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But when they're effective it can be really effective. DARPA self-driving challenges really jump started that field for a few million dollars. Even if people we

by sidibe 4y ago

But when they're effective it can be really effective. DARPA self-driving challenges really jump started that field for a few million dollars. Even if people were working on it already, the competitions got Sergey Brin and others obsessed enough with the idea to spend billions per year on it much earlier than they would have.

melling 4y ago
The author completely left out Lindbergh crossing the Atlantic too. https://www.herox.com/blog/428-history-of-challenges-the-orteig-prize-1919-1927 https://www.herox.com/blog/428-history-of-challenges-the-ort... I haven’t investigated the effectiveness of modern DARPA Challenges but they seems like a good value for our defense dollars, where we spend trillions.
mdorazio 4y ago
What? The 2004 and 2005 challenges participants were basically all university teams (i.e., the teams were students & professors who didn't need the prize money in the first place). The participants in those teams then went on to leadership roles in the various self-driving startups, but they didn't start there.
- HWR_14 4y ago
  > the teams were students & professors who didn't need the prize money in the first place Weird to phrase it as "need". I look forward to your proposal for replacing supply and demand determine wages with ones based on number of dependents.
- zip1234 4y ago
  Does pitting these teams directly against each other to achieve a specific purpose advance the field better than letting them do their normal research thing?
  - lief79 4y ago
    In this case, it made it clear what was possible with the currently available technology and some focus. That certainly drove more funding into self driving vehicles, as they no longer seemed like pure science fiction.
- melling 4y ago
  Not sure what argument is being made here. The DARPA Grand Challenge was an incredible success
- sidibe 4y ago
  I didn't suggest it was corporate teams. But I think it was the competitions that led these companies to start working on it when they did and caused the startups to spawn and get funding.
ModernMech 4y ago
Notably, the DARPA grand challenges funded the competitors before the competition. If you tell me you'll give me $100 million to solve global warming, I'll say "great, I'd love to try and get that money, but I'll need $1 million to get started". If the answer is "no startup funding, you have to show me the thing first before any money is given", then I'm not even going to try. In the DARPA had two tracks for their competition, with competitors in one of the tracks being granted $1 million to fund their entries. Now, you had to qualify to get that funding so a reputation and some prior work was needed, but the consolation prize was you were able to advance your career whether you won or lost. That is why it worked. You can't just dangle a giant carrot at this level and expect people to bite if it's a zero-sum game. Let's say I invest millions and years of my time to get the $100 million prize, and someone gets it right before me. What's my consolation prize? If it's absolutely nothing, then I'm not going to risk my career on that bet, and probably the person who would actually crack that egg won't either. Moreover, they might still try but it will be through tested funding channels.
- zozbot234 4y ago
  > Let's say I invest millions and years of my time to get the $100 million prize, and someone gets it right before me. What's my consolation prize? If it's absolutely nothing, then I'm not going to risk my career on that bet Isn't that exactly how startups work? A $100 million prize is reaching into baby unicorn territory (a fully grown unicorn is "only" $1B in value), so why wouldn't the prospect of winning the grand prize be enough to attract funding?
  - ModernMech 4y ago
    If you squint, but really academic incentive structures are such that this isn't an attractive bet. There's really no scenario where you can shoot for the $100 million without getting interim funding from grant agencies. And if that's what you're doing, you'll need to publish and conduct research in the usual way. Which begs the question, if everyone shooting for the $100 million is doing research as usual, what's the $100 million really incentivizing? The DARPA grand challenges recognized that this incentive structure doesn't work well. What they did instead was they held 3 smaller prizes instead of one large one. This meant that development was incremental over 5 years, which they also funded. What they did in those 5 years was take driverless cars from running off the road into rocks in the middle of the desert in 2003; to converging on an architecture that could reliably navigate an urban environment by 2007, an architecture which is now the basis for all commercial driverless car efforts. If they had offered just a single lump sum for a demonstration of such a car, I think the entire industry wouldn't be where it is today.

by sidibe 4y ago

melling 4y ago

The author completely left out Lindbergh crossing the Atlantic too. https://www.herox.com/blog/428-history-of-challenges-the-orteig-prize-1919-1927 https://www.herox.com/blog/428-history-of-challenges-the-ort... I haven’t investigated the effectiveness of modern DARPA Challenges but they seems like a good value for our defense dollars, where we spend trillions.

mdorazio 4y ago

What? The 2004 and 2005 challenges participants were basically all university teams (i.e., the teams were students & professors who didn't need the prize money in the first place). The participants in those teams then went on to leadership roles in the various self-driving startups, but they didn't start there.

HWR_14 4y ago
> the teams were students & professors who didn't need the prize money in the first place Weird to phrase it as "need". I look forward to your proposal for replacing supply and demand determine wages with ones based on number of dependents.
zip1234 4y ago
Does pitting these teams directly against each other to achieve a specific purpose advance the field better than letting them do their normal research thing?
- lief79 4y ago
  In this case, it made it clear what was possible with the currently available technology and some focus. That certainly drove more funding into self driving vehicles, as they no longer seemed like pure science fiction.
melling 4y ago
Not sure what argument is being made here. The DARPA Grand Challenge was an incredible success
sidibe 4y ago
I didn't suggest it was corporate teams. But I think it was the competitions that led these companies to start working on it when they did and caused the startups to spawn and get funding.

ModernMech 4y ago

Notably, the DARPA grand challenges funded the competitors before the competition. If you tell me you'll give me $100 million to solve global warming, I'll say "great, I'd love to try and get that money, but I'll need $1 million to get started". If the answer is "no startup funding, you have to show me the thing first before any money is given", then I'm not even going to try. In the DARPA had two tracks for their competition, with competitors in one of the tracks being granted $1 million to fund their entries. Now, you had to qualify to get that funding so a reputation and some prior work was needed, but the consolation prize was you were able to advance your career whether you won or lost. That is why it worked. You can't just dangle a giant carrot at this level and expect people to bite if it's a zero-sum game. Let's say I invest millions and years of my time to get the $100 million prize, and someone gets it right before me. What's my consolation prize? If it's absolutely nothing, then I'm not going to risk my career on that bet, and probably the person who would actually crack that egg won't either. Moreover, they might still try but it will be through tested funding channels.

zozbot234 4y ago
> Let's say I invest millions and years of my time to get the $100 million prize, and someone gets it right before me. What's my consolation prize? If it's absolutely nothing, then I'm not going to risk my career on that bet Isn't that exactly how startups work? A $100 million prize is reaching into baby unicorn territory (a fully grown unicorn is "only" $1B in value), so why wouldn't the prospect of winning the grand prize be enough to attract funding?
- ModernMech 4y ago
  If you squint, but really academic incentive structures are such that this isn't an attractive bet. There's really no scenario where you can shoot for the $100 million without getting interim funding from grant agencies. And if that's what you're doing, you'll need to publish and conduct research in the usual way. Which begs the question, if everyone shooting for the $100 million is doing research as usual, what's the $100 million really incentivizing? The DARPA grand challenges recognized that this incentive structure doesn't work well. What they did instead was they held 3 smaller prizes instead of one large one. This meant that development was incremental over 5 years, which they also funded. What they did in those 5 years was take driverless cars from running off the road into rocks in the middle of the desert in 2003; to converging on an architecture that could reliably navigate an urban environment by 2007, an architecture which is now the basis for all commercial driverless car efforts. If they had offered just a single lump sum for a demonstration of such a car, I think the entire industry wouldn't be where it is today.