There is nothing technical about the replies, nothing hacker about them. Just, "I am very smart" comments.
Exactly. The top comment in this thread is just listing some complex scenarios they've encountered and then assuming Waymo haven't thought about it. In reality, there is already evidence of Waymo navigating complex situations and plenty of published research in those areas.
What I do believe is that there are tons of edge cases, and diminishing returns with trying to solve for all of them. And, I would guess that it will take quite a while (the decade I mentioned) before self driving technology is capable of making >95% of trips autonomously without extra issues that most human drivers would handle.
Additionally, I think there are moral and comfort issues with AI that need to be addressed. This is speculation, but Waymo likely aims for the appearance of safety and tunes things to be overly cautious. That is at odds with some of the dynamics of driving in NYC, where you need to be assertive and maybe even risky, and I'm curious to see how that will play out.
I can see how it sounds like I'm just shitting on this tech. My intention was more to describe that self-driving in NYC is maybe even a harder problem than it sounds, and possibly an overreaction to the hype about this technology. I think about it pretty often when I'm driving or biking and encounter situations that seem very difficult for a computer to navigate.
NYC is definitely a harder problem. But Waymo's progress so far has been impressive and they have really solid technology from what I have followed all these years, so I'm pretty confident they can reasonably crack NYC. Your comment just sounded a bit too pessimistic for me is all :)
How do you keep these maps up to date in NYC when lane markings, construction zones, traffic flow, construction and a variety of other things are constantly changing on a daily basis? How do you deal with the ubiquitous "traffic cops" who stand in the center of many intersections and arbitrarily wave traffic in different directions?
As for traffic cops, here's a video of Waymo obeying hand signals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OopTOjnD3qY. No reason this couldn't be replicated in NYC as well with some improvements.
This is an incredibly idealized version of "traffic cop" that doesn't exist in NYC. Here's an extremely well disciplined example of a traffic cop in NYC. They don't stand in one place, they are constantly challenged by traffic from all direction, they sometimes stop certain lanes, and tell other ones to go, with all sorts of gestures. And this is only a 4 way intersection without much traffic, and without any construction or significant pedestrian traffic. Its one thing to program an AI car that can drive under idealized, predictable conditions and entirely another to drive in the chaos of the real world, especially NYC.
These are all good points, which is why I want to see this test happen. Maybe Waymo can handle it, maybe not -- but this is very useful info to measure the state of the art of a market leader (which I assume Waymo to be).
And yet, I get the feeling just by being straight about it, you also come close to breaking some HN guidelines about not insinuating bad intentions, etc… I do think you have done it in a way that is pretty reasonable though, so hopefully it's not a problem.
Sure wish it was not this way. One, I wish it wasn't all about "I am very smart" and two, I also wish we could talk about this stuff without risking being reprimanded.
To be clear, I don't think the posters have bad intentions or in other words making such comments intentionally. It's just how any community evolves over the time if conscious efforts to curtail discussions heading in such directions are not made.
Doesn't look like most people even bothered reading the article. They admit it has very little to do with trying to actually give rides or autonomously drive in the NYC area, but rather to map and get data on how the cars perform in different weather conditions.
Hopefully this announcement also means they are finding the testing in SF very useful and are accelerating their expansion