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His insights on self driving cars are total fluff once you realize he was only working on problems several orders of magnitude smaller in scope than the ones sp

by ra7 4y ago

His insights on self driving cars are total fluff once you realize he was only working on problems several orders of magnitude smaller in scope than the ones spending billions are attempting to solve. Autonomous driving is more than just making lane-keep on highways work with a camera mounted to the windshield and requires more than just "hacking". His insights do indicate one thing: that he doesn't understand the rigor required to engineer safety-critical systems.

andrewmcwatters 4y ago
I mean you can say that all you want, but the proof of the self-driving pudding is in the driving, and SAE Level 2 is the most practical self-driving we are ever going to get. I don't think there's anything wrong with trying to refine that approach as much as openpilot did, and honestly if there was fruit in SAE Level 3 and above, I feel like we would have seen it by now, but we haven't. I have no idea what you mean by "problems several orders of magnitude." Driving is driving. Your hardware and software can do it, or it can't. What do billions of dollars have to do with anything? Should people remind you Meta spent billions of dollars on a less popular Second Life? How would you explain to shareholders that your solution can't compete with openpilot?
- mwint 4y ago
  > SAE Level 2 is the most practical self-driving we are ever going to get. So… how much would you bet on this?
  - andrewmcwatters 4y ago
    $10,000 USD in 2022 dollars that SAE Level 4 is not available in standard economy cars in the next 10 years. My 2022 Corolla LE, a base model compact car, drives itself just fine (SAE Level 2) even on city streets. It would do it better with openpilot, though. It makes Tesla Full Self Driving look like a joke, in my opinion.
    - kajecounterhack 4y ago
      > SAE Level 2 is the most practical self-driving we are ever going to get. The bet is on this though -- what's impractical about having L4 fleets in major cities that replace Uber/Lyft? Just because you can't personally own one doesn't mean that in 10 years they can't be pretty ubiquitous and practical, particularly for city dwellers, which is most people. I'd bet that your statement is wrong on this basis. L4 cars already exist and are being used in large portions of San Francisco today. And this is to say nothing of trucking & delivery, where self driving is in some ways easier to solve and a lot of progress is being made.
      - andrewmcwatters 4y ago
        Well, not everyone lives in San Francisco, and no one wants to take an Uber literally everywhere. So, like most people, I want to own my self-driving car. And I personally don't think the industry is mature enough to accept the realities and limitations of the technology we work with to just say, "Hey, actually, we can let attentive drivers basically be hands-free for 80+% of their drives." And to me, that would be great.
        kajecounterhack 4y ago
        Not everyone wants to own a car either, and everyone owning a car is not exactly environmentally sustainable. Replacing Uber & Lyft with robots would add a ton of value and be practical for a very large percentage of the population. > And I personally don't think the industry is mature enough to accept the realities and limitations of the technology we work with to just say, "Hey, actually, we can let attentive drivers basically be hands-free for 80+% of their drives." Uh isn't this what Tesla, GM, Mobileye, Comma, and many others are doing? Basically every player in "the industry" wants this & is working on it -- FWIW I think L2 is fine, but there need to be more safety features because the number of folks who've slept while their flawed L2 system drove them is truly alarming. I'm less worried about their safety and more worried about the folks they might crash into.
        4y ago
- ra7 4y ago
  SAE Level 4 driving is several orders of magnitude harder than SAE Level 2. You are either good enough to drive without requiring a driver or you are not. There is a reason developing L4 systems cost billions of dollars. George Hotz thinks Comma does the job with only a fraction of the spending compared to the likes of Waymo, Cruise, Zoox, but fails to realize his product also does only a fraction of what the others are trying to do.
  - andrewmcwatters 4y ago
    "Several orders of magnitude" by what dimension? Engineering labor? Hardware expenses and testing? You can't just throw out a dimension of scale and say, oh it's so-and-so hard that's why it costs billions. If you were trying to build L4, you'd hire a small team of exceptional engineers, and spend a few thousand on hardware tests. Billions doesn't come close. You'd try and get Level 2 to be as satisfactory as possible, and see what percentage of the time you could achieve Level 3.
    - ra7 4y ago
      > If you were trying to build L4, you'd hire a small team of exceptional engineers, and spend a few thousand on hardware tests. Billions doesn't come close. Not sure if you are aware that the self driving (robotaxi) companies have spent tens of billions of dollars in the last decade. R&D expenses are huge, building custom sensors and vehicles is hard and fleet maintenance/operations is costly.
    - thfuran 4y ago
      >and spend a few thousand on hardware tests Okay, that should let you just about afford to certify an Ethernet cable.
