
Our road to self-driving vehicles - smaili
https://www.uber.com/blog/our-road-to-self-driving-vehicles/
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jjeaff
I love how they disingenuously imply that their end game is to have tons of
self driving cars with a highly trained (and presumably highly paid) driver
sitting in the driver's seat.

In reality, those drivers are there temporarily until the tech is good enough
to phase them out (obviously). My guess is that the cars will be ready for
full driverless before "driverless with backup driver" becomes big enough for
anyone to notice.

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erikpukinskis
Those drivers will provide value add services. Which is more valuable: a
coffee shop or a coffee shop with a person in it? Why would you think a mobile
coffee shop would be any different?

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ethbro
Not sure this is the best analogy. Here, the car is the coffee.

So to use those nouns, it's more like comparing a cup of coffee vs a cup of
coffee with a person in it....

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guiambros
Curiously, the source code @1:44 [1] is pretty visible [2].

Seems a Flask app in a file called hexstub.py, created by dennisz.

[1] [https://youtu.be/27OuOCeZmwI?t=104](https://youtu.be/27OuOCeZmwI?t=104)

[2] [https://i.imgur.com/x4SJmJe.png](https://i.imgur.com/x4SJmJe.png)

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programmarchy
Neat. Looks like some source from their iOS app on the left, too.

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CapitalistCartr
We've had "Johnny cabs" for decades now in science fiction. People are clear
on the concept. Once they work cleanly, smoothly, safely, I predict really
driverless cabs will become the norm in half a decade. They need to look,
feel, and be safe is all. Cabs don't have to handle all terrain; they can be
constrained to known, plotted streets.

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joe_the_user
So, from the video, I get the idea that a "self-driving car" is going to still
have someone behind the wheel (a more-qualified someone than otherwise, it
seems) so the self-driving part to ... increase safety? make you good about
automation? allow more videos to be made? ...

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sillysaurus3
I was wondering that too. I think they're the designated scapegoat. If
anything goes wrong, they get the blame.

Pretty smart. It sidesteps some of the moral questions by punting.

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taneq
Exactly. We have this weird cultural fixation on having "someone" to blame.
What's weird is that if it's a human that made the mistake, that's somehow OK.
We give humans a free pass. "To err is human", after all. Shit happens.

But if an algorithm screws up and kills someone, that's unacceptable. We start
imagining ways that a human would _not_ have failed in the same scenario. We
decry "killer robots" and "cold unfeeling machines". Even if that algorithm
has already saved 99 lives from being lost to stupid, tired, drunk,
inattentive humans, that 100th life is somehow more important.

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lefstathiou
It's a little sad that nobody at Uber spent 10 seconds reading past the first
sentence in this post:

"At Uber, we’ve got lots of people helping to get our hundreds of our self-
driving cars out on the road. "

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fowardslash
I find this all very jarring.

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jakeogh
I hear ya. I'm not worried. People tend to underestimate how intelligent
humans are and drastically overestimate how "smart" pre-programmed cars are
going to be. The reality is, like "free money" it's also a control system, and
most of us already know it. Consider the near total rejection of camera
tickets when it's put to a vote. There's billions of $ in hype. I'll happily
bet against it.

Something that concerns me slightly more is when we start growing
'subservient' neurons to drive us around. They will be smart enough to make it
work, but the closed and connected 'trusted' silicon surrounding them would be
a problem.

A short term problem is new drivers might become dependent and not learn the
necessary skills... like pilots forgetting how to land.... but I doubt it. Gen
Z is turning out just fine.

Note I live in one of the most freedom appreciating places on Earth, if you
are in one of the nanny states that has already hooked the population on
public transportation then all bets are off and ya, you should worry.

