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George Hotz: Fully Self-Driving Cars Are a Scam and Silicon Valley Needs to Die

78 points by vasco 7y ago

kevingadd 7y ago
Nice to see Hotz own up to his own hubris here and share what seems like a pretty level-headed opinion on the space after trying to put his money where his mouth was. EDIT: Having watched further in the video I think the best point he makes here is that the cost part of it simply doesn't make sense - the cars are still super expensive and good level 4 autonomy relies on things like carefully generated, high-precision map data that can easily become inaccurate and also are very expensive to produce.
- zouhair 7y ago
  Can you imagine the guy that invented the locomotive that told investors that it is the future you only need to build specific rails for them to work and you have to build miles and miles of them and no one can use those rails as they are meant only for trains and you also need to maintain them.
  - kevingadd 7y ago
    We already have trains and roads, if you're proposing another massive infrastructure investment where the consequences of underinvestment include 'people get hit by self-driving cars due to outdated map data', the bar you have to hit there is a lot higher than 'here's my idea for this locomotive, we build some rails in empty grassland and it'll take you somewhere 10 times faster than before'. It's not comparable. Self-driving is about convenience and PERHAPS scale, it's not presently enabling entirely new scenarios. And if the car is super expensive (as he points out, and as it currently is), it leads to a situation where the self-driving cars are owned by central powers instead of individual civilians, so now the cost equation for driving is different and you're giving up control over your own vehicle. They were talking about releasing waymo cars with no steering wheel!
    - zouhair 7y ago
      Not really a counter-argument. The real counter-argument would be trains are not for private use, but cars are.
  - gmueckl 7y ago
    Rails and train cars were relatively old technology. By the time the steam locomotive was invented, there were already horse drawn trains [1]. So your example is not quite backed by history. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_horse-drawn_railways https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_horse-drawn_railways
    - zouhair 7y ago
      Even now we have a lot of maps, roads, electronics and much more already made.
- darawk 7y ago
  That's a terrible point, though. The way the costs come down is by slowly chipping away at them, and scaling up production of all the important components. This is how all new technologies arrive.
  - kevingadd 7y ago
    That's true for things like LIDAR scanners, but if in the end you need a bunch of cars (human-operated for a while, maybe forever?) constantly mapping and re-mapping roads, you can only optimize the cost of that so much. If you need a bunch of humans checking and massaging data, human wages only go so low. It's important to note that in this video he's not calling it impossible, just calling it a scam. Whether you agree with that is up to you - I think he's overstating it - but it is definitely the case that we've been made promises over the last 5+ years by many people (including him) that didn't hold up and the self-driving cars we have now are less autonomous than promised and more expensive than we were told to expect.
    - darawk 7y ago
      Right, but there are potentially more efficient ways to go about that. Particularly if you have the buy-in of local governments to instrument their roads for you.
      - kevingadd 7y ago
        Their current method is pretty efficient - getting the general public to annotate photos to mark stoplights, etc. So they've solved the cost problem by making the entire planet pay the cost for them. I think a company like Google can do this without expecting us to directly pay the price for it. And a truly functional, high level automated driving system with high safety WOULD be highly valuable, so maybe the price is fine? But it's hard to deny that if you look at all the pieces, as a whole, it is a very, very expensive proposition.
        Retric 7y ago
        Compare the costs of physically building and maintaining roads vs having a sensor equipped vechile drive past them. That’s orders of magnitude cheaper and thus no real impediment. Assuming it’s both needed and people are willing to pay for self driving cars. 4.1 million miles of road in the US vs 263.6 million registered vehicles. Assuming it costs 10$ / mile you could make every road in the US every day for about 60$ / year per car. And that’s with insane cost estimates anything reasonable is going to end up being cheap.
earthshot 7y ago
I’m old enough to remember when geohot was loudly claiming that he’d cracked full self driving but was shutting it down without selling the assets because the government is mean. It was hilarious to see most of HN treating that obvious nonsense as credible. This is hilarious too, because of the context around his previous claims.
