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I would find it kind of satisfying if Waymo solidly won the self-driving race. It would be a triumph of solid engineering over unreliable "good-enough" solution

I would find it kind of satisfying if Waymo solidly won the self-driving race. It would be a triumph of solid engineering over unreliable "good-enough" solutions.

256lie 6y ago
It is unlikely to me that any company will "win" the self-driving race in this decade.
- switch11 6y ago
  would be surprised if anyone came up with an actual self driving car in the next 2 to 3 decades
- mensetmanusman 6y ago
  I used to have the same confidence about no AI beating the best human at Go any time soon. Now I see the problem of self driving is now just data and and computation, each of which grows by bounds every month...
  - 256lie 6y ago
    Go can be simulated and self-trained. Self driving cars are robots interacting in the real world with multiple, stochastic agents. Real time hardware systems that are reliable and commercially viable will also be extremely difficult.
    - mensetmanusman 6y ago
      cars are also racking up millions of virtual miles in parallel...
nwienert 6y ago
You’re defining solid-engineering funny. You need a mass amount of data to train on. How do you get that? Its an engineering or a business problem, depending how how you look at it - how do you get a ton of people driving for you? Tesla has the better business model here. That leads to more data, which is the most important factor in training. Now, google is orders of magnitude bigger and had a huge head start, perhaps they brute force their way to the lead. But being more conservative != better engineering. You could philosophically disagree with many things Tesla is doing, but in terms of solving self driving cars I think they have the better strategy that gives their engineers the data they need. Tesla is in the real world recording every car they sell through vastly more dynamic scenario/terrain. That’s smart engineering.
- sumedh 6y ago
  > But being more conservative != better engineering. Isn't being conservative better when your technology can kill people?
  - nwienert 6y ago
    Sure, but that’s a moral problem not an engineering one.
    - _se 6y ago
      Yeah... Real engineers would call that an engineering problem. Like the kind who have stamps that can cost or preserve lives. You're just showcasing the immaturity of most software "engineers", yourself included.
      - nwienert 6y ago
        Oh boy, a real engineer is here to tell the immature ones what’s what. First, you made a huge assumption. I never said I approve of how they are doing it. Engineering at the highest level encompasses morality, obviously. But you wooshed real hard on the context of this thread in your rush to get that sweet feeling of moral superiority. I’ll rewind it for you. I was replying to someone claiming they hope Google delivers self-driving first because they see them as executing better at the engineering portion of doing so. Do you see now? If they had said they see them as engineering more ethically and so they hope they win, fine. But they didn’t. Read it again. The context is: is Google’s engineering strategy going to deliver self-driving first? I replied to that. I even called out that you can totally disagree on moral grounds, and I do disagree with much of what they do, so it’s funny to call me out on something I was leaving purposely open as a further topic to discuss. But the context was who would deliver self-driving faster, due strictly to their engineering strategy, I made the case that real world data trumps artificial data. And it does.
    - CharlesW 6y ago
      > Sure, but that’s a moral problem not an engineering one. I'm pretty sure "don't kill user" is not only an engineering requirement, but the most important one.
chx 6y ago
It was one of their engineers who noted the car you can put your child into and it drives her to school is still decades away.
- xenospn 6y ago
  Or can drive out of a parking lot after a night of snow.
  - chx 6y ago
    Oh even the parking lot + rain is one of those problems where the problem is not the lack of computational strength, it's the complete lack of viable ideas. There's a reason they test drive these things in Phoenix. A crowded parking lot of a mall can be challenging for a beginner human driver, it's an absolute AI nightmare as there can be totally unexpectedly moving cars and pedestrians at any place and time. And then {rain,fog,snow} messes with LIDAR and you have a half blind (at best) system trying to navigate an extremely challenging environment.
    - xenospn 6y ago
      It will only work when all cars have a sensor set and can communicate effectively to cover the entire area. I don't see how it can possible work if you throw human drivers into the mix.
switch11 6y ago
you and pretty much everyone else can't believe the amount of 'wishful thinking can replace science' that Tesla pushes out and now he has gotten into Neuralink and chips in the brains of pigs stupidness
- manicdee 6y ago
  Do you mean long range EV wishful thinking, improved battery technology wishful thinking, market-changing utility scale battery wishful thinking, Supercharger network wishful thinking or some other kind of wishful thinking?
  - etaioinshrdlu 6y ago
    Well, none of those are very deadly most of the time and they don't put human life into the hands of algorithms.
    - vaxman 6y ago
      So you’re saying touching a Supercharger in 110F temps tomorrow and discharging it into a lithium battery contained in a hot car that’s been driving through such temps for hours is totally safe!
wilg 6y ago
This is so silly! It’s not even clear what this is an opinion about! How would you lose the the race with solid engineering? How would you win without it?
- etaioinshrdlu 6y ago
  Shoddy engineering wins all the time! Ever heard of the DOS, Windows, or Android (in the early days)? Tesla could win, with shoddy engineering, if they can convince the public and government (using the classic reality distortion field :) ) their self driving tech is ready for prime time (when, for the sake of argument, presume it's not ready). They could then use the investment dollars generated to take it to the next level and perhaps make it solid over time -- but it could take a long time. In the mean time, the public was effectively deceived as to the true safety level of the product. I would prefer if the opposite happened instead.
  - Gravityloss 6y ago
    You could have some kind of independent testing for this. Like there is for fuel consumption. It would be really easy to game though. And the surface area would be large.
- Barrin92 6y ago
  >How would you lose the the race with solid engineering? How would you win without it? marketing, brand image, any of the other dozen things that mask bad engineering quality and sell the customer on some superficial thing. Not just in cars but a ton of consumer products customers can easily neglect engineering quality in favour of some gimmick. Hell even developers constantly choose convenient or shiny technologies over ones that are robust or error free.
mlindner 6y ago
This is nonsense hyperbole. Tesla's stuff has very good engineering. Don't criticize what you don't understand. Further, engineering is always a tradeoff around "good-enough", ask any actual engineer. Perfect is an impossible goal for ANY engineering task.
- rsynnott 6y ago
  From the article, a lot of these features clearly fall into the category of 'not good enough'. They should not have been released.
omarforgotpwd 6y ago
Waymo's unit economics are terrible

