[HN Gopher] CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving
___________________________________________________________________
CEO of Waymo John Krafcik is leaving
Author : mgreg
Score : 106 points
Date : 2021-04-02 17:54 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.waymo.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.waymo.com)
| teslaberry wrote:
| the best way to 'solve' self driving is just to build new cities
| entirely with new transportation infrastructure specifically
| built for self driving vehicles to be on roads, and in parking
| spots. not for 'human driven vehicles'. just to make things
| simpler , and clear, the cars themselves should not even have
| steering wheels.
|
| any vehicles that are outside of the city, can be driven onto a
| self driving wheeled platform kind of thing, and that platform (
| a self driving cart ) will drive those vehicles around as needed
| .
|
| that's actually SIMPLER. than 'solving' self driving in reality.
| Musk's updates will not solve self driving . they will abdicate
| driving responsibilty, for every edge case in which it fails,
| which , ultimately, requires the driver to supervise the car , at
| least , while in complex city environments. which means,
| ultimately, you cannot have fully robot taxis.
|
| if you cannot have robot taxis, you can call 'self driving'
| whatever you want. but it's not effectively 'self driving' for
| the purpose of mega profit silicon valley ponzi-nomics.
|
| if you want mega profit, let alone, real world self driving
| solved. just start building the entire infrastructure from
| scratch to ensure the system as a whole works.
|
| right now, you're trying to solve 'self driving' for the
| individual vehicle as if it will be as 'smart' as a human by
| mimicing human driving styles with complex hardware and software.
|
| not gonna happen. at best you get mimicry of the highest order.
| still doesn't work. cannot mimic persistent capacity to deal with
| novel situation.
|
| 'self driving' is effectively non-deliverable, until at least the
| next AI revolution in hardware, which is still 15-20 years away
| from being commercialized as a suite of different asic chips are
| built out and then taught to communicate with one another by some
| hyper sophisticated universal buss system.
| endisneigh wrote:
| That's sad.
|
| I must be the only one who thinks full self driving will not
| happen before year 2100. Is there an example of anything that's
| completely automated that's dangerous? I cannot think of a single
| thing. At best things are partially automated and need humans
| still.
|
| The thing is, if you have "partial" self driving, you might as
| well just drive yourself IMHO. The consequence of being wrong
| with a car is literally your life. I know people like comparing
| this with airplanes, trains, or the elevator, but cars in the USA
| is just too chaotic an environment. It's nothing like any of
| those.
| Laremere wrote:
| It really depends on what you mean by "full self driving".
|
| Eg, I wouldn't consider the stuff Tesla is doing as self
| driving at all. I have significant worry because to reduces
| attention while still requiring it for safety.
|
| If you're talking "Hail robocab, don't touch a steering wheel,
| arrive at your destination", then Waymo is already there:
| https://blog.waymo.com/2020/10/waymo-is-opening-its-fully-dr...
|
| You might mean "does everything everyone uses a vehicle for
| today", however I feel that's perhaps moving the goalposts to
| unattainable. Eg, replacing nascar racers with self driving
| cars would defeat the point of nascar, so that's won't happen.
| (though it might be an interesting side event.)
|
| Between the two extremes of public pilot in limited area and
| handling every situation, there's a very large space for
| tremendous value. Just serving urban areas would significantly
| reduce the need for vehicles. There are many people who only
| use public transit, or could if they had more economical ways
| to handle sporadic trips such as grocery shopping and visiting
| friends across town.
| solutron wrote:
| Waymo has to learn the exact space it's going to drive in
| ahead of time, and then have high resolution lidar maps
| generated to assist. It's currently limited to use in grid-
| like pre-mapped areas like Phoenix AZ. Tesla is building a
| general learning solution such that you can take the vehicle
| anywhere, and not have the requirement that the area be pre-
| mapped or 'learned' by Tesla beforehand. Tesla has orders of
| magnitude more data and mileage driven than Waymo could
| possibly ever imagine having. Waymo is not going to scale.
| CEO departures like this are a big red flag. Pin this
| comment. Google will shutter Waymo in less than five years.
| bobsil1 wrote:
| Yep, Waymo approach is brittle
| croes wrote:
| How many of these completely automated things have lots of
| humans interacting and are outside an closed area?
| Shivetya wrote:
| full self driving would far easier if they weren't all trying
| to cover all cases at once. I, along with others, have
| mentioned that a far simpler problem to solve is freeway
| travel.
|
| HOV and Express lanes make this easy. They have well
| established markings, limited access, and traffic goes in one
| direction. So industry and regulators would work together to
| solve standardization of markings for travel and entry and
| exiting.
|
| Then you take it to the rest of the interstate system and then
| to limited access highways. Eventually you get down to the
| neighborhoods and city driving.
|
| I see real promise in Tesla's beta system which has a few
| thousand drivers. What it tracks is far more advanced than what
| my current software does in my 3. They finally went to a
| persistent model and far better labeling. Now where my car
| shows cones around a parked vehicle they show the vehicle as
| well. They show all parked and stationary objects. Something
| the current software does not always do if at all.
|
| Just within the US the lane markings, signage, and even
| signaling, is not consistent from state to state. Worse the
| rules for what is an acceptable lane is not consistent either.
| So the first step there is to standardize it all across the
| nation.
| solutron wrote:
| Tesla is 100% going to win in this space. And as Musk and
| Karpathy have said, the general solution will be in place and
| work nearly everywhere, but a long tail of edge scenarios
| will have to be ironed out over time. This is nascent, world
| changing technology solving hard problems.
|
| As a M3 owner you get to see the feature set growing over
| time, but the zero-to-one moment is when that FSD is finally
| rolled out in 9.x
|
| I can't wait. It's going to be amazing.
| qzw wrote:
| The advancements in AI tend to happen in intermittent large
| leaps, but people tend to make linear projections based on the
| most recent leap. That's why there's always a big hype cycle
| followed by disillusionment and some sort of AI winter. I
| personally think 2100 is extremely pessimistic, but all those
| projections of full self-driving by 2025 were certainly even
| more extreme in their optimism.
| meteor333 wrote:
| Even for airplanes and trains, we still have pilots and humans
| behind the controller with 100% attention.
| giobox wrote:
| There's plenty of examples of driverless trains throughout
| the world.
|
| > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_automated_train_syste
| m...
| meteor333 wrote:
| Fair enough. Thanks for correcting me.
|
| But i stand corrected. Guided tracks is hardly a good
| comparison for this.
| minhazm wrote:
| We don't have fully automated planes because they're already
| safe enough and the economics aren't there.
|
| The probability of crashing with a plane is extremely low,
| even factoring in the higher risk of takeoffs and landings.
| The entire process is coordinated with Air Traffic Control.
|
| Since planes are so safe already and pilots are relatively
| inexpensive, there's no strong financial incentive to fully
| automate planes.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Planes are also substantially regulated. I mean if there
| was a Vehicular Traffic Control on every intersection the
| same way there's Air Traffic Control we probably wouldn't
| have any accidents now, negating the main purported benefit
| of self driving to begin with.
| meteor333 wrote:
| Disagree on the economics. Pilots cost significant money
| and since the airline industry runs on low margins this can
| be a huge plus.
|
| But the main reason we won't see planes without pilots is
| political and related to trust. I think for the same
| reasons we are less likely to see truly driverless cars.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > we still have pilots and humans behind the controller with
| 100% attention.
|
| That really isn't true. Pilots, in particular, have huge
| challenges in keeping attention up between take off and
| landing. Likewise for trains, it turns out if you don't
| require humans to do anything but watch...it is much harder
| than if they were actually doing the flying/driving
| themselves.
