<story><title>Even after $100B, self-driving cars are going nowhere</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-10-06/even-after-100-billion-self-driving-cars-are-going-nowhere</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nichochar</author><text>[Disclaimer] I worked for Cruise for 4 years.&lt;p&gt;I agree with everything you said, but chuckled at this particular part (which is very wrong):
&amp;gt; Tesla is significantly ahead of everyone else.&lt;p&gt;Everyone in the industry knows that Tesla is nowhere near the tip of the technology. What Tesla does is _fantastic marketing_. Their whole self-driving division is just a mechanism to sell more cars.&lt;p&gt;At a high level, this is why:&lt;p&gt;- The hard thing about self driving isn&amp;#x27;t the first 95%, it&amp;#x27;s the impossibly long tail of the last 5% with unique, chaotic and rare scenarios (think, a reflective citern tank with a reflection of the back of a truck transporting stop signs, or terrible weather illusions with fog).&lt;p&gt;- Doing well on the last 5% is where most of the energy from Waymo&amp;#x2F;Cruise goes (the two leaders by quite a margin).&lt;p&gt;- Tesla is camera only. Weather alone means you can&amp;#x27;t reach critical safety because of this. Cameras don&amp;#x27;t do fog well, precipitation well, or sunsets&amp;#x2F;bad lighting well (see many Tesla crashes on freeways bc of this)&lt;p&gt;- Tesla does well on the 95% and Elon is a marketing genius, with those 2 things it&amp;#x27;s easy to convince outsiders that &amp;quot;Tesla is significantly ahead of everyone else&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;My prediction: before the end of the decade, cruise and waymo have commoditized fleets doing things that most people today would find unbelievable. Tesla is still talking a big game but ultimately won&amp;#x27;t have permits for you to be in a Tesla with your hands off of the wheel.&lt;p&gt;edit: formatting and typo</text></item><item><author>cs702</author><text>In the short run, technological progress is &lt;i&gt;much slower&lt;/i&gt; than anyone hopes, but in the long run it is &lt;i&gt;much faster&lt;/i&gt; than anyone expects.&lt;p&gt;My favorite example is that in 1987, the scientific consensus was that it would take &amp;quot;at least 100 years&amp;quot; and likely much longer to sequence the entire human gnome.[a] But the vast majority of it was sequenced by 2000, only 13 years later. Moreover, just two decades later, anyone could get their genome checked for known markers for pocket change by companies like 23andMe, founded in 2006.&lt;p&gt;Having some expertise and interest in AI, I regularly watch presentations by all companies working on self-driving and also look at the videos posted by beta testers online. While it&amp;#x27;s fun to watch the failures, I&amp;#x27;m more interested in judging whether the technology is continuing to improve.&lt;p&gt;My perceptions contradict this article: (1) The technology is progressing &lt;i&gt;faster&lt;/i&gt; than is generally recognized, with vehicles getting progressively better at dealing with edge cases and handling failures gracefully. (2) Judging by the videos I&amp;#x27;ve watched online, Tesla is significantly ahead of everyone else.&lt;p&gt;Prediction: Before the end of the decade, this article will seem... short-sighted.&lt;p&gt;--&lt;p&gt;[a] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nature.com&amp;#x2F;scitable&amp;#x2F;topicpage&amp;#x2F;sequencing-human-genome-the-contributions-of-francis-686&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nature.com&amp;#x2F;scitable&amp;#x2F;topicpage&amp;#x2F;sequencing-human-g...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I edited my statement about 23andMe based on sausagefeet&amp;#x27;s comment below.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>flutas</author><text>My favorite case so far of the &amp;#x27;5%&amp;#x27; that you mention happened on my Tesla irt:(object recognition) and I still laugh about it to this day.&lt;p&gt;I was driving down the road as normal, 4 lane divided highway that&amp;#x27;s a bit hilly. Suddenly my car starts having what I can only describe as a panic attack saying I&amp;#x27;m running a stop sign and blaring alarms.&lt;p&gt;It was detecting a giant 40ft tall red circle sign a bit away as a stop sign...</text></comment>