- BigBubbleButt 7y ago
  > It was hilarious to see most of HN treating that obvious nonsense as credible. I remember it very differently. Maybe there was more than one post on HN, but it seemed like everybody was eviscerating him and basically calling him a fraud. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12840368 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12840368 In fact, going through those comments now (I've only skimmed) I can't find anyone actually defending the guy.
  - IshKebab 7y ago
    Yeah but check when he first started: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12492566 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12492566 > Surprised with all the skepticism here. It's not perfect but this guy is a hardware, software, and AI genius and this could very well speed up the self driving race by several years or even more > Jailbreaking cars now? Good for him! Can't wait to see this in action. > Go Go GeoHotz! > Pretty exciting for sure. > If it really works like they say and can be added to any car, that's pretty huge. I'd definitely buy one. I wonder what it takes to install it ... There are lots of skeptical comments too - maybe 50-50. I think it was more positive on Reddit though.
    - BigBubbleButt 7y ago
      There's a difference between when geohot made an announcement that he's working on a hard problem like you referenced, and when he said he'd solved the problem (which would trivially make him a billionaire) but just couldn't be bothered to deal with regulation like OP mentioned.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
tanilama 7y ago
First statement is not a secret to many people who remotely works in the so called AI industry. Second one is an opinion. Overall, Hotz is a celebrity, he says stuff, some of them are right some of them doesn't matter. As regards to this interview, not a lot information out there really.
axegon_ 7y ago
I can't watch the video atm but I'm incredibly perplexed as to why the hype around self driving cars began in the first place. To me, even if it does become a common technology at some point, it's nothing more than a "hey-check-this-cool-thing" gimmick. For end consumers anyway. If my car has full self driving capabilities, I can't see myself using it more than once every 3 years.
- colordrops 7y ago
  > If my car has full self driving capabilities, I can't see myself using it more than once every 3 years. Huh? Why?
- kevingadd 7y ago
  The idea of not having to drive to get somewhere is really appealing if it doesn't involve having to wait at a bus stop and sit next to a stranger on the bus. People in many environments - especially silicon valley - spend a ton of time commuting every day, either in their own car, on a corporate shuttle or on public transit. So if you tell them they can sit in the privacy of their own car while it takes them to/from work and relax, you have their attention. Of course, that doesn't mean it's actually a good idea and it doesn't mean it's possible - but it's a seductive idea if you're someone who hates commuting, and many people really hate it because it eats up a chunk of their life.
  - baby 7y ago
    I'm one of the people commuting 3 hours per day in the bay. I don't know what's the solution but right now the problem with commuting with a shuttle is not solved by replacing it with a car, the roads are super bumpy and the traffic is bad. What I wish was for a subway to take me from SF to south bay. No traffic, stable, fast.
    - kevingadd 7y ago
      It's really depressing that for a short time period, it was a real possibility that BART+Caltrain would cover the vast majority of the SF bay area compared to what it does now. So much wasted potential because people weren't willing to eat some marginal costs then to lay down extra lines. We're slowly expanding it now, of course, but decades too late.
jmiskovic 7y ago
As much as I'd like self-driving tech, the price seems too high. High resolution urban area maps of that need constant updating? Built by and controlled by multi-national IT corporations known for no regard for privacy? How about we pour that research and investments into bettering the public transportation? Would be good enough for most people.
- kevingadd 7y ago
  A massive barrier to this is that people generally seem unhappy with the fact that public transit means they need to sit next to other members of the public. Rightly so, to a degree - our fellow humans can be quite rude or unsightly or dangerous at times, and most of us have probably done some shitty things in public by accident a few times. So if you offer them a pipe-dream of private automated transit instead, that's a lot more appealing than dropping 8 figures on slight improvements to BART or their local buses. The area I grew up in had a light rail network that was supposed to expand to my community college within 3 years, and in practice it took over 10. One source of delay was that communities rejected the expansion, and one reason among others was a claim that Local Crime would 'ride the rails' to their previously quiet neighborhoods. Sometimes people don't want to share space with their neighbors.
