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Yes, there are more driverless Waymos in S.F

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Re: Yes, there are more driverless Waymos in S.F

#51

Post by bryanlarsen »

george___c wrote: post #46
zactato wrote: post #41

The best thing about waymos is the screen that shows the machine vision and object identification. It sees all the cars, bikes, pedestrians, buses in a full 360 degree circle around the vehicle. It can make good predictions about what each one is doing. This visual makes it clear how much better it is at driving than humans. There aren't blind spots, it stops at stop signs, it doesn't dangerously speed around corners…

This object identification and prediction capability can be easily overloaded. Last night, coming home from Summer Symphony (Idaho's big improvement on Frisco's Stern Grove), I encountered 30 or so drivers behaving rather erratically due to a small roadside meadow containing at least 75 deer, all of which could decide to cross the roadway en masse within a few seconds. I successfully navigated all this, but I would N…

A human is likely better than a computer at predicting the movement and behaviour of a single object.

A computer is going to be way better than any human at doing the same for a large number of objects simultaneously.

Re: Yes, there are more driverless Waymos in S.F

#52

Post by 650REDHAIR »

drawnwren wrote: post #11
650REDHAIR wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d like to see the financial analysis. This job competes directly with San Franciscans who pay taxes and commuting drivers who spend money on food and gas. When we wipe them out and replace it with a tax-dodging multinational corporation what happens to our local economy?

When was the last time you had an Uber driver that actually lived in San Francisco? Most of the drivers I talk to were driving in, from as far away as San Diego.

Me, my neighbor, my other neighbor, two guys down the block from me…

There are at least 3 people in my building that do it. I also know a handful of cabis that all live in the city.

Re: Yes, there are more driverless Waymos in S.F

#53

Post by 650REDHAIR »

kylehotchkiss wrote: post #44
drawnwren wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When was the last time you had an Uber driver that actually lived in San Francisco? Most of the drivers I talk to were driving in, from as far away as San Diego.

Are you saying a driver commuted 8 hours north to drive for Uber? and then back when he was done?

Yeah that’s not a thing anymore and it hasn’t been lucrative to do that in quite some time.

Re: Yes, there are more driverless Waymos in S.F

#54

Post by 650REDHAIR »

foota wrote: post #17
650REDHAIR wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d like to see the financial analysis. This job competes directly with San Franciscans who pay taxes and commuting drivers who spend money on food and gas. When we wipe them out and replace it with a tax-dodging multinational corporation what happens to our local economy?

This seems strongly to me like a broken window argument. Taken another way, you're paying people that could likely be doing more productive things to sit in a car and burn gasoline. If money draining out of the economy is a major concern, there could just be a tax on AI rideshares (which given the political environment seems quite likely)

Are you in favor of UBI?

Re: Yes, there are more driverless Waymos in S.F

#55

Post by Bjartr »

ghaff wrote: post #18
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there were a fleet of a million Waymo cars, 2,000 support staff, and 2,000 engineers keeping a stable technology running, and vehicle wear and tear was low (possibly lower than a human driver running an ICE car ragged)...it could work. But they're going to be unprofitable for a long, long time.

It's hard for me to believe that Alphabet/Google even wants to be this huge robo-taxi service in the long run. I have to believe they want to be a technology supplier. Which means they need to enable robo-taxis-are-us to be a cheaper taxi service than Uber et al.

The want it because time you spend driving is time you could have spent browsing the web and therefore looking at Google ads

Re: Yes, there are more driverless Waymos in S.F

#56

Post by foota »

650REDHAIR wrote: post #54
foota wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems strongly to me like a broken window argument. Taken another way, you're paying people that could likely be doing more productive things to sit in a car and burn gasoline. If money draining out of the economy is a major concern, there could just be a tax on AI rideshares (which given the political environment seems quite likely)

Are you in favor of UBI?

Generally, yes. But implementing UBI by wasting people's time is a bad idea.

