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Predictions Scorecard, 2025 January 01

rodneybrooks.com

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Re: Predictions Scorecard, 2025 January 01

#161

Post by danenania »

ivanbalepin wrote: post #31
AlotOfReading wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's covering significant areas of 3 major metros, and the core of one minor, with testing deployments in several other major metros. Considering the top 10 metros are >70% of the US ridehail market, that seems like a long way beyond "non-existent" coverage nationally.

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…

Waymo has approval to operate in San Mateo County so it’s likely coming pretty soon.

Re: Predictions Scorecard, 2025 January 01

#162

Post by _yb2s »

torginus wrote: post #114
_yb2s wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Nothing that flies in the air is that safe for its passengers or its surroundings - not without restrictions placed on it and having a maintenance schedule that most people would not be comfortable following. Most components are safety critical in ways that their failure can lead to an outright crash or feeding the pilot false information leading him to make a fatal mistake. Most cars can be run relatively safely eve…

I would expect eVTOLs to be capable of greater redundancy than a helicopter or fixed wing aircraft - with no single point of failure that could make them drop from the sky. It would add little weight to have two or more independent electrical and motor systems each capable of making a semi controlled landing on its own, but must coordinate to provide the full rated lift. Marketing materials claim the Blackfly has triple redundancy. I suppose one could have software logic glitches that cause all modular systems to respond inappropriately to conditions in unison.

Re: Predictions Scorecard, 2025 January 01

#163

Post by lolinder »

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…

> Are you saying devs aren't part of the workers being laid off?

Of course not. The Section 174 changes are really only relevant to software devs—the conversation in the months leading up to them kicking in was all about how it would kill software jobs. But then when it happened the media latched onto this idea that it was the result of automation, with zero evidence besides the timing.

Since the timing also coincided with a gigantically important change to the tax code and a rapid increase in interest rates, both of which were predicted to kill software jobs, I'm suggesting that blaming AI is silly—we have a proximate cause already that is much more probable.

Re: Predictions Scorecard, 2025 January 01

#164

Post by _yb2s »

input_sh wrote: post #90
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?

Can you imagine thousands of flying cars flying low over urban areas? Skill level needed for "driving" would increase by a lot, noise levels would be abysmal, security implications would be severe (be they intentional or mechanical in nature), privacy implications would result in nobody wanting to have windows. This is all more-or-less true for drones as well, but their weight is comparable to a todler, not to a pola…

That does sound truly awful. I already hate the noise of internal combustion cars and am looking forward to cars getting quieter.

Re: Predictions Scorecard, 2025 January 01

#165

Post by fouronnes3 »

benreesman wrote: post #42
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…

Waymo cars can drive. Everything from the (limited) public literature to riding them personally has me totally persuaded that they can drive. DeepMind RL/MCTS can succeed in fairly open-ended settings like StarCraft and shit. Brain/DeepMind still knocks hard. They under-invested in LLMs and remain kind of half-hearted around it because they think it’s a dumbass sideshow because it is a dumbass sideshow. They train on…

Does Waymo run on JAX?

Re: Predictions Scorecard, 2025 January 01

#166

Post by brisky »

SavageBeast wrote: post #55

In reading this I come to wonder if the current advances in "AI" are going to follow the Self Driving Car model. Turns out the 80% is relatively easy to do, but the remaining 20% to get it right is REALLY hard.

Agree, that is why the agent hype is going to bust. Agent means giving AI control. That means critical failure modes and the need of human to constantly oversee agent working.

Re: Predictions Scorecard, 2025 January 01

#167

Post by metalliqaz »

skizm wrote: post #150
metalliqaz wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the final boss will be the first big lawsuit against a manufacturer for liability after someone is killed by a driverless car Of course, then we will eventually see infrastructure become even more hostile to non-drivers and people will have to sue their own governments for the right to exist in public without paying transport companies. Strong Towns tried to warn us

Didn’t that already happen in Phoenix? They paused the program there, but unsure if there was actually a lawsuit or settlement.

Wasn't there a human "monitor" in the car?

Re: Predictions Scorecard, 2025 January 01

#168

Post by Denzel »

bronco21016 wrote: post #120
Denzel wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Analyzing Alphabet’s capital allocation decisions gives you all the evidence necessary. It’s safe to assume that a company’s ownership takes the decisions that they believe will maximize the value of their company. Therefore, we can look at Alphabet’s capital allocation decisions, with respect to Waymo, to see what they think about Waymo’s opportunity. In the past five years, Alphabet has spent >$100B to buyback thei…

Isn’t there a point of diminishing returns? Let’s assume they hand over $70B to Waymo today. Can Waymo even allocate that? I view the bottlenecks as two things. Producing the vehicles and establishing new markets. My understanding of the process with the vehicles is they acquire them then begin a lengthy process of retrofitting them. It seems the only way to improve (read: speed up) this process is to have a tightly…

Yes, correct, you’re restating the “risk/uncertainty” in the form of various concrete hypotheses. :)

Within the context of the original discussion around whether self-driving is here, today, or not, I think we can definitively see it’s not here.

Re: Predictions Scorecard, 2025 January 01

#169

Post by KKKKkkkk1 »

benreesman wrote: post #42
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…

Waymo cars can drive. Everything from the (limited) public literature to riding them personally has me totally persuaded that they can drive. DeepMind RL/MCTS can succeed in fairly open-ended settings like StarCraft and shit. Brain/DeepMind still knocks hard. They under-invested in LLMs and remain kind of half-hearted around it because they think it’s a dumbass sideshow because it is a dumbass sideshow. They train on…

Which structural limits of TF2 and PyTorch were fixed via the Jax ecosystem?

Re: Predictions Scorecard, 2025 January 01

#170

Post by dingnuts »

HenryBemis wrote: post #126
Denzel wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re narrowing the market for self-driving to the ridehail market in the top 10 US metros. That’s kinda moving the goal posts, my friend, and completely ignoring the promises made by self-driving companies. The promise has been that self-driving would replace driving in general because it’d be safer, more economical, etc. The promise has been that you’d be able to send your autonomous car from city to city without…

> ..is a tiny part of a tiny market in a single nation in the world. Calculator was a small device that was made in one tiny market in one nation in the world. Now we all got a couple of hardware ones in our desk drawers, and a couple software ones on each smartphone. If a driving car can perform 'well' (Your Definition May Vary - YDMV) in NY/Chicago/etc. then it can perform equally 'well' in London, Paris, Berlin, B…

if you had read the F-ing article, which you clearly did not, you would see that you are committing the sin of exponentiation: assuming that all tech advances exponentially because microprocessor development did (for awhile).

Development of this technology appears to be logarithmic, not exponential.

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