Waymo CEO dismisses Tesla self-driving plan: “This is not how it works” • Hacker News Board

Re: Waymo CEO dismisses Tesla self-driving plan: “This is not how it works”

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Post by kerng » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 7:09 AM UTC

newbie789 wrote: post #262

kerng wrote: post #233

So much hate towards Tesla here. I'm more neutral - dont have a strong opinion on this. But from Google's messaging it seems that the Waymo CEO is maybe a bit defensive (scared?). Tesla has probably the long term better strategy which leads to more accurate up to date data to constantly improve their system. Tesla's crowdsourcing strategy might be the winning horse in this race.

That’s a very interesting neutral take that “Tesla’s strategy might be the winning horse in this race” and that the Waymo CEO may be defensive or scared. I personally don’t know enough about either company or their tech or how people react to self driving cars to call a winner when it comes to a something (in this case, fully self driving cars at scale) that literally don’t exist yet with enough certainty to predict…

How else would you describe Waymo's message?

Trying to "educate" or talk down to a competitor with words like "this is not how this works" when Tesla has significant resources, expertise (actual cars on the road!) and knowledge in this area seems defensive to me.

Re: Waymo CEO dismisses Tesla self-driving plan: “This is not how it works”

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Post by KorematsuFred » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 7:11 AM UTC

another_kel wrote: post #279

rcxdude wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This matches my experience of how Tesla is viewed in the autonomous car industry. No-one thinks they are a serious contender when it comes to a driverless vehicle (and their business model basically doesn't match with the technology either: every other company is basically going to operate a taxi service because there's far more value to be captured and it can help pay for the hardware making driverless possible)

How much value is there really? The gap between paying a driver and using cutting edge tech is super thin at best. Don’t forget that you also need to buy brand new vehicles and compete with Uber/taxis.

> The gap between paying a driver and using cutting edge tech is super thin at best.

The analogy is that the electric bulb did not replace candle as such but created entirely new possibilities that were unimaginable when the bulb was invented. This is nearly true for any invention and not just self driving cars. Advancements in self driving will change not just how people go to office or dates but will also change how goods are hauled, how docks are loaded, how agricultural products are transported, how fruits are picked from trees and how law enforcement deals with patrolling and so on.

Re: Waymo CEO dismisses Tesla self-driving plan: “This is not how it works”

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Post by 01100011 » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 7:12 AM UTC

ra7 wrote: post #26

I think the FSD beta rollout is completely irresponsible from Tesla. Rolling out a clearly half-baked safety critical technology to its customers (yes, I know it's only a few beta testers) who are untrained is nothing but a tactic to generate hype and get more customers to buy that $10k FSD package. This is on top of Tesla being the least transparent company out there in reporting safety data or their testing methodo…

Telsa will be very transparent when the first round of lawsuits begins and they're facing multi-billion dollar lawsuits.

Toyota lost billions from simply not following accepted safety design practices. Does anyone really think Tesla's self-driving tech is ISO26262 or MISRA compliant?

Re: Waymo CEO dismisses Tesla self-driving plan: “This is not how it works”

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Post by kerng » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 7:12 AM UTC

joeblau wrote: post #245

kerng wrote: post #233

So much hate towards Tesla here. I'm more neutral - dont have a strong opinion on this. But from Google's messaging it seems that the Waymo CEO is maybe a bit defensive (scared?). Tesla has probably the long term better strategy which leads to more accurate up to date data to constantly improve their system. Tesla's crowdsourcing strategy might be the winning horse in this race.

The term you’re looking for is “Federated Machine Learning.” The more cars Tesla has, the faster they can train the neural networks edge cases.

Thanks for sharing. I actually hadnt heard of "federated machine learning" before- need to read up on that.

Re: Waymo CEO dismisses Tesla self-driving plan: “This is not how it works”

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Post by KorematsuFred » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 7:14 AM UTC

NationalPark wrote: post #91

screye wrote: post #35

I worked with a self-driving product team a couple of years ago. Tesla's approach was looked upon with suspicion and often openly mocked. Tesla's entire self-driving strategy is led by Karpathy, who while brilliant, is an under-experienced researcher with a narrow expertise in large scale 2D CNNs. Tesla (and Comma.ai ?) seem to be the only groups that find Lidar unnecessary for L5 self-driving. I completely agree wit…

Surely you use power steering, drive-by-wire pedals, and anti-lock breaks though, right? Or even an automatic transmission? Is it so different to use lane assist or cruise control?

None of them have to deal with fat tail risks. (to quote nissim ntaleb).

I do not know about dbw pedals but power steering and anti-lock breaking operate 100% deterministically and the only true unknown is controlled by the driver.

Re: Waymo CEO dismisses Tesla self-driving plan: “This is not how it works”

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Post by rlt » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 7:17 AM UTC

AshWolfy wrote: post #242

sixQuarks wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wow, getting downvoted for stating this fact. I can't believe the anti-Musk bias here on HN. You would think HN would actually appreciate one of the more innovative entrepreneurs on the planet.