|
| The airforce is moving to unpiloted drones, though there is
| someone at a center to intervene as needed. It is only a
| matter of time before they decide that cargo can be moved in
| this way (think: fedex).
| [deleted]
| dmitrygr wrote:
| > I must be the only one who thinks full self driving will not
| happen before year 2100.
|
| Nope. Me as well. I think self driving is AGI-complete, and we
| are as far from AGI now as when we were living in caves,
| banging rocks together.
| bumby wrote:
| There's a decent amount of factory automation that is
| essentially fully autonomous with the exception of a "big red
| emergency shutdown" button for a human to press if all the
| other safeties fail. Many operate without continuous oversight
| and in the cases where a human is positioned to watch its
| usually for economic reasons rather than safety (e.g., to stop
| the operation if there is a quality issue that will render the
| product unusable)
|
| Edit: downvoting is fine but please at least add to the
| discussion by stating why you disagree. I'm speaking only from
| my personal experience working in factory automation and
| realize there's probably a lot of differing experience
| endisneigh wrote:
| My understanding is that with factory automation usually it's
| designed to the human is not in danger (usually they aren't
| even present at all). Are there factories that exist that are
| automated in a way where the human is exposed to a
| potentially lethal injury?
| bumby wrote:
| > _Are there factories that exist that are automated in a
| way where the human is exposed to a potentially lethal
| injury?_
|
| Yes, but probably to a lesser extent than driving a car.
| Everything has sensors that are meant to identify a risk to
| a human and stop whatever operation poses that risk.
|
| E.g., there may be robots picking thousands of pounds of
| parts and driving them around a facility but they stop if
| they sense a human a their path. Same for welding,
| stamping, etc. All those operations can injure or kill but
| unlike vehicles they can rely on the mitigation of "stop
| and wait". It's a much easier problem than self-driving
| jeffy90 wrote:
| I wonder if perhaps we can't get self driving cars, but maybe
| we can can't self driving train carts and move completely away
| from cars?
| edwr wrote:
| self driving light rail would be interesting
| piptastic wrote:
| I don't know about 2100 but I've made some bets that self
| driving cars won't be available in the next 5 years.. 2 years
| ago.
| [deleted]
| billfruit wrote:
| Does anyone else think that may be full autonomous flying of
| aircraft will be easier to make practical than driving of
| automobiles?
| fullshark wrote:
| The upside is much smaller though. There are lot more drivers
| than pilots, and crashes are so less common.
| craftinator wrote:
| I thought this was obvious. The complexity that cars deal
| with during travel is many orders of magnitude higher than
| the complexity aircraft deal with, and cars actually have an
| effect on the complexity of the environment they travel in,
| unlike aircraft. For the most part, aircraft one have ONE
| object that they have to avoid hitting, and it's the size of
| a planet, and engages in zero direction changes. Aircraft are
| simple.
| bumby wrote:
| Yes. It's a much more regulated industry that already has
| mandatory equipment that helps solve the problem (e.g.,
| transponders), there's often more time to perceive and
| mitigate a risk (outside of takeoff and landing), less
| variable environments etc
| sp3000 wrote:
| 2100 is almost 80 years from now. Think back to 1940 and how
| different our world was then. Cars will certainly be automated
| to some degree. And that will cause a great reduction in the
| almost 1.35 million people killed globally by motor vehicle
| accidents.
|
| A US statistic: In 2010, there were an estimated 5,419,000
| crashes, 30,296 deadly, killing 32,999, and injuring 2,239,000.
| It is hard for me to imagine a scenario where automated driving
| is as unsafe as that.
|
| We will truly look back and think, "Did we really trust others
| to operate multi ton metal machinery at exceedingly high speeds
| at each other day after day?"
| endisneigh wrote:
| > Cars will certainly be automated to some degree. And that
| will cause a great reduction in the almost 1.35 million
| people killed globally by motor vehicle accidents.
|
| They already are. I'm talking about full self driving. A car
| without a steering wheel. Cruise control (arguably the first
| car automation) has existed since the 1900s. Potentially
| earlier depending on how you define it.
| specialp wrote:
| As a whole this is true and could probably be bested. But it
| would have to be by many magnitudes of order to have people
| accept it. There's a feeling that isn't necessarily true that
| one can control their destiny driving and avoid being a
| statistic. Now we know that isn't always true as you are at
| the mercy of many other elements. But if autonomous cars were
| even 90% less fatalities it would still be hard to get humans
| to give up control for that. It would have to be on the realm
| of air travel safety.
| mrshadowgoose wrote:
| You can, today, go to Pheonix Arizona, download the Waymo One
| app, and summon a full self driving vehicle. This happened
| silently at the end of 2020, and was overshadowed by the
| ongoing pandemic doom and gloom.
| https://blog.waymo.com/2020/10/waymo-is-opening-its-fully-dr...
|
| On the subject of danger. Literally everything we do is
| dangerous to some degree. Everything. Self-driving does not
| need to be perfect, but only better than human drivers. We're
| likely already at that point with Waymo vehicles.
|
| On the subject of automation. Humanity is on track to have the
| computational power to perform whole brain emulation decades
| before 2100. Even if we don't solve the general AI problem
| through other pathways, we will solve it through this path.
| Ethical problems aside, once this is achieved, everything will
| be automatable at a human level of competence.
| npunt wrote:
| > On the subject of danger. Literally everything we do is
| dangerous to some degree.
|
| I don't disagree with your take and I'm a self driving car
| proponent, but I'm worried about what process we take to get
| there.
|
| One thing I've taken away from the pandemic is that people
| seem to have no problem imposing their tolerance for risk on
| others. Seems like we are on a path to play this dynamic out
| again in how self-driving cars come to market unless that
| safety profile is really well controlled and understandable.
|
| Even if at a population-level self-driving is slightly safer
| statistically than person-driving, there are enough edge
| cases to give me pause right now, and at the individual-level
| it may raise my risk either as a pedestrian or driver and
| certainly changes what is predictable behavior [1].
|
| [1]: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2021/04/why-its-so-hard-to-
| prov...
| bumby wrote:
| > _On the subject of danger. Literally everything we do is
| dangerous to some degree. Everything. Self-driving does not
| need to be perfect, but only better than human drivers._
|
| The problem is this statement is written like a technocrat
| rather than someone who makes public policy. From an
| engineering perspective, it's true that it would only need to
| be better than a human driver. To be implemented though, it
| needs approval in the public sphere and not just engineers.
| This presents a very real publicity problem.
|
| You are correct that everything in life contains risk. Risk
| is defined as severity x probability. While the severity may
| be the same, I think humans judge the probability very
| different between human and autonomous drivers.
|
| I think it's rooted in the need for humans to understand
| what's under the hood (no pun intended) to trust the decision
| making capability. We already have this with human drivers
| through the tool of empathy evolved over millions of years.
| We can reasonable assume we know what humans will do.
| (Incidentally it's also why witnessing someone with mental
| illness puts us on edge). We have no such ability to decipher
| an autonomous car, especially for the layman. So this
| distorts the uncertainty in the risk assessment and any
| accident can disproportionately cause our assumption of risk
| to elevate.
| chubot wrote:
| Can you really? I remember that announcement and there was a
| lot of fudged language. You have to be a "member of the
| public service". You can download the app because it's in the
| app store, which is not the same thing as hailing a
| driverless vehicle.
|
| It's not clear that member of the general public can actually
| sign up for it. Has anyone done that and taken a driverless
| ride in Phoenix? Happy to get more updated info / be
| corrected.
|
| (And if this seems like a unreasonable amount of suspicion, I
| invite others to go back and read their press releases from
| the last 3 or 4 years, and tell me if that gives you an
| accurate picture of where the service is today)
| ra7 wrote:
| In that 50 sq mile Chandler area, anyone can download the
| app and hail a ride. I don't live in AZ, but I've seen
| several YouTube videos and r/selfdrivingcars posts/comments
| that can confirm it.
| endisneigh wrote:
| > On the subject of automation. Humanity is on track to have
| the computational power to perform whole brain emulation
| decades before 2100. Even if we don't solve the general AI
| problem through other pathways, we will solve it through this
| path. Ethical problems aside, once this is achieved,
| everything will be automatable at a human level of
| competence.
|
| Is this actually true? I haven't heard of this. You're saying
| we will have an AI as good as a grown educated adult before
| 2100? I can't believe this at all - do you have a citation?