  - unicornhose 4y ago
    Hotz’s product should be compared to what Waymo can do right now, not what it’s trying to do.
    - ra7 4y ago
- OkayPhysicist 4y ago
  That's a bold claim against fully-autonomous driving. Does operating a motor vehicle require qualia? If not, what else makes a human uniquely capable of doing it? It may be a hard problem to crack, but asserting that it's impossible is pretty unfounded.
  - criddell 4y ago
    You're not asserting that everything that doesn't require qualia can be done by a machine, are you?
    - aidenn0 4y ago
      That seems like a reasonable assertion to me. Not that it can be done by a machine today or in ten years but eventually.
- Eridrus 4y ago
  Not even geohot is asserting that "SAE Level 2 is the most practical self-driving we are ever going to get", his assertion is that he thinks nobody is going to get there in the next 10 years. He may be right that we won't get there broadly for 10 years, but I think that's a rationalization of how things have gone for him, and the fact that the methods he has worked on don't have a chance of getting there, rather than the thesis he had when he started comma. Because if this was your thesis, there was really no reason to get into the space when he did. In particular, Waymo One is already an L4 driver. It operates completely autonomously and passengers do not have the option of taking over. I don't know how often they get stuck and have to call someone to do roadside service, etc, but clearly in some areas it is already feasible. So the question is whether this is possible in dense urban areas or not. And if you're just looking at SAE 2, the main competitors in this space, Mobileye and Tesla are doing way better than comma. I definitely thought progress would be faster here, but I don't think we're anywhere near as far away from useful systems as geohot argues.
  - andrewmcwatters 4y ago
    You don't have to tell me about Waymo. I live where they operate. I'm one of the few people in the United States who can actually use their service. They limit where you can go by an approximate 4x9 city block area, and actually less than that, I'm being generous. You have no idea exactly how limited the service is. Effectively, you can't go ANYWHERE in the Phoenix metro area unless your A-to-B destination is squarely in that region. That's not Level 4. Whatever pretend system they've got going on, I'm sure works perfectly on those particular pristine roads, but no one is using Waymo. There are no real, coast-to-coast Level 4 systems.
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      For a grading analogy, an area like that is level 4 minus, but "coast-to-coast" is level 4 plus. You don't need coast to coast to be "real". If they manage to cover 90% of a metro area, I'd be happy to call it a "real" level 4 service. Right now I'd want an explanation for why they're not adding blocks all the time.
    - 4y ago
- Dylan16807 4y ago
  > I have no idea what you mean by "problems several orders of magnitude." Driving is driving. Your hardware and software can do it, or it can't. What do billions of dollars have to do with anything? We've had the technology for level 2 for 20 years. You just need to track the painted lines and track the distance to the car in front of you. Higher levels are orders of magnitude more complicated. If you think level 2 is the best we'll get, that's fine, but that's giving up. It's not what people mean by self driving.
  - alphabettsy 4y ago
    > We've had the technology for level 2 for 20 years. You just need to track the painted lines and track the distance to the car in front of you. Considering many vehicles still do this inconsistently or poorly I’m not sure that’s an encouraging sign.
hatware 4y ago
> he was only working on problems several orders of magnitude smaller in scope Isn't that kind of the point? Tesla would have L4 if the architecture was built right, but it wasn't, and now they're scrambling. I think George made it very clear that the architecture is what these companies spending billions are getting wrong. Tech debt is more expensive than you think at the cutting edge. You know what is total fluff? Tesla FSD. Disgusting. At least comma is honest about their hardware, and that's about all it comes down to.
- ra7 4y ago
  > I think George made it very clear that the architecture is what these companies spending billions are getting wrong. Tech debt is more expensive than you think at the cutting edge. And yet the architectures he disapproves are the only ones who have shown fully autonomous driving is possible. There are driverless robotaxis running now, albeit in small areas but expanding. > You know what is total fluff? Tesla FSD. Disgusting. At least comma is honest about their hardware, and that's about all it comes down to. I fully agree.
  - Kbelicius 4y ago
    > And yet the architectures he disapproves are the only ones who have shown fully autonomous driving is possible. They did not. > There are driverless robotaxis running now, albeit in small areas but expanding. Running in small areas shows that they can drive in small mapped out areas under specific conditions. Not that we have fully autonomous self driving.
    - ra7 4y ago
      > Running in small areas shows that they can drive in small mapped out areas under specific conditions. That is fully autonomous driving. It's just classified as Level 4. Geofences and operating conditions can be extended to provide a real, useful taxi service to a lot of people.
      - adhendo 4y ago

