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Uber sells self-driving unit in deal that will push Aurora’s valuation to $10B

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Re: Uber sells self-driving unit in deal that will push Aurora’s valuation to $10B

#201

Post by krrrh »

ghaff wrote: post #131
lozaning wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber has a strong network effect, but I don't think there's actually much brand loyalty.

I'm not sure how strong a network effect other than in a local area. I'd be pretty sure that (in normal times) their primary market isn't business travelers flitting from SF to NYC to London but residents of $CITY using Uber Pool for commuting or Uber to go out with friends on a night out to a bar.

Contrary to that, local profitable markets like Manhattan have had significant entrants eat away at Uber’s market share with companies like Juno scooping up the best customers and drivers. The same thing happened in many cities in the early 20th century before streetcar operators managed to get jitney cabs (the unlicensed pool taxis of their day) banned because too many teens would borrow the family car after school and drive in front of streetcars on profitable lines and scoop riders for nickels instead of dimes.

Uber and Lyft have a de facto duopoly amongst those hopping off planes because it’s hard to know that there are any other local options available.

Re: Uber sells self-driving unit in deal that will push Aurora’s valuation to $10B

#202

Post by cercatrova »

officehero wrote: post #200
cercatrova wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100 to 200 years is a very long time. Look at the exponential nature of technology, and even deep learning. Only in 2012 had the image network reached 90% accuracy levels, and now we have all sort of networks for all sorts of things, including style transfer for videos.

The big problem is that the populace do not understand statistics. As soon as a self driving car kills someone the witch hunt begins and the whole fleet needs to be retracted until investigation is over. Can your image network solve this problem?

It's like nuclear power. It just has to continue regardless of how many deaths since the number of deaths will be lower than other methods, in this case coal and fossil fuel deaths, and in the case of self driving, manual driving accidents.

Re: Uber sells self-driving unit in deal that will push Aurora’s valuation to $10B

#203

Post by ntsplnkv2 »

cercatrova wrote: post #187
holoduke wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am convinced that it takes another 100 to 200 years before we really have smart self driving cars. Maybe it will never happen as I think it will be much more likely that we have self flying drones before long before. Airspace being regulated heavily and thus much more predictable for a machine.

100 to 200 years is a very long time. Look at the exponential nature of technology, and even deep learning. Only in 2012 had the image network reached 90% accuracy levels, and now we have all sort of networks for all sorts of things, including style transfer for videos.

There's nothing to suggest technological growth will be exponential forever. It's just as likely we've gotten all the easy stuff the last century and now everything else is much harder.

Re: Uber sells self-driving unit in deal that will push Aurora’s valuation to $10B

#204

Post by OpieCunningham »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #166
mikesabbagh wrote: post #160

This self-driving system promise keeps getting delayed! It looks to me this is a case of a donkey led by a carrot on a stick (investors are the donkey here). What I never understand is what happens when a new situation that the system did not previously train for happen? what if this situation is deadly? Will all the Uber cars decide to jump off a cliff because of a wrong signalization or bad weather? What will the T…

> What I never understand is what happens when a new situation that the system did not previously train for happen? This happens to human drivers all the time, and humans are really bad drivers even in situations that have happened before. I fully expect AI drivers to be safer than human drivers.

I also expect AI drivers to be safer than human drivers ... in about 50 - 250 years.

Re: Uber sells self-driving unit in deal that will push Aurora’s valuation to $10B

#205

Post by grumple »

dekhn wrote: post #183
LeoPanthera wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What I never understand is what happens when a new situation that the system did not previously train for happen? This happens to human drivers all the time, and humans are really bad drivers even in situations that have happened before. I fully expect AI drivers to be safer than human drivers.

One pedestrian death due to cars occurs on average every ~200 million car-driven miles. Is that really bad? (the math is based on # of US miles driven in 2017 divided by the number of car-caused pedestrian fatalities in the same year)

There’s one death per hundred million miles driven. One per million would mean one in 2 drivers kill someone in their lifetime.

Re: Uber sells self-driving unit in deal that will push Aurora’s valuation to $10B

#206

Post by ska »

holoduke wrote: post #165
mikesabbagh wrote: post #160

This self-driving system promise keeps getting delayed! It looks to me this is a case of a donkey led by a carrot on a stick (investors are the donkey here). What I never understand is what happens when a new situation that the system did not previously train for happen? what if this situation is deadly? Will all the Uber cars decide to jump off a cliff because of a wrong signalization or bad weather? What will the T…

I am convinced that it takes another 100 to 200 years before we really have smart self driving cars. Maybe it will never happen as I think it will be much more likely that we have self flying drones before long before. Airspace being regulated heavily and thus much more predictable for a machine.

I think humans are really poorly prepared to make accurate "100" year predictions.

Otoh, we're pretty bad at 10 year ones too - the original self driving hype being a prime example. Lots of otherwise intelligent people fell into magical thinking there.

Re: Uber sells self-driving unit in deal that will push Aurora’s valuation to $10B

#207

Post by waterhouse »

lr4444lr wrote: post #196
dekhn wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One pedestrian death due to cars occurs on average every ~200 million car-driven miles. Is that really bad? (the math is based on # of US miles driven in 2017 divided by the number of car-caused pedestrian fatalities in the same year)

It's the loss of agency to machines, not the raw numbers that scares people. Why do you think so many people are unduly spooked after airline accidents due to mechanical or computer error?

I would say that, when I think about it occasionally, I am kind of scared by the possibility that someone will hack into all the self-driving machines (from a particular vendor) and make them all do something terrible at once—before anyone has time to deploy countermeasures.

Re: Uber sells self-driving unit in deal that will push Aurora’s valuation to $10B

#208

Post by cercatrova »

ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #203
cercatrova wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100 to 200 years is a very long time. Look at the exponential nature of technology, and even deep learning. Only in 2012 had the image network reached 90% accuracy levels, and now we have all sort of networks for all sorts of things, including style transfer for videos.

There's nothing to suggest technological growth will be exponential forever. It's just as likely we've gotten all the easy stuff the last century and now everything else is much harder.

Maybe so, but there isn't much evidence of a slowdown while there is a lot of evidence of acceleration, such as time to new tech, re: hunter gatherer to agriculture to industrial revolution to information revolution to potentially genetic/biotech/AI revolution in the future.

Re: Uber sells self-driving unit in deal that will push Aurora’s valuation to $10B

#209

Post by grumple »

bagacrap wrote: post #154
lucasmullens wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hundreds? With Uber there's a car maybe 5-10 minutes away at all times, that's certainly not true with most of their competition.

once self driving arrives, the network effect is a lot less prominent, since the supply side can more easily be scaled

We’re in year 35 of self driving cars being a few years away.

Re: Uber sells self-driving unit in deal that will push Aurora’s valuation to $10B

#210

Post by GavinMcG »

neolog wrote: post #199
mlboss wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read somewhere that there are different levels of "tech" company. A truly tech company would work without any human intervention for multiple days without breakdown. A non-tech company involves human in every tasks required for work. Most of the companies fall somewhere in between. Ride services/Food delivery company cannot function without humans.

Are there any companies that work for days without human intervention?

Online digital content, like paid courses or an author selling their own books, may come close once a sufficient amount of marketing material is out there. Email funnels can be automated, blog posts can be scheduled (and recycled), payment gateways and whatnot can handle the actual transactions.

Simple apps and games don't necessarily need to keep getting better all the time; a successful one could likely coast for some time without needing much intervention.

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