Elon musk is everything wrong with the tech industry as a whole, overpriced, over engineered, and QA lacking products, hes arrogant when he shouldnt be, and his "disruptions" are mostly stupid, what accomplishments he does have are largely the result of engineers he pays that he takes credit for the only thing he is good at is marketing himself

Sorry, you are clueless. Yes, some aspects of his personality are obnoxious, but he’s built multiple companies that have delivered real innovation, his customers are largely happy, and I’m sure his engineers don’t care how much credit he takes.

Re: Waymo CEO dismisses Tesla self-driving plan: “This is not how it works”

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Post by missedthecue » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 7:18 AM UTC

plutonorm wrote: post #219

missedthecue wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk seems more of a marketer than an engineer to me, even though he's always characterized as one.

Have you even listened to him talk? Every word that comes out of his mouth is poured over to make sure that it contains truth.

It's been 311 days since Elon Musk promised to produce ventilators at the SpaceX factory.

It's been 546 days since Elon Musk claimed Tesla was increasing production of solar roofs towards one thousand per week by end of 2019

It's been 644 days since Elon Musk said there will be a million fully autonomous Tesla robotaxis in a year

It's been 726 days since Elon Musk said Tesla would likely be cash flow positive in all quarters going forward. Tesla lost $702.1 million in Q1 2019 and $408 million in Q2 2019.

It's been 747 days since Elon Musk said the new Roadster will use rocket technology that will allow it to fly

It's been 761 days since Elon Musk said brake pads on a Tesla would never need to be replaced.

It's been 817 days since Elon Musk said Teslas should be able to read and understand parking signage by end of 2019.

It's been 902 days since Elon Musk tweeted funding was secured to take Tesla private at $420 a share.

It's been 925 days since Elon Musk said he would rescue children stuck in a cave with a custom built mini-sub.

It's been 929 days since Elon Musk pledged to fix Flint's lead water crisis.

It's been 958 days since Elon Musk promised employees that there would be no more layoffs. They laid off 1000 employees 718 days ago.

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Truth doesn't seem like something he's particularly concerned with

Re: Waymo CEO dismisses Tesla self-driving plan: “This is not how it works”

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Post by KorematsuFred » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 7:18 AM UTC

cromwellian wrote: post #292

kart23 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like that Waymo is confident enough in their system to put it out there for people to use. But honestly, I think that their reasoning for releasing it is exactly to reduce worries in people, that 'it'll never happen feeling'. I think they needed to put something (before it was even 99% ready) out, otherwise people would lose hope and investors balk at the progress. I really do think that it'll never happen, at leas…

But people also shouldn't waste so much time of their life stuff in traffic driving vehicles either. I mean, the ideal city would probably be self-driving trains, people movers, and free scooters, segways, or wheelchairs everywhere. No AI vision systems needed. If you live in urban Japan, do you ever need a car? To replace all 273 million vehicles in the US with self-driving EVs would cost around $10 trillion @ $50k…

> You could built a national network of self-driving lanes for a fraction of that. You could build rail lines and subways in every major metro area.

Most of them will be built by government making huge losses, they will go from nowhere to nowhere and they will not function as intended. The California high speed train is a great example. Not to mention $50K will be put by people but the national rail network will have to built by government (not that they have to but very likely they will grab this opportunity).

Re: Waymo CEO dismisses Tesla self-driving plan: “This is not how it works”

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Post by interator7 » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 7:18 AM UTC

minwcnt5 wrote: post #186

jiofih wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans, surprisingly, don’t have LiDar, yet they can drive.

Humans have general intelligence and understand what their eyes are perceiving at a far deeper level than any CV system.

If I'm not mistaken, that's the gap that all these very smart people are trying to close.

Re: Waymo CEO dismisses Tesla self-driving plan: “This is not how it works”

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Post by Fricken » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 7:19 AM UTC

snoshy wrote: post #228

afavour wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can the footage be trusted? From my understanding Tesla has only rolled this out to a small number of users, browsing the YT search results you’ve provided I see that almost all the results are Tesla super fan accounts. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to disregard this until you see an objective assessment in the field.

It's fair to question the motivations of the FSD beta testers. They were obviously hand picked to ensure maximum safety, adequate public profile, having committed large sums of money to prove their allegiance, as well as being existing fans of the company. So they're likely to be biased. But that's a long way from alleging that they've doctored their videos, or that Tesla itself has censored them. There are many many…

What you need to know about the performance of various autonomous vehicles is not observable through a bunch of youtube videos. The improvements are happening at the statistical margins, that's where 99.9% of the work is. Youtube videos won't do much to show the difference between Google's car's performance 7 years ago and today. You need granular statistical data to make any kind of informed judgement.

That Tesla is just now getting to the place where they can get a few miles in moderately complex traffic without fucking up, while still having many other videos of failures and close calls should tell you that Tesla has a long way to go. There are tens of thousands of driving scenarios that all need special attention.