Many years ago, as an intern at Google, one of my mentors said to me "Google found a hose that money pours out of, and it's name is 'online advertising'. All we do now is improve that hose and desperately search for another one".
I would love to see Waymo become another hose. I'd love to see it launch in my city (whenever the laws are amended to allow such things).
(Yes, I know arguably they've had a few other successes.)
Google has YouTube, Android, gmail, GCP and a bunch of other big businesses.
I have a ton of criticism about Google but they've been able to diversify a lot better than I expected and I totally understand why companies with big cash "hoses" like you describe are making these sort of 'long shot but highly profitable' investments.
Waymo is just another way to add more water to the hose.
More leisure time not focusing on the road = more eyeballs.
What percent of our lives do we spend driving?[0]
"Our best guess? Six percent of our waking hours are spent in a car, en route. There are 4.12 million miles of road in the United States, and that’s a lot of ground for the 222 million drivers in this country to cover."
I took a Waymo in Phoenix the other night. Works like magic. I’m honestly fine waiting four times as long for one because it’s fun, and it’s cheaper. Even when they had to send out a manual driver, the experience was smooth and fast.
I also had a magical autonomous ride when I visited Phoenix a couple years ago.
I asked a friend who works at waymo why it's taking forever to build up a critical mass of vehicles to get the wait times down to a more reasonable level.
He said the issue was cost. I guess all those sensors are actually more expensive than the cost of a human driver at this point?
Yeah, I think if we want driverless taxis in major cities ASAP, then Waymo is probably the way forward. It should be relatively easy to continuously map a city with a fleet of vehicles and keep them geofenced. It's will be a good revenue generator that can sustain the company while they work on a more general video based solution.
The counter argument is lidar isn’t strictly necessary (case in point humans use vision, and roads are designed for visual drivers). Furthermore, there is potential added complexity in fusing lidar and video data. When lidar says the path is blocked and video says it is not, you essentially have to either trust lidar and stop unnecessarily or just ignore lidar and go anyway (and then what was the point of the lidar?). Having to make a decision like this is a form of complexity and addressing that complexity potentially takes resources away from iterating on the vision part of the stack.
That's a very important difference. If it turns out that LIDAR (and maybe other sensors) are needed in addition to machine vision for level 5 automation, all the data Tesla cameras have been gathering may be worth much less than the 3D models Google is building.
"For those of you in San Francisco, join the waitlist today."
Aw. Not quite yet. But getting steadily closer. What's pricing?
When the service turns on as a commercial service in San Francisco, autonomous vehicles will really be here. Phoenix is the easy case. SF is moderately hard. NYC will be tough.
It's interesting how different the rollout of autonomous cars has been from what people were expecting a decade ago. Not just the speed of things, but also the way they're being adopted. So far, we don't seem to be anywhere close to the nationwide mass layoffs of truck and taxi drivers that people were predicting would happen when self-driving cars started to take of.
Instead, current trends seem to be for an additional form of transportation within limited geographic areas. One can imagine a scenario where, for instance, we have a number of cities where self-driving cars are the dominant form of transportation in the center, but traditional cars are still owned and operated by the people who live on the periphery, and most cities don't have self-driving networks at all. Something similar to how the subway functions in Manhattan New York, perhaps.
Or maybe not. But I think this all shows that it's not just difficult to predict which pieces of future technology we will have, but also how a particular piece of technology will actually be implemented and impact society.
It feels like there's always an imminent threat of computers and technology replacing more human jobs, but it might wind up being harder than it looks for one reason or another.
I think in the past, technology mostly threatened to replace and eliminate jobs nobody really wanted, or merely assist people in their jobs to make them more effective. AI is really doing a number on us, though. I really like programming, and I have plenty of friends who really like drawing. It would be a shame if the main incentive to be good at those things in society were to disappear due to the job market being partially eaten, but it does seem like that's what is going to happen eventually. Sometimes I wonder if it's even worth fighting it, as it seems like it's just another inevitable mess that winds up the same either way because people with more money than I can fathom have a pretty good incentive to make it so.
Either way, driving seems somewhere down the middle. I think automating driving would be great, but I also assume plenty of truckers do enjoy the job, and would be lost without it.
It's good that this transition is taking a while. I don't think we're equipped to handle it.