by ra7 4y ago

andrewmcwatters 4y ago

I mean you can say that all you want, but the proof of the self-driving pudding is in the driving, and SAE Level 2 is the most practical self-driving we are ever going to get. I don't think there's anything wrong with trying to refine that approach as much as openpilot did, and honestly if there was fruit in SAE Level 3 and above, I feel like we would have seen it by now, but we haven't. I have no idea what you mean by "problems several orders of magnitude." Driving is driving. Your hardware and software can do it, or it can't. What do billions of dollars have to do with anything? Should people remind you Meta spent billions of dollars on a less popular Second Life? How would you explain to shareholders that your solution can't compete with openpilot?

mwint 4y ago
> SAE Level 2 is the most practical self-driving we are ever going to get. So… how much would you bet on this?
- andrewmcwatters 4y ago
  $10,000 USD in 2022 dollars that SAE Level 4 is not available in standard economy cars in the next 10 years. My 2022 Corolla LE, a base model compact car, drives itself just fine (SAE Level 2) even on city streets. It would do it better with openpilot, though. It makes Tesla Full Self Driving look like a joke, in my opinion.
  - kajecounterhack 4y ago
    > SAE Level 2 is the most practical self-driving we are ever going to get. The bet is on this though -- what's impractical about having L4 fleets in major cities that replace Uber/Lyft? Just because you can't personally own one doesn't mean that in 10 years they can't be pretty ubiquitous and practical, particularly for city dwellers, which is most people. I'd bet that your statement is wrong on this basis. L4 cars already exist and are being used in large portions of San Francisco today. And this is to say nothing of trucking & delivery, where self driving is in some ways easier to solve and a lot of progress is being made.
    - andrewmcwatters 4y ago
      Well, not everyone lives in San Francisco, and no one wants to take an Uber literally everywhere. So, like most people, I want to own my self-driving car. And I personally don't think the industry is mature enough to accept the realities and limitations of the technology we work with to just say, "Hey, actually, we can let attentive drivers basically be hands-free for 80+% of their drives." And to me, that would be great.
      - kajecounterhack 4y ago
        Not everyone wants to own a car either, and everyone owning a car is not exactly environmentally sustainable. Replacing Uber & Lyft with robots would add a ton of value and be practical for a very large percentage of the population. > And I personally don't think the industry is mature enough to accept the realities and limitations of the technology we work with to just say, "Hey, actually, we can let attentive drivers basically be hands-free for 80+% of their drives." Uh isn't this what Tesla, GM, Mobileye, Comma, and many others are doing? Basically every player in "the industry" wants this & is working on it -- FWIW I think L2 is fine, but there need to be more safety features because the number of folks who've slept while their flawed L2 system drove them is truly alarming. I'm less worried about their safety and more worried about the folks they might crash into.
        4y ago
ra7 4y ago
SAE Level 4 driving is several orders of magnitude harder than SAE Level 2. You are either good enough to drive without requiring a driver or you are not. There is a reason developing L4 systems cost billions of dollars. George Hotz thinks Comma does the job with only a fraction of the spending compared to the likes of Waymo, Cruise, Zoox, but fails to realize his product also does only a fraction of what the others are trying to do.
- andrewmcwatters 4y ago
  "Several orders of magnitude" by what dimension? Engineering labor? Hardware expenses and testing? You can't just throw out a dimension of scale and say, oh it's so-and-so hard that's why it costs billions. If you were trying to build L4, you'd hire a small team of exceptional engineers, and spend a few thousand on hardware tests. Billions doesn't come close. You'd try and get Level 2 to be as satisfactory as possible, and see what percentage of the time you could achieve Level 3.
  - ra7 4y ago
    > If you were trying to build L4, you'd hire a small team of exceptional engineers, and spend a few thousand on hardware tests. Billions doesn't come close. Not sure if you are aware that the self driving (robotaxi) companies have spent tens of billions of dollars in the last decade. R&D expenses are huge, building custom sensors and vehicles is hard and fleet maintenance/operations is costly.
  - thfuran 4y ago
    >and spend a few thousand on hardware tests Okay, that should let you just about afford to certify an Ethernet cable.
- unicornhose 4y ago
  Hotz’s product should be compared to what Waymo can do right now, not what it’s trying to do.
  - ra7 4y ago
OkayPhysicist 4y ago
That's a bold claim against fully-autonomous driving. Does operating a motor vehicle require qualia? If not, what else makes a human uniquely capable of doing it? It may be a hard problem to crack, but asserting that it's impossible is pretty unfounded.
- criddell 4y ago
  You're not asserting that everything that doesn't require qualia can be done by a machine, are you?
  - aidenn0 4y ago
    That seems like a reasonable assertion to me. Not that it can be done by a machine today or in ten years but eventually.
Eridrus 4y ago
Not even geohot is asserting that "SAE Level 2 is the most practical self-driving we are ever going to get", his assertion is that he thinks nobody is going to get there in the next 10 years. He may be right that we won't get there broadly for 10 years, but I think that's a rationalization of how things have gone for him, and the fact that the methods he has worked on don't have a chance of getting there, rather than the thesis he had when he started comma. Because if this was your thesis, there was really no reason to get into the space when he did. In particular, Waymo One is already an L4 driver. It operates completely autonomously and passengers do not have the option of taking over. I don't know how often they get stuck and have to call someone to do roadside service, etc, but clearly in some areas it is already feasible. So the question is whether this is possible in dense urban areas or not. And if you're just looking at SAE 2, the main competitors in this space, Mobileye and Tesla are doing way better than comma. I definitely thought progress would be faster here, but I don't think we're anywhere near as far away from useful systems as geohot argues.
- andrewmcwatters 4y ago
  You don't have to tell me about Waymo. I live where they operate. I'm one of the few people in the United States who can actually use their service. They limit where you can go by an approximate 4x9 city block area, and actually less than that, I'm being generous. You have no idea exactly how limited the service is. Effectively, you can't go ANYWHERE in the Phoenix metro area unless your A-to-B destination is squarely in that region. That's not Level 4. Whatever pretend system they've got going on, I'm sure works perfectly on those particular pristine roads, but no one is using Waymo. There are no real, coast-to-coast Level 4 systems.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    For a grading analogy, an area like that is level 4 minus, but "coast-to-coast" is level 4 plus. You don't need coast to coast to be "real". If they manage to cover 90% of a metro area, I'd be happy to call it a "real" level 4 service. Right now I'd want an explanation for why they're not adding blocks all the time.
  - 4y ago
Dylan16807 4y ago
> I have no idea what you mean by "problems several orders of magnitude." Driving is driving. Your hardware and software can do it, or it can't. What do billions of dollars have to do with anything? We've had the technology for level 2 for 20 years. You just need to track the painted lines and track the distance to the car in front of you. Higher levels are orders of magnitude more complicated. If you think level 2 is the best we'll get, that's fine, but that's giving up. It's not what people mean by self driving.
- alphabettsy 4y ago
  > We've had the technology for level 2 for 20 years. You just need to track the painted lines and track the distance to the car in front of you. Considering many vehicles still do this inconsistently or poorly I’m not sure that’s an encouraging sign.

