Current Events > Waymo, autonomous uber rides, are way better than people.

(+) Yeah! (+)

-You dont have to tip
-You dont have to care about your rating
-Because rating doesnt matter you dont have to worry about small talk, being quick to the car, talking on your phone or other things that need to be taken into account

It kind of sucks how much better Waymo is because Uber seems to be a great gig for low skill workers, or even high skill workers who cant find jobs right now.

One of my drivers went on a rant about autonomous cars taking his jobs. And AI taking all jobs in general. It was a bleak future.

They also dont bitch to you about Ubers taking AI jobs.

<insert overused meme here>

divot1338 posted...

They also dont bitch to you about Ubers taking AI jobs.

Or ranting about woke. And if you care about your rating you cant really push back.

It's also safer. Automated driving is something we should all be highly looking forward

A few months ago I was raving about wyamo too.

Haven't used it since because of limitations with destinations, but yes in city driving it's the bomb

The Waymos in Austin seem like decent drivers but they still do dumb shit a lot that borders on dangerous, particularly in where they choose to stop for drop-off/pickup

When people talk AI taking jobs it's kind of fascinating to see just how low of a barrier it actually takes to have somebody go from "we need to protect jobs" to "you mean the robot won't try to make small talk? Fire everyone"

I wanted to take one when I was in Vegas but my wife refused lol. Instead we get a guy roll up in a Tesla X and show it off by hitting 90 in 2 seconds flat. I'm glad she refused, that was a memorable experience!

I like talking to drivers.

Waymo is great. I wish I could buy one

Nah.

I'm good.

It's always fun seeing those in San Fran, just weird not seeing someone behind the steering wheel and it signals better than human drivers... lmao.

I wonder what the data looks like, does it rely on public mapping data or do they have a proprietary, ultra-high-resolution data set that has each lane mapped out

DrPrimemaster posted...

-You dont have to tip

Imagine not tipping the devs of the waymo company that are not being paid a livable wage.

You're one of the worst people I know. Tagged.

I don't have enough faith in computer vision systems under uncontrolled circumstances to trust an autonomous car and given the state of the world the answer is not going to be "develop better systems" it's going to be "well you signed a consent form when you ordered the ride so lmaoooo"

that it signals better than human drivers I don't doubt, though, people forget that lever exists for some reason

Didn't a Waymo just hit and kill a beloved neighborhood cat recently? And it was entirely avoidable?

DrPrimemaster posted...

because Uber seems to be a great gig

Sometimes you read a series of words so utterly ridiculous that your mind refuses to process it.

emblem-man posted...

It's also safer. Automated driving is something we should all be highly looking forward

It's going to be catastrophic once it happens, the amount of people that drive freight is truly staggering and that amount of people getting disrupted is going to be extremely hard to offset. More than AI office work, that's the thing I'm most worried about in regards to technology taking jobs from humans.

meestermj posted...

Didn't a Waymo just hit and kill a beloved neighborhood cat recently? And it was entirely avoidable?

The fact that it was news is a credit though. About 80 million humans hit and killed beloved neighborhood cats today probably.

How does it know when to stop, and how much time it needs to give you to get yourself and your items in/out of the car?

BuzzKilljoy posted...

The Waymos in Austin seem like decent drivers but they still do dumb shit a lot that borders on dangerous, particularly in where they choose to stop for drop-off/pickup

I had a waymo that kept getting confused about where to pick us up and drove around the block 3 times.

And also had an uber driver that just blatantly ran a red light. Sure we got home faster but damn.

nocturnal_traveler posted...

How does it know when to stop, and how much time it needs to give you to get yourself and your items in/out of the car?

You have to hit start ride on a screen to make it go so you have as much time as you want to get in and you have as much time as you want to get out.

Hexenherz posted...

It's always fun seeing those in San Fran, just weird not seeing someone behind the steering wheel and it signals better than human drivers... lmao.

I wonder what the data looks like, does it rely on public mapping data or do they have a proprietary, ultra-high-resolution data set that has each lane mapped out

I visited San Francisco recently. Was very surprised to see these. Didn't trust them so didn't bother trying.

badjay posted...

Imagine not tipping the devs of the waymo company that are not being paid a livable wage.

You're one of the worst people I know. Tagged.

True, hopefully some day we'll live in a future where everything is done by AI and we wont have to tip or talk to anyone.

UnholyMudcrab posted...

Sometimes you read a series of words so utterly ridiculous that your mind refuses to process it.

I mean, for people that cant do much else it seems decent. Like people that dont speak english.

Charged151 posted...

I visited San Francisco recently. Was very surprised to see these.

That's the thing, isn't it? They have the tech. They just won't share it.

im never getting in a robotaxi. some small talk doesnt bother me and it's better than being mangled in an accident

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAkeZqAN_qU

johnny cabs coming soon

name_unknown posted...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAkeZqAN_qU

johnny cabs coming soon

If Johnny cab lived in a future with pre pay, he wouldn't have needed that vehicular manslaughter feature.

