5 ms·

Cruise confirms robotaxis rely on human assistance every 4 to 5 miles

49 points by belltaco 3y ago

PartiallyTyped 3y ago
You can get pretty far in cities in 4 to 5 miles, and highways must be a couple orders of magnitude easier. I think that's acceptable so far, no?
- sharkjacobs 3y ago
  I think that what you're imagining is like a driver who can let the car do its thing and just intervene now and then once every fifteen or twenty minutes. I believe that what the article is describing is a guy in front of a bank of monitors watching 15-20 cars and intervening in one or another pretty much constantly for the duration of a work shift. > As far as the ratio of remote assistance advisors to driverless vehicles on the road, the Cruise spokesperson said, “During driverless operations there was roughly 1 remote assistant agent for every 15-20 driverless AVs.”
  - SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
    Seems like a recipe for exhaustion. I wonder how the "driverless" car drivers perform by the end of their shift.
- hospitalJail 3y ago
  Yes, not to mention, you might be able to outsource the decisions to a low cost call center...
  - falcolas 3y ago
    I get the feeling that offshoring this would have disastrous consequences.
- beastman82 3y ago
  If you're going 5 miles and only get 4 before stopping mid-journey, is that acceptable? I would say no, I would not find it acceptable
- marwatk 3y ago
  Such frequent interventions means you need very reliable cell service. In times of heavy congestion (concerts, etc) that doesn't seem feasible.
sharkjacobs 3y ago
> CNBC also asked Cruise for information about typical response time for remote operations, and how remote assistance workers at Cruise are trained. > “More than 98% of sessions are answered within 3 seconds,” the spokesperson said. > During that incident, Cruise previously told NBC, its vehicle “braked aggressively before impact and because it detected a collision” but then tried to pull over and in the process pulled the pedestrian forward about 20 feet. > The CEO wrote, “Cruise AVs are being remotely assisted (RA) 2-4% of the time on average, in complex urban environments. This is low enough already that there isn’t a huge cost benefit to optimizing much further, especially given how useful it is to have humans review things in certain situations.” Awesome, cool, this sounds really optimal.
- pengaru 3y ago
  So was the Cruise vehicle being remotely operated when it dragged the pedestrian 20 feet? (That's the impression I've had since this was initially reported) The whole act of remotely operating automobiles on public streets strikes me as extremely dangerous, unaccountable, and that it'd be obviously prohibited by law. AV advocates can at least argue the sensor suite provides far more data than a human driver has at their disposal. But a human driver on the other side of a wireless link working with a modicum of visual camera feedback and perhaps audio is unquestionably inferior to a licensed operator in the driver's seat. This is simply insanity unfolding on our city streets.
  - cma 3y ago
    > The whole act of remotely operating automobiles on public streets strikes me as extremely dangerous, unaccountable, and that it'd be obviously prohibited by law. I Googled it and that doesn't seem to be the case; in fact it is mandated by law: > The "Driverless AV Passenger Service" pilot program allows for the provision of passenger service in test AVs without a driver in the vehicle. Under this pilot program, a communication link between passengers and "remote operators" of the vehicle must be available and maintained at all times during passenger service. https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/regulatory-services/licensing/transportation-licensing-and-analysis-branch/autonomous-vehicle-programs https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/regulatory-services/licensing/transp...
ivan_burazin 3y ago
Do you think more AI companies augment their "AI" with actual people?
- falcolas 3y ago
  Absolutely. I knew one company who mined the Twitter firehose for events to sell to news stations and the government who had over 60% of the events identified and surfaced by dedicated employees, and 100% of the AI identified events were vetted by a person before going out. Still valuable, but it was always telling how those employees were never really acknowledged outside of the company.
- paxys 3y ago
  Of course. Amazon Go stores are a good example of this as well. As are all kinds of content filters across the internet. A large percent of "AI" is cheap labor in third world countries sitting in front of a computer and clicking buttons. And if human assistance isn't happening in real time, there is still a ridiculous amount of it in the training stages.
- sgt101 3y ago
  A UK company called spinvox blew up when it was revealed that their speech transcription tech was actually a warehouse filled with people in Pakistan. In that case the blow up was due to data protection laws in the first instance, and investor confidence in the second instance. They had, of course, told everyone that their transcription system was a giant e-brain.
forthwall 3y ago
In San Francisco, this would be more than 60% across the city; so seems generally fine?
- beastman82 3y ago
  Neither 60% nor 4-5 miles sound fine to me...
  - forthwall 3y ago
    If most of the transit opportunities for Cruise is less than 5 miles in San Francisco, as most people are not going end to end or even end to half; wouldn't this mean it's not every ride that this will happen. Though it's still bad in the sense of it claiming to be self driving
tech-historian 3y ago
Interesting to see an entire article based on an HN comment [0] from the CEO. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38145997 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38145997
sgt101 3y ago
Are the operators who do this certified and qualified to do it?
thereisnospork 3y ago
> The CEO wrote, “Cruise AVs are being remotely assisted (RA) 2-4% of the time on average, in complex urban environments. This is low enough already that there isn’t a huge cost benefit to optimizing much further, especially given how useful it is to have humans review things in certain situations.” That's a pretty worrying statement: CEO is of the opinion that decreasing it isn't possible and is trying to put a positive spin on it. Driving (pun not intended) remote assistance down should be their primary goal, to drive down OPEX and facilitate market expansion.
leobg 3y ago
Mechanical Turk self-driving.
YossarianFrPrez 3y ago
Does anyone know the Waymo equivalent? Also, this isn't best metric as "miles" in a city != "miles" on a freeway.
jakeogh 3y ago
When are they going to tell us where the humans were outsourced from?