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| No, it's not remotely true. Roughly equating neurons to
| petaflops, counting flops, drawing the best fitting
| straight line, and then announcing a date where the line
| gets high enough is not a remotely reasonable way to
| estimate a "worst case guarantee" date.
|
| It's not impossible that some sort of thing would happen,
| but anyone who tells you that it can't possibly fail to be
| achieved in the next 80 years is lying, either to your or
| to themselves.
| mrshadowgoose wrote:
| Yes, and the methodology I've described (whole brain
| emulation/WBE) is the worst-case, brute-force, but
| guaranteed approach. The following diagram captures the
| expected growth rate of computing power, and contrasts it
| with several thresholds (in blue) for emulation fidelity
| ultimately required: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_upl
| oading#/media/File:Who...
|
| The human brain works, therefore this technique will work,
| it's just a matter of having enough computing power.
|
| I will re-iterate though, we are pursuing various
| alternative pathways to artificial intelligence, and modern
| machine learning has already demonstrated super-human
| performance within constrained domains. It's my personal
| belief that we will achieve human-level general
| intelligence long before WBE becomes practical.
| ThalesX wrote:
| Would it not be feasible yet for very simple organisms?
| ubercore wrote:
| This sounds bonkers to me. We don't even understand fully
| what it would take to emulate a brain right now. I don't
| believe this for one second.
| jfk13 wrote:
| We have no idea what kind of "whole brain emulation" it
| would take to produce what we understand as intelligence,
| so all this seems highly speculative.
| baq wrote:
| We know it only takes 20W of power for the real thing to
| work.
|
| Let that sink in. We know it isn't impossible to run a
| general intelligence computer on 20W because every single
| one of us is living proof that it is possible. There is
| no reason why something man made shouldn't be able to do
| the same thing. How to do that is of course a different
| matter, but it isn't speculative that it can be done,
| it's a direct consequence of our own existence.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| This is the kind of thing that is very misleadingly true.
| If you simply take growth in computing power and
| extrapolate to the end of the century, and compare it to
| the current best estimate of human brain computing power,
| then yes, we'll get there.
|
| But 1) that is an _estimate_ of human brain computing
| power, based on number of neurons and possible connections.
| We have no idea if that is really a valid unit of computing
| "power." Do brain only compute things via voltage
| thresholds across synapses? Then yes, maybe this is an
| accurate estimate. But there are a whole lot of subcellular
| signal cascades happening at molecular levels we can't even
| begin to count and we have no idea whether or not those are
| also computing something accessible to the rest of the
| brain. 2) Matching the computing power of a brain doesn't
| mean you can emulate it. Emulating something requires
| knowing the target architecture and software. It is
| possible we can figure out exactly what a brain is doing to
| an accurate enough level to emulate it by the end of the
| century, but we certainly don't know how to do that right
| now, even if we had the computing power. Remote imaging
| techniques are not nearly good enough (because again, so
| many of the processes are subcellular) and you can't open
| up a brain without destroying it. This is actually a much
| broader problem in biology and we have figured out ways to
| partially dissect some animals while still keeping them
| alive long enough to figure out how a system works in vivo,
| but doing that with a brain is not something we have ever
| come remotely close to doing and there isn't really any
| ethical way to even think of how we can try to figure it
| out.
| quadrifoliate wrote:
| > You can, today, go to Pheonix Arizona, download the Waymo
| One app, and summon a full self driving vehicle.
|
| Consider Google's (okay, Alphabet's) standards for success
| though.
|
| My guess is that a metro area with less than 0.5% of the US
| population does not qualify as a successful product. Maybe as
| a successful small beta test.
|
| Also, given Arizona's overly cozy relationship with self-
| driving [1], I would not necessarily trust a program too much
| on the basis that it's operating there.
|
| -------------------------------------------------------
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/28/uber-
| ariz...
| meteor333 wrote:
| Is there any update on how's that truly driverless program
| going for Waymo?
| [deleted]
| gota wrote:
| I think there's a crucial issue with sensoring. Companies are
| tackling the problem mainly using sensors that are contained
| within the car. Even with LIDAR (and not just cameras) it is
| very hard to "sense" the full scene[1].
|
| What if our roads were built to communicate with the cars? What
| if there were only AVs on the street and they communicated with
| each other? What if every bicycle, school backpack, shopping
| cart did so too, identifying itself in the process?
|
| I think the problem of self-driving is harder right now in the
| transitional period in which they have to coexist with human
| drivers and essentially trying to "emulate" how a human driver
| gathers information (not really, but you get my meaning)
|
| I'm not sure it won't take decades, but I feel like there will
| be a magical few-months period in which we go from "can it be
| done?" to "oh, ok,we got it"
|
| [1] shoot, I lost the reference. But Cruise apparently assumes
| "use whatever is available until it works, we'll make it cost-
| effective later"
| stefan_ wrote:
| Then we can just build trains instead. Perfectly automated
| today.
| thu2111 wrote:
| No, the physics of that don't work at all. Trains for
| example cannot handle gradients that cars manage with ease.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| > What if every bicycle, school backpack, shopping cart did
| so too, identifying itself in the process?
|
| That sounds like a nazi-state dream - easily track every
| backpack, car, bicycle, etc...
|
| no thank you
| nicoburns wrote:
| That's a really good idea. You probably wouldn't need too
| many sensors either. Now that I think about it, a few
| strategically placed cameras around blind conrners woul be
| pretty useful for human drivers too!
| tialaramex wrote:
| > Is there an example of anything that's completely automated
| that's dangerous?
|
| I think this is just the usual goal post moving, if a machine
| does it then we decide it wasn't really dangerous for a machine
| to do it.
|
| Garmin Autoland will take a plane which is otherwise working
| and is in the sky and put it back on the ground because the
| pilot has a problem (e.g. your plane nut husband finally has
| another stroke+ while taking you and the kids cross country,
| you've never learned to fly but you just press the button like
| you were taught and the plane will tell you to remain calm
| while it figures out where to land and gets itself back down).
| It isn't cheap (the system needs to control flight surfaces,
| engines, radios, brakes, more or less everything on a plane)
| and of course it can't fix a broken plane, but a random non-
| pilot is going to do a much worse job and "land an aeroplane"
| seems like it counts as dangerous to me.
|
| > The thing is, if you have "partial" self driving, you might
| as well just drive yourself IMHO.
|
| If you live in the relatively small service zone for Waymo, you
| just get in the car and it drives you elsewhere in the zone,
| like a taxi, except the car is driving. Waymo doesn't want you
| "partially" driving anything, it doesn't want you near the
| wheel or pedals, it would prefer if you watch a video or read a
| book.
|
| + In some countries private pilots have to be fit, but the US
| has gradually decided that eh, it's your plane, your risk, the
| main obstacle today for medically unfit private pilots is
| getting insurance.
