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Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

blog.waymo.com

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Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#171

Post by sandworm101 »

sschueller wrote: post #123

If Google can't do it with its massive resources and sensors don't ever expect a Tesla to perform better than this. It's time for Elon to pay the piper and refund all users who were hoodwinked into purchasing FSD. Especially people who's cars are nearing end of life.

>> who were hoodwinked into purchasing FSD.

Fools and their money. Like most every expensive car, Teslas are luxury vehicles and fashion statements. People buy them because they are cool. That product was delivered. As for future features, nobody should believe Telsa's advertising any more than we do Microsoft's advertising about how the next version of Windows will solve all our computing problems. The hamburger never looks as good as it does in the commercial. Demanding such things post-purchase, after the test drive demonstrates the deficiencies of the real product, is simply buyers remorse.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#172

Post by dragontamer »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #137
sschueller wrote: post #123

If Google can't do it with its massive resources and sensors don't ever expect a Tesla to perform better than this. It's time for Elon to pay the piper and refund all users who were hoodwinked into purchasing FSD. Especially people who's cars are nearing end of life.

As I understand it, they just started selling the "fsd capable" stuff a few years ago. Are any of those cars nearing end of life? That would be an even greater cause for concern IMO.

Its not "end of life" vehicles that should be concerned, but instead "end of lease" vehicles.

People who bought a 3-year or 5-year lease from 2016 with the $5k full-self driving package probably should feel pissed for wasting money.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#173

Post by thinkharderdev »

lhorie wrote: post #102

I'm curious how Waymo deals with the human aspects of cab hailing. With a human driver, you can say "hey looks like traffic is bad between where the car currently is and the pick up spot, can I meet you at X instead and save us both 10 minutes?" To "good morning dear, do you think you could help me load my bag in the trunk" All the way up to completely degenerate scenarios like "my friend was drunk and tried to take…

For the first one, I'm guessing you would just change the pickup location just as you tell the drive to meet you somewhere else.

If there's no driver, then there's nobody to ask to help with bags.

For various degenerate situations I'm not sure being driverless really changes the situation all that much. A drunk passenger can grab the wheel of a manned vehicle as well. With a self-driving car you might even be able to avoid that situation entirely by preventing the passengers from using any controls without authorization. They can grab the physical steering wheel but can't turn it until they punch in an authorization code (which they don't have). Likewise you prevent unauthorized passengers from entering the car by keeping the doors locked until the authorized passenger gets there. And if someone does manage to sneak in you just shut down the vehicle and call the cops (just like if someone jumps in a cab without permission).

But humans are great at flummoxing countermeasures like that so it will be an interesting thing to watch for sure.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#174

Post by Wheaties466 »

sschueller wrote: post #123

If Google can't do it with its massive resources and sensors don't ever expect a Tesla to perform better than this. It's time for Elon to pay the piper and refund all users who were hoodwinked into purchasing FSD. Especially people who's cars are nearing end of life.

while it is disappointing that the true FSD may never materialize on cars that paid for it nearing EOL. The FSD beta 9 looks pretty impressive and from some videos i've seen have made some very difficult driving decisions.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#175

Post by kspacewalk2 »

actusual wrote: post #111
MontyCarloHall wrote: post #59

“All rides in the program will have an autonomous specialist on board for now” This tells me that we’re still a long way from full level 4 (and certainly level 5) autonomy in a busy city like San Francisco. The edge cases requiring immediate human attention are still too frequent for the human safety driver to be remote, as is the case in Phoenix. Also, just a reminder that Waymo in Phoenix is nowhere close to being…

Definitionally, the achievement of self driving vehicles does not require AGI. Doing one task very well requires a subset of AGI called Weak AI.

Stacking shelves in a warehouse is one task. Driving is not one task. There are too many corner cases for a modern-day AI system to perform as well as a median driver in, say, 95% of environments and settings in North America and Europe. I think the argument is that such a system might as well be AGI.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#176

Post by mostdataisnice »

dragontamer wrote: post #172
6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it, they just started selling the "fsd capable" stuff a few years ago. Are any of those cars nearing end of life? That would be an even greater cause for concern IMO.

Its not "end of life" vehicles that should be concerned, but instead "end of lease" vehicles. People who bought a 3-year or 5-year lease from 2016 with the $5k full-self driving package probably should feel pissed for wasting money.

Also, I don't think we actually know what the end-of-life of Tesla vehicles is. They've not been mass produced for long enough.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#177

Post by birdman3131 »

baxtr wrote: post #165
MontyCarloHall wrote: post #59

“All rides in the program will have an autonomous specialist on board for now” This tells me that we’re still a long way from full level 4 (and certainly level 5) autonomy in a busy city like San Francisco. The edge cases requiring immediate human attention are still too frequent for the human safety driver to be remote, as is the case in Phoenix. Also, just a reminder that Waymo in Phoenix is nowhere close to being…

> I still think that true level 5 (i.e. ability to drive autonomously everywhere with zero human oversight with a safety record equivalent to the median human driver) requires AGI. This might be true. Most of the time (95%) I am on complete human brain autopilot when I’m driving but those other 5% need my full focus and attention. I shut of the radio and tell other passengers to be quite (if I have the time for it).

Anybody who rides with me on a normal basis have come to learn to recognize the sudden stop halfway through a word when I switch from autopilot brain to active driving. There are times when you need more focus on everything than others.

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#178

Post by kspacewalk2 »

hn_go_brrrrr wrote: post #85

I wonder if the cars will always have a human chaperone. Not as a safety driver, but to prevent riders from trashing the car.

This problem has been solved when it comes to hotel rooms, or rental cars. What would be fundamentally different when it comes to autonomous cars?

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#179

Post by pnathan »

bluGill wrote: post #38
ra7 wrote: post #19

It's fantastic to see Waymo's progress. SF is a real nightmare to drive. If they can nail it there, that's 2/2 for busy, urban street driving (SF) and "boring" suburban driving (Chandler, AZ). They've been quietly very confident of their tech, but this is a real test. Tangentially, I've also noticed that Waymo has picked up pace ever since the recent leadership changes. They are publishing more blog posts, offering m…

It may not scale to rural areas though. There are some roads were you don't need to look at the road in front of your: it is there and nothing else is. Instead you need to watch the ditches in a wide area around because that is where wildlife will jump out of in front of you.

Having driven many rural roads, that is something I would be much more comfortable with an automatic system on: staring around for deer at night is the classic attention task where humans tend to fail.

What I wouldn't be as comfortable with is the "random sheet of ice" or "oh look, rocks" or "suddenly washboard dirt road".

Re: Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco

#180

Post by boplicity »

MattGaiser wrote: post #49
gfodor wrote: post #27

Kind of interesting to consider how this adjusts priors on these outcomes: - Self driving is not possible - Self driving is not possible anytime soon - Self driving is possible, but requires LIDAR - Self driving is possible, and can be done with normal cameras I've engaged with a lot of people who presume self-driving reduces onto AGI, therefore it will not be achieved anytime soon if ever. I wonder which of their as…

I assume that they just don't solve the really wacky edge cases which might require AGI. Many people assume that a self driving car must be 100% successful. To me it is sufficient to beat the top 20%/bottom 80% of drivers. So the car will crash if a seagull flies in front of the camera and there is a deer just beyond it. The human would probably crash too.

> To me it is sufficient to beat the top 20% of drivers.

Computerized safety systems can, should, and are raising the bar, in terms of safety for the top 20% of drivers. "Self-Driving Cars" aren't competing in a static environment, similar tools are raising the safety bar that they have to compete against. This means it will get increasingly difficult to beat non-self-driving vehicles.

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