Re: Yes, there are more driverless Waymos in S.F

#57

Post by matthewdgreen »

buu700 wrote: post #47
matthewdgreen wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What value is the owner providing here? For traditional cabs they're doing (1) driving, (2) customer acquisition, (3) maintenance, (4) capital provision. For Uber/Lyft the customer acquisition is centralized, but they're still doing 1, 3, 4. For a Waymo-like service the owner is basically just investing cash and doing occasional cleaning/maintenance work. Is capital so scarce that this is needed for services to opera…

In my mind, it would be controlling both pricing and geographic allocation of resources in a market-driven way. The idea is to be a strategy for efficiently rolling out the service at scale in a way that distributes the risks and profits, like how Uber and Lyft grew by outsourcing to independent drivers rather than buying a bunch of cars and hiring a bunch of drivers in particular locations. I don't know how the numb…

My hypothesis is that in the early days the key to success for robotaxi service companies is going to be safety and consistency, in order to convince regulators that huge fleets of robotaxis are safe. "Early days" doesn't just mean the current technical workup period -- it also covers the time period where robotaxi services start to eat into the market for privately-owned cars. That's the point where you'll see the heaviest anti-robotaxi lobbying from entrenched competitors, which will include not just taxi services but also politically-connected interests like car dealerships, manufacturers, service centers, etc. These folks will see their entire livelihood disappearing, and "robotaxis aren't safe" is the obvious argument they'll turn to.

During this period, it seems like a huge risk for a robotaxi company to play it "fast and loose" with car quality or maintenance. You'd want to maintain exceptional standards on anything safety-critical, and that means you don't want to be seen as outsourcing critical hardware purchases and maintenance to random sole-proprietor businesses. (Maybe somewhere down the line this will change, when the tech is so advanced and accepted that anyone can offer it.)

Obviously I might be wrong. Maybe capital is going to become so tight that it'll be hard for the Waymos of the world to scale up quickly? But at least for the first, say, 7 years of major expansion it feels like safety and quality are going to dominate the conversation.

Re: Yes, there are more driverless Waymos in S.F

#58

Post by phillypham »

jMyles wrote: post #21
stopachka wrote: post #10

I rode my first Waymo last weekend. It's _significantly_ better than an Uber. You get an almost 'white-glove' experience getting inside. Then, you have complete privacy. I could get work done in the car guilt-free. I was very surprised with the experience

> I could get work done in the car guilt-free. ...have rideshare drivers guilt-tripped you about working? Or is this just some kind of reflexive response? If the addition of a human per se produces guilt, I want to gentle suggest that work on boundaries is in order, and that no amount of automation is likely to fix the underlying problem. It's OK to meet your wants and needs (such as getting some work done - a want I…

This is just (neurotypical?) human programming to be considerate of others. The driver feels this, too. I'd assume that the CEO of Uber Dara can manage his emotions and boundaries, well. But he mentions

> Some experiences made him feel slighted, such as when riders discussed personal problems and company secrets on speakerphone, as if there was no one else present.

https://archive.is/2023.04.17-151927/https://www.wsj.com/amp... (WSJ article)

Re: Yes, there are more driverless Waymos in S.F

#59

Post by jacobjjacob »

george___c wrote: post #46
zactato wrote: post #41

The best thing about waymos is the screen that shows the machine vision and object identification. It sees all the cars, bikes, pedestrians, buses in a full 360 degree circle around the vehicle. It can make good predictions about what each one is doing. This visual makes it clear how much better it is at driving than humans. There aren't blind spots, it stops at stop signs, it doesn't dangerously speed around corners…

This object identification and prediction capability can be easily overloaded. Last night, coming home from Summer Symphony (Idaho's big improvement on Frisco's Stern Grove), I encountered 30 or so drivers behaving rather erratically due to a small roadside meadow containing at least 75 deer, all of which could decide to cross the roadway en masse within a few seconds. I successfully navigated all this, but I would N…

In my experience in SF, a Waymo would handle this just fine. This isn’t really a good example of how it “can be easily overloaded” because there are no Waymo in Idaho?

Re: Yes, there are more driverless Waymos in S.F

#60

Post by singleshot_ »

xnx wrote: post #25
jMyles wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I could get work done in the car guilt-free. ...have rideshare drivers guilt-tripped you about working? Or is this just some kind of reflexive response? If the addition of a human per se produces guilt, I want to gentle suggest that work on boundaries is in order, and that no amount of automation is likely to fix the underlying problem. It's OK to meet your wants and needs (such as getting some work done - a want I…

There's a reason that limousines and Rolls-Royce's have dividing walls between the driver and passengers.

And police cars.
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