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The Waymo World Model

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Re: The Waymo World Model

#191

Post by jellojello »

smallmancontrov wrote: post #167
ASalazarMX wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At first I gave him the benefit of the doubt, like that weird decision of Steve Jobs banning Adobe Flash, which ran most of the fun parts of the Internet back then, that ended up spreading HTML5. Now I just think he refused LIDAR on purely aesthetic reasons. The cost is not even that significant compared to the overall cost of a Tesla.

His stated reason was that he wanted the team focused on the driving problem, not sensor fusion "now you have two problems" problems. People assumed cost was the real reason, but it seems unfair to blame him for what people assumed. Don't get me wrong, I don't like him either, but that's not due to his autonomous driving leadership decisions, it's because of shitting up twitter, shitting up US elections with handouts…

Sensor fusion is an issue, one that is solvable over time and investment in the driving model, but sensor-can't-see-anything is a show stopper.

Having a self-driving solution that can be totally turned off with a speck of mud, heavy rain, morning dew, bright sunlight at dawn and dusk.. you can't engineer your way out of sensor-blindness.

I don't want a solution that is available to use 98% of the time, I want a solution that is always-available and can't be blinded by a bad lighting condition.

I think he did it because his solution always used the crutch of "FSD Not Available, Right hand Camera is Blocked" messaging and "Driver Supervision" as the backstop to any failure anywhere in the stack. Waymo had no choice but to solve the expensive problem of "Always Available and Safe" and work backwards on price.

Re: The Waymo World Model

#192

Post by agildehaus »

iknowstuff wrote: post #176
iamtheworstdev wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

he didn't refuse it. MobileEye or whoever cut Tesla off because they were using the lidar sensors in a way he didn't approve. From there he got mad and said "no more lidar!"

False. Mobileye never used lidar. Lmao where do you all come up with this

https://www.mobileye.com/news/mobileye-to-end-internal-lidar...

Um, yes they did.

No idea if it had any relation to Tesla though.

Re: The Waymo World Model

#193

Post by thefounder »

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…

But somehow google fails to execute. Gemini is useless for programming and I don’t think even bother to use it as chat app. Claude code + gpt 5.2 xhigh for coding and gpt as chat app are really the only ones that are worth it(price and time wise)

Re: The Waymo World Model

#194

Post by BoredPositron »

coffeemug wrote: post #189
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…

The vertical integration argument should apply to Grok. They have Tesla driving data (probably much more data than Waymo), Twitter data, plus Tesla/SpaceX manufacturing data. When/if Optimus starts on the production line, they'll have that data too. You could argue they haven't figured out how to take advantage of it, but the potential is definitely there.

Agreed. Should they achieve Google level integration, we will all make sure they are featured in our commentary. Their true potential is surely just around the corner...

Re: The Waymo World Model

#195

Post by hiddencost »

jrm4 wrote: post #163

1. Still hard not to think that this is a huge waste of time as opposed to something that's a little more like a public transport train-ish thing, i.e. integrate with established infrastructure. 2. No seriously, is the filipino driver thing confirmed? It really feels like they're trying to bury that.

(2) I really don't understand why people are surprised that Waymo has fallbacks? The fact that they had a team ready to take over as necessary was well known. I've seen a bunch of comments about this and it seems like people are confused.

Re: The Waymo World Model

#196

Post by coffeemug »

thefounder wrote: post #193
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…

But somehow google fails to execute. Gemini is useless for programming and I don’t think even bother to use it as chat app. Claude code + gpt 5.2 xhigh for coding and gpt as chat app are really the only ones that are worth it(price and time wise)

I've recently switched to Claude for chat. GPT 5.2 feels very engagement-maxxed for me, like I'm reading a bad LinkedIn post. Claude does a tiny bit of this too, but an order of magnitude less in my experience. I never thought I'd switch from ChatGPT, but there is only so much "here's the brutal truth, it's not x it's y" I can take.

Re: The Waymo World Model

#197

Post by AceJohnny2 »

IIUC, there's a confusion of meaning for "World Model", between Waymo/Deepmind's which is something that can create a consistent world (for use to train Waymo's Driver), vs Yann LeCun/Advanced Machine Intelligence (AMI) which is something that can understand a world.

Re: The Waymo World Model

#198

Post by ddalex »

smcl wrote: post #144

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

Have you read the article ? The guys in the Philippines are providing high level executive indications, they don't drive remotely the car or have any low level control of the car.

Re: The Waymo World Model

#199

Post by nerdsniper »

iknowstuff wrote: post #176
iamtheworstdev wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

he didn't refuse it. MobileEye or whoever cut Tesla off because they were using the lidar sensors in a way he didn't approve. From there he got mad and said "no more lidar!"

False. Mobileye never used lidar. Lmao where do you all come up with this

I think Elon announced Tesla was ditching LIDAR in 2019.[0] This was before Mobileye offered LIDAR. Mobileye has used LIDAR from Luminar Technologies around 2022-2025. [1][2] They were developing their own lidar, but cancelled it. [3] They chose Innoviz Technologies as their LIDAR partner going forward for future product lines. [4]

0: https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/22/anyone-relying-on-lidar-is...

1: https://static.mobileye.com/website/corporate/media/radar-li...

2: https://www.luminartech.com/updates/luminar-accelerates-comm...

3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vvg9heQObyQ&t=48s

4: https://ir.innoviz.tech/news-events/press-releases/detail/13...

Re: The Waymo World Model

#200

Post by joshuamerrill »

It’s impressive to see simulation training for floods, tornadoes, and wildfires. But it’s also kind of baffling that a city full of Waymos all seemed to fail simultaneously in San Francisco when the power went out on Dec 22.

A power outage feels like a baseline scenario—orders of magnitude more common than the disasters in this demo. If the system can’t degrade gracefully when traffic lights go dark, what exactly is all that simulation buying us?

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