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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

#271

Post by vincentmarle »

arcticfox wrote: post #224
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)

Is that right? That seems phenomenally bad. I feel like I have normal American driving habits and I drive a standard 10k miles per year... So I'm going to kill a pedestrian every 100 years? Assuming I drive normally for ~50 years, 500k miles, I have a 50% chance to kill a pedestrian?

25%

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

#272

Post by ntsplnkv2 »

rtsil wrote: post #237
ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That supposes that we've reached the flattening upper section of the S-curve of technology, right about now. There's nothing that suggests that. Various techs do reach that stage periodically, but nothing indicates that technology in general does, quite the contrary. And what the past sees as hard often becomes less hard (I'm not going to say easy, because technology is never easy) in the future thanks to the accumul…

The s-curve of technology is not meant to be applied to universal technological improvements in a civilization. It just doesn't work.

> And what the past sees as hard often becomes less hard (I'm not going to say easy, because technology is never easy) in the future thanks to the accumulation of knowledge and increased speed of processing data.

It doesn't matter how fast you process data if you can't physically alter the scenario. No amount of data can make the carnot cycle more efficient or reduce entropy.

I'm sure the Romans thought Europe would never enter the dark ages too.

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

#273

Post by satvikpendem »

ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #270
cercatrova wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That jump happened because of groundbreaking discoveries in physics, chemistry, and biology. We are reaching the ends of that, though. Particle physics has been at a standstill for decades. Fusion power is still a pipe dream. Global warming continues to go on without a technological answer in sight. False AI promises are not evidence of anything. Nothing AI is doing now is genuinely artificial intelligence. Biotech?…

The point is that it's unknown what will happen in the future. In 1889, the US patent office commissioner had said that we should close it, as "everything that can be invented has been invented."

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

#274

Post by tachyonbeam »

cercatrova wrote: post #185

I was approached by Uber's self driving division a few months ago and I asked about the layoffs and changes there. They said not to worry about it. Turns out I was right in the end to worry about it and not work there.

The COVID situation is negatively affecting their revenue streams, which puts pressure on them to cut losses fast. You made the right choice indeed.

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

#275

Post by tachyonbeam »

justapassenger wrote: post #168
dboreham wrote: post #43

Signals the end of the self driving delusion, at least for 10-20 years.

Elon is waiting on the line 1 with some promises.

You can see lots of videos filmed by Tesla car owners (not by Tesla) showcasing exactly how the Tesla full self driving beta is doing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8IQFb3JeEo

It's not perfect, but it keeps better with every release. They are ahead of everyone else by a long shot.

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

#276

Post by maybeiambatman »

fastball wrote: post #40
maybeiambatman wrote: post #2

Genuinely wondering - - How a 600 person company will determine who among the 1200 at ATG gets acquihired? - How will the Uber employee unvested stocks get paid out (or not) in an almost no cash deal?

Why would Uber selling a portion of its business be relevant to Uber employee unvested stocks? Do you mean Uber ATG employees? Were they getting stock packages for ATG or for Uber?

I meant the ATG employees. And they were getting Uber stock as part of their compensation. Source: me, a former Uber ATG employee.

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

#277

Post by Tarq0n »

nhumrich wrote: post #240
neolog wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

google search, netflix, facebook, gmail, roomba, apple, microsoft, slack, youtube, AWS, wordpress, github, jira, the list goes on

I'm not convinced any of those would last even hours without an army of SRE's holding them together.

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

#278

Post by jfim »

mkolodny wrote: post #157
necubi wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there are competitors (e.g., Waymo) that have self-driving that's significantly cheaper, then Uber and Lyft can't compete. So it's a huge potential threat to their businesses. And if self-driving makes rides much cheaper, that can significantly boost the size of the market. But that does not imply that they can't be successful and profitable businesses in a world without self-driving cars, which is the frequently-…

I agree that saying self-driving is a threat is very different from saying that your business will fail unless you create self-driving cars. Also, saying that Uber/Lyft need to create their own self-driving cars is ignoring the fact that other companies that create self-driving cars are, and will likely continue to offer rides in their cars through existing ride sharing companies.

> other companies that create self-driving cars are, and will likely continue to offer rides in their cars through existing ride sharing companies

That remains to be seen. If a company is able to create self driving cars, what's the value add provided by Uber and Lyft? Having a middleman TNC platform skim some profits doesn't really make sense from that perspective.

Compared to achieving reliable and cost effective autonomy at scale, building a ride sharing app is trivial, and customers have indicated that they're willing to install another app if the fares are cheaper. The complexity of getting a self driving service is high enough that there probably will be only a few entrants in the market, unlike the current value add provided by the TNC apps that match customers with a large pool of individual providers.

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

#279

Post by aabhay »

finolex1 wrote: post #169
aabhay wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish! The self driving delusion is more than alive and kicking. It’s just that the hype is moving from the vertically integrated options (Waymo) to the disaggregated ‘stack’ players (Luminar, Scale, Aurora)

Perhaps you mean comma.ai and not scale.ai?

Scale sells data labeling solutions to autonomous vehicle companies

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

#280

Post by boh »

mlboss wrote: post #130
boh wrote: post #99

Is it possible that just having an app doesn't make you a tech company? Anyone else ready to think Uber might just be an overvalued taxi company?

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.

So I guess SpaceX, Tesla, Intel, Apple aren't tech companies.
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