9 ms·
Suddenly all this focus on world models by Deep mind starts to make sense. I've never really thought of Waymo as a robot in the same way as e.g. a Boston Dynami
by mattlondon 9mo ago
Suddenly all this focus on world models by Deep mind starts to make sense. I've never really thought of Waymo as a robot in the same way as e.g. a Boston Dynamics humanoid, but of course it is a robot of sorts.
Google/Alphabet are so vertically integrated for AI when you think about it. Compare what they're doing - their own power generation , their own silicon, their own data centers, search Gmail YouTube Gemini workspace wallet, billions and billions of Android and Chromebook users, their ads everywhere, their browser everywhere, waymo, probably buy back Boston dynamics soon enough (they're recently partnered together), fusion research, drugs discovery.... and then look at ChatGPT's chatbot or grok's porn. Pales in comparison.
- smeeth 9mo agoI always understood this to be why Tesla started working on humanoid robots
- ACCount37 9mo agoPretty much. They banked on "if we can solve FSD, we can partially solve humanoid robot autonomy, because both are robots operating in poorly structured real world environments".
- smt88 9mo agoThey started working on humanoid robots because Musk always has to have the next moonshot, trillion-dollar idea to promise "in 3 years" to keep the stock price high. As soon as Waymo's massive robotaxi lead became undeniable, he pivoted to from robotaxis to humanoid robots.
- senordevnyc 9mo agoYeah, that and running Grok on a trillion GPUs in space lol
- jasondigitized 9mo agoI don't want a humanoid robot. I want a purpose built robot.
- simondotau 9mo agoObviously both will exist and compete with each other on the margins. The thing to appreciate is that our physical world is already built like an API for adult humans. Swinging doors, stairs, cupboards, benchtops. If you want a robot to traverse the space and be useful for more than one task, the humanoid form makes sense. The key question is whether general purpose robots can outcompete on sheer economies of scale alone.
- monocasa 9mo agoI mean, I would take a robot to handle all of my housework. Purpose built, that probably takes the form of a humanoid robot since all of tasks it needs to do were previously designed for humanoids.
- rswail 9mo agoVacuuming and mopping are not inherently "designed" for humans. Dusting with a single extensible and multiple degrees of freedom arm would be much more maneuverable than a human arm. Loading and unloading washing machines or dryers or doign the same for dishes and cutlery in a dishwasher is not inherently designed for humans. If anything, selling an integrated "housekeeping" system that fits into an existing laundry and combines features would be a much better approach.
- monocasa 9mo agoI agree that each would be made slightly better with a more integrated system. But you could handle all of them in my hundred year old house with the form factor it was designed for: a humanoid. Probably pretty soon here for cheaper than each could be handled separately by more integrated systems.
- 9mo ago
- Fricken 9mo agoIt's so they can stick a Tesla logo on a bunch of chinese tech and call it innovation.
- rswail 9mo agoThe drop in demand for Tesla's clapped out model range would have meant embarrassing factory closures, so now they're being closed to start manufacturing a completely different product. Bait and switch for Tesla investors. I wonder how long they'll be closed for "modifications" and whether the Optimus Prime robot factories will go into production before the "Trump Kennedy Center" is reopened after its "renovations".
- mooktakim 9mo agoTesla built something like this for FSD training, they presented many years ago. I never understood why they did productize it. It would have made a brilliant Maps alternative, which country automatically update from Tesla cars on the road. Could live update with speed cameras and road conditions. Like many things they've fallen behind
- jellojello 9mo agoWithout Lidar + the terrible quality of tesla onboard cameras.. street view would look terrible. The biggest L of elon's career is the weird commitment to no-lidar. If you've ever driven a Tesla, it gives daily messages "the left side camera is blocked" etc.. cameras+weather don't mix either.
- verelo 9mo agoYeah its absurd. As a Tesla driver, I have to say the autopilot model really does feel like what someone who's never driven a car before thinks it's like. Using vision only is so ignorant of what driving is all about: sound, vibration, vision, heat, cold...these are all clues on road condition. If the car isn't feeling all these things as part of the model, you're handicapping it. In a brilliant way Lidar is the missing piece of information a car needs without relying on multiple sensors, it's probably superior to what a human can do, where as vision only is clearly inferior.