  - baby 7y ago
    the failure of public transport in the US is not a good argument against public transport in general due to its large success elsewhere in the world.
    - kevingadd 7y ago
      I am 110% in support of public transport expansion and not especially fond of self-driving cars as an alternative, just trying to express why I find people in my area (and industry) tend to prefer self-driving to transit.
      - hef19898 7y ago
        It is also way more sexy. And it attracts way more VC money as well. A well run public transport system is a nice thing to have. It can still be optimized, so.
mothsonasloth 7y ago
George makes the economic points but like most hackers/devs fails to see the humanist point (something I am learning to appreciate). Forget about the big money, Elon Musks and the "world-changing" tech. Behind it all is a dangerous precedent to automate away our daily lifes, byte by byte. 10 years ago I had instant messenger, basic satnav, email, holiday bookings, price comparisons and online shopping. Nowadays I have dating algorithms, live satnav, home automation, voice assistants, smart motorways, groceries and weekly sundries handled by amazon prime, cars collecting telemetry on my driving habits. These things are influencing or completely removing our brains need to make decisions. Through this, comes an easier, safer or happier life, however you have to think, at what cost? Do we become dependant on machines and evolve towards this "singularity" that we hear mentioned around here often. Or do we become willing hostages to our technology?
- kick 7y ago
  I agree with Hotz, but self-driving cars are an unambiguous win. Way more people die from car crashes than most ways to die; there's a moral imperative to take away control from humans in that regard. Dating apps are easy: don't use them. Bars still exist. Voice assistants are pretty easy to not use. Cars are not, because cars aren't consensual. Kids don't get a choice as to whether or not they get to ride in cars. You take a bike, regulators have made it intentionally dangerous for people on bicycles so cars could continue to rule the world. Go for a walk and most sidewalks are in terrible condition outside of a few areas in the United States. Public transit has been systematically defunded, partially because of cars. In America, most people have no choice. Automate away, there's plenty to think about.
  - mothsonasloth 7y ago
    >Way more people die from car crashes than most ways to die; there's a moral imperative to take away control from humans in that regard. How many self driving cars are on the road vs. non autonomous cars on the road? As a software developer, we are taught to look at the root cause. In your case you are saying the human is the root cause but that is too shallow. The root cause, is why a human was in that situation in the first place - stress, crazy work hours, car maintenance etc.
tim333 7y ago
That was quite an entertaining video. He mostly argues the level 4/5 driver free taxi type stuff is a scam because it won't work in the near term. He's a launching an open source android phone based driver assist system that tracks the drivers eyes to check they are paying attention to the road also.
ackbar03 7y ago
I always thought hotz was cooler as an actual hacker in the old sense. He's got that rogue spirit
- tim333 7y ago
  Yeah the end statement: Zook screws and lame-o start to really falter things are gonna look good for us and then you want to buy. I have a price. I'll sell out 1 billion dollars. For a billion a lot of things are negotiable. I could do a lot of stuff at the billion that's a good endowment for our religion.
- rvz 7y ago
  That’s the big age old irony of this orange site. Some say Musk is cool and others say ’Hotz was cooler’ but both say outlandish claims and yet still create something real which is better than vapourware. However, for drive assistance software today? Tesla and Commai are both still considered as unsafe. Realistically, the industry is still immature and now at the assisted-driving level and unfortunately some users still conflate that with ‘self-driving’ due to the industry’s own hype of achieving level 4 self-driving capabilities. Tesla and Comma.ai directly tell the user to keep their eyes on the road, whereas the others do not, yet Tesla drivers keep getting killed. The same is possible for Comma.ai and I would consider both software as unsafe for now, but those who don’t instruct the user to keep their eyes on the wheel as very unsafe. But they are at least aware of this. Some users however...
solarkraft 7y ago
I like that he makes an "i use arch btw" joke during the interview.
craftoman 7y ago
Just because you failed completing a project doesn't mean everyone else's doing it wrong. I know sometimes it's really frustrating but that's life.
superkuh 7y ago
He's not wrong. Self driving cars will (at least for the foreseeable next 20 years) be stuck to operating in simple non-changing environments like the arid southwest. They simply cannot work anywhere there is snow.

