
George Hotz: Fully Self-Driving Cars Are a Scam and Silicon Valley Needs to Die - vasco
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nnh5TQ60hek
======
jmiskovic
As much as I'd like self-driving tech, the price seems too high. High
resolution urban area maps of that need constant updating? Built by and
controlled by multi-national IT corporations known for no regard for privacy?
How about we pour that research and investments into bettering the public
transportation? Would be good enough for most people.

~~~
kevingadd
A massive barrier to this is that people generally seem unhappy with the fact
that public transit means they need to sit next to other members of the
public. Rightly so, to a degree - our fellow humans can be quite rude or
unsightly or dangerous at times, and most of us have probably done some shitty
things in public by accident a few times. So if you offer them a pipe-dream of
private automated transit instead, that's a lot more appealing than dropping 8
figures on slight improvements to BART or their local buses.

The area I grew up in had a light rail network that was supposed to expand to
my community college within 3 years, and in practice it took over 10. One
source of delay was that communities rejected the expansion, and one reason
among others was a claim that Local Crime would 'ride the rails' to their
previously quiet neighborhoods. Sometimes people don't want to share space
with their neighbors.

~~~
baby
the failure of public transport in the US is not a good argument against
public transport in general due to its large success elsewhere in the world.

~~~
tyfon
We have excellent public transportation where I live (Norway), but after I got
kids I needed a car. It's not just about public transportation being a
success.

We try to use public transportation as much as possible but sometimes it just
isn't possible. I can't carry 4 bags of groceries on a public bus while having
two kids in tow after an 8 hour work day.

The focus should be making the cars pollute less not remove them (except in
city centres where they do not belong).

~~~
mattlutze
Having a bunch of people and things to move around is a good reason for a
vehicle, because you're using it. Being a single occupant in a midsized
something filling up roads is what folks are generally concerned with first.

Congestion is a big issue and until cars are 0 emissions, putting more on the
road will bring more pollution. It will also mean building more roads, which
further increases our environmental impact.

Best to both improve that through regulation and industry response, and
actively work on expanding multi-modal mass transit options. The goal should
still be fewer cars overall along with fantastically desirable other transport
options -- we should (in a good way) want you to be disappointed when you
_have_ to get in your car instead of taking the mass transit options.

------
kevingadd
Nice to see Hotz own up to his own hubris here and share what seems like a
pretty level-headed opinion on the space after trying to put his money where
his mouth was.

EDIT: Having watched further in the video I think the best point he makes here
is that the cost part of it simply doesn't make sense - the cars are still
super expensive and good level 4 autonomy relies on things like carefully
generated, high-precision map data that can easily become inaccurate and also
are very expensive to produce.

~~~
zouhair
Can you imagine the guy that invented the locomotive that told investors that
it is the future you only need to build specific rails for them to work and
you have to build miles and miles of them and no one can use those rails as
they are meant only for trains and you also need to maintain them.

~~~
gmueckl
Rails and train cars were relatively old technology. By the time the steam
locomotive was invented, there were already horse drawn trains [1]. So your
example is not quite backed by history.

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_horse-
drawn_railways](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_horse-drawn_railways)

~~~
zouhair
Even now we have a lot of maps, roads, electronics and much more already made.

------
tim333
That was quite an entertaining video. He mostly argues the level 4/5 driver
free taxi type stuff is a scam because it won't work in the near term. He's a
launching an open source android phone based driver assist system that tracks
the drivers eyes to check they are paying attention to the road also.

------
tanilama
First statement is not a secret to many people who remotely works in the so
called AI industry.

Second one is an opinion.

Overall, Hotz is a celebrity, he says stuff, some of them are right some of
them doesn't matter. As regards to this interview, not a lot information out
there really.

------
superkuh
He's not wrong. Self driving cars will (at least for the foreseeable next 20
years) be stuck to operating in simple non-changing environments like the arid
southwest. They simply cannot work anywhere there is snow.

------
ackbar03
I always thought hotz was cooler as an actual hacker in the old sense. He's
got that rogue spirit

~~~
rvz
That’s the big age old irony of this orange site. Some say Musk is cool and
others say ’Hotz was cooler’ but both say outlandish claims and yet still
create something real which is better than vapourware. However, for drive
assistance software today? Tesla and Commai are both still considered as
unsafe.