- ASalazarMX 9mo agoMaybe vision-only can work with much better cameras, with a wider spectrum (so they can see thru fog, for example), and self-cleaning/zero upkeep (so you don't have to pull over to wipe a speck of mud from them). Nevertheless, LIDAR still seems like the best choice overall.
- smallmancontrov 9mo agoThe inputs to FSD are: 7 cameras x 36fps x 5Mpx x 30s 48kHz audio Nav maps and route for next few miles 100Hz kinematics (speed, IMU, odometry, etc) Source: https://youtu.be/LFh9GAzHg1c?t=571 https://youtu.be/LFh9GAzHg1c?t=571
- xnx 9mo ago> Suddenly all this focus on world models by Deep mind starts to make sense Google's been thinking about world models since at least 2018: https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.10122 https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.10122
- anp 9mo agoFWIW I understood GP to mean that it suddenly makes sense to them, not that there’s been a sudden focus shift at google.
- sdf2erf 9mo ago"Waymo as a robot in the same way" Erm, a dishwasher, washing machine, automated vacuum can be considered robots. Im confused as to this obsession of the term - there are many robots that already exist. Robotics have been involved in the production of cars for decades. ......
- ASalazarMX 9mo agoI think the (gray) line is the degree of autonomy. My washing machine makes very small, predictable decisions, while a Waymo has to manage uncertainty most of the time.
- sdf2erf 9mo agoIts irrelevant. A robot is a robot. Dictionary def: "a machine controlled by a computer that is used to perform jobs automatically."
- ASalazarMX 9mo agoTIL fuel injectors are robots. Probably my ceiling lights too. Maybe we need to nitpick about what a job is exactly? Or we could agree to call Waymos (semi)autonomous robots?
- mattlondon 9mo agoNo one is denying that robots existed already (but I would hardly call a dishwasher a robot FWIW) But in my mind a waymo was always a "car with sensors", but more recently (especially having recently used them a bunch in California recently) I've come to think of them truly as robots.
- goatlover 9mo agoIn the same way people online have argued helicopters are flying cars, it doesn't capture what most people mean when they use the word "robot", anymore than helicopters are what people have in mind when they mention flying cars.
- saghm 9mo ago
- themafia 9mo agoIt's a 3500lb robot that can kill you. Boston Robotics is working on a smaller robot that can kill you. Anduril is working on even smaller robots that can kill you. The future sucks.
- zzzeek 9mo agoand they're all controlled by (poorly compensated) humans anyway [1] [2] [1] https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/i-tried-the-robot-thats-coming-to-live-with-you-its-still-part-human-68515d44 https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/i-tried-the-robot-tha... [2] https://futurism.com/advanced-transport/waymos-controlled-workers-philippines https://futurism.com/advanced-transport/waymos-controlled-wo...
- themafia 9mo agoThey couldn't even make burger flipping robots work and are paying fast food workers $20/hr in California. If that doesn't make it obvious what they can and cannot do then I can't respect the tranche of "hackers" who blindly cheer on this unchecked corporate dystopian nightmare.
- MisterMower 9mo agoThey can totally make it work, it’s just currently cheaper to have humans do it. Solving the technical challenges and using that solution profitably are two completely different things.
- dmd 9mo agoWhich is why it's embarrassing how much worse Gemini is at searching the web for grounding information, and how incredibly bad gemini cli is.
- xnx 9mo agoNot my experience in either of those areas.
- coffeemug 9mo agoThe vertical integration argument should apply to Grok. They have Tesla driving data (probably much more data than Waymo), Twitter data, plus Tesla/SpaceX manufacturing data. When/if Optimus starts on the production line, they'll have that data too. You could argue they haven't figured out how to take advantage of it, but the potential is definitely there.
- BoredPositron 9mo agoAgreed. Should they achieve Google level integration, we will all make sure they are featured in our commentary. Their true potential is surely just around the corner...
- jeffbee 9mo ago"Tesla has more data than Waymo" is some of the lamest cope ever. Tesla does not have more video than Google! That's crazy! People who repeat this are crazy! If there was a massive flow of video from Tesla cars to Tesla HQ that would have observable side effects.
- schiffern 9mo ago"More video" (gigabytes) is a straw man. The key metric is more unusual situations. That scales with miles driven, not gigabytes. With onboard inference the car simply logs anything 'unusual' (low confidence) to selectively upload those needle-in-a-haystack rare events.