<story><title>Even after $100B, self-driving cars are going nowhere</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-10-06/even-after-100-billion-self-driving-cars-are-going-nowhere</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nichochar</author><text>[Disclaimer] I worked for Cruise for 4 years.&lt;p&gt;I agree with everything you said, but chuckled at this particular part (which is very wrong):
&amp;gt; Tesla is significantly ahead of everyone else.&lt;p&gt;Everyone in the industry knows that Tesla is nowhere near the tip of the technology. What Tesla does is _fantastic marketing_. Their whole self-driving division is just a mechanism to sell more cars.&lt;p&gt;At a high level, this is why:&lt;p&gt;- The hard thing about self driving isn&amp;#x27;t the first 95%, it&amp;#x27;s the impossibly long tail of the last 5% with unique, chaotic and rare scenarios (think, a reflective citern tank with a reflection of the back of a truck transporting stop signs, or terrible weather illusions with fog).&lt;p&gt;- Doing well on the last 5% is where most of the energy from Waymo&amp;#x2F;Cruise goes (the two leaders by quite a margin).&lt;p&gt;- Tesla is camera only. Weather alone means you can&amp;#x27;t reach critical safety because of this. Cameras don&amp;#x27;t do fog well, precipitation well, or sunsets&amp;#x2F;bad lighting well (see many Tesla crashes on freeways bc of this)&lt;p&gt;- Tesla does well on the 95% and Elon is a marketing genius, with those 2 things it&amp;#x27;s easy to convince outsiders that &amp;quot;Tesla is significantly ahead of everyone else&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;My prediction: before the end of the decade, cruise and waymo have commoditized fleets doing things that most people today would find unbelievable. Tesla is still talking a big game but ultimately won&amp;#x27;t have permits for you to be in a Tesla with your hands off of the wheel.&lt;p&gt;edit: formatting and typo</text></item><item><author>cs702</author><text>In the short run, technological progress is &lt;i&gt;much slower&lt;/i&gt; than anyone hopes, but in the long run it is &lt;i&gt;much faster&lt;/i&gt; than anyone expects.&lt;p&gt;My favorite example is that in 1987, the scientific consensus was that it would take &amp;quot;at least 100 years&amp;quot; and likely much longer to sequence the entire human gnome.[a] But the vast majority of it was sequenced by 2000, only 13 years later. Moreover, just two decades later, anyone could get their genome checked for known markers for pocket change by companies like 23andMe, founded in 2006.&lt;p&gt;Having some expertise and interest in AI, I regularly watch presentations by all companies working on self-driving and also look at the videos posted by beta testers online. While it&amp;#x27;s fun to watch the failures, I&amp;#x27;m more interested in judging whether the technology is continuing to improve.&lt;p&gt;My perceptions contradict this article: (1) The technology is progressing &lt;i&gt;faster&lt;/i&gt; than is generally recognized, with vehicles getting progressively better at dealing with edge cases and handling failures gracefully. (2) Judging by the videos I&amp;#x27;ve watched online, Tesla is significantly ahead of everyone else.&lt;p&gt;Prediction: Before the end of the decade, this article will seem... short-sighted.&lt;p&gt;--&lt;p&gt;[a] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nature.com&amp;#x2F;scitable&amp;#x2F;topicpage&amp;#x2F;sequencing-human-genome-the-contributions-of-francis-686&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nature.com&amp;#x2F;scitable&amp;#x2F;topicpage&amp;#x2F;sequencing-human-g...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;--&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I edited my statement about 23andMe based on sausagefeet&amp;#x27;s comment below.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>joakleaf</author><text>As someone who also follows the progress online and watch the presentations by Cruise, Tesla, etc, I agree that Cruise is well ahead of Tesla.&lt;p&gt;It feels like Tesla’s main strategy is to add more data, more compute power, more simulation, and hope for “convergence”. Maybe that will work, but right now it feels like Cruise’s technology feels more mature and thought through.</text></comment>