ReturnOfDevsman posted...

That's the thing, isn't it? They have the tech. They just won't share it.

Dunno about how easy this would be to implement nationwide. Checked pricing and apparently Waymo costs more than Uber/Lyft for now on average. Just my limited experience looking into it in my free time when I learned self-driving cars were actually used in practice.

Charged151 posted...

Checked pricing and apparently Waymo costs more than Uber/Lyft for now on average.

https://youtu.be/BwSts2s4ba4?si=E0LIc5vpbqz-A0KE

ReturnOfDevsman posted...

https://youtu.be/BwSts2s4ba4?si=E0LIc5vpbqz-A0KE

You would think that with no drivers the cost would be less. But...that wasn't my experience in the brief time I was looking at prices. Does anyone else have any experience with this?

is it cheaper than Uber and Lyft without the tip?

Arcanine2009 posted...

is it cheaper than Uber and Lyft without the tip?

When I briefly looked it wasn't. You would think it would be. Granted, other people may say differently.

I just want to point out that with Waymo they actually incorporate many different types of sensors which does enhance their safety a ton compared to something like Tesla. Under Musk's guidance, Tesla threw out LIDAR as an option, for instance, so Tesla relies solely on video cameras to collect data and make decisions, whereas Waymo uses video cameras and radar and LIDAR.

I think it's important to make this distinction because I feel like a lot of people see "self-driving car" and automatically assume it's all the same equipment under the hood.

Looks like its only in a few cities though, none of which are near me.

They're all over where I live, and it makes me anxious as hell.

Hexenherz posted...

I just want to point out that with Waymo they actually incorporate many different types of sensors which does enhance their safety a ton compared to something like Tesla. Under Musk's guidance, Tesla threw out LIDAR as an option, for instance, so Tesla relies solely on video cameras to collect data and make decisions, whereas Waymo uses video cameras and radar and LIDAR.

I think it's important to make this distinction because I feel like a lot of people see "self-driving car" and automatically assume it's all the same equipment under the hood.

Waymos still drive into phone poles and dive into water too deep to get out of because LIDAR seems to be just another grift too.

The CEO of the company that sells LIDAR to Waymo was recently fired for unethical business practices. Which appears to be code for, based on the timing of him being investigated, paying people to stage misleading safety videos so he could pump and dumb his LIDAR stock.

All these big tech companies are the same circus.

The problem with adding LIDAR is it also makes the vehicles far more expensive to sell and maintain. Tesla is trying to go without them because it adds like $50-100K to the cost of the car depending on how many lidars and what kind. LIDAR for commercial purposes would make sense but it's a dead-end addition to any self-driving car that you want consumers to buy.

But in either case the problem is no amount of sensor data can offset the current state of autonomy being absolutely terrible at contextual reasoning combined with a lack of robustness against degraded conditions (road, sensor, light, etc). They're all running on models that work "well enough" in specific conditions but fall apart pretty quickly outside of nominal ranges.

foreverzero212 posted...

The CEO of the company that sells LIDAR to Waymo was recently fired for unethical business practices. Which appears to be code for, based on the timing of him being investigated, paying people to stage misleading safety videos so he could pump and dumb his LIDAR stock.

That's a nice pile of bullshit you are spouting there.

What if we just had good public transit

foreverzero212 posted...

And this is why I think we are many decades away from actual autonomous cars.

They absolutely are. Especially since it's way harder to do autonomy on a road where only some cars are digitally connected and most of them aren't autonomous. You're likely to see a dedicated "left lane for AI trucks only" shipping thing first, but even that will fall apart after a week once people realize there's a billion ways for a lane to become blocked but the trucks wouldn't be able to change lanes so shipping would just be perpetually clogged.

s0nicfan posted...

Tesla is trying to go without them because it adds like $50-100K to the cost of the car depending on how many lidars and what kind.

Where are those numbers coming from?

s0nicfan posted...

They absolutely are. Especially since it's way harder to do autonomy on a road where only some cars are digitally connected and most of them aren't autonomous. You're likely to see a dedicated "left lane for AI trucks only" shipping thing first, but even that will fall apart after a week once people realize there's a billion ways for a lane to become blocked but the trucks wouldn't be able to change lanes so shipping would just be perpetually clogged.

I completely agree (accidentally hit delete instead of edit for my post you quoted)

s0nicfan posted...

They absolutely are. Especially since it's way harder to do autonomy on a road where only some cars are digitally connected and most of them aren't autonomous. You're likely to see a dedicated "left lane for AI trucks only" shipping thing first, but even that will fall apart after a week once people realize there's a billion ways for a lane to become blocked but the trucks wouldn't be able to change lanes so shipping would just be perpetually clogged.

Even then, we just don't have the national infrastructure for anything like this yet. And too many areas where it wouldn't be feasible or wise to try to implement it. We aren't even ready to all electric nationally. We have decades of work to do.