For sure. "We tend to over-estimate the impact of a phenomenon in the short run and under-estimate it in the long run."
I think part of what's going on here is that the actual pattern of technology use is heavily dependent on technical and economic details that can't be known up front. It turns out that SAE level 5 autonomy is much harder than a lot of people expected, so the thing that disrupted the cab industry is not the long-anticipated robo-cab but a mechanical-turk version of that. Or consider mass adoption of flying cars and/or personal helicopters. It has been technically possible for a while, but the economics and practicalities don't work out.
I think a lot of people thought it would be exactly as hard as it has turned out to be but were dismissed as being luddites or lacking imagination.
I think it’s always been apparent that self driving is one of those problems where the first 90% is hard but solvable, but where the difficulty just keeps increasing in the last 10%.
When I was growing up in the 80s and 90s I was constantly seeing coverage of cars driving themselves around circuits and even handling skids in a skid pan better than any human. I fully expected to never have to drive. Sadly I was very wrong.
I’ve never wanted more to be wrong about my cynicism about a technology than with self driving.
It’s just US implementing proper public transportation via contemporary means. I’ve always thought US has the advantage of a genuine need for robotaxis compared to other advanced economies where public transport already works well.
If what you are describing turns out to be true in the long term, it would have to mean that there is something fundamentally different and harder about self-driving outside of cities.
Yes, I got on the trusted riders list. I usually only use ride shares to go to the airport, and sadly it doesn't go there yet, so I've only used it a few times
Does anybody know how much this is currently backed with human intervention? My understanding is that Waymo is bridging the gap between their current level and full automation with having humans on tap via the network. But I'd love to know more about the frequency and circumstances of remote interventions.
Waymo has to do SAE Level 4 because there literally is no human driver in the vehicle. You aren't allowed to sit in the seat where the pedals and wheel are, this isn't assistance, it's a driver, like in a taxi.
Remote humans can correct the machine's model of the world, to a limited extent. A human looking at the data might conclude that's a life-size cardboard cut out of Luke Skywalker, not Mark Hamill stood motionless in the road in costume for no reason, and so it's OK for the Waymo to squeeze past it, whereas driving very close to humans is unacceptable.
They don't have any means to remotely drive the car, if for any reason that's the solution to a problem, the Waymo will stop somewhere, a vehicle with Waymo employees in will turn up in a few minutes, then a human driver gets into your car and takes over.
It's been a good year for machine learning overall, and that includes autonomous vehicles. There's more optimism this year, the survivors are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.
Have Waymo announced which cities they will work on in 2023/2024? One of the comments in here mentions their vehicles in Los Angeles. Any guesses on when they may start service in New York City?
without knowing phoenix, it's hard to get a sense of how much area is actually covered from this blog post. is this just an expansion to a couple neighbourhoods, or is this getting towards covering most of the city?
Having tried Tesla FSD many times, I'm very bearish on self driving technology. Genuinely alarmed how Waymo was able to get a permit for rides without human supervision. If I had not intervened multiple times when I tried FSD in a Model S for just a 30 minute trip, I certainly would have crashed.
If your only sample has been Tesla "FSD", your bearishness is appropriate. However, Tesla's level of development is infantile compared to Waymo's.
It's clear that Waymo has run into some costs/limits in physically scaling their operations, as the software side of things appears to already be "good enough" and is not the limiting factor.
You can’t compare Tesla FSD with Waymo, they are using fundamentally different techniques. Specifically, Tesla decided to do everything based on video images, while Waymo uses LIDAR.
Additionally, there’s a cultural difference where Tesla doesn’t care about quality/safety as much as Waymo does.
At this rate will be 2060 before waymo is profitable. Curious how long the shareholders are going to tolerate such a large expense over dividend/share repurchases
Tesla charges $12,000 for the FSD package. Not sure what a Waymo package might be worth, but it could be a hell of a lot more lucrative business than Android.
From a consumer's standpoint, is that bad? I'd rather wait longer and know for a fact that the product is 100% safe and tested. This isn't something I would be willing to take a risk on, getting into a car crash because I was really anxious to try a driverless taxi seems embarrassing.
