3 ms·

There are cars on the road now, driving without drivers. Google (and Cruise) have built cars without pedals or a steering wheel. The needle has moved.

jacquesm 5y ago
Ok, let's see one drive through Amsterdam tomorrow morning at 9 am between two random zipcodes and house numbers. I'll bet you it can't do it. "Edge cases" indeed.
- danielmarkbruce 5y ago
  I'd take that bet at even money all day long. But, maybe it can't. It doesn't change the fact that they are materially closer than they were 5 years ago.San Francisco streets aren't a snack. There are hilly, narrow streets with cable cars, constant construction, homeless people wandering onto the street. It's real progress. Anyone around Mountain View, or SF will have seen the progress with their own eyes. It's not a theoretical debate.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    > But, maybe it can't. But that's the whole point: if this were a reality there wouldn't be a maybe there. So thanks for making my point. "Materially closer" isn't the bar to cross the bar to cross is "It just works" which is for me what I'm getting at when I say that we are not 'closer', because it's a binary thing, arrival means 'it works' not that we have made some incremental change towards an ill defined goal. The 'it works some of the time or even most of the time' bar was crossed years ago, but it needs to work all of the time.
    - danielmarkbruce 5y ago
      The question was if they are closer. Materially closer is closer? How would materially closer not meet the bar for closer?
      - ux-app 5y ago
        >How would materially closer not meet the bar for closer? I don't have a horse in this race, but I think what the other commenter was getting at is that: if there were 10 problems that needed solving 5 years ago, and in the course of solving those 10 problems you discovered 100 more than needed solving that you weren't initially aware of, then sure you got closer to the goal, but the progress was so tiny that it's almost not relevant. I'm personally not arguing one way or another, but that's how I read the other person's comment.
        danielmarkbruce 5y ago
        I guess that would be a reasonable take if Waymo announced they were "close" or had solved "x technical problems". But here progress = cars on the road with no driver in more and more difficult situations. So, even if more problems keep coming up they seem to be overcoming them at a good clip.
        ux-app 5y ago
        fwiw, I agree that progress has been astounding in the past 10 years... but on the other hand I really do wonder what the limits of the current approach is. After all humans don't drive by analysing 1 frame at a time, we have a model of how the world works, we anticipate, we have intuition etc... I know the whole human flight is different to bird flight argument, so I guess we'll just have to wait and see how it all plays out. Exciting times :)
        seanmcdirmid 5y ago
        > but on the other hand I really do wonder what the limits of the current approach is. If the technology stagnates, the hardware stops improving, and the software stops getting better, then we would hit the limit pretty quickly. > After all humans don't drive by analysing 1 frame at a time, we have a model of how the world works, we anticipate, we have intuition etc... All self driving cars also maintain those models as well, and use frame by frame input to correct those models in real time (but they have already guessed where something is going to be 100+ frames from now).

jacquesm 5y ago

Ok, let's see one drive through Amsterdam tomorrow morning at 9 am between two random zipcodes and house numbers. I'll bet you it can't do it. "Edge cases" indeed.

danielmarkbruce 5y ago
I'd take that bet at even money all day long. But, maybe it can't. It doesn't change the fact that they are materially closer than they were 5 years ago.San Francisco streets aren't a snack. There are hilly, narrow streets with cable cars, constant construction, homeless people wandering onto the street. It's real progress. Anyone around Mountain View, or SF will have seen the progress with their own eyes. It's not a theoretical debate.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  > But, maybe it can't. But that's the whole point: if this were a reality there wouldn't be a maybe there. So thanks for making my point. "Materially closer" isn't the bar to cross the bar to cross is "It just works" which is for me what I'm getting at when I say that we are not 'closer', because it's a binary thing, arrival means 'it works' not that we have made some incremental change towards an ill defined goal. The 'it works some of the time or even most of the time' bar was crossed years ago, but it needs to work all of the time.
  - danielmarkbruce 5y ago
    The question was if they are closer. Materially closer is closer? How would materially closer not meet the bar for closer?
    - ux-app 5y ago
      >How would materially closer not meet the bar for closer? I don't have a horse in this race, but I think what the other commenter was getting at is that: if there were 10 problems that needed solving 5 years ago, and in the course of solving those 10 problems you discovered 100 more than needed solving that you weren't initially aware of, then sure you got closer to the goal, but the progress was so tiny that it's almost not relevant. I'm personally not arguing one way or another, but that's how I read the other person's comment.
      - danielmarkbruce 5y ago
        I guess that would be a reasonable take if Waymo announced they were "close" or had solved "x technical problems". But here progress = cars on the road with no driver in more and more difficult situations. So, even if more problems keep coming up they seem to be overcoming them at a good clip.
        ux-app 5y ago
        fwiw, I agree that progress has been astounding in the past 10 years... but on the other hand I really do wonder what the limits of the current approach is. After all humans don't drive by analysing 1 frame at a time, we have a model of how the world works, we anticipate, we have intuition etc... I know the whole human flight is different to bird flight argument, so I guess we'll just have to wait and see how it all plays out. Exciting times :)
        seanmcdirmid 5y ago
        > but on the other hand I really do wonder what the limits of the current approach is. If the technology stagnates, the hardware stops improving, and the software stops getting better, then we would hit the limit pretty quickly. > After all humans don't drive by analysing 1 frame at a time, we have a model of how the world works, we anticipate, we have intuition etc... All self driving cars also maintain those models as well, and use frame by frame input to correct those models in real time (but they have already guessed where something is going to be 100+ frames from now).