| roughly wrote:
| > I think this is just the usual goal post moving, if a
| machine does it then we decide it wasn't really dangerous for
| a machine to do it.
|
| I've seen a lot of goalpost moving in the other direction on
| this one, to be honest - Self Driving Cars started as "never
| have an accident again!" and have slowly migrated to "look,
| you suck at driving, the robot sucks less, so stop bitching
| when the robot runs over grandma"
| kungito wrote:
| *runs over grandma who us trying to ilegally and suddenly
| cross the street right in front of the car
| roughly wrote:
| Yep, turns out that's the sorta shit you have to deal
| with when operating a motor vehicle.
| viklove wrote:
| *runs into a stationary median which is literally bolted
| into the road, in broad daylight
| bumby wrote:
| Is your bar that the environment should adapt to the tech
| rather than the other way around? If so, I'd encourage
| you to take a course in human factors engineering
| toast0 wrote:
| Have you seen the aerial pictures of the area? There's
| pretty clearly a path through the median that's inviting
| pedestrians to cross there.
| carmen_sandiego wrote:
| *in the dark, on a highway
| Syonyk wrote:
| > Garmin Autoland will take a plane which is otherwise
| working and is in the sky and put it back on the ground
| because the pilot has a problem...
|
| Indeed. For reasonable values of "land" and "on the ground."
| It's better than a non-trained pilot, but it also relies
| heavily on the concept of "emergency" in aviation, in which
| everything else is put on hold and everyone else gets out of
| the way.
|
| It has basically nothing to do with driving a car.
|
| First, the sky is large - "Big Sky Theory" is the term for
| it, and it generally means that you can fly around however
| and wherever you want without hitting anyone. Yes, there are
| controlled airspace segments, various levels for flying
| around, but the reality is that if you just ignored all of
| that and flew a plane from A to B, you wouldn't hit anyone
| (almost always). It breaks down a bit around airports, and
| there have been the occasional "plane A not talking to anyone
| and plane B not talking to anyone colliding" events, but they
| are exceedingly rare.
|
| Second, large airports are going to be (almost by definition)
| controlled airspace, with ground response crews. And there
| are common airbands for radio communication. The Garmin
| system relies on these things.
|
| If you hit the "Oh Crap!" button, yes. It will control an
| otherwise operational plane down to landing at some airport
| (I believe it prefers controlled airspace and emergency
| services, though I don't know details), and it will clear the
| road in front of it by setting the appropriate emergency
| transponder code and broadcasting prerecorded messages on the
| appropriate frequency that basically amount to "Get out of my
| way, I'm coming in for a landing at this airport on this
| runway." Which, for an incapacitated pilot, is absolutely the
| right thing to do. I'm fairly sure it won't clear the active
| runway, though. That's a problem for the humans on the
| ground.
|
| But - literally everyone else in the sky will get out of
| their way, and ATC will ensure that. If there's an A380 on
| approach and this system is triggered near the airport, if
| ATC needs the A380 to get out of the way, they'll tell them
| to go around and go hold somewhere until the Cirrus is dealt
| with.
|
| It's really a very, very different class of problem than self
| driving cars.
| [deleted]
| anyfoo wrote:
| It is so, so much easier to have a computer land a plane than
| to travel through a road infrastructure made for humans.
|
| There are no roads, no obstacles, usually not even other
| planes constraining your plane for any autopilot situation.
| With autolanding, "other planes" might start becoming an
| issue, but it's still a vastly different level from the
| momentary and immediate coordination necessary between cars
| on public roadways.
| bumby wrote:
| Also, the operating environment is rather stable for
| aircraft. You won't find thing's like construction cones
| blocking off airspace that was once available. Even if
| airspace availability was changed, its not likely to create
| an immediate hazard (with some caveats like military
| testing ranges)
| [deleted]
| ryan93 wrote:
| No point in comparing planes to cars.
| endisneigh wrote:
| > I think this is just the usual goal post moving, if a
| machine does it then we decide it wasn't really dangerous for
| a machine to do it.
|
| I strongly disagree. Most machines are not capable of killing
| you because it makes a mistake.
|
| Do you have an example of something humans did that could
| kill them that was automated completely that still can kill
| them, but generally does not anymore? An elevator is one
| example, but in the case of an elevator its a very bounded
| problem to solve, and even still hundreds die for unnecessary
| elevator deaths yearly.
|
| Not to mention an elevator is not an entropic environment. A
| full self driving car would have to be able to deal with ice
| suddenly falling on the ground, people crashing around them,
| etc.
| craftinator wrote:
| You mean, like the entire rest of his comment? Garmin
| Autoland...
| endisneigh wrote:
| The Garmin Autoland is not equivalent to full self
| driving? That's like self parking which has existed for a
| while now. In any case planes are inherently orders of
| magnitude safer than cars to begin with due to the lack
| of obstacles/chaos.
| anyfoo wrote:
| It frustrates me to no end when people compare
| autolanding (even the Garmin kind), or worse, general
| autopilots, with self-driving cars.
|
| Anyone who does that has either never traveled in an
| airplane (even just as a passenger), or just never
| observed and thought about the vastly different levels of
| interaction planes have with their environment.
| jacobolus wrote:
| > _hundreds die for unnecessary elevator deaths yearly_
|
| Elevator deaths are extremely rare in industrialized
| countries (a couple dozen per year in the USA), and most
| are of people working on the elevator (e.g. accidentally
| falling down the elevator shaft), not passengers riding in
| an elevator. I think construction elevators are also quite
| a bit less safe than ordinary passenger elevators.
|
| Typical elevators are one of the safest forms of
| transportation, substantially safer than stairs or ladders.
| nsp wrote:
| Fully automated train systems? https://en.wikipedia.org/wik
| i/List_of_automated_train_system...
|
| Not nearly as complex a problem as self driving cars, but
| I'd still rather not get hit by a train
| endisneigh wrote:
| My understanding of trains is that most of the safety
| advances have come from better signaling, not the
| automation of the trains themselves.
| anyfoo wrote:
| Yes, not nearly. Not _anywhere_ close to the complexity
| needed for self driving cars. Trains run on closed,
| limited, well-signaled infrastructure, which (comparably)
| makes it fairly easy to "avoid other trains" (as long as
| the signaling, coordinated externally, works--if it
| doesn't the train is likely programmed to just stop until
| it does again).
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| How is it the goalposts moving? Dangerous in the context of
| that question doesn't mean the solution is dangerous.
| Dangerous there means that a screwup would be dangerous. Or
| maybe where a 'simple' screwup would be dangerous for some
| subjective value of 'simple.'
|
| Garmin autoland seems like a perfect example of something
| dangerous that's completely automated.
| dqpb wrote:
| Waymo is full self driving, not partial
| jefft255 wrote:
| *Waymo is trying to develop full self driving, not partial
| solutron wrote:
| Waymo is little more than a Jurassic Park jeep ride. Only
| works on the tracks. Take a Waymo vehicle anywhere their
| engineering staff hasn't spent countless hours driving around
| back and forth with those ridiculous spinning lidar sensors
| and roof rack full of who-knows-what and see what's left of
| their 'self driving'.
| jedberg wrote:
| > Is there an example of anything that's completely automated
| that's dangerous?
|
| Flying an airplane. They put pilots in there to make people
| comfortable, but if need be, a modern passenger plane can fly
| itself, including take off and landing.
|
| Driving a subway. BART in San Francisco launched as self
| driving in the 60s. It freaked people out so much that they put
| a human in front. But if you sit up there you'll see the human
| doesn't do much. They press a button to close the doors, but
| that could easily be automated.