78 points by vasco 7y ago

Nice to see Hotz own up to his own hubris here and share what seems like a pretty level-headed opinion on the space after trying to put his money where his mouth was. EDIT: Having watched further in the video I think the best point he makes here is that the cost part of it simply doesn't make sense - the cars are still super expensive and good level 4 autonomy relies on things like carefully generated, high-precision map data that can easily become inaccurate and also are very expensive to produce.

zouhair 7y ago
Can you imagine the guy that invented the locomotive that told investors that it is the future you only need to build specific rails for them to work and you have to build miles and miles of them and no one can use those rails as they are meant only for trains and you also need to maintain them.
- kevingadd 7y ago
  We already have trains and roads, if you're proposing another massive infrastructure investment where the consequences of underinvestment include 'people get hit by self-driving cars due to outdated map data', the bar you have to hit there is a lot higher than 'here's my idea for this locomotive, we build some rails in empty grassland and it'll take you somewhere 10 times faster than before'. It's not comparable. Self-driving is about convenience and PERHAPS scale, it's not presently enabling entirely new scenarios. And if the car is super expensive (as he points out, and as it currently is), it leads to a situation where the self-driving cars are owned by central powers instead of individual civilians, so now the cost equation for driving is different and you're giving up control over your own vehicle. They were talking about releasing waymo cars with no steering wheel!
  - zouhair 7y ago
    Not really a counter-argument. The real counter-argument would be trains are not for private use, but cars are.
- gmueckl 7y ago
  Rails and train cars were relatively old technology. By the time the steam locomotive was invented, there were already horse drawn trains [1]. So your example is not quite backed by history. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_horse-drawn_railways https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_horse-drawn_railways
  - zouhair 7y ago
    Even now we have a lot of maps, roads, electronics and much more already made.
darawk 7y ago
That's a terrible point, though. The way the costs come down is by slowly chipping away at them, and scaling up production of all the important components. This is how all new technologies arrive.
- kevingadd 7y ago
  That's true for things like LIDAR scanners, but if in the end you need a bunch of cars (human-operated for a while, maybe forever?) constantly mapping and re-mapping roads, you can only optimize the cost of that so much. If you need a bunch of humans checking and massaging data, human wages only go so low. It's important to note that in this video he's not calling it impossible, just calling it a scam. Whether you agree with that is up to you - I think he's overstating it - but it is definitely the case that we've been made promises over the last 5+ years by many people (including him) that didn't hold up and the self-driving cars we have now are less autonomous than promised and more expensive than we were told to expect.
  - darawk 7y ago
    Right, but there are potentially more efficient ways to go about that. Particularly if you have the buy-in of local governments to instrument their roads for you.
    - kevingadd 7y ago
      Their current method is pretty efficient - getting the general public to annotate photos to mark stoplights, etc. So they've solved the cost problem by making the entire planet pay the cost for them. I think a company like Google can do this without expecting us to directly pay the price for it. And a truly functional, high level automated driving system with high safety WOULD be highly valuable, so maybe the price is fine? But it's hard to deny that if you look at all the pieces, as a whole, it is a very, very expensive proposition.
      - Retric 7y ago
        Compare the costs of physically building and maintaining roads vs having a sensor equipped vechile drive past them. That’s orders of magnitude cheaper and thus no real impediment. Assuming it’s both needed and people are willing to pay for self driving cars. 4.1 million miles of road in the US vs 263.6 million registered vehicles. Assuming it costs 10$ / mile you could make every road in the US every day for about 60$ / year per car. And that’s with insane cost estimates anything reasonable is going to end up being cheap.

earthshot 7y ago

I’m old enough to remember when geohot was loudly claiming that he’d cracked full self driving but was shutting it down without selling the assets because the government is mean. It was hilarious to see most of HN treating that obvious nonsense as credible. This is hilarious too, because of the context around his previous claims.

