How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business • Hacker News Board

Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

#341

Post by zellyn » Thu, May 30, 2024, 8:14 PM UTC

6510 wrote: post #143

namaria wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glossing over the part where you try to tell a judge a company should be owned by its assets, why do you think the 'autonomous' in autonomous cars means they would also be able to do hiring, planning, assign work etc?

I'm guilty of thoughts about autonomous companies. They don't require AI necessarily, just a formula to hire reliable humans. One could short cut to the gedankenexperiment by assuming the company owner is a p-zombie[0]. It would boil down to the same thing without scaring the humans. Even the judge would have to accept it. edit: What to do when people get brain chips? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_z…

The self-owned car company idea is fighting in my "list of short stories I'd write if I had the skill and got off my ass and did it" with a variant where the company is formed in middle ages Europe, and driven (at least at first) by written policy, in exactly that way.

There would be a legal firm to handle direct tasks, and vetting contractors, then an auditing legal firm. A CEO-type, and various checks/fail-safes.

Periodically hire competent groups to come up with new ideas and have a policy for updating the policy.

One of the "ideas" people would eventually realize the need for failsafes for the failsafes: taking control of the entity's assets would become extremely profitable. So you need some kind of secret society to keep an eye on things and execute the assassinate-and-reset plan when necessary.

Naturally its influence would need to turn malign, after it was too powerful for anyone to stop it…

Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

#342

Post by zellyn » Thu, May 30, 2024, 8:17 PM UTC

namaria wrote: post #128

zellyn wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I’m really looking forward to is when autonomous taxis can run a net profit —- including maintenance and upgrades —- at which point, instead of letting Waymo take all the vehicle profit in the world, I want to start an autonomous taxi company and then find an appropriate legal construction/shenanigan to give ownership of the company to the cars! The philosophical dilemmas would easily make the initial investment…

Glossing over the part where you try to tell a judge a company should be owned by its assets, why do you think the 'autonomous' in autonomous cars means they would also be able to do hiring, planning, assign work etc?

Presumably a high-reputation law firm, paid enough, would be willing to hire executives, hiring staff, etc.

Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

#343

Post by zellyn » Thu, May 30, 2024, 8:18 PM UTC

jrussino wrote: post #336

zellyn wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I’m really looking forward to is when autonomous taxis can run a net profit —- including maintenance and upgrades —- at which point, instead of letting Waymo take all the vehicle profit in the world, I want to start an autonomous taxi company and then find an appropriate legal construction/shenanigan to give ownership of the company to the cars! The philosophical dilemmas would easily make the initial investment…

Thinking about this dispelled my last bit of youthful naivete a few years ago. Won't it be great once we have fully self-driving cars? Heck, I could buy a car and then rent it out to other people like a taxi when I'm not using it, and it would pay for itself. Maybe I could even make a profit! ... If I could make more money than the car costs to purchase and maintain, without any additional work on my part, why would…

Right? Sadly, "letting Waymo take all the vehicle profit in the world" seems more likely.

Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

#344

Post by zellyn » Thu, May 30, 2024, 8:21 PM UTC

m348e912 wrote: post #315

zellyn wrote: post #107

This seems silly. It’s been obvious even to casual observers like myself for years that Waymo/Google was one of the only groups taking the problem seriously and trying to actually solve it, as opposed to pretending you could add self-driving with just cameras in an over-the-air update (Tesla), or trying to move fast and break things (Uber), or pretending you could gradually improve lane-keeping all the way into auton…

>pretending you could add self-driving with just cameras in an over-the-air update (Tesla) I have watched enough recent Tesla self-driving ride along videos on YouTube to suspect you might be mistaken on this point. Tesla intends to launch a cybertaxi fleet and their software looks like it will be good enough to get them there without lidar or additional sensors.

I think they do great! Except for the occasional stationary emergency vehicle, bridge pile, etc. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/apr/26/tesla-aut...

Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

#345

Post by zellyn » Thu, May 30, 2024, 8:22 PM UTC

dataflow wrote: post #257

zellyn wrote: post #107

This seems silly. It’s been obvious even to casual observers like myself for years that Waymo/Google was one of the only groups taking the problem seriously and trying to actually solve it, as opposed to pretending you could add self-driving with just cameras in an over-the-air update (Tesla), or trying to move fast and break things (Uber), or pretending you could gradually improve lane-keeping all the way into auton…

> IIUC, Cruise has pretty much also always been legit? https://www.forbes.com/sites/cyrusfarivar/2023/12/04/judge-a... Not sure if you count this as "legit" or not, but I haven't seen similar incidents from Waymo. (Perhaps I've just missed them - if so, links welcome!)

Oh, oops. I guess I meant "legitimately trying to solve the full problem" rather than "not a bunch of weasels" :-)

Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

#346

Post by m348e912 » Thu, May 30, 2024, 8:23 PM UTC

jeffbee wrote: post #322

m348e912 wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>pretending you could add self-driving with just cameras in an over-the-air update (Tesla) I have watched enough recent Tesla self-driving ride along videos on YouTube to suspect you might be mistaken on this point. Tesla intends to launch a cybertaxi fleet and their software looks like it will be good enough to get them there without lidar or additional sensors.

