I had a look at his predictions re: self-driving cars. He clearly invested quite a lot of thought went into these because he makes a lot of subtle distinctions. However, one of his predictions (probably the one that you're referring to) is this:

> A driverless "taxi" service in a major US city with arbitrary pick and drop off locations, even in a restricted geographical area.

> Not Earlier Than 2032

This is odd because isn't Waymo doing just that in Phoenix with a general release date of 2019? I checked the source because I wanted to verify that it says "a city" and not "any city".

I think his note clarifies it pretty well: "This is what Uber, Lyft, and conventional taxi services can do today."

What I've seen about Waymo (and maybe I've missed something) is very hazy. And it's not out yet. I'll be very surprised if they go from "operating in secret" to "completely competitive with Lyft" in one jump. My guess is that there will be significant limitations for whatever their first release is.

Waymo is available right now, and has been for almost a year, to normal non-employee citizens, in Phoenix, albeit behind a private invite system. And as mentioned above, it'll become an open beta by 2019. Also, most of the limitation at this point has to do with regulation, they'd be in many more places if not for that.

That is much much closer than 2035.

The question is, does it qualify as 100% driverless? I don't think so. Waymo service is partially teleoperated.

Do you have a proof for that? Waymo is actually the only car that explicitly does not allow teleoperating. They specifically made this decision to bypass the risk of being hacked and taken over.

The best a teleoperator can do is suggest a path to a car that is confused, and the car decides if the path is a good idea. We also don't know how often that's used. If it's rare enough, does it even matter? Does it not make it driverless if once in a while they need a little nudge?

That's like saying your car isn't a real car because 1% of the time you need to take it to the mechanic.

I think you're correct on the first part; "It does have humans in remote operations centers who can communicate with passengers and guide the car in complicated situations—like a cop sending cars the wrong way down a one-way street—but they never take actual control of the driving; it’s the car’s job to stay safe." https://www.wired.com/story/waymo-self-driving-car-service-p...

But yes, if a human has to get involved, I think it's correct to say it's not self-driving. In particular, what Wired describes is either SAE Level 3 or Level 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-driving_car#Levels_of_dri...

Until it's Level 5, it's not really driverless.

Precisely, not Level 5. They are hiring for their remote operations through Adecco: https://www.adeccousa.com/jobs/self-driving-vehicle-operator... . This is a job where you sit in front of the display(s) with steering wheel in your hand and foot on the pedal. Remote driving - pure and simple. Not very scalable.

Yes, they are operating in secret right now, and are extremely hazy about what "operating" means. And they have said they'll be in open beta by 2019. But it wouldn't be the first time that a software project is late.

Where did you read 2019? All the sources that I can find say that the initial commercial service launch will be this year.

Google has promissed "release dates" as early as 2017 in the past. They have managed to keep exactly zero of those. Not only have they pushed back their deadlines again and again, but the scope of their promisses has also been reduced steadily. Let's wait and see what they can actually make work reliably next year.

>until 2035 at the earliest

Could be correct. I think likely it is correct. BUT, everyone thought we still wouldn't be winning games of Go by now. So could be wrong.