Realistically, the industry is still immature and now at the assisted-driving
level and unfortunately some users still conflate that with ‘self-driving’ due
to the industry’s own hype of achieving level 4 self-driving capabilities.
Tesla and Comma.ai directly tell the user to keep their eyes on the road,
whereas the others do not, yet Tesla drivers keep getting killed. The same is
possible for Comma.ai and I would consider both software as unsafe for now,
but those who don’t instruct the user to keep their eyes on the wheel as very
unsafe.

But they are at least aware of this. Some users however...

------
solarkraft
I like that he makes an "i use arch btw" joke during the interview.

------
craftoman
Just because you failed completing a project doesn't mean everyone else's
doing it wrong. I know sometimes it's really frustrating but that's life.

------
earthshot
I’m old enough to remember when geohot was loudly claiming that he’d cracked
full self driving but was shutting it down without selling the assets because
the government is mean.

It was hilarious to see most of HN treating that obvious nonsense as credible.
This is hilarious too, because of the context around his previous claims.

~~~
BigBubbleButt
> It was hilarious to see most of HN treating that obvious nonsense as
> credible.

I remember it very differently. Maybe there was more than one post on HN, but
it seemed like everybody was eviscerating him and basically calling him a
fraud.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12840368](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12840368)

In fact, going through those comments now (I've only skimmed) I can't find
anyone actually defending the guy.

~~~
IshKebab
Yeah but check when he first started:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12492566](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12492566)

> Surprised with all the skepticism here. It's not perfect but this guy is a
> hardware, software, and AI genius and this could very well speed up the self
> driving race by several years or even more

> Jailbreaking cars now? Good for him! Can't wait to see this in action.

> Go Go GeoHotz!

> Pretty exciting for sure.

> If it really works like they say and can be added to any car, that's pretty
> huge. I'd definitely buy one. I wonder what it takes to install it ...

There are lots of skeptical comments too - maybe 50-50. I think it was more
positive on Reddit though.

~~~
BigBubbleButt
There's a difference between when geohot made an announcement that he's
working on a hard problem like you referenced, and when he said he'd solved
the problem (which would _trivially_ make him a billionaire) but just couldn't
be bothered to deal with regulation like OP mentioned.

------
mothsonasloth
George makes the economic points but like most hackers/devs fails to see the
humanist point (something I am learning to appreciate).

Forget about the big money, Elon Musks and the "world-changing" tech. Behind
it all is a dangerous precedent to automate away our daily lifes, byte by
byte.

10 years ago I had instant messenger, basic satnav, email, holiday bookings,
price comparisons and online shopping.

Nowadays I have dating algorithms, live satnav, home automation, voice
assistants, smart motorways, groceries and weekly sundries handled by amazon
prime, cars collecting telemetry on my driving habits.

These things are influencing or completely removing our brains need to make
decisions.

Through this, comes an easier, safer or happier life, however you have to
think, at what cost?

Do we become dependant on machines and evolve towards this "singularity" that
we hear mentioned around here often. Or do we become willing hostages to our
technology?

~~~
kick
I agree with Hotz, but self-driving cars are an unambiguous win. Way more
people die from car crashes than most ways to die; there's a moral imperative
to take away control from humans in that regard.

Dating apps are easy: don't use them. Bars still exist. Voice assistants are
pretty easy to not use.

Cars are not, because cars aren't consensual. Kids don't get a choice as to
whether or not they get to ride in cars. You take a bike, regulators have made
it intentionally dangerous for people on bicycles so cars could continue to
rule the world. Go for a walk and most sidewalks are in terrible condition
outside of a few areas in the United States. Public transit has been
systematically defunded, partially because of cars. In America, most people
have no choice.

Automate away, there's plenty to think about.

~~~
mothsonasloth
>Way more people die from car crashes than most ways to die; there's a moral
imperative to take away control from humans in that regard.

How many self driving cars are on the road vs. non autonomous cars on the
road?

As a software developer, we are taught to look at the root cause. In your case
you are saying the human is the root cause but that is too shallow.

The root cause, is why a human was in that situation in the first place -
stress, crazy work hours, car maintenance etc.

