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Uber CEO says Uber and Alphabet are discussing working together on self-driving
- johanj 8y agoDirect link to recode.net: https://www.recode.net/2018/5/31/17390030/uber-ceo-dara-khosrowshahi-code-conference-interview https://www.recode.net/2018/5/31/17390030/uber-ceo-dara-khos...
- JasonFruit 8y ago'Autonomous' is an adjective.
- jayess 8y agoI guess it's sorta like how "architect" has become a verb.
- repsilat 8y agoSo is "mobile". It used to be awkward and embarrassing when someone said things like "focusing on mobile" but then we got used to it I guess. The same might happen here (though "driverless" will probably be more common than "autonomous".)
- JasonFruit 8y agoI don't have to like it. I am still bothered by "mobile", "solar", "nuclear" (or "nookyular"), and the rest. I'm willing to die on this hill — or to stand on it, waving my arms, showing that one man at least cares about the English language.
- soVeryTired 8y agoPeople - particularly businesspeople, and especially American businesspeople - like to noun and verb words. Verbing and nouning weirds language.
- braythwayt 8y ago> Verbing weirds language https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/01/25 https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/01/25 Don't miss the comment pointing out the word "denominative:" http://www.dictionary.com/browse/denominative http://www.dictionary.com/browse/denominative
- bunderbunder 8y agoDepending on just how traditional you want to be, it may not even be a word.
- mdorazio 8y agoAnother way of looking at this: after the Phoenix accident, Uber realized that its own autonomous tech is woefully inadequate and years behind Waymo's, so now they're trying to play nice to not get left behind.
- cfadvan 8y agoI think that everyone in this industry is also starting to realize that far from a quick race to be first, this is actually the start of a long slog. With the realization that full autonomy isn’t a few years, but at least a few decades away, collaboration rather than throat-slitting becomes a more sensible strategy.
- ghaff 8y agoI'm still unsure if all the people claiming that they're going to be able to order an autonomous cab in a random US city within the next year or two are just irrationally optimistic or if they have a totally cynical interest in telling a bigger whopper than the next guy.
- euyyn 8y agoI've never read of a single person claiming that.
- visarga 8y agoI very much doubt your claim about "decades away". There would be zero interest in this field from companies if the prospect of medium-term profits is zero.
- gradys 8y agoGiven that Waymo has autonomous cars driving real users around at least one real city with no driver behind the wheel, why are you so confident that autonomy is "at least" decades away? Maybe you mean decades away from market saturation? Or from being able to do literally anything a human driver can do? Even then, "at least a few decades" feels overly pessimistic, and neither of those accomplishments are required to start eating the Uber/Lyft market.
- mannykannot 8y agoThe article is actually saying that Dara Khosrowshahi would like to talk to Alphabet about this matter, which is not surprising given how Uber's own project is going. There's no indication of enthusiasm for this on Alphabet's part, however.
- Fricken 8y agoI don't know why you were downvoted. Waymo has a partnership with Lyft that may or may not go anywhere. Waymo may decide that they don't need no stinking rideshare company to host their vehicles.
- heisenbit 8y agoI agree and even if these talks would be going on what are the chances that Alphabet would be happy for him to go to the press at this stage?
- mannykannot 8y agoGood point - maybe Alphabet already passed up on this opportunity, and the goal in this interview was to give the impression that Uber is doing something about its automation problem.
- jacksmith21006 8y agoReally Alphabet has the cards and will have to decide if want to give access to the Waymo cars or not. Did think Waymo more interested in the Android model versus the iPhone model.
- ProAm 8y agoLet's let Uber fold and just let Google take the reins here.
- jacksmith21006 8y agoWould keep more people alive.
- gfo 8y agoI'd really prefer any company working on self-driving technology collaborate anyway. I don't see it as important for getting users on the platforms as suggested in the article or even as a 'business' decision. As we begin adopting automated driving, there comes a point where it's helpful to have the systems communicating intentions with each other; part of the issue with driving manually is the uncertainty over other drivers' intent. Using automation and letting drivers talk in this manner would likely reduce crashes down to manual driver fault and significant bugs or sensor errors as it's adopted more. This isn't what they're after at the moment, but encouraging collaboration in this space could make that an easier path moving forward. Not to mention, a single accepted protocol with higher adoption could allow a single car to gain much more valuable data beyond what's in their immediate vicinity, but could tell them what's going on nearby and even real-time traffic data along the route. As for now, imagine the years of experience each technology has being combined into one super-driver. I know it's not that simple - each company may be representing the data differently - but I don't expect that to be an issue that couldn't resolve itself. Couldn't this significantly push this tech forward? (Note: I don't have the answer, this is my suspicion. I'm hoping some discussion could highlight situations where this has had a bad result, if any).
- criticali 8y agogood. i hope uber fires their entire pittsburg team. vile garbage human beings on the hardware team. happy job hunting tech bros!
- jxub 8y agoAnd so it looks that the development of the autonomous cars will ironically be collaborative instead of autonomous...