- thefounder 9mo agoBut somehow google fails to execute. Gemini is useless for programming and I don’t think even bother to use it as chat app. Claude code + gpt 5.2 xhigh for coding and gpt as chat app are really the only ones that are worth it(price and time wise)
- coffeemug 9mo agoI've recently switched to Claude for chat. GPT 5.2 feels very engagement-maxxed for me, like I'm reading a bad LinkedIn post. Claude does a tiny bit of this too, but an order of magnitude less in my experience. I never thought I'd switch from ChatGPT, but there is only so much "here's the brutal truth, it's not x it's y" I can take.
- aschla 9mo agoExperiencing the same. It seems Anthropic’s human-focused design choices are becoming a differentiator.
- thechao 9mo agoGPT likes to argue, and most of its arguments are straw man arguments, usually conflating priors. It's ... exhausting; akin to arguing on the internet. (What am I even saying, here!?) Claude's a lot less of that. I don't know if tracks discussion/conversation better; but, for damn sure, it's got way less verbal diarrhea than GPT.
- mrlongroots 9mo agoYes, GPT5-series thinking models are extremely pedantic and tedious. Any conversation with them is derailed because they start nitpicking something random. But Codex/5.2 was substantially more effective than Claude at debugging complex C++ bugs until around Fall, when I was writing a lot more code. I find Gemini 3 useless. It has regressed on hallucinations from Gemini 2.5, to the point where its output is no better than a random token stream despite all its benchmark outperformance. I would use Gemini 2.5 to help write papers and all, can't see to use Gemini 3 for anything. Gemini CLI also is very non-compliant and crazy.
- phkahler 9mo agoGoogle has been doing more R&D and internal deployment of AI and less trying to sell it as a product. IMHO that difference in focus makes a huge difference. I used to think their early work on self-driving cars was primarily to support Street View in thier maps.
- AlfredBarnes 9mo agoIt has always felt to me that the LLM chatbots were a surprise to Google, not LLMs, or machine learning in general.
- raphlinus 9mo agoNot true at all. I interacted with Meena[1] while I was there, and the publication was almost three years before the release of ChatGPT. It was an unsettling experience, felt very science fiction. [1]: https://research.google/blog/towards-a-conversational-agent-that-can-chat-aboutanything/ https://research.google/blog/towards-a-conversational-agent-...
- nasretdinov 9mo agoWell, I must say ChatGPT felt much more stable than Meena when I first tried it. But, as you said, it was a few years before ChatGPT was publicly announced :)
- hibikir 9mo agoThe surprise was not that they existed: There were chatbots in Google way before ChatGPT. What surprised them was the demand, despite all the problems the chatbots have. The pig problem with LLMs was not that they could do nothing, but how to turn them into products that made good money. Even people in openAI were surprised about what happened. In many ways, turning tech into products that are useful, good, and don't make life hell is a more interesting issue of our times than the core research itself. We probably want to avoid the valuing capturing platform problem, as otherwise we'll end up seeing governments using ham fisted tools to punish winners in ways that aren't helpful either
- jasondigitized 9mo agoThe flywheel is starting to spin......
- spiderfarmer 9mo agoGrok/xAI is a joke at this point. A true money pit without any hopes for a serious revenue stream. They should be bought by a rocket company. Then they would stand a chance.
- uoaei 9mo agoWhat an upsetting comment. I'm glad you came around but what did you think was going to be effective before you came around to world models?
- Dig1t 9mo ago>or grok's porn I know it’s gross, but I would not discount this. Remember why Blu-ray won over HDDVD? I know it won for many other technical reasons, but I think there are a few historical examples of sexual content being a big competitive advantage.
- schiffern 9mo ago>I've never really thought of Waymo as a robot in the same way as e.g. a Boston Dynamics humanoid, but of course it is a robot of sorts. So for the record, with this realization you're 3+ years behind Tesla. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODSJsviD_SU&t=3594s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODSJsviD_SU&t=3594s
- tapoxi 9mo agoAren't they still using safety drivers or safety follow cars and in fewer cities? Seems Tesla is pretty far behind.
- schiffern 9mo agoWhat do you think I said that you're contradicting? IMO the presence of safety chase vehicles is just a sensible "as low as reasonably achievable" measure during the early rollout. I'm not sure that can (fairly) be used as a point against them. I'm comfortably with Tesla sparing no expense for safety, since I think we all (including Tesla) understand that this isn't the ultimate implementation. In fact, I think it would be a scandal if Tesla failed to do exactly that. Damned if you do and damned if you don't, apparently.
