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No, they haven't , at least nowhere near the scope of the hype. The promise in the early 2010s was that in 10-20 years, human driving would be obsolete, that pr

No, they haven't , at least nowhere near the scope of the hype. The promise in the early 2010s was that in 10-20 years, human driving would be obsolete, that professional drivers would be out of a job, and that all land-based transportation would be overhauled. None of this is even close to happening. Waymo is impressive tech, for sure, but what they're proving is that this is just not currently solvable as a general problem. The best we can do is to meticulously craft a solution for one constrained use case - driving in SF, driving in LA, etc. And even then, we need to pick certain use cases - it's not like they could use their current tech to start autonomous service in Juneau Alaska. Or even NYC, most likely.

olalonde 1y ago
The optimists got the timeline wrong but they were closer to the truth than those who said it would never happen. I have no idea how close AGI is but there is clearly no AI winter around the corner as some HNers have been predicting[0]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23886325 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23886325
- yencabulator 1y ago
  Solving a small subset of the problem != solving the problem. I'll believe self-driving is solved when I can order an automated ride to a BLM/forest service dirt road I only have GPS coordinates for and that has cell service on the hilltop only.
  - olalonde 1y ago
    I'm pretty sure that problem is solved from a technical point of view - though it might not be commercially available yet due to economic and regulatory reasons.
    - yencabulator 1y ago
      You're trying to move the goalpost from "self-driving" to "self-driving in scenarios where the route has been fully premapped". Might as well move it to "as long as there's no semi crossing the road" to cover for Tesla. Centrally-managed clean and rigid setting is not the full extent of the problem domain.
      - olalonde 1y ago
        On the contrary, I was saying that self-driving in scenarios where the road has not been fully premapped is solved.
        yencabulator 1y ago
        Meanwhile, all the self-driving that's currently happening is within well-controlled small geographic areas and some limited interstates/highways, and based on matching observed surroundings to pre-made very detailed maps. Okay, sure. As I said, I'll believe it's solved when these limitations are no longer necessary for it to work. You can choose to believe it based on a research project or marketing materials.
    - tsimionescu 1y ago
      It has very much not been. None of the players on the market are able to do anything close to this. You either have self-driving on carefully pre-mapped routes, with on-call human suport ready to jump in for more complex cases (Waymo), self-driving in very specific conditions with few seconds notice to the human driver (highways, with speeds below 60 - Mercedes), or not self driving, where the human driver has to be ready to intervene with no notice whatsoever (Tesla).

olalonde 1y ago

The optimists got the timeline wrong but they were closer to the truth than those who said it would never happen. I have no idea how close AGI is but there is clearly no AI winter around the corner as some HNers have been predicting[0]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23886325 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23886325

yencabulator 1y ago
Solving a small subset of the problem != solving the problem. I'll believe self-driving is solved when I can order an automated ride to a BLM/forest service dirt road I only have GPS coordinates for and that has cell service on the hilltop only.
- olalonde 1y ago
  I'm pretty sure that problem is solved from a technical point of view - though it might not be commercially available yet due to economic and regulatory reasons.
  - yencabulator 1y ago
    You're trying to move the goalpost from "self-driving" to "self-driving in scenarios where the route has been fully premapped". Might as well move it to "as long as there's no semi crossing the road" to cover for Tesla. Centrally-managed clean and rigid setting is not the full extent of the problem domain.
    - olalonde 1y ago
      On the contrary, I was saying that self-driving in scenarios where the road has not been fully premapped is solved.
      - yencabulator 1y ago
        Meanwhile, all the self-driving that's currently happening is within well-controlled small geographic areas and some limited interstates/highways, and based on matching observed surroundings to pre-made very detailed maps. Okay, sure. As I said, I'll believe it's solved when these limitations are no longer necessary for it to work. You can choose to believe it based on a research project or marketing materials.
  - tsimionescu 1y ago
    It has very much not been. None of the players on the market are able to do anything close to this. You either have self-driving on carefully pre-mapped routes, with on-call human suport ready to jump in for more complex cases (Waymo), self-driving in very specific conditions with few seconds notice to the human driver (highways, with speeds below 60 - Mercedes), or not self driving, where the human driver has to be ready to intervene with no notice whatsoever (Tesla).