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My theory is that the self-driving car industry, similarly to Theranos, at some point switched from a fake-it-till-you-make-it mode to full blown faking it. Thi

My theory is that the self-driving car industry, similarly to Theranos, at some point switched from a fake-it-till-you-make-it mode to full blown faking it. This was either some time around 2016 when Waymo made a video of driving a blind man around Austin [0] or maybe 2015 when Elon pronounced that self-driving is a "solved problem." [1] [0] https://youtu.be/uHbMt6WDhQ8 https://youtu.be/uHbMt6WDhQ8 [1] https://youtu.be/xQhb3C2hQoE?t=3510 https://youtu.be/xQhb3C2hQoE?t=3510

baby 6y ago
It could be repeating virtual reality’s steps. There was some hype in the 90s and some attempts that led nowhere. It took 30 years for a real breakthrough to happen.
- sfblah 6y ago
  What was the breakthrough?
  - TulliusCicero 6y ago
    Things like smallish screens getting good and cheap enough, leading to the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. Or in the case of the Quest, having powerful and reasonably priced SoC's.
  - mikejb 6y ago
    I'd say the breakthrough term was not the ideal word choice - it's more that technological advances passed a threshold: For VR, a lot was advances in (affordable) processing power (latency causes significant issues in VR), and screen (manufacturing) technology (i.e. pricing improvements). For self-driving, it's again processing power (with the focus on the ratio between computation power and power consumption/size), but also the advances in technologies like Lidar, as well as advances in theoretical research (and better understanding) of machine learning.
  - baby 6y ago
    You’re in for a treat if you haven’t heard of the oculus quest :)
shermanmccoy 6y ago
I presume Waymo has been knocking on every trucking company door in the phone book, trying to get some sort of pilot up, before opting down this rather costly path.
mikejb 6y ago
I think the primary fallacy in the theory is confusing companies like Waymo with companies like Tesla, and mingling their (in)capabilities. Both have a very different approach in trying to get to self-driving, and when combining what both can't do, it would seem nobody can do anything. And whilst both throw out their fair share of "demo videos" (=advertising), they have different track records for what they can (and actually do), and what they can't (but claim to do).
- Dumblydorr 6y ago
  You just named the two companies closest to autonomy, IMO. Waymo has the lead in actual self driving, Tesla has the lead in actually commercializing features. I'm confident these two companies will reach mostly autonomous driving before many of the other fakers.
  - mikejb 6y ago
    I named these 2 companies because the parent referenced them in their argument. But I agree that they are the ones that are the ahead in their individual approaches, though I think Tesla is not really that near to autonomous driving. They have a lot of features in development that their test drivers (=consumers) are using, and that gives the impression that they got that already (Elon even claimed Tesla has FSD on highways in early 2019), but the step to "the driver doesn't always have to pay attention" is gigantic and far away - and on that scale, Tesla's lead to other manufacturers (who don't do that kind of marketing or testing on consumers) is relatively small. They're still doing better than a lot of the wannabe-unicorns that pursue self-driving or Lidar though.
  - michaelt 6y ago
    Tesla has certainly got the furthest forward in releasing features - but I fear they've gone a long way down a dead end by putting all their eggs in the we-don't-need-LIDAR basket. And that decision means their Level 1 autonomy is nowhere near good enough to form a foundation for Level 4 autonomy.
TulliusCicero 6y ago
Except we've seen Waymo doing fully driverless rides with customers in the Phoenix area. They've obviously gone a lot slower than planned though.
imtringued 6y ago
Waymo is doing fine but they need more time (a lot more). Tesla, on the other hand, is completely faking it. They have nothing to show for yet.
- Dumblydorr 6y ago
  Nothing to show except thousands of vehicles collecting data and doing partially autonomous driving, you mean. That's way more progress than other auto manufacturers, most of whom are going to be riding coat tails of a tech company to autonomy.
  - mikejb 6y ago
    Talking about data collection is a slippery slope. Surprisingly little of a Tesla ride gets transmitted, so whilst it seems like "A huge fleet of cars out there is collecting driving data", only a tiny amount of it is used to train. And so far, Tesla has a driver assist feature, and a lot of promises that get postponed every time the deadline is up. Their current set of feature outshines most car manufacturers, yes - but you have to remember: Tesla seems that far ahead because - unlike most other manufacturers - they push their beta-features to the production fleet. [Edit]: I should note: I don't subscribe to the sentiment that Tesla is "completely faking it" - I think they very much oversell their capabilities, and are nowhere near the point where the driver can stop paying attention (which to me is a core component of autonomy).
    - ghaff 6y ago
      Certainly miles/time for adding training data and to refine driving rules is important. But there's also a naive belief out there that piling on the mileage somehow directly leads to "better driving" and that's mostly just not the case.
  - RivieraKid 6y ago
    That doesn't mean they're anywhere close to self-driving. Anyone can start collecting data and do partially autonomous self-driving with a modest investment - this is a solved problem.

