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I think this is an overly cynical take. I think the majority of Uber's investors (along with a surprisingly high fraction of the tech community) genuinely belie

I think this is an overly cynical take. I think the majority of Uber's investors (along with a surprisingly high fraction of the tech community) genuinely believed that self-driving cars were just a few years away, and so Uber's stated business model was viable: in the few years it takes to develop self-driving cars, sell rides at a massive loss to get customers accustomed to cheap taxi transportation and destroy existing taxi markets, and then switch customers who are now addicted to Ubering everywhere over to self-driving cars, thereby yielding absurd profit margins. And to be fair, had self-driving cars indeed become commonplace by now (as many people ~10 years ago believed would have happened), Uber would rightly be one of the world’s most valuable companies.

ghaff 4y ago
I'm genuinely curious how those who claimed full self-driving would be a thing by today broke out between: 1.) Techno-optimists including those who saw the extremely rapid progress in ML across various domains after very little progress for decades. If we've made so much progress in 5 years, surely we can achieve almost anything in ten more even if we're not quite sure how! 2.) People whose self-interest was wrapped up in it happening so they just didn't want to probe too deeply. 3.) Those who knew it was probably flim flam, but hey whatever parts the rubes from their money 4.) Those who just figured that so many people who apparently believed in it can't possibly be wrong. (And there were a bunch of, especially, younger people who really wanted this world where they didn't need to own a car.)
- rsynnott 4y ago
  I think it was mostly (1) and (4), with (1) feeding (4). There was a lot of "this time it's different" about the current AI bubble, though I think it's fading a bit, now.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    The non-cynic in me tends to agree. There has been remarkable progress. I was just in someone's Tesla "FSD" beta a couple of weeks ago and it was pretty impressive. It's also a long way from being able to be turned loose on arbitrary roads in arbitrary weather without a human in the loop. But it can be easy to dismiss all the work it can take to solve the "last 10%" of many problems. And, of course, there's a general mindset in tech to be positive about overcoming obstacles as opposed to being "it will never work" about some technology. I do think today there's a better appreciation of just how challenging it is for AI to deal with an unconstrained physical world.
mola 4y ago
I don't think self driving cars were part of the original Uber plan. It was bolted on after it became pretty obvious the business isn't sustainable. Uber was a behemoth before they did any self driving RnD. You give an extremely charitable explanation. Given what we know about Kalanick character I doubt if your explanation is reasonable.
- MontyCarloHall 4y ago
  Uber's public launch was in 2011. It only offered limos, at rates competitive to traditional limo services. This would have been a sustainable (albeit much smaller) business. Uber didn't start offering unsustainably cheap rides until mid 2013, when UberX was launched. Its self-driving research program was announced not long after in early 2015, so it's quite plausible that a long-term pivot to self-driving was indeed part of the UberX business strategy from the beginning. Uber’s only path to levels of profitability commensurate with its VC valuation in 2013 that wouldn’t have involved self-driving cars would instead have required that the demand elasticity for taxi rides be so low that after getting people Ubering everywhere, Uber could successfully raise prices above the level of the taxi services it displaced without demand falling off a cliff. Although Kalanick probably believed Uber was just that good, I doubt his investors did.
  - mola 4y ago
    Investors in that economy were far from being rational. We're talking SoftBank here. It's dumb money when interest rates are zero.

ghaff 4y ago

I'm genuinely curious how those who claimed full self-driving would be a thing by today broke out between: 1.) Techno-optimists including those who saw the extremely rapid progress in ML across various domains after very little progress for decades. If we've made so much progress in 5 years, surely we can achieve almost anything in ten more even if we're not quite sure how! 2.) People whose self-interest was wrapped up in it happening so they just didn't want to probe too deeply. 3.) Those who knew it was probably flim flam, but hey whatever parts the rubes from their money 4.) Those who just figured that so many people who apparently believed in it can't possibly be wrong. (And there were a bunch of, especially, younger people who really wanted this world where they didn't need to own a car.)

rsynnott 4y ago
I think it was mostly (1) and (4), with (1) feeding (4). There was a lot of "this time it's different" about the current AI bubble, though I think it's fading a bit, now.
- ghaff 4y ago
  The non-cynic in me tends to agree. There has been remarkable progress. I was just in someone's Tesla "FSD" beta a couple of weeks ago and it was pretty impressive. It's also a long way from being able to be turned loose on arbitrary roads in arbitrary weather without a human in the loop. But it can be easy to dismiss all the work it can take to solve the "last 10%" of many problems. And, of course, there's a general mindset in tech to be positive about overcoming obstacles as opposed to being "it will never work" about some technology. I do think today there's a better appreciation of just how challenging it is for AI to deal with an unconstrained physical world.

mola 4y ago

I don't think self driving cars were part of the original Uber plan. It was bolted on after it became pretty obvious the business isn't sustainable. Uber was a behemoth before they did any self driving RnD. You give an extremely charitable explanation. Given what we know about Kalanick character I doubt if your explanation is reasonable.

MontyCarloHall 4y ago
Uber's public launch was in 2011. It only offered limos, at rates competitive to traditional limo services. This would have been a sustainable (albeit much smaller) business. Uber didn't start offering unsustainably cheap rides until mid 2013, when UberX was launched. Its self-driving research program was announced not long after in early 2015, so it's quite plausible that a long-term pivot to self-driving was indeed part of the UberX business strategy from the beginning. Uber’s only path to levels of profitability commensurate with its VC valuation in 2013 that wouldn’t have involved self-driving cars would instead have required that the demand elasticity for taxi rides be so low that after getting people Ubering everywhere, Uber could successfully raise prices above the level of the taxi services it displaced without demand falling off a cliff. Although Kalanick probably believed Uber was just that good, I doubt his investors did.
- mola 4y ago
  Investors in that economy were far from being rational. We're talking SoftBank here. It's dumb money when interest rates are zero.