BigBubbleButt 7y ago
> It was hilarious to see most of HN treating that obvious nonsense as credible. I remember it very differently. Maybe there was more than one post on HN, but it seemed like everybody was eviscerating him and basically calling him a fraud. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12840368 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12840368 In fact, going through those comments now (I've only skimmed) I can't find anyone actually defending the guy.
- IshKebab 7y ago
  Yeah but check when he first started: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12492566 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12492566 > Surprised with all the skepticism here. It's not perfect but this guy is a hardware, software, and AI genius and this could very well speed up the self driving race by several years or even more > Jailbreaking cars now? Good for him! Can't wait to see this in action. > Go Go GeoHotz! > Pretty exciting for sure. > If it really works like they say and can be added to any car, that's pretty huge. I'd definitely buy one. I wonder what it takes to install it ... There are lots of skeptical comments too - maybe 50-50. I think it was more positive on Reddit though.
  - BigBubbleButt 7y ago
    There's a difference between when geohot made an announcement that he's working on a hard problem like you referenced, and when he said he'd solved the problem (which would trivially make him a billionaire) but just couldn't be bothered to deal with regulation like OP mentioned.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

tanilama 7y ago

First statement is not a secret to many people who remotely works in the so called AI industry. Second one is an opinion. Overall, Hotz is a celebrity, he says stuff, some of them are right some of them doesn't matter. As regards to this interview, not a lot information out there really.

axegon_ 7y ago

I can't watch the video atm but I'm incredibly perplexed as to why the hype around self driving cars began in the first place. To me, even if it does become a common technology at some point, it's nothing more than a "hey-check-this-cool-thing" gimmick. For end consumers anyway. If my car has full self driving capabilities, I can't see myself using it more than once every 3 years.

colordrops 7y ago
> If my car has full self driving capabilities, I can't see myself using it more than once every 3 years. Huh? Why?
kevingadd 7y ago
The idea of not having to drive to get somewhere is really appealing if it doesn't involve having to wait at a bus stop and sit next to a stranger on the bus. People in many environments - especially silicon valley - spend a ton of time commuting every day, either in their own car, on a corporate shuttle or on public transit. So if you tell them they can sit in the privacy of their own car while it takes them to/from work and relax, you have their attention. Of course, that doesn't mean it's actually a good idea and it doesn't mean it's possible - but it's a seductive idea if you're someone who hates commuting, and many people really hate it because it eats up a chunk of their life.
- baby 7y ago
  I'm one of the people commuting 3 hours per day in the bay. I don't know what's the solution but right now the problem with commuting with a shuttle is not solved by replacing it with a car, the roads are super bumpy and the traffic is bad. What I wish was for a subway to take me from SF to south bay. No traffic, stable, fast.
  - kevingadd 7y ago
    It's really depressing that for a short time period, it was a real possibility that BART+Caltrain would cover the vast majority of the SF bay area compared to what it does now. So much wasted potential because people weren't willing to eat some marginal costs then to lay down extra lines. We're slowly expanding it now, of course, but decades too late.

jmiskovic 7y ago

As much as I'd like self-driving tech, the price seems too high. High resolution urban area maps of that need constant updating? Built by and controlled by multi-national IT corporations known for no regard for privacy? How about we pour that research and investments into bettering the public transportation? Would be good enough for most people.

kevingadd 7y ago
A massive barrier to this is that people generally seem unhappy with the fact that public transit means they need to sit next to other members of the public. Rightly so, to a degree - our fellow humans can be quite rude or unsightly or dangerous at times, and most of us have probably done some shitty things in public by accident a few times. So if you offer them a pipe-dream of private automated transit instead, that's a lot more appealing than dropping 8 figures on slight improvements to BART or their local buses. The area I grew up in had a light rail network that was supposed to expand to my community college within 3 years, and in practice it took over 10. One source of delay was that communities rejected the expansion, and one reason among others was a claim that Local Crime would 'ride the rails' to their previously quiet neighborhoods. Sometimes people don't want to share space with their neighbors.
- baby 7y ago
  the failure of public transport in the US is not a good argument against public transport in general due to its large success elsewhere in the world.
  - kevingadd 7y ago
    I am 110% in support of public transport expansion and not especially fond of self-driving cars as an alternative, just trying to express why I find people in my area (and industry) tend to prefer self-driving to transit.
    - hef19898 7y ago
      It is also way more sexy. And it attracts way more VC money as well. A well run public transport system is a nice thing to have. It can still be optimized, so.