I would find it kind of satisfying if Waymo solidly won the self-driving race. It would be a triumph of solid engineering over unreliable "good-enough" solutions.

256lie 6y ago

It is unlikely to me that any company will "win" the self-driving race in this decade.

switch11 6y ago
would be surprised if anyone came up with an actual self driving car in the next 2 to 3 decades
mensetmanusman 6y ago
I used to have the same confidence about no AI beating the best human at Go any time soon. Now I see the problem of self driving is now just data and and computation, each of which grows by bounds every month...
- 256lie 6y ago
  Go can be simulated and self-trained. Self driving cars are robots interacting in the real world with multiple, stochastic agents. Real time hardware systems that are reliable and commercially viable will also be extremely difficult.
  - mensetmanusman 6y ago
    cars are also racking up millions of virtual miles in parallel...

nwienert 6y ago

You’re defining solid-engineering funny. You need a mass amount of data to train on. How do you get that? Its an engineering or a business problem, depending how how you look at it - how do you get a ton of people driving for you? Tesla has the better business model here. That leads to more data, which is the most important factor in training. Now, google is orders of magnitude bigger and had a huge head start, perhaps they brute force their way to the lead. But being more conservative != better engineering. You could philosophically disagree with many things Tesla is doing, but in terms of solving self driving cars I think they have the better strategy that gives their engineers the data they need. Tesla is in the real world recording every car they sell through vastly more dynamic scenario/terrain. That’s smart engineering.

