Lawsuit incoming!
Another Group of Google Veterans Starts a Self-Driving Technology Company
21–30 of 80 posts
Re: Another Group of Google Veterans Starts a Self-Driving Technology Company
#22The bet on maps is interesting. I'm of the personal opinion that in the long run only machine learning can solve autonomous driving, but both MobilEye and now this company both have invested heavily into maps. MobilEye makes sense, they have vested financial reasons that dictate what they do, so they can't turn their back on maps which they've been using for such a long time. On the other hand, starting a company in…
The betting is not only interesting, but actually an excellent bet, in fact, very strategic. Learning to drive is only part of the formulas. As I stated this probably 10th time on HN, we need real data about road condition in order to make self-driving really successful. DeepMap is only part that solution, but we still need real data in real time. We need a real network communication in the transportation space. Take…
The problem with your idea is it's well outside a MVP for self driving cars, and we don't actually have self driving cars yet.
Re: Another Group of Google Veterans Starts a Self-Driving Technology Company
#23When companies pay each engineer X and earn 10 times X on each engineer, this is inevitable. Near as I can tell, this is a strategy that is helping engineers retain more of the value they are creating. If the difference was more subtle such as 2 to 3 times X, then the incentive to go through this much trouble to retain much of the value you create is much smaller.
nit: self-driving talent doesn't currently earn anything, but rather holds some long-term strategic value I would summarize this effect as BigCorp HR being much more disciplined/constrained on individual compensation than the M&A department. Naturally, well-positioned and clever employees will capitalize on this.
I'm pretty sure there are differing accounting/tax consequences in each sort of spending.
Re: Another Group of Google Veterans Starts a Self-Driving Technology Company
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cruise (now part of GM) also relies heavily on maps, based on a talk I saw their lead CV guy make. It does make a good deal of sense - maps (at least street-maps) are mostly static and they make the problem way easier, so why not use them. In fact, most people these days are implicitly using maps - how often do people drive to new places without GPS navigation? Of course, vision and likely ML are still a necessary pa…
> "In fact, most people these days are implicitly using maps - how often do people drive to new places without GPS navigation?" I'd argue also they're using maps in an even more fundamental way - most driving occurs in places where the driver has already been, and relying on a wetware-stored map is a critical part of safe and effective driving. Local knowledge - traffic patterns, weird traffic signal setups, difficul…
A map in your head is closer to machine learning than to using GPS.
Re: Another Group of Google Veterans Starts a Self-Driving Technology Company
#25The bet on maps is interesting. I'm of the personal opinion that in the long run only machine learning can solve autonomous driving, but both MobilEye and now this company both have invested heavily into maps. MobilEye makes sense, they have vested financial reasons that dictate what they do, so they can't turn their back on maps which they've been using for such a long time. On the other hand, starting a company in…
The betting is not only interesting, but actually an excellent bet, in fact, very strategic. Learning to drive is only part of the formulas. As I stated this probably 10th time on HN, we need real data about road condition in order to make self-driving really successful. DeepMap is only part that solution, but we still need real data in real time. We need a real network communication in the transportation space. Take…
Every car could observe its environment, refer to the map, and send back any conflicting information to DeepMap, so that the map database would be updated in real-time, and pushed to all cars in the area.
Re: Another Group of Google Veterans Starts a Self-Driving Technology Company
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I have been to the destination multiple of times, I usually don't open map, I leave my phone off, or I let Pokemon Go running. But sometimes I do use map to seek for alternate faster route if I am in a hurry even if I am familiar with some alternate routes just to be sure. Since I don't use Waze (horrible experience), Google Map won't tell me there's a camera ahead, or police is ahead.
Right - I may have phrased my point badly. The idea is that all effective driving relies on pre-mapping, either via digital means (your phone) or human means (your brain). The expectation that self-driving can be perfected without any kind of pre-mapping and the system can behave at high reliably in-situ seems unreasonable. Even humans can't do that.
Humans and computers have different strengths though. Just because humans can't do something good doesn't mean computers can't, and vice-versa.
Re: Another Group of Google Veterans Starts a Self-Driving Technology Company
#27This kind of articulates a larger attitude I feel about startups in general - too many people are going for too much. Right now, a bunch of companies are going for too much of the metaphorical self-driving pie.
But, there's a lot of niches with less competition - yeah, the slice might be smaller, but I'd rather have a 90% chance at 10% of the pie than a 10% chance at 90% of the pie.
Re: Another Group of Google Veterans Starts a Self-Driving Technology Company
#28This kind of articulates a larger attitude I feel about startups in general - too many people are going for too much. Right now, a bunch of companies are going for too much of the metaphorical self-driving pie. But, there's a lot of niches with less competition - yeah, the slice might be smaller, but I'd rather have a 90% chance at 10% of the pie than a 10% chance at 90% of the pie.
People need to corner some niche of the self driving X market then expand. Going for the whole pie is foolharder unless you already have name recognition.
Re: Another Group of Google Veterans Starts a Self-Driving Technology Company
#29Am I the only person genuinely shocked Google doesn't slap their self driving car engineers with non-competes?
I realize that non-competes are illegal by CA law, but perhaps they should do the engineering in a different state to stop hemorrhaging talent that tries to compete with them?
Re: Another Group of Google Veterans Starts a Self-Driving Technology Company
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
What exactly is the downside of that? Is it really that wrong that bright employees who make the actual product have a little more leverage?
I see parallels between this and lobbying in the US government where lobbied officials will leave for a private sector position as a lobbyist or executive at say a $BIG_TELCO or $BIG_OIL company. Why shouldn't government professionals use their knowledge and expertise to get more leverage going into the private sector? I think the biggest argument here is that sometimes the end goal becomes not the work that person i…
To your first point, because being part of a government is something you should ideally be doing for a non-monetary altruistic reason, whereas employment at a large corp is clearly about personal gain.