61–70 of 190 posts
Glad Polymarket (and other related markets) exist so they can put actual goal posts in place with mechanisms that require certain outcomes in order to finalize on a prediction result.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In what sense is self-driving “here” if the economics alone prove that it can’t get “here”? It’s not just limited coverage, it’s practically non-existent coverage, both nationally and globally, with no evidence that the system can generalize, profitably, outside the limited areas it’s currently in.
It's covering significant areas of 3 major metros, and the core of one minor, with testing deployments in several other major metros. Considering the top 10 metros are >70% of the US ridehail market, that seems like a long way beyond "non-existent" coverage nationally.
The promise has been that self-driving would replace driving in general because it’d be safer, more economical, etc. The promise has been that you’d be able to send your autonomous car from city to city without a driver present, possibly to pick up your child from school, and bring them back home.
In that sense, yes, Waymo is nonexistent. As the article author points out, lifetime miles for “self-driving” vehicles (70M) accounts for less than 1% of daily driving miles in the US (9B).
Even if we suspend that perspective, and look at the ride-hailing market, in 2018 Uber/Lyft accounted for ~1-2% of miles driven in the top 10 US metros. [1] So, Waymo is a tiny part of a tiny market in a single nation in the world.
Self-driving isn’t “here” in any meaningful sense and it won’t be in the near-term. If it were, we’d see Alphabet pouring much more of its war chest into Waymo to capture what stands to be a multi-trillion dollar market. But they’re not, so clearly they see the same risks that Brooks is highlighting.
[1]: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FIUskVkj9lsAnWJQ6kLhAhNoVLj...
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Speaking for one of those metro areas I'm familiar with: maybe in SF city limits specifically (where they still are half the Uber's share), but that's 10% of the population of the Bay Area metro. I'm very much looking forward to the day when I can take a robo cab from where I live near Google to the airport - preferably, much cheaper than today's absurd Uber rates - but today it's just not present in the lives of abo…
> preferably, much cheaper than today's absurd Uber rates I just want to highlight that the only mechanism by which this eventually produces cheaper rates is by removing having to pay a human driver. I’m not one to forestall technological progress, but there are a huge number of people already living on the margins who will lose one of their few remaining options for income as this expands. AI will inevitably create…
Feels too self-congratulatory when he claims to be correct about self driving in the Waymo case. The bar he set is so broad and ambiguous, that probably anything Waymo did, would not qualify as self driving to him. So he think humans are intervening once every 1-2 miles to train the Waymo, we’re not even sure if that is true, I heard from friends that it was 100+ miles but let us say Waymo comes out and says it is 10…
Just to make sure we're applying our rubric fairly and universally: Has anyone else been in an Uber where you wished you were able to intervene in the driving a few times, or at least apply RLHF to the driver?
(In other words: Waymo may be imperfect to the point where corrections are sometimes warranted; that doesn't mean they're not already driving at a superhuman level, for most humans. Just because there is no way for remote advisors to provide better decisions for human drivers doesn't mean that human-driven cars would not benefit from that, if it were available.).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Speaking for one of those metro areas I'm familiar with: maybe in SF city limits specifically (where they still are half the Uber's share), but that's 10% of the population of the Bay Area metro. I'm very much looking forward to the day when I can take a robo cab from where I live near Google to the airport - preferably, much cheaper than today's absurd Uber rates - but today it's just not present in the lives of abo…
> preferably, much cheaper than today's absurd Uber rates I just want to highlight that the only mechanism by which this eventually produces cheaper rates is by removing having to pay a human driver. I’m not one to forestall technological progress, but there are a huge number of people already living on the margins who will lose one of their few remaining options for income as this expands. AI will inevitably create…
Let's say AV development stops tomorrow though. Is continuing to grind workers down under the boot of the gig economy really a preferred solution here or just a way to avoid the difficult political discussion we need to have either way?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I believe some devs were probably replaced by AI, but not a large amount. I'm not even sold on the idea that there were any . The media likes to blame AI for the developer layoffs because it makes a much more exciting story than interest rates and arcane tax code changes. But the fact is that we don't need more than the Section 174 changes and the end of ZIRP to explain what's happened in tech. Federal economic pol…
But I see so many devs typing here saying how vital AI is to their writing code efficiently and quickly now. If that is true then you need way less devs. Are people just sitting idle at their desks? I do see quite a bit of tech layoffs for sure. Are you saying devs aren't part of the workers being laid off? >In 2024: At least 95,667 workers at U.S.-based tech companies have lost their jobs so far in the year, accordi…
The problem is different in the meantime: nobody wants to be paying for training of those new devs. Juniors don’t have the experience to call LLM’s bullshit and seniors don’t get paid to teach them since LLMs replaced interns churning out boilerplate.
Wait, What now?
I have never heard this, but from the founder of CSAIL I am going to take it as a statement of fact and proof that basically every AI company is flat out lying.
I mean the difference between remote piloting a drone that has some autonomous flying features (which they do to handle lag etc) and remote driving a car is … semantics?
But yeah it’s just moving jobs from one location to another.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> preferably, much cheaper than today's absurd Uber rates I just want to highlight that the only mechanism by which this eventually produces cheaper rates is by removing having to pay a human driver. I’m not one to forestall technological progress, but there are a huge number of people already living on the margins who will lose one of their few remaining options for income as this expands. AI will inevitably create…
People living on the margins is fundamentally a social problem, and we all know how amenable those are to technical solutions. Let's say AV development stops tomorrow though. Is continuing to grind workers down under the boot of the gig economy really a preferred solution here or just a way to avoid the difficult political discussion we need to have either way?
All I'm asking is that we take a moment to reflect on the people who won't be winners. Which is going to be a hell of a lot of people. And right now there is absolutely zero plan for what to do when these folks have one of the few remaining opportunities taken away from them.
As awful as the gig economy has been it's better than the "no economy" we're about to drive them to.
> That being said, we are not on the verge of replacing and eliminating humans in either white collar jobs or blue collar jobs. Tell that to someone laid off when replaced by some "AI" system. > Waymo not autonomous enough It's not clear how often Waymo cars need remote attention, but it's not every 1-2 miles. Customers would notice the vehicle being stopped and stuck during the wait for customer service. There are m…
> Tell that to someone laid off when replaced by some "AI" system. What are some good examples? I am very skeptical of anyone losing their jobs to AI. People are getting laid off for various reasons: - Companies are replacing American tech jobs with foreigners - Many companies hired more devs than they need - companies hired many devs during the pandemic, and don't need them anymore Some companies may claim they are…