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”

#491

Post by sixQuarks » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 1:04 PM UTC

judge2020 wrote: post #272

sixQuarks wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When has someone died while sleeping in an autopiloted Tesla? I've kept a close eye on this space and never heard of this.

There are six cases of death where autopilot was confirmed to be engaged at the time of the incident, with 15 total that claim AP was engaged but had not been proven (via post-crash analysis or otherwise). https://www.tesladeaths.com/ Based on reviewing the articles linked to the data, only one includes a lawsuit that claims the driver fell asleep before the crash. Doing this would either require a weight on the whee…

that article says the driver fell asleep and the car crashed into pedestrians.

The original comment said "driver" died after falling asleep on autopilot - there has been no such case of that occurring.

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

#492

Post by javagram » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 1:33 PM UTC

Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #457

YZF wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I own a model 3. Often it says "the camera is blinded" (e.g. when the sun is shining at it), often there's rain on the lens... So I'd argue Tesla's cameras are much worse for driving under all conditions vs. the human eye. I'm not sure there's enough redundancy for depth perception either. I tend to agree with the argument that humans prove it's possible to drive with just visual sensors but Tesla's sensors, for bett…

> Often it says "the camera is blinded" It could very well theoretically be a software issuse.

The human driver has a number of options to adjust their “cameras” (eyes) that the Tesla doesn’t. E.g., flipping down the sun shield, adjusting head position to reduce glare, or even putting on a pair of polarized sunglasses.

While there are technical solutions possible with more hardware, it’s not clear that Tesla could correct for some of these things in just software...

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

#493

Post by necovek » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 1:52 PM UTC

bartvk wrote: post #452

icebraining wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bugs in humans let them do that too: "The US NHTSA estimates 16,000 accidents per year in USA, when drivers intend to apply the brake but mistakenly apply the accelerator." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudden_unintended_acceleration

Or: look-but-failed-to-see-errors, which are an "interesting" cause of accidents. When I took my motorcycle driver's test, my driving instructor sometimes warned me that I needed to make movements in a particular way. He claimed that even though I would make eye contact with a car driver, they may look-but-not-see-me. His reasoning was, as a motorcycle rider, I'm horizontal/upright when a car driver may be looking fo…

Riding a motorcycle is a tough one for car drivers, and not just because of the issue you mention: bikes can accelerate and brake much more rapidly due to their lower mass, and inattentive drivers can easily be caught by that. Them appearing where it shouldn't be possible for a car to show up also amplifies the issue (you don't need to look over your shoulders in a single lane street, but bikes easily show up there).

To be honest, I'd trust software even less if I was a bike rider riding in a European (or Chinese, Phillipine...) city, but that's just me :)

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

#494

Post by staticman2 » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 2:03 PM UTC

paul7986 wrote: post #209

staticman2 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My Dad avoided a crash where he was nearly killed with children in the car and believes he did it because an angel took over the steering wheel and corrected his driving error faster than he could. How is this relevant to you friend's story, you may ask? It's relevant to show humans are not necessarily reliable narrators of why a crash occurred.

Whether your Dad thinks "Jesus, Took the Wheel," your Dad still had control of the wheel himself (he may think a spirit helped him but his physical self still had control) vs. AI saying I'm locking your brakes and steering wheel & you or Jesus can't do anything about it!

But my point is your friend may be wrong about A.I. causing the particular crash the same way my Dad is wrong about Angels.

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

#495

Post by BoorishBears » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 2:04 PM UTC

nrjames wrote: post #373

na85 wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You're also entrusting my life, and those of my family, to them. But we'll gloss over that, because it's expensive not to. This is my biggest concern. I'm going to get killed by some jackass' tesla while he's texting, because Elon Musk is a megalomaniac.

There are loads of people texting and driving who aren’t in a Tesla. I worry much more about them.

I worry about them, but not more than people abusing AP, they're all in the same boat.

The people texting and driving are idiots, distracted idiots, but they have no misconceptions about if their car will save them if they take a nap.

Elon's made comments about "your hands are just there for regulatory reasons" and overpromised for years so now people abuse it until it's just as dangerous if not more dangerous than distracted driving (stuff like intentionally sleeping or using a laptop full time)

Other manufacturers are coming out with features that protect me from texting drivers without generating a new breed of ultra-distracted drivers like those who are falling for Elon's act.

Now a base model Corolla, pretty much the automotive equivalent of a yardstick, will steer people back into their lane and warn drowsy drivers that the car is intervening too much.

A Tesla can't even do the latter.

-

One day we're going to look back and wonder why we allowed things like automatic steering without fully fleshed FSD.

I mean the driver is actually safer if you only intervene when something goes wrong. They're forced to be attentive, yet in all situations where they fail to be attentive and AP would have saved them... it does save them. And tells them to get their head out of their backside.