I find it interesting how deeply downvoted this comment is. This is pretty much what TCI Management, a not insignificant investor in Alphabet, has said in a note that they published recently [0]:
TCI also pointed out that Alphabet's Other Bets division – which houses operations including Waymo, Nest, Access, Calico and more – generated $3 billion in revenues in the past five years but incurred operating losses of $20 billion. "Other Bets have been unsuccessful" and operating losses estimated at $6 billion in 2022 should be reduced by 50 percent.
"The biggest component of Other Bets is Waymo," TCI added. "Unfortunately, enthusiasm for self-driving cars has collapsed and competitors have exited the market. Ford and Volkswagen recently decided to shut down their self-driving venture" saying that achieving profit in the short term was not likely.
This will not end well as ml/dl has no intelligence, and given the ever changing world we live in, intelligence is needed for safe driving. Phoenix has less variation than many places, but statistics on the past won't help when something unexpected arises as it always will in time. My guess is they are only doing this now to convince investors (or google itself) that the technology is viable, when in fact, is simply is not. Best to just shut all these companies down until machine intelligence has been achieved rather than waste so many resources.
> intelligence is needed for safe driving... won't get when something unexpected arises as it always will in time
I don't think that's true. While unexpected situations do arise, I don't think people use much "intelligence" to handle them. When an elephant falls out of the semi truck in front of you, your response is to hit the breaks. You don't spend a minute thinking about the likelihood of the event, or question whether allowing the elephant to hit your car might improve the likelihood of it surviving (and whether that justifies sacrificing yourself.)
The fact is that most accidents aren't very atypical. They're everyday things that happen, and people aren't paying attention, or they make a mistake. Handling just these scenarios will result in net saved lives. In other words, autonomous driving doesn't have to be perfect to be useful.
[+] [-] mabbo|3 years ago|reply
I would love to see Waymo become another hose. I'd love to see it launch in my city (whenever the laws are amended to allow such things).
(Yes, I know arguably they've had a few other successes.)
[+] [-] inglor|3 years ago|reply
I have a ton of criticism about Google but they've been able to diversify a lot better than I expected and I totally understand why companies with big cash "hoses" like you describe are making these sort of 'long shot but highly profitable' investments.
[+] [-] mbesto|3 years ago|reply
Waymo is just another way to add more water to the hose.
More leisure time not focusing on the road = more eyeballs.
What percent of our lives do we spend driving?[0]
"Our best guess? Six percent of our waking hours are spent in a car, en route. There are 4.12 million miles of road in the United States, and that’s a lot of ground for the 222 million drivers in this country to cover."
[0] - https://short-facts.com/how-many-hours-does-the-average-amer...
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] BurningFrog|3 years ago|reply
The rational thing would be to keep doing what they're best at.
But somehow that's not how things work.
[+] [-] JumpCrisscross|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcrady|3 years ago|reply
I asked a friend who works at waymo why it's taking forever to build up a critical mass of vehicles to get the wait times down to a more reasonable level.
He said the issue was cost. I guess all those sensors are actually more expensive than the cost of a human driver at this point?
[+] [-] wpietri|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] verdenti|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] amelius|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Philip-J-Fry|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshribakoff|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zigurd|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] darknavi|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Animats|3 years ago|reply
Aw. Not quite yet. But getting steadily closer. What's pricing?
When the service turns on as a commercial service in San Francisco, autonomous vehicles will really be here. Phoenix is the easy case. SF is moderately hard. NYC will be tough.
[+] [-] snug|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dslowell|3 years ago|reply
Instead, current trends seem to be for an additional form of transportation within limited geographic areas. One can imagine a scenario where, for instance, we have a number of cities where self-driving cars are the dominant form of transportation in the center, but traditional cars are still owned and operated by the people who live on the periphery, and most cities don't have self-driving networks at all. Something similar to how the subway functions in Manhattan New York, perhaps.
Or maybe not. But I think this all shows that it's not just difficult to predict which pieces of future technology we will have, but also how a particular piece of technology will actually be implemented and impact society.
[+] [-] jchw|3 years ago|reply
I think in the past, technology mostly threatened to replace and eliminate jobs nobody really wanted, or merely assist people in their jobs to make them more effective. AI is really doing a number on us, though. I really like programming, and I have plenty of friends who really like drawing. It would be a shame if the main incentive to be good at those things in society were to disappear due to the job market being partially eaten, but it does seem like that's what is going to happen eventually. Sometimes I wonder if it's even worth fighting it, as it seems like it's just another inevitable mess that winds up the same either way because people with more money than I can fathom have a pretty good incentive to make it so.
