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Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

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Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#561

Post by bambax »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #545
shimon wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the shorter term, there are still huge efficiencies to be gained with smarter ride sharing. Imagine if something like uberpool served a majority of car commuters instead of a tiny fraction... you could get a lot of cars off the road but still provide a very high level of service.

Or, wait, what if we made the car really long and put in even more passengers per driver? It might even have a pre-determined schedule and be pretty cheap?

Trains won't stop in front of your house.

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#562

Post by ageofwant »

woofyman wrote: post #539
ageofwant wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry no. Cars kill thousands of people every year, and will continue to do so. Car companies are doing just fine. Power companies literally kill millions every year, a-ok. McDonalds, Coca Cola ? ditto.

Drivers kill, not the cars. That's totally different from an autonomous car killing someone. Humans make mistakes. That's different from a defective product.

And then it gets fixed, just like with current defects on current cars. Why should it be any different ?

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#563

Post by flashman »

vinceguidry wrote: post #170
bdrool wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also: Private car ownership is going to fall off a cliff shortly after autonomous ride services arrive. Which probably means general demand for vehicles will fall off a cliff. Or, if everyone has a self-driving car of their own (or one that can be converted to self-driving), people will rent out their cars AirBnB-style when they aren't using them. I mean, why not? You've already got a garage, a driveway, etc. Might…

Not going to happen, or if it does it won't last. The so-called sharing economy has mostly just devolved to low-barriers-to-entry entrepreneurship. AirBnB listings start off with ordinary joes renting out their spare bedrooms, but they got crowded out in a few years by businessmen providing real services, and consumers follow. Uber drivers at first were mostly just driving in their spare time, but over the years the…

But AirBnB and Uber require the owner to invest effort: cleaning the house (or arranging the cleaner) and driving the car. If you could hire your car out fully autonomously that changes the equation.

It's like you're saying I shouldn't bother with my zero effort $100-a-month passive income just because somebody else is making $200-a-month with higher margins.

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#564

Post by euyyn »

tim333 wrote: post #452
londons_explore wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are costs divided between fuel, driver, vehicle capital? I'm not sure the driver is the most expensive part...

Per mile 2011 Vehicle-based Fuel & Oil Costs $0.590 Truck/Trailer Lease or Purchase Payments $0.189 Repair & Maintenance $0.152 Truck Insurance Premiums $0.067 Permits and Licenses $0.038 Tires $0.042 Tolls $0.017 Driver-based Driver Wages $0.460 Driver Benefits $0.151 TOTAL $1.706 So driver ~ 36%

Big chunk!

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#566

Post by walrus1066 »

ThomPete wrote: post #417
walrus1066 wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can see communication with other autonomous cars happening, but with humans is another question altogether. We enter the realms of 'general ai' here, which is way out of scope of our ML tools.

Is that really true though? You don't use your general AI to see someone extending their hand in traffic ex. General AI is the ability to both drive car, score a girl, cook food, clean your room etc. I think you would be surprised how little general AI have to do with this.

Sure, not Turing test level AI, but the car needs not to just correctly interpret what the other human driver is communicating, it too needs to communicate back, sometimes assertively. Sometimes you need to actually talk to the other driver.

Anecdote: I was driving down a long, narrow country road, lots of turns, space only for 1 car, land rover coming in opposite direction, and another car behind me. We had to verbally negotiate who reverses back 50m to let the others go past. I cannot think how an ML algo could resolve this situation, even if it could, how would it communicate it's intentions to the humans, when flashing your lights isn't enough?

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#567

Post by euyyn »

manmal wrote: post #196
DrScump wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Driving on interstate freeways is orders of magnitude easier than driving in a city with pedestrians, bikes, cars parked in the road, etc." Yes, it's easy and safe if competing traffic is only fellow truckers or other level-headed, observant drivers. It's when you mix in the distracted, newbie, or skittish drivers that things get difficult. Long-haul truckers (the majority, the good ones) develop a sixth sense about…

About the sixth sense - does this not also apply to good doctors? And yet, they are easily outdiagnosed by many ML implementations. I can imagine deep learning to also gain this sixth sense. E.g. a cyclist in front of you looks to the left - a proficient driver predicts that cyclist might turn left very soon. Why should a self driving car/truck not learn the same?

Also, it sounds to me like the feat of controlling a beast of a truck in an emergency situation is easier for a computer.

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#568

Post by rtx »

jedberg wrote: post #407
marssaxman wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it that "real people are experiencing self driving"? I was under the impression that Google's autonomous vehicle and other projects like it were still all technology research prototypes. There is a very big difference between the sort of next-generation cruise control driver assistance features Tesla and others are providing, and the sort of fully autonomous wheeled robot people are fantasizing about when they…

They're more than just prototypes. Their employees are using self-driving cars for their daily lives. If you have a friend who works at Google (well Waymo now) who is using the car, you can get a ride. Also, as a driver on Mt View roads, I have experience self-driving as someone behind and next to the vehicle. They aren't the "robotic" drivers you'd expect, but fit in pretty well. They still show signs of being a rob…

Will they stop when they see a ball fly across the street, because a child may be chasing it. Fringe cases will determine their success. Until then, it will be glorified cruise control.

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#569

Post by kvz »

walrus1066 wrote: post #487
Retric wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a human on call to remote into a Car is still a viable option in most of the US. This is not a good fit for sub second response times or tunnels, but it vastly reduces the endless .0001% edge cases. ED: Not hitting kids is manditory, not blocking traffic is mandatory, parking in every random stop is optional as long as their are safe places it can drive to.

Yes, it may provide a good impetus to upgrade our mobile data infrastructure. It would have to be ultra fast, ultra reliable, ultra wide coverage. Because if you can't remote in, and the cars caused a huge traffic jam, it'll be very difficult to get the owner companies human in to help out the vehicle. I guess the recovery man can just use a bike :/

And if you can remote in, I'm worried about hacks. Imagine the chaos if a terrorist group got in and turned the wheel of an entire fleet in a random direction. It seems to me anything can get hacked/any individual can be pressed, and it's alsways just a matter of if it's worth the trouble. Seems a hack like this is would be worth some, to some groups. Also: they only need to succeed Once. The rest of us need to have perfect security among all fleets of all corporations and brands for all time.

Re: Waymo: Google's self-driving car company

#570

Post by imh »

anchpop wrote: post #489
imh wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On their webpage, waymo breaks down that 30k into smaller pieces. 94% of those deaths were due to human choice or human error. At least 71% were due to speeding, alcohol, distraction, and drowsiness. It's probably safe to say that driving like those 94% during your DMV driving test would mean a human wouldn't even get licensed. Why lower the bar to just being better than them? I want my autonomous car to be better th…

Sure, but if the average person really would be safer with a car that self-drives 90% of the time, wouldn't you recommend that everyone get a self driving car? You can't say "Only get a self-driving car if you're a below average driver" because then nobody would get one (and they'd be worse off for it)

I don't think there's a clear answer to that question, but my gut says that would be immoral. What we'd be doing is saving a ton of lives where people would have otherwise gotten themselves killed through their own choices, but at the expense of a few deaths where the fault is entirely our own (the car maker). It's laudable to protect people from themselves when it doesn't otherwise affect them, but when the cost is killing totally innocent responsible people, I think it crosses a line.

On the other hand, if you think fault doesn't matter and it's just one life for another, then it essentially becomes the trolley problem, which doesn't have a clear answer either.

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