sumedh 6y ago
> But being more conservative != better engineering. Isn't being conservative better when your technology can kill people?
- nwienert 6y ago
  Sure, but that’s a moral problem not an engineering one.
  - _se 6y ago
    Yeah... Real engineers would call that an engineering problem. Like the kind who have stamps that can cost or preserve lives. You're just showcasing the immaturity of most software "engineers", yourself included.
    - nwienert 6y ago
      Oh boy, a real engineer is here to tell the immature ones what’s what. First, you made a huge assumption. I never said I approve of how they are doing it. Engineering at the highest level encompasses morality, obviously. But you wooshed real hard on the context of this thread in your rush to get that sweet feeling of moral superiority. I’ll rewind it for you. I was replying to someone claiming they hope Google delivers self-driving first because they see them as executing better at the engineering portion of doing so. Do you see now? If they had said they see them as engineering more ethically and so they hope they win, fine. But they didn’t. Read it again. The context is: is Google’s engineering strategy going to deliver self-driving first? I replied to that. I even called out that you can totally disagree on moral grounds, and I do disagree with much of what they do, so it’s funny to call me out on something I was leaving purposely open as a further topic to discuss. But the context was who would deliver self-driving faster, due strictly to their engineering strategy, I made the case that real world data trumps artificial data. And it does.
  - CharlesW 6y ago
    > Sure, but that’s a moral problem not an engineering one. I'm pretty sure "don't kill user" is not only an engineering requirement, but the most important one.

chx 6y ago

It was one of their engineers who noted the car you can put your child into and it drives her to school is still decades away.

xenospn 6y ago
Or can drive out of a parking lot after a night of snow.
- chx 6y ago
  Oh even the parking lot + rain is one of those problems where the problem is not the lack of computational strength, it's the complete lack of viable ideas. There's a reason they test drive these things in Phoenix. A crowded parking lot of a mall can be challenging for a beginner human driver, it's an absolute AI nightmare as there can be totally unexpectedly moving cars and pedestrians at any place and time. And then {rain,fog,snow} messes with LIDAR and you have a half blind (at best) system trying to navigate an extremely challenging environment.
  - xenospn 6y ago
    It will only work when all cars have a sensor set and can communicate effectively to cover the entire area. I don't see how it can possible work if you throw human drivers into the mix.

switch11 6y ago

you and pretty much everyone else can't believe the amount of 'wishful thinking can replace science' that Tesla pushes out and now he has gotten into Neuralink and chips in the brains of pigs stupidness

manicdee 6y ago
Do you mean long range EV wishful thinking, improved battery technology wishful thinking, market-changing utility scale battery wishful thinking, Supercharger network wishful thinking or some other kind of wishful thinking?
- etaioinshrdlu 6y ago
  Well, none of those are very deadly most of the time and they don't put human life into the hands of algorithms.
  - vaxman 6y ago
    So you’re saying touching a Supercharger in 110F temps tomorrow and discharging it into a lithium battery contained in a hot car that’s been driving through such temps for hours is totally safe!

wilg 6y ago

This is so silly! It’s not even clear what this is an opinion about! How would you lose the the race with solid engineering? How would you win without it?

etaioinshrdlu 6y ago
Shoddy engineering wins all the time! Ever heard of the DOS, Windows, or Android (in the early days)? Tesla could win, with shoddy engineering, if they can convince the public and government (using the classic reality distortion field :) ) their self driving tech is ready for prime time (when, for the sake of argument, presume it's not ready). They could then use the investment dollars generated to take it to the next level and perhaps make it solid over time -- but it could take a long time. In the mean time, the public was effectively deceived as to the true safety level of the product. I would prefer if the opposite happened instead.
- Gravityloss 6y ago
  You could have some kind of independent testing for this. Like there is for fuel consumption. It would be really easy to game though. And the surface area would be large.
Barrin92 6y ago
>How would you lose the the race with solid engineering? How would you win without it? marketing, brand image, any of the other dozen things that mask bad engineering quality and sell the customer on some superficial thing. Not just in cars but a ton of consumer products customers can easily neglect engineering quality in favour of some gimmick. Hell even developers constantly choose convenient or shiny technologies over ones that are robust or error free.

mlindner 6y ago

This is nonsense hyperbole. Tesla's stuff has very good engineering. Don't criticize what you don't understand. Further, engineering is always a tradeoff around "good-enough", ask any actual engineer. Perfect is an impossible goal for ANY engineering task.

rsynnott 6y ago
From the article, a lot of these features clearly fall into the category of 'not good enough'. They should not have been released.

omarforgotpwd 6y ago

Waymo's unit economics are terrible