Either way, driving seems somewhere down the middle. I think automating driving would be great, but I also assume plenty of truckers do enjoy the job, and would be lost without it.
It's good that this transition is taking a while. I don't think we're equipped to handle it.
[+] [-] wpietri|3 years ago|reply
I think part of what's going on here is that the actual pattern of technology use is heavily dependent on technical and economic details that can't be known up front. It turns out that SAE level 5 autonomy is much harder than a lot of people expected, so the thing that disrupted the cab industry is not the long-anticipated robo-cab but a mechanical-turk version of that. Or consider mass adoption of flying cars and/or personal helicopters. It has been technically possible for a while, but the economics and practicalities don't work out.
[+] [-] noneeeed|3 years ago|reply
I think it’s always been apparent that self driving is one of those problems where the first 90% is hard but solvable, but where the difficulty just keeps increasing in the last 10%.
When I was growing up in the 80s and 90s I was constantly seeing coverage of cars driving themselves around circuits and even handling skids in a skid pan better than any human. I fully expected to never have to drive. Sadly I was very wrong.
I’ve never wanted more to be wrong about my cynicism about a technology than with self driving.
[+] [-] ansgri|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] colordrops|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rafaelero|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nosefrog|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] snug|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] renewiltord|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coolspot|3 years ago|reply
I hope they will open service here soon.
[+] [-] wpietri|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tialaramex|3 years ago|reply
Remote humans can correct the machine's model of the world, to a limited extent. A human looking at the data might conclude that's a life-size cardboard cut out of Luke Skywalker, not Mark Hamill stood motionless in the road in costume for no reason, and so it's OK for the Waymo to squeeze past it, whereas driving very close to humans is unacceptable.
They don't have any means to remotely drive the car, if for any reason that's the solution to a problem, the Waymo will stop somewhere, a vehicle with Waymo employees in will turn up in a few minutes, then a human driver gets into your car and takes over.
This does not seem to happen very often.
[+] [-] Fricken|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] foruhar|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notatoad|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nullc|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lopkeny12ko|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrshadowgoose|3 years ago|reply
It's clear that Waymo has run into some costs/limits in physically scaling their operations, as the software side of things appears to already be "good enough" and is not the limiting factor.
[+] [-] darkwizard42|3 years ago|reply
Waymo’s approach is so different from Teslas in both tech and safety I’m not even sure you could compare or generalize.
[+] [-] stingraycharles|3 years ago|reply
Additionally, there’s a cultural difference where Tesla doesn’t care about quality/safety as much as Waymo does.
[+] [-] onlyrealcuzzo|3 years ago|reply
It's a complete joke that should really tarnish the brand value of a company.
Doesn't mean other companies with better sensors and better data don't have a FAR, FAR, FAR better experience.
[+] [-] ipsum2|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] WilTimSon|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KKKKkkkk1|3 years ago|reply
TCI also pointed out that Alphabet's Other Bets division – which houses operations including Waymo, Nest, Access, Calico and more – generated $3 billion in revenues in the past five years but incurred operating losses of $20 billion. "Other Bets have been unsuccessful" and operating losses estimated at $6 billion in 2022 should be reduced by 50 percent.
"The biggest component of Other Bets is Waymo," TCI added. "Unfortunately, enthusiasm for self-driving cars has collapsed and competitors have exited the market. Ford and Volkswagen recently decided to shut down their self-driving venture" saying that achieving profit in the short term was not likely.
[0] https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/16/tci_fund_google_cut_c...
[+] [-] gibsonf1|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moeris|3 years ago|reply
I don't think that's true. While unexpected situations do arise, I don't think people use much "intelligence" to handle them. When an elephant falls out of the semi truck in front of you, your response is to hit the breaks. You don't spend a minute thinking about the likelihood of the event, or question whether allowing the elephant to hit your car might improve the likelihood of it surviving (and whether that justifies sacrificing yourself.)
The fact is that most accidents aren't very atypical. They're everyday things that happen, and people aren't paying attention, or they make a mistake. Handling just these scenarios will result in net saved lives. In other words, autonomous driving doesn't have to be perfect to be useful.