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Does anyone have concrete evidence on an over-under date for something commercial, e.g., availability of self-driving (or at least a self-delivering) taxi? The

Does anyone have concrete evidence on an over-under date for something commercial, e.g., availability of self-driving (or at least a self-delivering) taxi? The most specific hint at a number I've seen recently was in the neighborhood of 2022, which comes from a recent Morgan Stanley report on Waymo: "The analysts believe Waymo can get to an operating profit by 2022 and reach 8% margins by 2030." https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmarkman/2017/06/12/self-driving-cars-could-add-140-billion-in-alphabet-shareholder-value/#3579d5c4c318 https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmarkman/2017/06/12/self-driv...

ilaksh 9y ago
There is actually no reason to predict this to be years away except for like just future shock or something. Which is the big thing holding it back is just general disbelief. Waymo is actually testing for real in Arizona with selected people from the public. Yes, they include an employee in the car to monitor or take over if necessary. But from the numbers I saw they reported to the DMV like a year ago, with Waymo's cars that happens surprisingly little. https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/946b3502-c959-4e3b-b119-91319c27788f/GoogleAutoWaymo_disengage_report_2016.pdf?MOD=AJPERES https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/946b3502-c959-4e3b... Like very, very little. 635,868 miles and 124 reportable disengages. As of last year. Significantly improved now. In the rare case of a problem they can send a human to help. If they had legal clearance or a waiver or something, they could TODAY just take some routes and times that had little traffic and not include the test/backup employee. Again, the number of times they report the driver needs to take over now is minuscule. They could then start charging for the rides. Then that would be a commercial deployment. For them to make that widely available, at first for selected low traffic areas and times to reduce the risk of any incident or needing to send a human driver, is just a matter of scaling up their fleet and the legal issues. Tesla is pushing very hard to the point of being unsafe to get their autopilot to actually work in as many circumstances as possible. They literally have been selling self-driving cars. The cars are collecting massive amounts of real-world data. They have hired many genius AI experts. Unless there are too many crashes or the company goes down in flames (which is possible considering how aggressively they are testing and releasing software even with issues), they will push to decrease the amount of driving the human has to do down to close to 0 as soon as is possible. Musk will try as hard as he can to get 75% to 100% there before the end of the year, because that is literally what he has promised. By the end of next year his actual conservative expectation is to be more than 80%. As far as operating profit who knows, but there is no way that we will be waiting until 2022 for this to be deployed, at least in somewhat limited routes and times.
- jessriedel 9y ago
  > there is no way that we will be waiting until 2022 for this to be deployed How sure would you say you are? Want to put some money on that?
  - ilaksh 9y ago
    Before 2022? Yes, I should take that wager. The tricky part about a wager is that it gives people a strong incentive to reinterpret events to their advantage, and its tough to define this in an objective way. Even if it is defined objectively there is ambiguity in language and again they may not realize they disagree on what they are wagering about. But maybe in a few days when I get paid again I could make a wager if there was some agreement on what we were wagering. I have a feeling that once that got pinned down you wouldn't want to continue the wager. 2021 is four years from now. Do you really think that, in the next four years, this early rider program https://waymo.com/apply/ https://waymo.com/apply/ won't progress to allowing rides without the supervisor employee present on some rides? Once they have that working on a regular basis, should we not assume they will start charging for rides? They could actually do that now for certain routes and times if they had the government sign off on it. So it is feasible (although unlikely) that you could lose the bet tomorrow. There are several other advanced self-driving vehicle programs out there including Cruise, Uber, etc. They are also using the LIDAR technology and detailed maps etc. Audi has announced they will have a 'level 4' self pilot mode for freeways in 2020-2021 https://media.audiusa.com/models/piloted-driving https://media.audiusa.com/models/piloted-driving They announced that in 2017 (or maybe 2016) because they have been partnering with nVidia and saw nVidia actually demonstrated deep neural network autonomous driving. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmVWLr0X1Sk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmVWLr0X1Sk GM, Ford, Honda, Tesla have all made announcements that they plan to deploy self driving vehicles on or before 2021. https://venturebeat.com/2017/06/04/self-driving-car-timeline-for-11-top-automakers/ https://venturebeat.com/2017/06/04/self-driving-car-timeline...
    - jessriedel 9y ago
      You seem to have a more liberal interpretation of "somewhat limited" than I do. I have ascribed a 45% chance to this statement, and last year bet $500 against it taking place: "By July 2023, a self-driving car can be reliably hailed by a member of the general public in at least 10 North American cities. At least 8 cities must be outside the San Fransisco Bay Area. The car must available on at least 50% of days, i.e., not confined to very narrow weather or traffic situations. No back-up human may be physically present to take over in an emergency." http://blog.jessriedel.com/2016/04/ http://blog.jessriedel.com/2016/04/ Would you bet on that happening by July 2022? I would take on another $500.