hatware 4y ago

> he was only working on problems several orders of magnitude smaller in scope Isn't that kind of the point? Tesla would have L4 if the architecture was built right, but it wasn't, and now they're scrambling. I think George made it very clear that the architecture is what these companies spending billions are getting wrong. Tech debt is more expensive than you think at the cutting edge. You know what is total fluff? Tesla FSD. Disgusting. At least comma is honest about their hardware, and that's about all it comes down to.

ra7 4y ago
> I think George made it very clear that the architecture is what these companies spending billions are getting wrong. Tech debt is more expensive than you think at the cutting edge. And yet the architectures he disapproves are the only ones who have shown fully autonomous driving is possible. There are driverless robotaxis running now, albeit in small areas but expanding. > You know what is total fluff? Tesla FSD. Disgusting. At least comma is honest about their hardware, and that's about all it comes down to. I fully agree.
- Kbelicius 4y ago
  > And yet the architectures he disapproves are the only ones who have shown fully autonomous driving is possible. They did not. > There are driverless robotaxis running now, albeit in small areas but expanding. Running in small areas shows that they can drive in small mapped out areas under specific conditions. Not that we have fully autonomous self driving.
  - ra7 4y ago
    > Running in small areas shows that they can drive in small mapped out areas under specific conditions. That is fully autonomous driving. It's just classified as Level 4. Geofences and operating conditions can be extended to provide a real, useful taxi service to a lot of people.
    - adhendo 4y ago