~~~
kick
_The root cause, is why a human was in that situation in the first place -
stress, crazy work hours, car maintenance etc._

All three of these are solved with self-driving cars. The human is the least-
manageable part of the equation. Take out the human, stress doesn't matter.
Them drinking doesn't matter. Them having crazy work hours or whatever excuse
they'll use doesn't matter. With proper self-driving cars, them being
conscious eventually doesn't matter.

This is one of the few problems that can actually be solved with a mostly-
technical (including law as tech, because law is programming) solution: take
away control of vehicles from humans.

The root cause is that humans are not good at handling motor vehicles going at
high speeds repetitively on average. There are too many factors to cover. It's
40,000 people dead and millions injured in the United States every year over
something that can be mitigated.

~~~
mothsonasloth
Ok my guy, lets see how this rolls (excuse the pun) in 20 years from now when
my Bezos Mk2 hydrocell vehicle running Microsoft Car SP3 has a glitch in its
LIDAR driver...

~~~
kick
Congratulations, you picked proprietary software and bet on LIDAR, then died
because of those choices. The death count is still significantly lower than it
was in 2020, and life is considered better for most.

For a serious answer: even if the life-threatening crash-caused-by-glitch rate
is 1/10,000, which is unlikely on its own, that's still giving you better
results than human drivers, where the rate of death (keep in mind, deaths, not
injuries) is around 12/100,000 drivers.

------
axegon_
I can't watch the video atm but I'm incredibly perplexed as to why the hype
around self driving cars began in the first place. To me, even if it does
become a common technology at some point, it's nothing more than a "hey-check-
this-cool-thing" gimmick. For end consumers anyway. If my car has full self
driving capabilities, I can't see myself using it more than once every 3
years.

~~~
kevingadd
The idea of not having to drive to get somewhere is really appealing if it
doesn't involve having to wait at a bus stop and sit next to a stranger on the
bus. People in many environments - especially silicon valley - spend a ton of
time commuting every day, either in their own car, on a corporate shuttle or
on public transit. So if you tell them they can sit in the privacy of their
own car while it takes them to/from work and relax, you have their attention.

Of course, that doesn't mean it's actually a good idea and it doesn't mean
it's possible - but it's a seductive idea if you're someone who hates
commuting, and many people really hate it because it eats up a chunk of their
life.

~~~
baby
I'm one of the people commuting 3 hours per day in the bay.

I don't know what's the solution but right now the problem with commuting with
a shuttle is not solved by replacing it with a car, the roads are super bumpy
and the traffic is bad.

What I wish was for a subway to take me from SF to south bay. No traffic,
stable, fast.

~~~
nullc
No snark intended, but 3 hours per day is a tremendous expenditure of your
time... is that really preferable to working close to where you live or living
close to where you work?

Other than a brief period where I was commuting between Florida and DC I've
never lived more than a 15 minute drive from my office (or worked from
home)... I can't imagine sinking 3 hours a day into a commute. There are
plenty of decisions in my life that I'd make differently in a redo, but the
commute distance decisions are not among them.

~~~
kevingadd
It's prohibitively expensive - if possible at all - to live close to the main
campus of a company like Google or Facebook. If you're lucky your commute is
maybe 30 minutes, if you're unlucky it's much longer. Self-inflicted harm,
perhaps, but if you're already working there cutting down your commute
basically means you need to quit your job because most teams won't let you go
full/heavy WFH.

~~~
nullc
Up until a couple years ago I used to live within a very short commute from
the google campus. My rent was ~$2000/month for a two bedroom apartment in
Mountain View. I can't imagine that SF is much cheaper.

~~~
baby
Can you really get this in MV now? There's no way you would even get a one bed
room with this money in SF.

~~~
nullc
Yes. Older buildings, nothing fancy. Availability of 2br seems kinda tight so
you won't get a great price if you're in a hurry.

Sunnyvale is even less expensive.