|
| Also, I took a ride in a self driving car in SF a few years
| ago. It had a safety driver, but he didn't do anything (he
| grabbed the wheel once, but then they looked at the data and
| found the car was about to do the right thing anyway). It
| handled things like cars going the wrong way, double parked
| trucks, trash bags in the street, jaywalkers, etc.
| slibhb wrote:
| A interesting analogy is the Washington DC Metro, which was
| automated but now isn't due to a significant accident in 2009
| which killed 9 people. That's a train on rails. We have much
| less tolerance for computers killing people compared to people
| killing people.
| wjamesg wrote:
| The DC metro was once automated? Interesting
| jedberg wrote:
| BART in SF was too.
| stefan_ wrote:
| You would think that but then that Uber car ran over a
| pedestrian in the middle of a typical ultra wide deserted
| American throughfare with perfect lighting and.. kinda
| nothing happened? My pulse still rises when I think of that
| dashcam video they released that predictably shows nothing to
| blame that lady their negligence killed.
|
| Maybe the common denominator is just cars. The regulators are
| fully absent - they care about the shape of your headlights,
| but do they care that SUVs have them mounted at the height of
| mirrors for every other car? Do they care that cars have
| absurdly overpowered engines that have no imaginable use? Do
| they care that trucks have fronts so high it's impossible to
| see a kid walking on a crosswalk and when you hit it, it's
| hit head-height and thrown under the wheels?
|
| None of these things would ever fly on a train or airplane.
| [deleted]
| senkora wrote:
| That incident basically ended Uber ATG. I wouldn't say that
| nothing happened.
| adewinter wrote:
| > Is there an example of anything that's completely automated
| that's dangerous?
|
| Monorail trains (like at the airport)
|
| Combine Harvesters
|
| Airplane Autopilot/autoland
|
| Elevators
| adewinter wrote:
| Literally any operational (and unattended) machine in a
| modern factory
| Tomte wrote:
| Factory automation usually has fail-stop behaviour (in
| process automation like chemical plants, things get more
| interesting).
|
| And resumption of operation after an emergency stop happens
| only after a human check and intentional operator
| acknowledge.
|
| So you're technically right, but the circumstances are
| vastly different. Nobody will buy a car that does a full
| emergency brake whenever a leaf falls off a tree. The
| environment is so much more difficult on the street than in
| a factory.
| joefourier wrote:
| Some comments are saying self-driving cars are not currently
| possible and that Waymo isn't successful, but aren't they
| currently available to the public in some areas in Phoenix, with
| no safety drivers?
|
| There may be many limitations, but self-driving in sunny flat
| suburban areas would already cover a decent portion of the
| American market. Sure they might not be ready for chaotic, busy
| city centres or regions with harsh weather conditions, but that's
| letting perfect be enemy of the good - those living in areas
| suitable for self-driving cars would certainly appreciate them,
| and who's to say there can't be a gradual retooling of
| infrastructure to accommodate them as they expand to more and
| more areas?
| thomasikzelf wrote:
| More context on the -no safety driver- issue.
|
| "Eliminating the safety driver is an important step toward
| making Waymo's service profitable. But it may not be enough on
| its own because Waymo says the cars still have remote
| overseers.
|
| These Waymo staffers never steer the vehicles directly, but
| they do send high-level instructions to help vehicles get out
| of tricky situations. For example, a Waymo spokeswoman told me,
| "if a Waymo vehicle detects that a road ahead may be closed due
| to construction, it can pull over and request a second set of
| eyes from our fleet response specialists." The fleet response
| specialist can then confirm that the road is closed and
| instruct the vehicle to take another route."
|
| https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/10/waymo-finally-launches-...
| ripper1138 wrote:
| I encourage you to watch a video of a current Waymo ride in
| Phoenix. In one ride I watched, the very first turn it made out
| of a parking lot should have been a left turn, but it turned
| right instead and went through residential streets to get back
| in the right direction.
|
| It is nice that they have deployed to the public, but I doubt
| anyone capable of driving themselves will use it any time soon
| if it can't even make left turns.
| erikgaas wrote:
| I took a waymo in Chandler that had no safety driver and it
| was able to make unprotected left turns just fine.
| joefourier wrote:
| I don't understand what you're saying. Obviously the cars are
| capable of turning left. Are you saying it took a longer
| route when there was a shorter path to leave the parking lot?
| I don't know what video you're referring to (there's quite a
| few), but that seems to concern the high-level path planning,
| not any driving capabilities (e.g. a human following GPS
| instructions might have chosen the same route). Or perhaps
| the navigation planning system prefers to drive through lower
| traffic residential areas.
| modeless wrote:
| I still think it was a mistake to hire this guy and partner with
| the auto industry dinosaurs. Should have kept going down the path
| of being independent and building their own cars without steering
| wheels. I never liked "Waymo" as a brand either.
|
| Maybe just retrofitting off the shelf cars made sense if they
| thought they needed hundreds of thousands of cars ASAP, but it
| turns out they would have had plenty of time to develop the car
| and even build factories for it while waiting for the technology
| to mature. And they didn't really need to partner with any
| manufacturers just to retrofit existing cars anyway.
| solutron wrote:
| This is why full self driving coming from a company like Tesla
| matters. It's vertical integration with hardware,
| manufacturing, battery and chip production makes it so they
| don't need any of the OEM legacy auto companies. They are
| already building the best electric cars available. Nobody comes
| close. When FSD 9.x is released the zero-to-one moment happens
| and there'll be no going back. The other companies are going to
| do nothing but play catch-up and many will go bankrupt.
| bob_theslob646 wrote:
| This is a highly under rated take. The reason they didn't do so
| was industry pressure/competition.
|
| The counter point could be that the technology is there, but
| the regulation is not.
|
| Why must everything be retrofitted versus a complete system
| overhaul? The initial costs may be immense but the return on
| investment will be far greater.
|
| Just my two cents.
| ironman1478 wrote:
| Partnering with an existing car company helps a lot. They
| know how to build vehicles at scale and they also can provide
| a lot of support when it comes to interfacing with the
| control systems for the car. Controlling the car (engine,
| doors, wheels, wipers, lights, etc) is a surprisingly
| difficult task on its own. It requires a lot of control
| systems knowledge, a complex test infrastructure, and a lot
| of specialized talent that's probably hard to get. It
| could've been seen as too difficult to take on in addition to
| figuring out how to actually do all the self driving specific
| tasks (mapping, planning, detection, etc.).
| jpm_sd wrote:
| You are very, very wrong. I saw the sausage being made. The
| "koala" car was ... not a success.
|
| Building a car is so hard. And Google mostly sucks at hardware
| manufacturing. There are good reasons why their market share of
| Chromebooks, Android phones, etc. is vanishingly small.
| modeless wrote:
| Not that building a car is easy, but there are contract
| manufacturers that can build cars and even design cars for
| you. And they won't have quite as much of a conflict of
| interest, in that their business model isn't selling cars
| direct to consumers, which Waymo is explicitly trying to
| disrupt.
|
| The koala cars may not have been successful but that was many
| years ago, years that could have been spent making something
| better.
| mrpippy wrote:
| It'll be interesting to see where he goes next and if any info
| comes out about why he's leaving.
|
| Brief summary of his jobs: - NUMMI (GM/Toyota),
| 1984-1986 - MIT, 1986-1990 - Ford, 1990-2004 -
| Hyundai America, 2004-2013, left as president/CEO -
| TrueCar, 2014-2015 - Google/Waymo, 2015-2021
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Apparently Apple is rumored to be working on a car...