mothsonasloth 7y ago

George makes the economic points but like most hackers/devs fails to see the humanist point (something I am learning to appreciate). Forget about the big money, Elon Musks and the "world-changing" tech. Behind it all is a dangerous precedent to automate away our daily lifes, byte by byte. 10 years ago I had instant messenger, basic satnav, email, holiday bookings, price comparisons and online shopping. Nowadays I have dating algorithms, live satnav, home automation, voice assistants, smart motorways, groceries and weekly sundries handled by amazon prime, cars collecting telemetry on my driving habits. These things are influencing or completely removing our brains need to make decisions. Through this, comes an easier, safer or happier life, however you have to think, at what cost? Do we become dependant on machines and evolve towards this "singularity" that we hear mentioned around here often. Or do we become willing hostages to our technology?

kick 7y ago
I agree with Hotz, but self-driving cars are an unambiguous win. Way more people die from car crashes than most ways to die; there's a moral imperative to take away control from humans in that regard. Dating apps are easy: don't use them. Bars still exist. Voice assistants are pretty easy to not use. Cars are not, because cars aren't consensual. Kids don't get a choice as to whether or not they get to ride in cars. You take a bike, regulators have made it intentionally dangerous for people on bicycles so cars could continue to rule the world. Go for a walk and most sidewalks are in terrible condition outside of a few areas in the United States. Public transit has been systematically defunded, partially because of cars. In America, most people have no choice. Automate away, there's plenty to think about.
- mothsonasloth 7y ago
  >Way more people die from car crashes than most ways to die; there's a moral imperative to take away control from humans in that regard. How many self driving cars are on the road vs. non autonomous cars on the road? As a software developer, we are taught to look at the root cause. In your case you are saying the human is the root cause but that is too shallow. The root cause, is why a human was in that situation in the first place - stress, crazy work hours, car maintenance etc.

tim333 7y ago

That was quite an entertaining video. He mostly argues the level 4/5 driver free taxi type stuff is a scam because it won't work in the near term. He's a launching an open source android phone based driver assist system that tracks the drivers eyes to check they are paying attention to the road also.

ackbar03 7y ago

I always thought hotz was cooler as an actual hacker in the old sense. He's got that rogue spirit

tim333 7y ago
Yeah the end statement: Zook screws and lame-o start to really falter things are gonna look good for us and then you want to buy. I have a price. I'll sell out 1 billion dollars. For a billion a lot of things are negotiable. I could do a lot of stuff at the billion that's a good endowment for our religion.
rvz 7y ago
That’s the big age old irony of this orange site. Some say Musk is cool and others say ’Hotz was cooler’ but both say outlandish claims and yet still create something real which is better than vapourware. However, for drive assistance software today? Tesla and Commai are both still considered as unsafe. Realistically, the industry is still immature and now at the assisted-driving level and unfortunately some users still conflate that with ‘self-driving’ due to the industry’s own hype of achieving level 4 self-driving capabilities. Tesla and Comma.ai directly tell the user to keep their eyes on the road, whereas the others do not, yet Tesla drivers keep getting killed. The same is possible for Comma.ai and I would consider both software as unsafe for now, but those who don’t instruct the user to keep their eyes on the wheel as very unsafe. But they are at least aware of this. Some users however...

solarkraft 7y ago

I like that he makes an "i use arch btw" joke during the interview.

craftoman 7y ago

Just because you failed completing a project doesn't mean everyone else's doing it wrong. I know sometimes it's really frustrating but that's life.

superkuh 7y ago

He's not wrong. Self driving cars will (at least for the foreseeable next 20 years) be stuck to operating in simple non-changing environments like the arid southwest. They simply cannot work anywhere there is snow.