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Posted by xnx 13 hours ago

The Waymo World Model(waymo.com)
805 points | 487 commentspage 6
xvxvx 10 hours ago|
[flagged]
devmor 13 hours ago||
Wow, interesting timing for this PR blast considering the admission in the Senate Commerce Committee hearing. Not transparent at all!
WarmWash 12 hours ago|
What was the admission? That they use cheap labor to provide the waymo clarity when it is confused? That has been known for a long time.
turtlesdown11 12 hours ago||
How many Filipinos, who do not have US drivers licenses, does it take to drive this new model?
add-sub-mul-div 13 hours ago||
"Autonomous"

https://cybernews.com/news/waymo-overseas-human-agents-robot...

Rebelgecko 13 hours ago||
My understanding is that support is basically playing an RTS (point and click), not a 1P driving game. Which makes sense, if they were directly controlling the vehicles they'd put support in central America for better latency, like the food delivery bot drivers
jonas21 13 hours ago||
Yeah. Waymo described how this works a couple of years ago:

https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response/

turtlesdown11 12 hours ago||
Right, I totally believe Waymo, just like I totally believed Amazon's checkout-less stores.
Rebelgecko 3 hours ago||
What's your theory for how it works?
TulliusCicero 12 hours ago|||
This isn't news, they've always acknowledged that they have remote navigators that tell the cars what to do when they get stuck or confused. It's just that they don't directly drive the car.
tamimio 6 hours ago||
Yeah I have some videos of these drivers in action, I think the sensors are as assistance and but not the whole story, so yeah there’s models lidars etc etc but human factor is there, unfortunately this means we should see soon many cobitics are teleopetated remotely from India and Philippines and the likes to satisfy the greed of these companies to pay peanuts to operate them.
smcl 11 hours ago||
The Waymo driving model: hire some guys in Philippines: https://futurism.com/advanced-transport/waymos-controlled-wo...
ASalazarMX 11 hours ago||
This is not false, but gives the wrong idea that foreigners are driving them in real time.

> After being pressed for a breakdown on where these overseas operators operate, Peña said he didn’t have those stats, explaining that some operators live in the US, but others live much further away, including in the Philippines.

> “They provide guidance,” he argued. “They do not remotely drive the vehicles. Waymo asks for guidance in certain situations and gets an input, but the Waymo vehicle is always in charge of the dynamic driving tasks, so that is just one additional input.”

andreyk 10 hours ago|||
This is quite misleading... From the article:

“When the Waymo vehicle encounters a particular situation on the road, the autonomous driver can reach out to a human fleet response agent for additional information to contextualize its environment,” the post reads. “The Waymo Driver [software] does not rely solely on the inputs it receives from the fleet response agent and it is in control of the vehicle at all times.” [from Waymo's own blog https://waymo.com/blog/2024/05/fleet-response/]

What's the problem with this?

ddalex 10 hours ago|||
Have you read the article ? The guys in the Philippines are providing high level executive indications, they don't drive remotely the car or have any low level control of the car.
themafia 11 hours ago||
Dig deep enough into any "AI" idea and you'll find the bottom end of the scam looks exactly like this.

We've simply relabeled the "Mechanical Turk" into "AI."

The rest is built on stolen copyrighted data.

The new corporate model: "just lie the government clearly doesn't give a shit anymore."

OGEnthusiast 13 hours ago|
What's going to happen to all the millions of drivers who will lose their job overnight? In a country with 100 million guns, are we really sure we've thought this through?
0x457 13 hours ago||
Yes, let's stop all progress and roll-back all automation to keep hypothetical angry people with guns happy.
Phenomenit 13 hours ago|||
Seems like a good description on current events.
runarberg 12 hours ago|||
Autonomous private cars is not the technological progress you think it is. We’ve had autonomous trains for decades, and while it provides us with a more efficient and cost effective public transit system, it didn’t open the doors for the next revolutionary technology.

Self driving cars is a dead end technology, that will introduce a whole host of new problems which are already solved with public transit, better urban planning, etc.

sekai 12 hours ago|||
> We’ve had autonomous trains for decades

Trains need tracks, cars - already have the infrastructure to drive on.

> Self driving cars is a dead end technology, that will introduce a whole host of new problems which are already solved with public transit, better urban planning, etc.

Self driving cars will literally become a part of public transit

runarberg 12 hours ago||
> Self driving cars will literally become a part of public transit

I’ve been hearing people say that for almost 15 years now. I believe it when I see it.

tanseydavid 11 hours ago||
>> I believe it when I see it.

I'm willing to wager that you might not actually believe it at that point either.

drewmate 11 hours ago||||
Unfortunately, many of our urban areas have already been planned (for better or worse) for cars and not the density that makes public transit viable. Autonomous cars will solve a host of problems for the old, young, mobility limited, and just about everyone else.

