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Uber wants to turn its drivers into a sensor grid for self-driving companies

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Re: Uber wants to turn its drivers into a sensor grid for self-driving companies

#81

Post by delfinom »

simmonmt wrote: post #58
ra7 wrote: post #32

> The insight driving the program, Naga said, is that the limiting factor for AV development is no longer the underlying technology. “The bottleneck is data,” he said. “[Companies like Waymo] need to go around and collect the data, collect different scenarios. You may be able to say: in San Francisco, ‘At this school intersection, I want some data at this time of day so I can train my models.’ The problem for all the…

> When they want data about a school intersection in SF at a certain time of day, they just... synthetically generate it and simulate I think it's more about detecting changes to the world. You need boots on the ground, so to speak, to see that new speed limit sign or the new lane paint. The Waymo vehicle can no doubt react to changes in the world when it encounters them, relaying them back to the mothership, but it'…

>You need boots on the ground, so to speak, to see that new speed limit sign or the new lane paint.

It'll shock you to know that you can simply get this from governments, some even provide this in API form

Re: Uber wants to turn its drivers into a sensor grid for self-driving companies

#83

Post by samagragune »

"Our goal is not to make money out of this data" is doing a lot of heavy lifting for a company that just committed $10B to robotaxis and is taking equity in the same AV companies it would be supplying. The actually interesting part isn't the sensor grid, that's years away and has real consent, compensation, and regulatory problems nobody's talking about. It's shadow mode: letting AV companies sim-run their models against millions of real Uber trips without putting a car on the road. That works today. That's the product. The sensor grid is the press release. Shadow mode is the business. Also completely absent from this article: do the drivers whose cars become "rolling data collection platforms" get anything? A cut? A notification? A commemorative badge? Uber has a rich history of finding creative ways to extract value from its driver network, so I'm sure they've thought carefully about this.

Re: Uber wants to turn its drivers into a sensor grid for self-driving companies

#84

Post by bastawhiz »

zitterbewegung wrote: post #78

Isn’t this a pivot I always thought Uber wanted to automate their whole fleet instead of having to pay people ?

Uber was working on self driving ten years ago. They had cars on the road loaded with cameras and sensors specifically to collect data. Then they negligently killed a woman crossing a street.

This isn't a pivot, this is them trying to sheepishly reenter the race they were dramatically ejected from.

Re: Uber wants to turn its drivers into a sensor grid for self-driving companies

#85

Post by ryandrake »

xp84 wrote: post #46
kjkjadksj wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Preface: I am personally NOT into anti-growth ideas, and I also think it’s super alarming that the West especially seems to be intent on wiping itself out by lack of having kids. But that said, supposing we are looking at 60 years from now having a few billion fewer people on Earth, just by attrition (lack of replacement) that is not automatically bad. We could afford to shrink in population - if there’s a floor to t…

Look at it from the very high level point of view of the ~500 or so richest people on the planet that rule everything: Planet Earth is basically a vacation resort for them that they control, and the remaining 7,999,999,500 of us are the staff that serve them and keep them entertained and comfortable. If that can still happen with only 6 billion, 2 billion, or 50 million of us, they are not going to care. When their wealth stops coming from other people's labor, they'll just dispose of us.

Re: Uber wants to turn its drivers into a sensor grid for self-driving companies

#86

Post by JumpCrisscross »

ninjagoo wrote: post #79
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The majority of people have absolutely no foundational belief for their actions it is simply how do I get more money sex property attention etc… There are no monks door dashing

> The majority of people have absolutely no foundational belief for their actions The majority of people have absolutely no choice for their actions FTFY Especially given that for an increasing number of folks the alternative to doing what you're told is starvation (food insecurity), homelessness, and death (from lack of healthcare).

> majority of people have absolutely no choice for their actions

The poorest Americans remain among the richest people in the world and across human history. Many people don't have material choices. Almost every American does.

Re: Uber wants to turn its drivers into a sensor grid for self-driving companies

#88

Post by bobro »

ra7 wrote: post #32

> The insight driving the program, Naga said, is that the limiting factor for AV development is no longer the underlying technology. “The bottleneck is data,” he said. “[Companies like Waymo] need to go around and collect the data, collect different scenarios. You may be able to say: in San Francisco, ‘At this school intersection, I want some data at this time of day so I can train my models.’ The problem for all the…

I find the idea of learning from simulated data so unintuitive. How can you radically improve your model with just your model? I take it people do it, so it must work, but i just don’t understand it at all.

Re: Uber wants to turn its drivers into a sensor grid for self-driving companies

#89

Post by ninjagoo »

gcheong wrote: post #71
ra7 wrote: post #32

> The insight driving the program, Naga said, is that the limiting factor for AV development is no longer the underlying technology. “The bottleneck is data,” he said. “[Companies like Waymo] need to go around and collect the data, collect different scenarios. You may be able to say: in San Francisco, ‘At this school intersection, I want some data at this time of day so I can train my models.’ The problem for all the…

Didn't they need the data from the 200 million miles or so from actual driving before they could get to the generative model though? Data isn't everything, as you point out with Telsa (mainly because they decided to forego using lidar it would seem), but it is pretty fundamental.

> before they could get to the generative model though?

Is that the right kind of model for this particular application?

Re: Uber wants to turn its drivers into a sensor grid for self-driving companies

#90

Post by pirates »

whiplash451 wrote: post #70
ChrisArchitect wrote: post #54

Related: Uber torches 2026 AI budget on Claude Code in four months https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47976415

How is that related?

It’s not, but this guy is in probably 70% of threads posting what he thinks is the same submission. I’ve seen several instances where the posts are different but he just links it and says it’s a duplicate anyway. If he wants to be a mod so bad he should just apply for a job imo.
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