49 points by belltaco 3y ago

You can get pretty far in cities in 4 to 5 miles, and highways must be a couple orders of magnitude easier. I think that's acceptable so far, no?

sharkjacobs 3y ago
I think that what you're imagining is like a driver who can let the car do its thing and just intervene now and then once every fifteen or twenty minutes. I believe that what the article is describing is a guy in front of a bank of monitors watching 15-20 cars and intervening in one or another pretty much constantly for the duration of a work shift. > As far as the ratio of remote assistance advisors to driverless vehicles on the road, the Cruise spokesperson said, “During driverless operations there was roughly 1 remote assistant agent for every 15-20 driverless AVs.”
- SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
  Seems like a recipe for exhaustion. I wonder how the "driverless" car drivers perform by the end of their shift.
hospitalJail 3y ago
Yes, not to mention, you might be able to outsource the decisions to a low cost call center...
- falcolas 3y ago
  I get the feeling that offshoring this would have disastrous consequences.
beastman82 3y ago
If you're going 5 miles and only get 4 before stopping mid-journey, is that acceptable? I would say no, I would not find it acceptable
marwatk 3y ago
Such frequent interventions means you need very reliable cell service. In times of heavy congestion (concerts, etc) that doesn't seem feasible.

sharkjacobs 3y ago

> CNBC also asked Cruise for information about typical response time for remote operations, and how remote assistance workers at Cruise are trained. > “More than 98% of sessions are answered within 3 seconds,” the spokesperson said. > During that incident, Cruise previously told NBC, its vehicle “braked aggressively before impact and because it detected a collision” but then tried to pull over and in the process pulled the pedestrian forward about 20 feet. > The CEO wrote, “Cruise AVs are being remotely assisted (RA) 2-4% of the time on average, in complex urban environments. This is low enough already that there isn’t a huge cost benefit to optimizing much further, especially given how useful it is to have humans review things in certain situations.” Awesome, cool, this sounds really optimal.

pengaru 3y ago
So was the Cruise vehicle being remotely operated when it dragged the pedestrian 20 feet? (That's the impression I've had since this was initially reported) The whole act of remotely operating automobiles on public streets strikes me as extremely dangerous, unaccountable, and that it'd be obviously prohibited by law. AV advocates can at least argue the sensor suite provides far more data than a human driver has at their disposal. But a human driver on the other side of a wireless link working with a modicum of visual camera feedback and perhaps audio is unquestionably inferior to a licensed operator in the driver's seat. This is simply insanity unfolding on our city streets.
- cma 3y ago
  > The whole act of remotely operating automobiles on public streets strikes me as extremely dangerous, unaccountable, and that it'd be obviously prohibited by law. I Googled it and that doesn't seem to be the case; in fact it is mandated by law: > The "Driverless AV Passenger Service" pilot program allows for the provision of passenger service in test AVs without a driver in the vehicle. Under this pilot program, a communication link between passengers and "remote operators" of the vehicle must be available and maintained at all times during passenger service. https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/regulatory-services/licensing/transportation-licensing-and-analysis-branch/autonomous-vehicle-programs https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/regulatory-services/licensing/transp...

ivan_burazin 3y ago

Do you think more AI companies augment their "AI" with actual people?

falcolas 3y ago
Absolutely. I knew one company who mined the Twitter firehose for events to sell to news stations and the government who had over 60% of the events identified and surfaced by dedicated employees, and 100% of the AI identified events were vetted by a person before going out. Still valuable, but it was always telling how those employees were never really acknowledged outside of the company.
paxys 3y ago
Of course. Amazon Go stores are a good example of this as well. As are all kinds of content filters across the internet. A large percent of "AI" is cheap labor in third world countries sitting in front of a computer and clicking buttons. And if human assistance isn't happening in real time, there is still a ridiculous amount of it in the training stages.
sgt101 3y ago
A UK company called spinvox blew up when it was revealed that their speech transcription tech was actually a warehouse filled with people in Pakistan. In that case the blow up was due to data protection laws in the first instance, and investor confidence in the second instance. They had, of course, told everyone that their transcription system was a giant e-brain.

forthwall 3y ago

In San Francisco, this would be more than 60% across the city; so seems generally fine?

beastman82 3y ago
Neither 60% nor 4-5 miles sound fine to me...
- forthwall 3y ago
  If most of the transit opportunities for Cruise is less than 5 miles in San Francisco, as most people are not going end to end or even end to half; wouldn't this mean it's not every ride that this will happen. Though it's still bad in the sense of it claiming to be self driving

tech-historian 3y ago

Interesting to see an entire article based on an HN comment [0] from the CEO. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38145997 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38145997

sgt101 3y ago

Are the operators who do this certified and qualified to do it?

thereisnospork 3y ago

> The CEO wrote, “Cruise AVs are being remotely assisted (RA) 2-4% of the time on average, in complex urban environments. This is low enough already that there isn’t a huge cost benefit to optimizing much further, especially given how useful it is to have humans review things in certain situations.” That's a pretty worrying statement: CEO is of the opinion that decreasing it isn't possible and is trying to put a positive spin on it. Driving (pun not intended) remote assistance down should be their primary goal, to drive down OPEX and facilitate market expansion.

leobg 3y ago

Mechanical Turk self-driving.

YossarianFrPrez 3y ago

Does anyone know the Waymo equivalent? Also, this isn't best metric as "miles" in a city != "miles" on a freeway.

jakeogh 3y ago

When are they going to tell us where the humans were outsourced from?