baby 6y ago

It could be repeating virtual reality’s steps. There was some hype in the 90s and some attempts that led nowhere. It took 30 years for a real breakthrough to happen.

sfblah 6y ago
What was the breakthrough?
- TulliusCicero 6y ago
  Things like smallish screens getting good and cheap enough, leading to the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. Or in the case of the Quest, having powerful and reasonably priced SoC's.
- mikejb 6y ago
  I'd say the breakthrough term was not the ideal word choice - it's more that technological advances passed a threshold: For VR, a lot was advances in (affordable) processing power (latency causes significant issues in VR), and screen (manufacturing) technology (i.e. pricing improvements). For self-driving, it's again processing power (with the focus on the ratio between computation power and power consumption/size), but also the advances in technologies like Lidar, as well as advances in theoretical research (and better understanding) of machine learning.
- baby 6y ago
  You’re in for a treat if you haven’t heard of the oculus quest :)

shermanmccoy 6y ago

I presume Waymo has been knocking on every trucking company door in the phone book, trying to get some sort of pilot up, before opting down this rather costly path.

mikejb 6y ago

I think the primary fallacy in the theory is confusing companies like Waymo with companies like Tesla, and mingling their (in)capabilities. Both have a very different approach in trying to get to self-driving, and when combining what both can't do, it would seem nobody can do anything. And whilst both throw out their fair share of "demo videos" (=advertising), they have different track records for what they can (and actually do), and what they can't (but claim to do).

Dumblydorr 6y ago
You just named the two companies closest to autonomy, IMO. Waymo has the lead in actual self driving, Tesla has the lead in actually commercializing features. I'm confident these two companies will reach mostly autonomous driving before many of the other fakers.
- mikejb 6y ago
  I named these 2 companies because the parent referenced them in their argument. But I agree that they are the ones that are the ahead in their individual approaches, though I think Tesla is not really that near to autonomous driving. They have a lot of features in development that their test drivers (=consumers) are using, and that gives the impression that they got that already (Elon even claimed Tesla has FSD on highways in early 2019), but the step to "the driver doesn't always have to pay attention" is gigantic and far away - and on that scale, Tesla's lead to other manufacturers (who don't do that kind of marketing or testing on consumers) is relatively small. They're still doing better than a lot of the wannabe-unicorns that pursue self-driving or Lidar though.
- michaelt 6y ago
  Tesla has certainly got the furthest forward in releasing features - but I fear they've gone a long way down a dead end by putting all their eggs in the we-don't-need-LIDAR basket. And that decision means their Level 1 autonomy is nowhere near good enough to form a foundation for Level 4 autonomy.

TulliusCicero 6y ago

Except we've seen Waymo doing fully driverless rides with customers in the Phoenix area. They've obviously gone a lot slower than planned though.

imtringued 6y ago

Waymo is doing fine but they need more time (a lot more). Tesla, on the other hand, is completely faking it. They have nothing to show for yet.

Dumblydorr 6y ago
Nothing to show except thousands of vehicles collecting data and doing partially autonomous driving, you mean. That's way more progress than other auto manufacturers, most of whom are going to be riding coat tails of a tech company to autonomy.
- mikejb 6y ago
  Talking about data collection is a slippery slope. Surprisingly little of a Tesla ride gets transmitted, so whilst it seems like "A huge fleet of cars out there is collecting driving data", only a tiny amount of it is used to train. And so far, Tesla has a driver assist feature, and a lot of promises that get postponed every time the deadline is up. Their current set of feature outshines most car manufacturers, yes - but you have to remember: Tesla seems that far ahead because - unlike most other manufacturers - they push their beta-features to the production fleet. [Edit]: I should note: I don't subscribe to the sentiment that Tesla is "completely faking it" - I think they very much oversell their capabilities, and are nowhere near the point where the driver can stop paying attention (which to me is a core component of autonomy).
  - ghaff 6y ago
    Certainly miles/time for adding training data and to refine driving rules is important. But there's also a naive belief out there that piling on the mileage somehow directly leads to "better driving" and that's mostly just not the case.
- RivieraKid 6y ago
  That doesn't mean they're anywhere close to self-driving. Anyone can start collecting data and do partially autonomous self-driving with a modest investment - this is a solved problem.