- tapoxi 9mo agoI don't know if Tesla claiming they're doing something carries weight anymore.
- schiffern 9mo agoSetting aside the anti-Tesla bias, none of what I said relies on Tesla claims. The "chase vehicle" claims are all based on third-party accounts from actual rideshare customers.
- Mawr 9mo ago> IMO the presence of safety chase vehicles is just a sensible "as low as reasonably achievable" measure during the early rollout. I'm not sure that can (fairly) be used as a point against them. Only if you're comparing them to another company, which you seem to be. So yes, yes it can. Seriously, the amount of sheer cope here is insane. Waymo is doing the thing. Tesla is not. If Tesla were capable of doing it, they would be. But they're not. It really is as simple as that and no amount of random facts you may bring up will change the reality. Waymo is doing the thing.
- londons_explore 9mo agoInternal firewalls and poor management means that the vast majority of integration opportunities are missed.
- QuantumFunnel 9mo agoAlso known as a monopoly. This should terrify us all.
- lagrange77 9mo ago> I've never really thought of Waymo as a robot in the same way as e.g. a Boston Dynamics humanoid, but of course it is a robot of sorts. I view Tesla also more as a robot company than anything else.
- adarsh2321 9mo ago[dead]
- rswail 9mo agoMaybe they were focusing on a real world use that basically requires AI, but not LLMs. Tesla claimed that all their "real world" recording would give them a moat on FSD. Waymo is showing that a) you need to be able to incorporate stuff that isn't "real" when training, and b) you get a lot more information from alternate sensors to visible spectrum only.
- ericzundel 9mo agoI just listened to a fantastic multi-hour Acquired (https://www.acquired.fm/ https://www.acquired.fm/) podcast episode on Google and AI that talks about the history of Google and AI and all the ways they have been using it since 2012. It's really fascinating. You can forgive them for not focusing on Reader or any of their other properties when you realize they were pulling in hundreds of billions of dollars of value by making big bets in AI and incorporating it into their core business.
- theptip 9mo agoSo is this a model baked into the VLLM layer? Or a scaffold that the agent sits in for testing? If the former then it’s relevant to the broader discourse on LLM generality. If the latter, then it seems less relevant to chatbots and business agents. Edit to add: this is not part of the model, it’s in a separate pillar (Simulator vs Driver). More at https://waymo.com/blog/2025/12/demonstrably-safe-ai-for-autonomous-driving https://waymo.com/blog/2025/12/demonstrably-safe-ai-for-auto....
- YeGoblynQueenne 9mo ago>> Suddenly all this focus on world models by Deep mind starts to make sense. The apparent applicability to Waymo is incidental, more likely because a few millions+ were spent on Genie and they have to do something with it. DeepMind started to train "world models" because that's the current overhyped buzzword in the industry. First it was "natural language understanding" and "question answering" back in the days of old BERT, then it was "agentic", then "reasoning", now it's "world models", next years it's going to be "emotions" or "social intelligence" or some other anthropomorphic, over-drawn neologism. If you follow a few AI accounts on social media you really can't miss when those things suddenly start trending, then pretty much die out and only a few stragglers still try to publish papers on them because they failed to get the memo that we're now all running behind the Next Big Thing™.
- wiz21c 9mo agonotice that all these buzzwords you give actually correspond to real advances in the field. All of these were improvements on something existing, not a big revolution for sure, but definitely measurable improvements.
- YeGoblynQueenne 9mo agoThose are not "real advances in the field", which is why they are constantly abandoned for the next new buzzword. Edit: This just in: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46870514#46929215 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46870514#46929215 The Next Big Thing™ is going to be "context learning", at least if Tencent have their way. And why do we need that? >> Current language models do not handle context this way. They rely primarily on parametric knowledge—information compressed into their weights during massive pre-training runs. At inference time, they function largely by recalling this static, internal memory, rather than actively learning from new information provided in the moment. >> This creates a structural mismatch. We have optimized models to excel at reasoning over what they already know yet users need them to solve tasks that depend on messy, constantly evolving context. We built models that rely on what they know from the past, but we need context learners that rely on what they can absorb from the environment in the moment. Yep. Reasoning is so 2025.