| iujjkfjdkkdkf wrote:
| I'm curious about the co-CEO thing. That seems like it is
| universally something that doesn't work and is just what happens
| when nobody wants to make a tough decision. Is there any context
| on why it might be the right move here?
| cbanek wrote:
| I can only think of The Office: "It doesn't take a genius to
| know that any organization thrives when it has two leaders. Go
| ahead, name a country that doesn't have two presidents. A boat
| that sets sail without two captains. Where would Catholicism be
| without the Popes?"
| pasttense01 wrote:
| From the Wall Street Journal:
|
| "The company said Friday that it is promoting its chief
| technology and operating officers, Dmitri Dolgov and Tekedra
| Mawakana, to lead a decade-old effort to make self-driving cars
| a reality. They will share the title of co-chief executive...
| Mr. Dolgov is one of the founders of Google's self-driving car
| project. He joined the program when it began in 2009 and led
| the development of Waymo's autonomous system, known as Waymo
| Driver. He studied physics and math at the Moscow Institute of
| Physics and Technology before earning a doctorate in computer
| science from the University of Michigan. As chief operating
| officer, Ms. Mawakana has led the effort to commercialize
| Waymo's self-driving system. She has a law degree from Columbia
| University and previously worked at other tech companies such
| as eBay Inc. and Yahoo."
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/waymo-ceo-john-krafcik-is-leavi...
|
| My guess it that traditionally the chief operating officer
| would have been promoted and the chief technology officer would
| stay as the chief technology officer--but that there was a
| significant risk of the chief technology officer leaving if he
| wasn't promoted. So you end up with co-CEOs.
| solutron wrote:
| This is a huge red flag. Especially when Waymo's had no
| significant milestones and when the CEO is using language like
| 'spend time with friends and family'. That usually means
| they're being pushed out, or that he's made the realization
| it's not going to work out and is jumping ship.
| tmsh wrote:
| Just wanted to say, from the outside, John Krafcik seemed to me
| like a strong leader.
|
| I used to live in Mountain View and at one point I saw a few
| Waymo vans (this was 3-4 years ago when they were more active)
| speeding on El Camino (just barely, and being manually driven at
| the time, but even though I work for a competitor I was concerned
| if an accident happened it'd be a bad publicity event; i.e.,
| Waymo vehicles should always be extra, extra careful, etc.); and
| it just made me wonder what was going on. So I connected with him
| on LinkedIn; and then ended up reaching out to some QA folks I
| believe.
|
| Anyway, John was super responsive and I always appreciated that.
| From what I could see (just one anecdote), he was a CEO who dived
| deep into customer concerns. There's a lot to be said for that.
|
| My two cents is it's a very delicate space. One bad event and the
| whole industry can be set back. So it's an area (despite
| extremely cutting-edge tech; deep learning, etc.) that has to
| roll out gradually.
| Traster wrote:
| I talked to someone who was working with BMW 5 years ago and
| they had a similar story- automotive companies hated Tesla
| because they all understood that one screw up on self driving
| probably meant he death of their brand in terms of safety and
| probably a massive set back for the entire industry. That's
| something a start up can afford but for a large car
| manufacturer it's an existential threat.
| tdhz77 wrote:
| Self driving is not possible without changes to infrastructure.
| We know this because NHS tried in 1960's and was able to succeed
| with this approach. Government will have to solve problem first.
| How? Installing sensors on our highways that cars can use.
| Anything this big in scale can't be solved by the private sector
| alone, you also need better infrastructure.
| layoutIfNeeded wrote:
| >Self driving is not possible without changes to infrastructure
|
| Humans seem to be perfectly capable of doing it though.
| throwawayfrauds wrote:
| 36,000 US driving deaths annually would beg to differ.
| lrem wrote:
| Humans come with their own liability :(
| xnx wrote:
| There were a lot of things that weren't possible in the 1960's
| that are possible now. Highway driving is the easiest type of
| driving. If Waymo wasn't limiting their driving to specific
| areas, I have no doubt their Driver could easily drive through
| the US interstates without issue.
| tdhz77 wrote:
| That just isn't true. Computer technology hasn't come as far
| as you want to believe. 144 characters isn't a technological
| revolution.
| specialp wrote:
| "To start, I'm looking forward to a refresh period, reconnecting
| with old friends and family, and discovering new parts of the
| world."
|
| I suppose that is a nice way of saying wait out my non-
| compete....
| lrem wrote:
| Even without a non-compete, taking a couple months off between
| jobs is nice. But yeah, at that level I imagine non-competes
| reach to the full legal extent and then some ;)
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Is Waymo not headquartered in California?
| specialp wrote:
| Yes you are correct and it probably is unenforceable if it
| exists. My mistake. It just reeked of that.
| layoutIfNeeded wrote:
| This combined with the recent announcement of Waymo pivoting to
| monetize their research in what's basically a garage sale
| (https://waymo.com/lidar) tells me that Waymo is soon to be
| interred on killedbygoogle.com.
| choppaface wrote:
| That lidar has been for sale for years, it's not really a
| pivot. See e.g. this older post on HN:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19319233
| Sherl wrote:
| For fully autonomous driving need to happen, all cars must
| exchange data with each other how robots do in a factory floor.
| Image and depth perception can solve some problems but a crash or
| a vehicle can maneuver in any direction. If two self driving cars
| need to take a decision at a intersection, how are they gonna do
| it?
| modeless wrote:
| Do factory floor robots communicate with each other in any
| meaningful way? I'm under the impression that they mostly just
| follow pre-programmed paths and all you need for that is clock
| synchronization.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Do you need to exchange data with every other driver when
| you're on the road?
| jdavis703 wrote:
| Isn't this what turn signals, horns and brake lights are for?
| Not to mention making eye contact with pedestrians at
| crossings.
| jedberg wrote:
| Self driving cars have turn signals, horns, and brake
| lights too. And can also read that data from other cars.
| And some of them even replicate eye-contact now.
| throwmeawayhaha wrote:
| On one hand this kind of makes sense to me - his experience in
| the actual auto industry must have seemed invaluable when he was
| hired in 2015 and people thought self driving would be brought to
| mass market in a couple years.
|
| But now that everyone assumes we're in for the long haul (Aurora
| says 2025 for L4 in some cities), it doesn't make sense for him
| to want to stay.
| bertil wrote:
| Am I the only one to read like an acknowledgement that Waymo
| didn't achieve what it was supposed to do and he was asked to go
| for lack of performance?
| SilasX wrote:
| No, he wants to spend more time with friends and family and
| travel the world.
| pasttense01 wrote:
| Maybe. But a lot of us are cynical when we hear this kind of
| language from departing CEOs.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the person you were responding to was being
| sarcastic. Then again it's the internet, so who knows?
| andrewcl wrote:
| The CEO lists several accomplishments in the press brief. It
| doesn't appear to say that he's being let go specifically for
| performance concerns.
| stefan_ wrote:
| Well, they never say that. I personally think it's because of
| that horrendous "Waymonauts" moniker.
| blihp wrote:
| It rarely does unless there's been a very public screw up on
| the part of the executive that results in bad PR the company.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| I read it as a state of self-driving cars in general. The
| technology isn't developing as fast as people had hoped. Waymo
| is still in the lead, even if this guy failed to deliver (he
| announced Waymo would be a public service for 2018, and that
| obviously didn't happen).
| solutron wrote:
| Definitely google some Tesla FSD beta videos and watch them.
| Waymo doubled down on a technology set and data methodology
| that is not scalable. Tesla is going to win in this space
| 100%
| bumby wrote:
| > _The technology isn 't developing as fast as people had
| hoped._
|
| I can't help but think people conflated what the problem
| statement of self driving really is. We've made huge strides
| in perception in the last two decades but self-driving is a
| much more complex problem than just accurately perceiving the
| world sound us.