There are no Teslas that have ever taken a trip without an operator behind the wheel. The idea that there will be a near-future discontinuity after which a Tesla will be able to serve as a robotaxi is pretty ridiculous. I just watched the latest video from AIDRIVR on YouTube. AIDRIVR is a TSLA pumper-and-dumper who has dedicated their channel to uncritical praise of FSD. In the first third of the video FSD v12 runs t…

>This stuff is not even a little bit ready for fully supervised operation. https://youtu.be/fpoXr_z_6a4?t=565

Thanks for sharing. I skimmed through the video and watched a fair amount of it. I got a different impression.

I thought it was impressive how FSD 12 navigated narrow winding roads with parked cars and oncoming traffic and flaggers holding signs that alternate between stop and slow. My impression was while it's not perfect, it's a few iterations away from having very few situations that require disengagement. And keeping in mind that every incident of disengagement is a learning and improving moment for FSD, the following iterations of FSD will continue to get more impressive.

Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

#347

Post by Gibbon1 » Thu, May 30, 2024, 8:30 PM UTC

tialaramex wrote: post #203

mike_hearn wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These comparisons are never quite apples-to-apples because the heavy rail line assumes only a few passengers have any luggage and that the entire line is used only for passengers, whereas the capacity rating for a road allows everyone to take large amounts of luggage and freight is always mixed in as well. You also have to take into account all the other factors that make roads preferable, for example, that rail capa…

Where can I buy these roads that don't require maintenance ? Cars that never break down ? Road traffic signals that never fail ? For the first I'm asking for a friend as the road outside her front door is currently torn open for a whole month and it sure seems like "Just magically never do that" would have been a better option if you insist it's so easy. The lines near me have freight on them (I live in a port city,…

One thing I try to do is read stuff from people whose job it is to do stuff. What I read from transportation people is that for dense urban areas cars are inefficient at loading and unloading. And self driving cars are the worst.

My rando observation is the few times something has gone really wrong on BART traffic is bad enough that it'd be better to take the day off. Ditto if a truck overturns on one of the bridges. And the latter happens way more often than the former. Reminds me after the Loma Prieta earthquake the bay bridge was out for a month but BART was running 12 hours later.

Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

#348

Post by jeffbee » Thu, May 30, 2024, 8:30 PM UTC

donut_rider wrote: post #328

m348e912 wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>pretending you could add self-driving with just cameras in an over-the-air update (Tesla) I have watched enough recent Tesla self-driving ride along videos on YouTube to suspect you might be mistaken on this point. Tesla intends to launch a cybertaxi fleet and their software looks like it will be good enough to get them there without lidar or additional sensors.

Just a timeline of how Musk predicts that FSD will be solved in the next year every year since 2015: https://motherfrunker.ca/fsd/ . It is one thing to cherry-pick flawless drives on a sunny day and upload it to YouTube while having someone behind the wheel ready to take over the glorified driving assistant system. It is another to run a commercial driverless service open to the public 24/7 in one of the biggest urba…

> cherry-pick flawless drives on a sunny day

Tesla FSD sucks extra bad on sunny days in fact, due to its basic optical systems.

Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

#349

Post by zellyn » Thu, May 30, 2024, 8:31 PM UTC

martythemaniak wrote: post #244

zellyn wrote: post #107

This seems silly. It’s been obvious even to casual observers like myself for years that Waymo/Google was one of the only groups taking the problem seriously and trying to actually solve it, as opposed to pretending you could add self-driving with just cameras in an over-the-air update (Tesla), or trying to move fast and break things (Uber), or pretending you could gradually improve lane-keeping all the way into auton…

I think a lot of people have uncritically been repeating Waymo's marketing talking points for so long they've started mistaking it for "consensus" or even worse "truth". Waymo's tech is impressive and it works, but that doesn't mean it is the only way to make it work. The Tesla/Waymo approaches are far far more alike than they are different, so the whole debate is about very little. The question of Camera vs LIDAR+Ca…

The whole thing is largely probabilistic in many ways/parts, and it seems like more sensors, especially more sensors that operate in different modalities, is better, assuming your sensor fusion is working properly so that each additional sensor adds certainty to your predictions.

There are atmospheric conditions and obstructions that lidar can see through that cameras can't.

Cameras also seem prone to being blocked by a small splash of mud/dirt. Is anyone on this thread knowledgeable enough in the domain to know if that's an issue? I thought of it while moving my head sideways to see around a temporary sight obstruction on my windshield. Luckily the windshield is big, and I can move my head. Cameras are small. I guess you just put several so you have an effectively large camera array? It does mean more redundancy is necessary than I would have initially thought.

Re: How Waymo outlasted the competition and made robo-taxis a real business

#350

Post by zellyn » Thu, May 30, 2024, 8:33 PM UTC

endtime wrote: post #214

maxdo wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why people are so triggered by bottom up approach vs top down by Waymo vs Tesla. Tesla already silently abandoned the "just over the AIR one day" approach with a dedicated car announcement. However the camera+ultra-sonic radars but no lidar is not only Tesla vision, but other companies too. We don't know what it costs Waymo to operate their car. The fact that they charge money doesn't make them a real bu…

I think it's because Tesla's approach seems unsafe and/or misleading (to the people reacting negatively to it).

Yes, and they occasionally drive into stationary objects at high speed.