<story><title>Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco</title><url>https://blog.waymo.com/2021/08/welcoming-our-first-riders-in-san.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sandworm101</author><text>Middle steps:
(1) Board members use product to travel to board meetings.  (2) Board members use product as replacement for personal vehicles.  (3) Board members demand pay increases.&lt;p&gt;Back in 1999 the Chinese government announced that airline execs would be airborne at the changeover as reassurance that aircraft were safe from Y2K.  Like or hate them, the incentive logic was sound.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.wired.com&amp;#x2F;1999&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;y2k-in-china-caught-in-midair&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.wired.com&amp;#x2F;1999&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;y2k-in-china-caught-in-midair&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cbc.ca&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;science&amp;#x2F;chinese-airlines-won-t-be-bitten-by-y2k-bug-1.193052&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cbc.ca&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;science&amp;#x2F;chinese-airlines-won-t-be-bi...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>hammock</author><text>&amp;gt;“All rides in the program will have an autonomous specialist on board for now” This tells me that we’re still a long way&lt;p&gt;Did you expect something different? I can&amp;#x27;t really see a boardroom writing a roadmap that goes straight from&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  test rides (no passengers) with a backup driver onboard
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
to&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  actual rides with passengers - no backup driver onboard
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
with no in-between steps.</text></item><item><author>MontyCarloHall</author><text>“All rides in the program will have an autonomous specialist on board for now”&lt;p&gt;This tells me that we’re still a long way from full level 4 (and certainly level 5) autonomy in a busy city like San Francisco. The edge cases requiring immediate human attention are still too frequent for the human safety driver to be remote, as is the case in Phoenix.&lt;p&gt;Also, just a reminder that Waymo in Phoenix is nowhere close to being level 5, since it is still heavily geofences and requires those remote safety monitors. I still think that true level 5 (i.e. ability to drive autonomously everywhere with zero human oversight with a safety record equivalent to the median human driver) requires AGI. Would love to be proven wrong!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>rudyfink</author><text>I think of that as a parachute-rigger solution (&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Parachute_rigger&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Parachute_rigger&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;p&gt;Historically, people packing parachutes could be randomly selected to jump with the parachute they had packed.</text></comment>
<story><title>Welcoming our first riders in San Francisco</title><url>https://blog.waymo.com/2021/08/welcoming-our-first-riders-in-san.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sandworm101</author><text>Middle steps:
(1) Board members use product to travel to board meetings.  (2) Board members use product as replacement for personal vehicles.  (3) Board members demand pay increases.&lt;p&gt;Back in 1999 the Chinese government announced that airline execs would be airborne at the changeover as reassurance that aircraft were safe from Y2K.  Like or hate them, the incentive logic was sound.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.wired.com&amp;#x2F;1999&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;y2k-in-china-caught-in-midair&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.wired.com&amp;#x2F;1999&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;y2k-in-china-caught-in-midair&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cbc.ca&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;science&amp;#x2F;chinese-airlines-won-t-be-bitten-by-y2k-bug-1.193052&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cbc.ca&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;science&amp;#x2F;chinese-airlines-won-t-be-bi...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>hammock</author><text>&amp;gt;“All rides in the program will have an autonomous specialist on board for now” This tells me that we’re still a long way&lt;p&gt;Did you expect something different? I can&amp;#x27;t really see a boardroom writing a roadmap that goes straight from&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  test rides (no passengers) with a backup driver onboard
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
to&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;  actual rides with passengers - no backup driver onboard
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
with no in-between steps.</text></item><item><author>MontyCarloHall</author><text>“All rides in the program will have an autonomous specialist on board for now”&lt;p&gt;This tells me that we’re still a long way from full level 4 (and certainly level 5) autonomy in a busy city like San Francisco. The edge cases requiring immediate human attention are still too frequent for the human safety driver to be remote, as is the case in Phoenix.&lt;p&gt;Also, just a reminder that Waymo in Phoenix is nowhere close to being level 5, since it is still heavily geofences and requires those remote safety monitors. I still think that true level 5 (i.e. ability to drive autonomously everywhere with zero human oversight with a safety record equivalent to the median human driver) requires AGI. Would love to be proven wrong!</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>whimsicalism</author><text>In Phoenix, people are being driven without a safety driver. They are doing these in between steps.</text></comment>