| solutron wrote:
| That's exactly how I read it. It's a huge red flag.
| choppaface wrote:
| All of the big players in self-driving have shown that while they
| can try to solve the tech problem, nobody can solve the _team_
| problem. Self-driving brings together people with very diverse
| backgrounds (perception, planning, controls, hardware, safety,
| rideshare product, etc), very diverse incentives (established
| automakers vs start-up founders vs VC investors), and throws them
| in a pot with a huge amount of money and greed. And does this to
| serve a public who largely doesn 't trust self-driving AI today.
|
| Waymo has had a ton of notable departures:
|
| * Urmson made a good amount of money and left for Aurora.
|
| * The founders of Nuro cashed in $40m each and left for their own
| thing.
|
| * Levandowski made nearly a quarter billion and took off.
|
| * Drago worked on Streetview and more Google-centric things, then
| went to Zoox to make about $100k (lol), then returned to Waymo.
|
| * Now the era of Krafcik is coming to an end.
|
| The perhaps unique thing about the self-driving problem is that
| all of the above individuals made tons of money without having
| delivered equitable value to end-users. At least not today. When
| Google was bleeding headcount to Facebook, both companies were
| making bank. It's surreal to see people minted with money for
| life and yet deliver so little value. That sort of arbitrage
| usually only happens on Wall Street.
|
| I think it's worth reflecting on the era of Krafcik as a general
| success-- he was brought in to do hard work and he generally did
| a good job. But by no means did he (nor any of his predecessors)
| solve the "team" problem. Krafcik himself couldn't stick to the
| team he helped shape, nor the userbase he helped grow, at least
| nt long enough to actually deliver widespread value on the scale
| of his own compensation.
| Lavery wrote:
| >It's surreal to see people minted with money for life and yet
| deliver so little value. That sort of arbitrage usually only
| happens on Wall Street.
|
| This must be a joke? The multi million-dollar exit with zero
| actual earnings is an almost uniquely tech phenomenon. There
| are Wall Street-ers that earned high pay for generating high
| earnings that many years later were found to be value-
| destructive, but at least at the time they were paid, they were
| cash-generating. That Wall Street jobs paid so much was because
| comp was structurally a function of cash generated.
| shuckles wrote:
| The difference between "selling a growth story" and "selling
| current profits booked by incurring future liabilities" seems
| entirely like a semantic one. What's the practical
| difference?
| recuter wrote:
| Sometimes the code monkeys actually code something.
| sjg007 wrote:
| Does Waymo have product market fit? I know you can ride around
| in one in Phoenix and they are learning how to manage those
| vehicles with remote assistance as necessary but is that
| sufficient?
| joe_the_user wrote:
| This seems like a cause and effect confusion.
|
| Because no one can solve the tech problem, no one wants to
| stick around for the point where the failure is obvious.
|
| Especially, for a while, self-driving cars have been at the
| level that impressive demos are possible but actual deployment
| isn't. So a fine career move is sticking around for long enough
| to create a demo and then leaving and blaming the failure on
| your successor.
|
| Reason the tech can't deployed is that while 99% of driving
| problems involve just a complex, adaptive system, the 1% or
| .01% remaining involve "understanding what's happening", a far
| higher bar, one that requires a system well beyond what exists
| today.
| bobsil1 wrote:
| Last .01% = "assume AGI..."
| echelon wrote:
| I'm willing to longbets $5000/20 years:
|
| We won't have self driving cars that replace 30% or more of
| driving on existing roads and highways by 2040.
|
| The problem is too hard and everyone's drunk the ML kool-aid.
| (Just like everyone is drinking the NFT kool-aid right now.)
|
| Hype, unrealistic dreams, and spin.
|
| We'll be on Mars before we have generally available self-
| driving cars that do not require humans.
| lumost wrote:
| This describes 99% of ML projects in industry. There is a
| reason the incentives are such that a science team creates a
| solution and then a theoretical engineering team deploys it.
| The Science team gets credit for the analysis/prototype but
| the prototype is so delayed getting to production that only
| the engineers take the blame or the scientists have moved on.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| _This describes 99% of ML projects in industry._
|
| This may well be true given how fragile a construct most
| deep learning systems are.
|
| But there are still substantially different deployment
| issues for different systems. Google can deploy a question-
| answerer or a search-by-image-description system and
| lowered accuracy in practice doesn't really do much damage.
| Google can't deploy a self-driving car with low safety in
| the same way.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Don't these facts prove the opposite of your claim? You want to
| build a company with a culture that extends beyond individuals.
| All of these people left Waymo and the project is still robust.
| That's exactly what you want! Did you think Google was dead
| when Craig Silverstein left?
| snide wrote:
| I was talking with a friend who worked at IBM in the heyday. He
| mentioned that a lot of the time, it wasn't so much that talent
| got used, it was that talent was not used elsewhere. Stiffing
| innovation is just as effective as breeding it when you're
| already on top.
| axguscbklp wrote:
| Well, I think that they wouldn't be able to solve the tech
| problem even if they completely solved any and all team
| problems, so as far as the end users are concerned it doesn't
| really matter much whether they can solve the team problem. I
| think that full self driving almost certainly requires
| artificial general intelligence, and I don't think humanity is
| anywhere close to creating that, so all current self-driving
| car projects will end in failure.
|
| I wonder to what extent the leaders of these self-driving car
| projects understand that their efforts to create the technology
| have almost no chance of success. How many of them understand
| this but carry on due to either wild optimism, or to just make
| money, or on the principle of "it's not up to me to decide
| whether to try, someone else is paying me to try"?
|
| The degree to which self-driving car hype seized even the minds
| of many otherwise smart people in the last decade has been
| strange for me to see.
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| What evidence there is a team problem. Like building cars
| requires all those things and companies manage to do it all the
| time. Adding the self driving tech in there, ok, but these cars
| already have teams upon teams of tech already working on them.
| Each part of the inboard computer has a different tech team
| which works with a different company it's outsourced to. In
| fact, sometimes different teams work with the same outsourcing
| company for different parts. That seems a very much a solved
| problem.
|
| It also seems like you're not really also applying in the fact
| self driving cars are approved in how many places? And it takes
| approximately 5 years to get a standard car to market, getting
| a self driving car that has been tested in just 10 states, it's
| unreasonable to expect the value to end users you're expecting
| to see here. Getting the car to market seems to be the actual
| problem and that seems more of a legal issue of no one wanting
| to say yes on the major scale. This is a very slow moving
| industry, electric cars are basically a solved problem, yet
| we'll be seeing people buying combustion engine cars for
| decades.
|
| How long has this project been going on for? 12-years? Seeing
| management change over that amount of time seems normal. It
| would be notable if we were seeing 1 or 2 people a month leave
| for 6 months.
| username_my1 wrote:
| The problem is a venture problem / industry not teams and
| individuals ... VCs have been heavily investing in anything
| remotely promising because let's face it since smartphone tech
| hasn't found its solid step into the next level .. VCs have the
| money they throw it at promising companies, lots of people get
| rich in the process but the end result is delayed ether no
| working product or no working business (unit economics) an
| example is all these ride hailing apps, scooter apps and food
| delivery where billions has been spent and losses are recorded
| annually and everyone is happy to move the ball down the field
| and make it a tomorrow's problem.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| I hear Anthony Levandowski is available, having been pardoned by
| Trump in his last day in office on January 20, 2021.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Levandowski#Criminal_c...
