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I think they were really betting on autonomous driving, fueled by Elon Musks lies and hype. They built up the digital infrastructure and so much clout their com

I think they were really betting on autonomous driving, fueled by Elon Musks lies and hype. They built up the digital infrastructure and so much clout their company name & product became a verb on the level of googling. But now taxi-level 100% autonomous no-driving-wheel cars are farther away than ever. The current broad generation of machine learning and sensors reached its maximum and it‘s looking bleak.

smcl 4y ago
I don't know if Elon Musk's nonsense was involved - they had their own autonomous driving project in-house didn't they?
- nowherebeen 4y ago
  Have you forgetton the whole Google lawsuit against Uber? Anthony Levandowski. Uber’s self driving project is still no where near production ready.
  - lozenge 4y ago
    What does that have to do with Musk? Musk never worked at Google and Tesla s self driving technology lacks key sensors compared to what Waymo and Uber were working with.
    - fallingknife 4y ago
    - jmeister 4y ago
      /u/failingknife, I cannot reply to you, but thanks for making only relevant comment on this entire thread.
      - rightbyte 4y ago
        You copy pasted something you were about to write on Reddit?
        smcl 4y ago
        The person they were replying to was flagged, so you may not see it unless you set showdead in your profile
      - smcl 4y ago
        I can't see why it's relevant. We're talking about Uber's bet on self-driving cars and this person commented with an bitter, offtopic gripe about how they think HN commenters are losers.
  - smcl 4y ago
    I think you mis-read - I'm saying they did have a self-driving car project, not that they didn't. And yeah nobody has production ready self-driving tech, it wouldn't surprise me if they had canned it.
    - nowherebeen 4y ago
      Oh you are right. I definitely mis-read your comment. Apologies.
    - snowpiercer 4y ago
      So the self driving talk was all a lie ?
      - smcl 4y ago
        I don't know which part you mean, so you might have to clarify. But I don't think they were lying about having a self-driving car program - as someone else mentioned there was a pretty famous lawsuit about this very topic. I don't really remember much about how far along they claimed to be, but it's definitely possible they exaggerated how successful their efforts were - so that could be construed as lying I guess? But it's a tough nut to crack, as evidenced by Tesla's ongoing FSD problems.
      - mst 4y ago
        It was ... over-optimistic. I would -suspect- that we'll get full self driving -eventually-, but which of the companies attempting it will succeed first and how many years from now I have no idea.
- kibibu 4y ago
  Yes, they quite famously killed a person
- Traubenfuchs 4y ago
  Just forget about me naming him. What I really meant was simply the whole autonomous driving bubble that just had him as its figurehead.
snowpiercer 4y ago
Wow. ..I'm really surprised by this comment..what do you mean by "farther away than ever" . I just recently started learning to code and I really want to go into machine learning ..does it mean there isn't any major innovation right now in the field ?
- occz 4y ago
  That's probably not what they meant. What I interpreted it as was that the current iteration of machine learning will not be able to satisfactorily solve full self-driving cars.
  - Traubenfuchs 4y ago
    > That's probably not what they meant. It is, somewhat. The current generation of software and hardware was pushed to its limits by the smartest AI/ML engineers in the world and the best we got is Tesla FSD which is in no way ready to replace taxis and still needs someone at the wheel at all times. 100% self driving taxis for drunk night crawlers are not on the horizon anymore.
- Traubenfuchs 4y ago
  Modern ML/AI became a fully accepted, mature part of the "production software engineering world", it's a solid career choice, from everything that can be predicted right now. Existing, non-startup companies are using ML/AI to solve real problems and its buzzword powers are shrinking every day. But regarding autonomous driving, there seems to be stagnation. We now got cars that can "autonomously drive in most conditions but required a driver at the wheel at all times" for many years now. Tesla FSD updates seem to be incremental at best. Is there any company left still planning 100% autonomous taxis that can get drunk people home? I don't think so. And that would be the fucking holy grail of the transportation business. There are about 18 million taxi drivers in the world and most of them would lose their job, saving customers and companies billions.

smcl 4y ago

I don't know if Elon Musk's nonsense was involved - they had their own autonomous driving project in-house didn't they?

nowherebeen 4y ago
Have you forgetton the whole Google lawsuit against Uber? Anthony Levandowski. Uber’s self driving project is still no where near production ready.
- lozenge 4y ago
  What does that have to do with Musk? Musk never worked at Google and Tesla s self driving technology lacks key sensors compared to what Waymo and Uber were working with.
  - fallingknife 4y ago
  - jmeister 4y ago
    /u/failingknife, I cannot reply to you, but thanks for making only relevant comment on this entire thread.
    - rightbyte 4y ago
      You copy pasted something you were about to write on Reddit?
      - smcl 4y ago
        The person they were replying to was flagged, so you may not see it unless you set showdead in your profile
    - smcl 4y ago
      I can't see why it's relevant. We're talking about Uber's bet on self-driving cars and this person commented with an bitter, offtopic gripe about how they think HN commenters are losers.
- smcl 4y ago
  I think you mis-read - I'm saying they did have a self-driving car project, not that they didn't. And yeah nobody has production ready self-driving tech, it wouldn't surprise me if they had canned it.
  - nowherebeen 4y ago
    Oh you are right. I definitely mis-read your comment. Apologies.
  - snowpiercer 4y ago
    So the self driving talk was all a lie ?
    - smcl 4y ago
      I don't know which part you mean, so you might have to clarify. But I don't think they were lying about having a self-driving car program - as someone else mentioned there was a pretty famous lawsuit about this very topic. I don't really remember much about how far along they claimed to be, but it's definitely possible they exaggerated how successful their efforts were - so that could be construed as lying I guess? But it's a tough nut to crack, as evidenced by Tesla's ongoing FSD problems.
    - mst 4y ago
      It was ... over-optimistic. I would -suspect- that we'll get full self driving -eventually-, but which of the companies attempting it will succeed first and how many years from now I have no idea.
kibibu 4y ago
Yes, they quite famously killed a person
Traubenfuchs 4y ago
Just forget about me naming him. What I really meant was simply the whole autonomous driving bubble that just had him as its figurehead.

snowpiercer 4y ago

Wow. ..I'm really surprised by this comment..what do you mean by "farther away than ever" . I just recently started learning to code and I really want to go into machine learning ..does it mean there isn't any major innovation right now in the field ?

occz 4y ago
That's probably not what they meant. What I interpreted it as was that the current iteration of machine learning will not be able to satisfactorily solve full self-driving cars.
- Traubenfuchs 4y ago
  > That's probably not what they meant. It is, somewhat. The current generation of software and hardware was pushed to its limits by the smartest AI/ML engineers in the world and the best we got is Tesla FSD which is in no way ready to replace taxis and still needs someone at the wheel at all times. 100% self driving taxis for drunk night crawlers are not on the horizon anymore.
Traubenfuchs 4y ago
Modern ML/AI became a fully accepted, mature part of the "production software engineering world", it's a solid career choice, from everything that can be predicted right now. Existing, non-startup companies are using ML/AI to solve real problems and its buzzword powers are shrinking every day. But regarding autonomous driving, there seems to be stagnation. We now got cars that can "autonomously drive in most conditions but required a driver at the wheel at all times" for many years now. Tesla FSD updates seem to be incremental at best. Is there any company left still planning 100% autonomous taxis that can get drunk people home? I don't think so. And that would be the fucking holy grail of the transportation business. There are about 18 million taxi drivers in the world and most of them would lose their job, saving customers and companies billions.