If AP did that every person it has saved would have still been saved, but a few people it got killed would still be here today.

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

#496

Post by elisharobinson » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 2:12 PM UTC

reitzensteinm wrote: post #487

elisharobinson wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really though how realistic is your business model ... if you wanted a autonomous network to replace Uber Currently 30 million cars on road . you would atleast need 10 million cars assuming each car costs 100k ( optimistically with lidar tech factoring in capex for factories and you dont have major product revisions ) thats 1 trillion in capex ... now you if you had the revenue of apple in 2020 ~ 0.25T$ you could exp…

Uber 2019 revenue $14.15 billion, divided by your estimate of 10 million cars is $1415 per car per year. I would suggest you're estimating at least an order of magnitude too high for the car count, since they can more or less operate 24x7. That would bring the capex down below $100 billion - less than Google's cash on hand. And you'd be starting with the most lucrative cities while staggering it out, and have a very…

Yes i think i over inflated the number of cars required . https://www.businessofapps.com/data/uber-statistics/#4 going through the data there are about 5 million drivers in Uber in 2019 . i will admit 100B$ in capex is a reasonable assumption But I cant imagine for practical reasons google , apple , Amazon putting a large % of their savings into still unproven tech with regulatory risk. Keep in mind that they would still have to compete with Tesla at somepoint which has a best car platform vs in the market. Not to mention they already have close to 1 million cars with all the hardware(their claim, i still feel tesla TPU v2 with TSMC 7nm is a must have) and they are on track to producing 500k cars in US with these capabilities. while no other car company is even trying to integrate in mass production Today . Not to mention that currently the primary hindrance for Tesla is software which can scale much better in comparison to a ground up redesign of a car plant to accommodate lidar based systems .

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

#497

Post by BoorishBears » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 2:14 PM UTC

KorematsuFred wrote: post #312

another_kel wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ho…

You didn't really answer their question...

The candle was a candle and an electric bulb was an electric bulb. One could do things the other was not capable of.

FSD however, is pretty close to what humans do. It's cost that's the difference.

If you want a more apt analogy, this us more like the invention of a household CFL bulb.

It's cheaper, it increases accessibility and quality in some dimensions, but it's not allowing you to do so much that was utterly impossible before.

The comment you replied to wasn't saying FSD enables nothing new but rather that saying stuff like "change how people go to the office" is rather odd when today right now you can pay people for "FSD" and we already did see the shift from it...

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

#498

Post by joeblau » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 2:39 PM UTC

stingraycharles wrote: post #268

joeblau wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They are collecting data on all cars yes, but are training a model in one place. That is not federated machine learning, it’s federated data collection at best.

Ah yeah you’re right. Distributed data collect.

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

#499

Post by ralfd » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 2:40 PM UTC

lathiat wrote: post #138

mxschumacher wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's interesting how optimistic long term visions conflict - if you really think autonomous cabs will become widespread then by implication you are also saying that car sales will be drastically lower. Tough to be serious betting on both. The math of "you'll pay more for the car but the car will go out and make money for you as a robotic Uber" sounds like a pyramid scheme to me; if too many people do it, it can no lo…

The Tesla robotic Uber thing can totally work but it's not going to work if everyone with a car now, tries to use it. It'l flatten out to find the break event point. But that's a normal market effect and the same as Taxis which traditionally (at least in many places) had quotas to stop people not getting enough jobs to fulfill their wage (Taxi 'Tag' or 'Plate' or 'License'); or similar effects on the number of Uber d…

It can work for Uber, because this is Ubers core business. It can work for Tesla, because they have a market share of Toyota, Volkswagen or General Motors would maybe have less revenue with shared cars utopia.

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

#500

Post by crazygringo » Mon, Jan 25, 2021, 2:42 PM UTC

mongol wrote: post #305

crazygringo wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree on lane assist, but I'm confused, how does cruise control fail? I just set it to a speed on the highway... and the speed stays there until I brake. Are you talking about adaptive cruise control (ACC) to follow the speed of the car in front?

I also don't use cruise control. Not because I don't trust it, but I don't trust myself to react as quickly with it on. If my "gas foot" rests, it will take longer for it to hit the brake if needed, than if I engage continuously while driving. No scientific proof for this, except my own perception of my own attention.

That's really interesting.

Funny, I don't feel the same -- my foot rests below the brake (on the floor) instead of on the gas pedal so the time to move it to the brake feels roughly the same, and I'm paying 100% attention while driving since I'm still steering and constantly monitoring distance to the cars in front of me. So I don't notice any less attention -- it's just a rest for the muscles in my right foot.

But really I'd definitely go with your own perception here -- if you feel like you're paying less attention then it's a good thing you're not using it! Everyone's attention habits and patterns are different. And I'm glad to know people vary in this.