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GM's Cruise alleged to rely on human operators to achieve "autonomous" driving

nytimes.com

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Re: GM's Cruise alleged to rely on human operators to achieve "autonomous" driving

#41

Post by KennyBlanken »

alkonaut wrote: post #12
hartator wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an emergency every 2-5 miles?

That sounds pretty low if it's city driving or poor conditions. I know some of the trial cities are basically easy mode (wide streets, almost never snows..) but still.

First off: not even close. Waymo has a disengagement rate of 0.076 per 1,000 miles.

Second: You're shifting the goalposts from the grandparent comment's assertion that these interventions are to be expected in an "emergency", when the frequency of the interventions shows they're clearly not "emergency" interventions but part of normal operation.

Re: GM's Cruise alleged to rely on human operators to achieve "autonomous" driving

#42

Post by KennyBlanken »

dventimi wrote: post #3
mlinhares wrote: post #2

The title isn't news at all as every single trustworthy autonomous driving solution MUST HAVE human operators somewhere to take over but the actual article is a good summary of Cruise's current situation and I'd guess the competition as well.

Where is the article does it even support the title? I'll reread it but I didn't see anything about human operators.

I thought HN very strictly required the title to be the original article's title unless the title was really, really bad?

Re: GM's Cruise alleged to rely on human operators to achieve "autonomous" driving

#45

Post by Retric »

cheeselip420 wrote: post #26

Cruise is leveraging human-in-the-loop to expand faster than they otherwise would, with the hope that they will solve autonomy later to bring this down. I don't think this is a viable strategy though given the enormous costs and challenges involved. There doesn't exist a short-term timeline where Cruise makes money, and the window is rapidly closing. They needed to expand to show big revenues, even if they had to thr…

Human in the loop can be vastly cheaper than you might think.

If this lets them have the only level 5 system on the market they could double that and millions would happily pay. Suppose your a trucking company would you rather pay 50k / year or 5k/year? That’s a stupidly easy choice.

Americans drive roughly 500 hours per year. If they can replace 98% with automation and the other 2% with someone making 20$/hour that only costs them ~200$/year, which then drops as the system improves.

Re: GM's Cruise alleged to rely on human operators to achieve "autonomous" driving

#46

Post by raldi »

wolverine876 wrote: post #29
simonw wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably they meant that the first paragraph they quoted looked to them like a "performative charade".

Yes. I'll clarify.

What would it have looked like if it had been sincere?

Re: GM's Cruise alleged to rely on human operators to achieve "autonomous" driving

#47

Post by cheeselip420 »

chaostheory wrote: post #34
cheeselip420 wrote: post #26

Cruise is leveraging human-in-the-loop to expand faster than they otherwise would, with the hope that they will solve autonomy later to bring this down. I don't think this is a viable strategy though given the enormous costs and challenges involved. There doesn't exist a short-term timeline where Cruise makes money, and the window is rapidly closing. They needed to expand to show big revenues, even if they had to thr…

GM actually spun off Cruise in 2018. Honda now has shares in Cruise. SoftBank used to own some as well, but GM bought out their share last year

GM had FOMO and now it's time for FAFO.

Re: GM's Cruise alleged to rely on human operators to achieve "autonomous" driving

#48

Post by cheeselip420 »

dontblink wrote: post #37
cheeselip420 wrote: post #26

Cruise is leveraging human-in-the-loop to expand faster than they otherwise would, with the hope that they will solve autonomy later to bring this down. I don't think this is a viable strategy though given the enormous costs and challenges involved. There doesn't exist a short-term timeline where Cruise makes money, and the window is rapidly closing. They needed to expand to show big revenues, even if they had to thr…

So Waymo/Google winning here in your opinion?

Waymo will have challenges scaling rapidly, but they may be able to get some sort of favorable unit economics and expand more slowly.

Tesla has the scale and for some reason regulators give them a pass. I wouldn't bet against Elon, but we aren't there yet...

Re: GM's Cruise alleged to rely on human operators to achieve "autonomous" driving

#49

Post by ra7 »

haltist wrote: post #7

It's not an allegation. It's the same as using human feedback for tuning large language models. There are no autonomous cars currently regardless of what is written on the marketing brochures. In various "emergency" situations the cars phone home and ask a human operator to take over the controls.

This is completely incorrect. Remote operators cannot “take over controls” at all and hence cannot help in any “emergency” i.e. safety critical situation (e.g. preventing a crash). All they can do is assist the vehicle with things drawing a path to get around a parked vehicle, instructing it to do a multi-point turn when it’s stuck and so on.

What the article says is that Cruise vehicles need some sort of assistance every 2.5 to 5 miles (I highly doubt this number is accurate). Not that they’re getting into emergency situations that frequently.

Re: GM's Cruise alleged to rely on human operators to achieve "autonomous" driving

#50

Post by cheeselip420 »

Retric wrote: post #45
cheeselip420 wrote: post #26

Cruise is leveraging human-in-the-loop to expand faster than they otherwise would, with the hope that they will solve autonomy later to bring this down. I don't think this is a viable strategy though given the enormous costs and challenges involved. There doesn't exist a short-term timeline where Cruise makes money, and the window is rapidly closing. They needed to expand to show big revenues, even if they had to thr…

Human in the loop can be vastly cheaper than you might think. If this lets them have the only level 5 system on the market they could double that and millions would happily pay. Suppose your a trucking company would you rather pay 50k / year or 5k/year? That’s a stupidly easy choice. Americans drive roughly 500 hours per year. If they can replace 98% with automation and the other 2% with someone making 20$/hour that…

Human in the loop is fine.

Negative unit economics and massive expansion are not.

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