate the Beatles crossing the street at Abbey Road in the late '60s

As a Londoner who used to have to ride up Abbey Road at least once per week there are people on that crossing pretty much all day every day reproducing that picture. So now Waymo are in Beta in London[1] they have only to drive up there and they'll get plenty of footage they could use for taht. [1] I've seen a couple of them but they're not available to hire yet and are still very rare.

Will Google finally fund Christopher Wren's post great fire "wide streets" rebuild of the City?

Re: The Waymo World Model

#152

Post by themafia »

smcl wrote: post #144

The Waymo driving model: hire some guys in Philippines: https://futurism.com/advanced-transport/waymos-controlled-wo...

Dig deep enough into any "AI" idea and you'll find the bottom end of the scam looks exactly like this.

We've simply relabeled the "Mechanical Turk" into "AI."

The rest is built on stolen copyrighted data.

The new corporate model: "just lie the government clearly doesn't give a shit anymore."

Re: The Waymo World Model

#153

Post by ra7 »

jmux wrote: post #85
menaerus wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How expensive is their lidar system?

Waymo does their LiDAR in-house, so unfortunately we don’t know the specs or the cost

We know Waymo reduced their LiDAR price from $75,000 to ~$7500 back in 2017 when they started designing them in-house: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/01/googles-waymo-invests-i...

That was 2 generations of hardware ago (4th gen Chrysler Pacificas). They are about to introduce 6th gen hardware. It's a safe bet that it's much cheaper now, given how mass produced LiDARs cost ~$200.

Re: The Waymo World Model

#154

Post by sdf2erf »

ASalazarMX wrote: post #150
sdf2erf wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Waymo as a robot in the same way" Erm, a dishwasher, washing machine, automated vacuum can be considered robots. Im confused as to this obsession of the term - there are many robots that already exist. Robotics have been involved in the production of cars for decades. ......

I think the (gray) line is the degree of autonomy. My washing machine makes very small, predictable decisions, while a Waymo has to manage uncertainty most of the time.

Its irrelevant. A robot is a robot.

Dictionary def: "a machine controlled by a computer that is used to perform jobs automatically."

Re: The Waymo World Model

#155

Post by ra7 »

codexb wrote: post #142
ra7 wrote: post #22

The novel aspect here seems to be 3D LiDAR output from 2D video using post-training. As far as I'm aware, no other video world models can do this. IMO, access to DeepMind and Google infra is a hugely understated advantage Waymo has that no other competitor can replicate.

3d from moving 2d images has been a thing for decades.

This is 3D LiDAR output (multimodal) from 2D images.

Re: The Waymo World Model

#156

Post by ACCount37 »

smeeth wrote: post #95
mattlondon wrote: post #89

Suddenly all this focus on world models by Deep mind starts to make sense. I've never really thought of Waymo as a robot in the same way as e.g. a Boston Dynamics humanoid, but of course it is a robot of sorts. Google/Alphabet are so vertically integrated for AI when you think about it. Compare what they're doing - their own power generation , their own silicon, their own data centers, search Gmail YouTube Gemini wor…

I always understood this to be why Tesla started working on humanoid robots

Pretty much. They banked on "if we can solve FSD, we can partially solve humanoid robot autonomy, because both are robots operating in poorly structured real world environments".

Re: The Waymo World Model

#158

Post by ASalazarMX »

smcl wrote: post #144

The Waymo driving model: hire some guys in Philippines: https://futurism.com/advanced-transport/waymos-controlled-wo...

This is not false, but gives the wrong idea that foreigners are driving them in real time.

> After being pressed for a breakdown on where these overseas operators operate, Peña said he didn’t have those stats, explaining that some operators live in the US, but others live much further away, including in the Philippines.

> “They provide guidance,” he argued. “They do not remotely drive the vehicles. Waymo asks for guidance in certain situations and gets an input, but the Waymo vehicle is always in charge of the dynamic driving tasks, so that is just one additional input.”

Re: The Waymo World Model

#159

Post by askl »

pnut wrote: post #70
runarberg wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Autonomous private cars is not the technological progress you think it is. We’ve had autonomous trains for decades, and while it provides us with a more efficient and cost effective public transit system, it didn’t open the doors for the next revolutionary technology. Self driving cars is a dead end technology, that will introduce a whole host of new problems which are already solved with public transit, better urban…

Nope. Humans are statistically fallible and their attention is too valuable to be obliged to a mundane task like executing navigation commands. Redesigning and rebuilding city transportation infrastructure isn't happening, look around. Also personal agency limits public transportation as a solution.

> Redesigning and rebuilding city transportation infrastructure isn't happening, look around.

The US already did it once (just in the wrong direction) by redesigning all cities to be unfriendly to humans and only navigable by cars. It should be technically possible to revert that mistake.

Re: The Waymo World Model

#160

Post by drewmate »

runarberg wrote: post #53
0x457 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, let's stop all progress and roll-back all automation to keep hypothetical angry people with guns happy.

Autonomous private cars is not the technological progress you think it is. We’ve had autonomous trains for decades, and while it provides us with a more efficient and cost effective public transit system, it didn’t open the doors for the next revolutionary technology. Self driving cars is a dead end technology, that will introduce a whole host of new problems which are already solved with public transit, better urban…

Unfortunately, many of our urban areas have already been planned (for better or worse) for cars and not the density that makes public transit viable. Autonomous cars will solve a host of problems for the old, young, mobility limited, and just about everyone else.

It will prove disruptive to the driving industry, but I think we’ve been through worse disruptions and fared the better for it.

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