ilaksh 9y ago

There is actually no reason to predict this to be years away except for like just future shock or something. Which is the big thing holding it back is just general disbelief. Waymo is actually testing for real in Arizona with selected people from the public. Yes, they include an employee in the car to monitor or take over if necessary. But from the numbers I saw they reported to the DMV like a year ago, with Waymo's cars that happens surprisingly little. https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/946b3502-c959-4e3b-b119-91319c27788f/GoogleAutoWaymo_disengage_report_2016.pdf?MOD=AJPERES https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/946b3502-c959-4e3b... Like very, very little. 635,868 miles and 124 reportable disengages. As of last year. Significantly improved now. In the rare case of a problem they can send a human to help. If they had legal clearance or a waiver or something, they could TODAY just take some routes and times that had little traffic and not include the test/backup employee. Again, the number of times they report the driver needs to take over now is minuscule. They could then start charging for the rides. Then that would be a commercial deployment. For them to make that widely available, at first for selected low traffic areas and times to reduce the risk of any incident or needing to send a human driver, is just a matter of scaling up their fleet and the legal issues. Tesla is pushing very hard to the point of being unsafe to get their autopilot to actually work in as many circumstances as possible. They literally have been selling self-driving cars. The cars are collecting massive amounts of real-world data. They have hired many genius AI experts. Unless there are too many crashes or the company goes down in flames (which is possible considering how aggressively they are testing and releasing software even with issues), they will push to decrease the amount of driving the human has to do down to close to 0 as soon as is possible. Musk will try as hard as he can to get 75% to 100% there before the end of the year, because that is literally what he has promised. By the end of next year his actual conservative expectation is to be more than 80%. As far as operating profit who knows, but there is no way that we will be waiting until 2022 for this to be deployed, at least in somewhat limited routes and times.

jessriedel 9y ago
> there is no way that we will be waiting until 2022 for this to be deployed How sure would you say you are? Want to put some money on that?
- ilaksh 9y ago
  Before 2022? Yes, I should take that wager. The tricky part about a wager is that it gives people a strong incentive to reinterpret events to their advantage, and its tough to define this in an objective way. Even if it is defined objectively there is ambiguity in language and again they may not realize they disagree on what they are wagering about. But maybe in a few days when I get paid again I could make a wager if there was some agreement on what we were wagering. I have a feeling that once that got pinned down you wouldn't want to continue the wager. 2021 is four years from now. Do you really think that, in the next four years, this early rider program https://waymo.com/apply/ https://waymo.com/apply/ won't progress to allowing rides without the supervisor employee present on some rides? Once they have that working on a regular basis, should we not assume they will start charging for rides? They could actually do that now for certain routes and times if they had the government sign off on it. So it is feasible (although unlikely) that you could lose the bet tomorrow. There are several other advanced self-driving vehicle programs out there including Cruise, Uber, etc. They are also using the LIDAR technology and detailed maps etc. Audi has announced they will have a 'level 4' self pilot mode for freeways in 2020-2021 https://media.audiusa.com/models/piloted-driving https://media.audiusa.com/models/piloted-driving They announced that in 2017 (or maybe 2016) because they have been partnering with nVidia and saw nVidia actually demonstrated deep neural network autonomous driving. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmVWLr0X1Sk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmVWLr0X1Sk GM, Ford, Honda, Tesla have all made announcements that they plan to deploy self driving vehicles on or before 2021. https://venturebeat.com/2017/06/04/self-driving-car-timeline-for-11-top-automakers/ https://venturebeat.com/2017/06/04/self-driving-car-timeline...
  - jessriedel 9y ago
    You seem to have a more liberal interpretation of "somewhat limited" than I do. I have ascribed a 45% chance to this statement, and last year bet $500 against it taking place: "By July 2023, a self-driving car can be reliably hailed by a member of the general public in at least 10 North American cities. At least 8 cities must be outside the San Fransisco Bay Area. The car must available on at least 50% of days, i.e., not confined to very narrow weather or traffic situations. No back-up human may be physically present to take over in an emergency." http://blog.jessriedel.com/2016/04/ http://blog.jessriedel.com/2016/04/ Would you bet on that happening by July 2022? I would take on another $500.