It will prove disruptive to the driving industry, but I think we’ve been through worse disruptions and fared the better for it.

xnx 11 hours ago||||
> Self driving cars is a dead end technology

I would be happy to bet on some strict definition of your claim.

pnut 12 hours ago|||
Nope. Humans are statistically fallible and their attention is too valuable to be obliged to a mundane task like executing navigation commands. Redesigning and rebuilding city transportation infrastructure isn't happening, look around. Also personal agency limits public transportation as a solution.
askl 11 hours ago|||
> Redesigning and rebuilding city transportation infrastructure isn't happening, look around.

The US already did it once (just in the wrong direction) by redesigning all cities to be unfriendly to humans and only navigable by cars. It should be technically possible to revert that mistake.

runarberg 12 hours ago|||
Unlike autonomous driving, public transit is a proven solution employed in thousands of cities around the world, on various scales, economies, etc.

> Redesigning and rebuilding city transportation infrastructure isn't happening, look around.

We have been redesigning and rebuilding city transportation infrastructure since we had cities. Where I live (Seattle) they are opening a new light rail bridge crossing just next month (first rail over a floting bridge; which is technologically very interesting), and two new rail lines are being planned. In the 1960s the Bay area completely revolutionized their transit sytem when they opened BART.

I think you are simply wrong here.

tanseydavid 11 hours ago||
>> In the 1960s the Bay area completely revolutionized their transit sytem when they opened BART.

66 years later we see California struggling terribly with implementation of a high-speed rail system -- where the placement/location of the infrastructure largely is targeted for areas far less dense than the Bay Area.

I don't think there is any single reason why this is so much more difficult now then it was in 1960 -- but clearly things have changed quite a lot in that time.

paxys 13 hours ago|||
Waymo has been operating since 2004 (22 years ago), and replacing drivers on the road will take many more decades. Nothing is happening "overnight".
skybrian 13 hours ago|||
If Waymo's history is any guide, it's not going to happen overnight. Even in San Francisco, their market share is only 20-30%.
8note 3 hours ago|||
this sounds like a major benefit.

i dont want my uber driver bragging anout how theyre going to shoot me before i get out of the car

sekai 12 hours ago|||
> What's going to happen to all the millions of drivers who will lose their job overnight? In a country with 100 million guns, are we really sure we've thought this through?

Same was said about electricity, or the internet.

password54321 11 hours ago||
People keep referencing history but this really is unprecedented. We are approaching singularity and many people will become obsolete in all areas. There are no new hypothetical jobs waiting on the horizon.
sroussey 11 hours ago|||
Reminds me of the history or radio and the absolute uproar that someone played a record on the radio rather than live performances!!
lanthissa 13 hours ago|||
same thing that happened during the industrial revolution, you pay enough of them to 'protect the law' vs the rest.
sigspec 13 hours ago|||
UBI or war, or both
bdangubic 3 hours ago|||
what did all the farmers do when the first tractors rolled into the fields?
VirusNewbie 13 hours ago|||
I don't think Uber goes out of business. There is probably a sweet spot for Waymo's steady state cars, and you STILL might want 'surge' capabilities for part time workers who can repurpose their cars to make a little extra money here and there.
gadflyinyoureye 13 hours ago||
Those are rookie numbers. The US has 400 million guns. https://www.theglobalstatistics.com/united-states-gun-owners...

As to the revolt, America doesn't do that any more. Years of education have removed both the vim and vigor of our souls. People will complain. They will do a TikTok dance as protest. Some will go into the streets. No meaningful uprising will occur.

The poor and the affected will be told to go to the trades. That's the new learn to program. Our tech overlords will have their media tell us that everything is ok (packaging it appropriately for the specific side of the aisle).

Ultimately the US will go down hill to become a Belgium. Not terrible, but not a world dominating, hand cutting entity it once was.

markvdb 13 hours ago|||
> Ultimately the US will go down hill to become a Belgium.

Sharing one's opinion in a respectful way is possible. Less spectacle, so less eyeballs, but worth it. Try it.

nubg 13 hours ago||
What's wrong with his comparison? He explained what he meant by "a Belgium".
tanseydavid 11 hours ago||
The entire side topic of guns and revolt seems misplaced in this thread.

The original Luddite movement arose in response to automation in the textile industry.

They committed violence. Violence was committed against them. All tragic events when viewed from a certain perspective.

My rhetorical question is this: did any of this result in any meaningful impedance of the "march of technological progress"?

bonsai_spool 13 hours ago|||
> Ultimately the US will go down hill to become a Belgium.

I'm curious why you say this given you start by highlighting several characteristics that are not like Belgium (to wit, poor education, political media capture, effective oligarchy). I feel there are several other nations that may be better comparators, just want to understand your selection.