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Predictions Scorecard, 2025 January 01

rodneybrooks.com

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Re: Predictions Scorecard, 2025 January 01

#71

Post by sashank_1509 »

coderintherye wrote: post #61

Good example of everything that can wrong with a prediction market if left unchecked. Don't like that Waymo broke your prediction? Fine just move your goalposts. Like that prediction came true but on the wrong timeframe? Just move the goal 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 predicti…

Well said, shows even the most accomplished humans have the same biases as the rest of us when not held accountable

Re: Predictions Scorecard, 2025 January 01

#72

Post by AlotOfReading »

Denzel wrote: post #62
AlotOfReading wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You’re narrowing the market for self-driving to the ridehail market in the top 10 US metros. That’s kinda moving the goal posts, my friend, and completely ignoring the promises made by self-driving companies. 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…

There are, optimistically, significantly less than 10k Waymos operating today. There are a bit less than 300M registered vehicles in the US. If the entire US automotive production were devoted solely to Waymos, it'd still take years to produce enough vehicles to drive any meaningful percentage of the daily road miles in the US.

I think that's a bit of a silly standard to set for hopefully obvious reasons.

Re: Predictions Scorecard, 2025 January 01

#73

Post by Denzel »

jsnell wrote: post #60
Denzel wrote: post #21

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.

Where's the economic proof of impossibility? As far as I know Waymo has not published any official numbers, and any third party unit profitability analysis is going to be so sensitive to assumptions about e.g. exact depreciation schedules and utilization percentages that the error bars would inevitably be straddling both sides of the break-even line. > with no evidence that the system can generalize, profitably, outs…

Analyzing Alphabet’s capital allocation decisions gives you all the evidence necessary.

It’s safe to assume that a company’s ownership takes the decisions that they believe will maximize the value of their company. Therefore, we can look at Alphabet’s capital allocation decisions, with respect to Waymo, to see what they think about Waymo’s opportunity.

In the past five years, Alphabet has spent >$100B to buyback their stock; retained ~100B in cash. In 2024, they issued their first dividend to investors and authorized up to $70B more in stock buybacks.

Over that same time period they’ve invested This tells us that Alphabet believes their money is better spent buying back their stock, paying back their investors, or sitting in the bank, when compared to investing more in Waymo.

Either they believe Waymo’s opportunity is too small (unlikely) to warrant further investment, or when adjusted for the remaining risk/uncertainty (research, technology, product, market, execution, etc) they feel the venture needs to be de-risked further before investing more.

Re: Predictions Scorecard, 2025 January 01

#74

Post by xarope »

_yb2s wrote: post #19
laweijfmvo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kobe Bryant basically commuted by helicopter, when it was convenient. It may have even taken off and landed at his house, but probably not exactly at all of his destinations. Is a “flying car” fundamentally that much different?

I think the difference is that a helicopter is extremely technical to fly requiring complex and expensive training, and the eVTOL is supposed to be extremely simple to fly. Also the eVTOL in principle is really cheap to make if you just consider the materials and construction costs- probably eventually much cheaper than a car. I was curious so I looked up how much you can buy the cheapest new helicopters for, and the…

But I'm sure running costs (aviation fuel), hanger costs, maintenance costs, cost to maintain pilot license are far more expensive, compared to driving a car.

Re: Predictions Scorecard, 2025 January 01

#75

Post by Bootvis »

benreesman wrote: post #47
tylerflick wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can tell you as someone that crosses paths almost everyday with a Waymo car, they absolutely due work. I would describe their driving behavior as very safe and overly cautious. I’m far more concerned of humans behind the wheel.

I especially love how they can go fast when it’s safe and slow when the error bars go up even a little. It’s like being in the back seat of Nikki Lauda’s car.

As shown here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVZ8NyV4pXU

Re: Predictions Scorecard, 2025 January 01

#76

Post by xarope »

laweijfmvo wrote: post #15
_yb2s wrote: post #7

It seems to me that the redefined flying cars for extremely wealthy people did happen? eVTOLs are being sold/delivered to the general public. Certainly still pretty rare, as I've never seen one in real life. I'd love to have one but would probably hate a world where everyone has them. Not really wanting to have this argument a second time in a week (seriously- just look at my past comments instead of replying here as…

Kobe Bryant basically commuted by helicopter, when it was convenient. It may have even taken off and landed at his house, but probably not exactly at all of his destinations. Is a “flying car” fundamentally that much different?

I had a friend who used to (still does) fly RC helicopters; that requires quite a bit of skill. Meanwhile, I think anybody can fly a DJI drone. I think that's what will transform "flying" when anybody, not just a highly skilled pilot, can "drive" a flying car (assuming it can be as safe as a normal car... which somehow I doubt)

Re: Predictions Scorecard, 2025 January 01

#77

Post by tkgally »

zetalyrae wrote: post #56

> LLMs have proved amazing facile with language. If you took a transcript of a conversation with Claude 3.6 Sonnet, and sent it back in time even five years ago (just before the GPT-3 paper was published), nobody would believe it was real. They would say that it was fake, or that it was witchcraft. And whoever believed it was real would instantly acknowledge that the Turing test had been passed. This refusal to updat…

Similarly if you could let a person from five years ago have a spoken conversation with ChatGPT Advanced Voice mode or Gemini Live. For me five years ago, the only giveaways that the voice on the other end might not be human would have been its abilities to answer questions instantaneously about almost any subject and to speak many different languages.

The NotebookLM “podcasters” would have been equally convincing to me.

Re: Predictions Scorecard, 2025 January 01

#78

Post by fifticon »

zzzeek wrote: post #20

what a weird writer, lots of interesting things to talk about but this very long essay continued to circle back to being author-self-obsessed with their own prowess and drawing out huge expositions and bullet lists on how well they are at predicting things. Call it self-referential-appeal-to-authority.

Another perspective is that it is a person who takes great care/is very thorough, to examine and re-evaluate his reasonings, and makes an effort to explain the logic in his reasoning, which can be helpful if you are trying to figure out if you agree or disagree.

Re: Predictions Scorecard, 2025 January 01

#79

Post by tsimionescu »

Mistletoe wrote: post #58
lolinder wrote: post #24

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…

> Are you saying devs aren't part of the workers being laid off?

No, they are saying that the reason for the layoffs is not AI, it is financial changes making devs too expensive.

> If that is true then you need way less devs.

This does not follow. First of all, companies take a long time to measure dev output, it's not like you can look at a burn down chart over two sprints and decide to fire half the team because it seems they're working twice as fast. So any productivity gains will show up as layoffs only after a long time.

Secondly, dev productivity is very rarely significantly bounded by how long boilerplate takes to write. Having a more efficient way to write boilerplate, even massively more efficient, say 8h down to 1h, will only marginally improve your overall throughput, at least at the senior level: all that does is free you to think more about the complex issues you needed to solve. So if the task would have previously taken you 10 days, of which one day was spent on boilerplate, it may now take you, say, 8-9 days, because you've saved one day on boilerplate, plus some more minor gains here and there. So far from firing 7 out of every 8 devs, the 8h-to-1h boilerplate solution might allow you to fire 1 dev in a team of 10.

Re: Predictions Scorecard, 2025 January 01

#80

Post by jdminhbg »

Mistletoe wrote: post #58
lolinder wrote: post #24

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…

> 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.

Sure, in the same sense that editors and compilers mean you need way less devs.

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