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Another 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 t

Another 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 ago
I 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 ago
  I'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 ago
    I've never read of a single person claiming that.
- visarga 8y ago
  I 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 ago
  Given 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.
- dougmwne 8y ago
  I'd be very interested to hear you up unpack your prediction of "decades away." It seems possible to predict technology developments for the next few years, but I struggle to see how predicting decades away can have any evidence or meaning. I think what people mean is "this isn't theoretically impossible but no-one has any idea how to build it and it may in fact be impossible or impractical." Tech that's decades away probablly shouldn't receive any corporate r&d dollars at all. Given how many billions are being currently spent on self driving, there's going to be a lot of dissapointed investors if they've just been sold snake oil, and anything decades out absolutely is snake oil in the corporate world.
  - cfadvan 8y ago
    Given how many billions are being currently spent on self driving, there's going to be a lot of dissapointed investors if they've just been sold snake oil, and anything decades out absolutely is snake oil in the corporate world. Hell yes. A lot of hype has been sold at a dear price, driven in no small part by Uber’s desperation to find a profitable business model through automation. The reality is that critical edge cases are hard, and no one seems to know how to fix them. Two factors that I believe will dictate “decades away” or as you rightly say, someday, but not today, probably a loooong time from now. First, these crashes are not going to stop as long as SDVs are on public roads, and that includes the bad joke that is Tesla AP. That kind of thing is just too juicy for the media not to latch on to, and too scary to the average person to ignore. As a thought experiment, imagine if Uber has mowed down a well-off white kid instead of someone they could dismiss as a “formerly homeless woman.” Second, the tech itself is hard and may be on shaky ground to begin with. The assumption that with enough training AI can adapt to the point of “better than human” is yet to be borne out in reality. And yet, the billions have already been invested, so a lot of people have a lot on the line to make some kind of MVP. So “millions of miles driven” gets bandied about, but it’s not miles in torrential rain, or terrible roads, or snow and ice. Who cares how many miles Waymo can drive on a sunny day in California? Get back to me when they can do the same on a back road in Maine, in the winter. IMO this creates a feedback loop of hype and investment until the bottom drops out. Then it won’t just be a technological problem, but political, legal, and shrouded in “winter” as investors once burned will be reluctant to wade in again. To the people who see the billions invested as evidence of promise in and of itself, I say Theranos... Juicero...
ocdtrekkie 8y ago
As the case is, they've always wanted to use Google's cars. They only started investing in their own program because they felt like Google had shut them out.
- jacksmith21006 8y ago
  That is not true. They had an opportunity to get the Google technology basically stollen and had nothing to do with Google offering or not offering. Now Google called them on it their hands are tied as can't do on their own. I suspect Google will work with them as Google wants the Android model and NOT the iPhone model. Google wants to be the standard for everyone.

cfadvan 8y ago

I 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 ago
I'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 ago
  I've never read of a single person claiming that.
visarga 8y ago
I 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 ago
Given 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.
dougmwne 8y ago
I'd be very interested to hear you up unpack your prediction of "decades away." It seems possible to predict technology developments for the next few years, but I struggle to see how predicting decades away can have any evidence or meaning. I think what people mean is "this isn't theoretically impossible but no-one has any idea how to build it and it may in fact be impossible or impractical." Tech that's decades away probablly shouldn't receive any corporate r&d dollars at all. Given how many billions are being currently spent on self driving, there's going to be a lot of dissapointed investors if they've just been sold snake oil, and anything decades out absolutely is snake oil in the corporate world.
- cfadvan 8y ago
  Given how many billions are being currently spent on self driving, there's going to be a lot of dissapointed investors if they've just been sold snake oil, and anything decades out absolutely is snake oil in the corporate world. Hell yes. A lot of hype has been sold at a dear price, driven in no small part by Uber’s desperation to find a profitable business model through automation. The reality is that critical edge cases are hard, and no one seems to know how to fix them. Two factors that I believe will dictate “decades away” or as you rightly say, someday, but not today, probably a loooong time from now. First, these crashes are not going to stop as long as SDVs are on public roads, and that includes the bad joke that is Tesla AP. That kind of thing is just too juicy for the media not to latch on to, and too scary to the average person to ignore. As a thought experiment, imagine if Uber has mowed down a well-off white kid instead of someone they could dismiss as a “formerly homeless woman.” Second, the tech itself is hard and may be on shaky ground to begin with. The assumption that with enough training AI can adapt to the point of “better than human” is yet to be borne out in reality. And yet, the billions have already been invested, so a lot of people have a lot on the line to make some kind of MVP. So “millions of miles driven” gets bandied about, but it’s not miles in torrential rain, or terrible roads, or snow and ice. Who cares how many miles Waymo can drive on a sunny day in California? Get back to me when they can do the same on a back road in Maine, in the winter. IMO this creates a feedback loop of hype and investment until the bottom drops out. Then it won’t just be a technological problem, but political, legal, and shrouded in “winter” as investors once burned will be reluctant to wade in again. To the people who see the billions invested as evidence of promise in and of itself, I say Theranos... Juicero...

ocdtrekkie 8y ago

As the case is, they've always wanted to use Google's cars. They only started investing in their own program because they felt like Google had shut them out.

jacksmith21006 8y ago
That is not true. They had an opportunity to get the Google technology basically stollen and had nothing to do with Google offering or not offering. Now Google called them on it their hands are tied as can't do on their own. I suspect Google will work with them as Google wants the Android model and NOT the iPhone model. Google wants to be the standard for everyone.