| rajrkrish wrote:
| I don't think neither google nor uber would want him back.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| Having read hundreds of these sorts of CEO leaving letters I'm a
| bit jaded and cynical. If you're interested in what I see when I
| read that message, I rewrote it[1] in more plain language.
|
| Google demands a lot of its "other bets" companies. Some might
| say it asks too much. Mostly it seems to me that they want a
| 'moonshot' company that has the original profitability of search
| advertising, full stop. And while it would be great for them if
| they found it, there is a lot to be said for having a bunch of
| businesses that just make anywhere from a few million to a
| billion dollars a year in revenue.
|
| I don't know if the attitude has changed since I was there but
| people creating $20M/year business revenue streams were not
| considered "successful" back in the day. I found that somewhat
| self defeating.
|
| [1]
| https://gist.github.com/ChuckM/ff5fc8c800c7fe9160483b68ec45a...
| iJohnDoe wrote:
| Your rewrite was extremely well done.
|
| It's too bad CEOs don't write their PR like you have done. Like
| when they drive companies into the ground, lay everyone off,
| and then they exit with millions.
| karljtaylor wrote:
| they do, it just usually gets re-written to hell in about 30
| very anxious email rounds
| petra wrote:
| Maybe businesses don't need revenue streams. I wonder by how
| much the Moonshot program, increased Google's Market Cap.
| recuter wrote:
| I am 32. I Could have written this 7 years ago. I no longer
| accept job offers at any salary in this industry.
|
| In fact, all my emails and communications are written in this
| style all the time with everyone - what shall I do now wise
| one? (serious question)
|
| You wanna start a band or whatever. Maybe we can start like an
| Elks club thing?
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| Are you the CEO or the non-executive employee? One of the
| reasons I put my email in my profile is that it brings me
| interesting questions. :-)
| recuter wrote:
| I'm gainfully unemployed and like Luke you can't make me go
| back!
|
| I've job hopped looking for a place where people don't
| engage in the Kabuki but apparently all the worlds a stage.
| Maybe I'll make one of those lil ships in a bottle this
| year.
| mohon wrote:
| Could you also translate the last section too? Would love to
| read that as well
| TheMagicHorsey wrote:
| This is the funniest thing I've read in a while. And
| potentially true.
| jpm_sd wrote:
| This is fantastic.
|
| You accurately describe the Other Bets climate when I left X in
| 2015, and I hear it's even worse these days from friends who
| recently left when Loon shut down.
| lumost wrote:
| I swear that there is a resource curse for businesses with a
| singular "successful" product line. In order to expand the
| business and not have people sucked into the "successful" part,
| the teams need to be split. Once the teams are split the
| "successful" team wonders why the "new" team sucks.
|
| In the case that the successful business is Ads/Search... it's
| tough to compete. I'd imagine even within Ads/Search there is a
| resource curse between AdX/AdWords/Youtube and every other ad
| business.
| liaukovv wrote:
| Sounds to me like what they shoukd be doing is instead of
| trying to "reinvest" profits from ads instead pay them out to
| shareholders so they can more efficiently redistibute it to
| multiple smaller businesses
| ilyaeck wrote:
| Nice rewrite, now I no longer need to bother reading the
| original!
| dealforager wrote:
| I understand the sentiment, but $20M/year really is a waste of
| time for a $200B/year business. I have a hard time thinking of
| a way it wouldn't be a loss given the added organizational
| complexity having those kinds of projects would bring.
|
| I thought the entire purpose of "other bets" was to pursue
| ideas that have the potential to become $XXB/year revenue
| streams. So of course they want 'moonshot' companies.
| cobookman wrote:
| How many XXB/year companies start off making XXB/year or have
| clear visibility to XXB/year near-term?
|
| For example, I doubt the AirBNB founders early-on and/or 5-10
| years ago even imagined they'd have multiple billions of
| revenue.
| solutron wrote:
| I give it less than 5 years before Google offloads or
| shutters Waymo entirely.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| > $20M/year really is a waste of time for a $200B/year
| business.
|
| That's the thing though, it isn't a waste of time.
|
| One can hear very similar logic from people with investments.
| They will say "The stock market is returning X% / year and is
| way better than those bonds with only 3%/year. Investing in
| bonds is a waste of time."
|
| They say that because they have yet to internalize the value
| of having a diversified their investments. Not everything
| goes up all the time.
|
| It only makes sense for Google if the Search Ads business
| were to never ever lose its profitability. And yet, it is
| losing its profitability. As a result, Google has to
| aggressively cut back on expenses, remove projects, end of
| life products, etc as that cash cow slowly deflates.
|
| Consider then the alternative where there are 10, 20, even 30
| business lines within Google generating $10 - $30M of profit
| each. 30 businesses at $30M is only $900M, less than 5% of
| their revenue, but those businesses are SOLID and provide a
| supply of management talent, consistency, and some bucks to
| keep the lights on elsewhere.
|
| That is diversification of execution risk. It works the same
| way investment diversification works, it adds other, less
| high margin, businesses to the portfolio that are all revenue
| positive.
|
| A company like Google can use those businesses to experiment
| with alternate user support models, management schemes,
| policies, and communications. All of that helps the "main"
| company to mature in its thinking about how to be a business.
| Sadly, executives who have never had any experience other
| than one wildly successful business tend to think exactly
| like you do, "Why would I waste time on piddling little
| products when I've got more cash than I know what to do with
| being pumped out by my main business?"
|
| Short answer: "Things change."
| dealforager wrote:
| $900M/year is <1% of Alphabet's yearly revenue. I know you
| mentioned profits, but the OP mentioned revenue so I want
| to keep the same units because they're very different
| things. It could very well be that if it was $20M/year in
| profits, then those projects would not be considered
| failures.
|
| If something happened to their core business, it's unlikely
| that those tiny projects (<1% of revenues combined) would
| save them. The more likely thing is that many of those
| small projects fail over time and it becomes death by a
| thousand cuts.
|
| What you said is mostly correct and is exactly what they
| are doing. The only problem is that at the scale of a
| trillion dollar company, they need 10, 20, even 30 business
| lines generating $XB - $XXB of revenue each.
| pembrook wrote:
| Do you have any idea how insanely hard it is to establish
| 30 separate $30M businesses?
|
| Even with the weight and existing audience of the Google
| brand, creating new businesses is HARD.
|
| It'd be roughly 1,000X easier to squeeze an extra $900M in
| revenue out of search than it would be to incubate 30 new
| mid-size companies.
|
| Instead of going on an insane boondoggle where your brand
| image is trashed by creating literally hundreds of failed
| companies (the only way you're going to end up with 30
| successful ones)...why wouldn't Google just buy those 30
| companies? They have enough cash on hand to buy 99% of
| Silicon Valley startups outright.
|
| And even then, would the 30 companies they buy grow faster
| than the S&P 500 at 9% a year? Because otherwise they might
| as well just dump that money in an index fund.
|
| This is nowhere near as easy or simple as you think it is.
|
| For all of Google's PR efforts around moonshots and only
| hiring "the best talent," a vast majority of their revenue
| still comes from their original search product a tiny group
| of dudes created 20 years ago. The next biggest bucket
| comes from acquisitions (DoubleClick, YouTube, Android).
|
| I think the fact that Google hasn't incubated any big
| success in the last decade is a good thing! It leaves more
| room for others to take their place. Why the hell would we
| want one company to dominate everything forever?
| solutron wrote:
| I don't wanna be 'that guy' but the news of this on the same day
| of Tesla's Q1 p/d beat speaks volumes about who's winning in this
| space. Watch the FSD beta vids, especially the Weimo & Tesla
| comparison in Phoenix. It's clear who's going to dominate this
| space.
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