
Uber CEO says Uber and Alphabet are discussing working together on self-driving - aaggarwal
https://www.recode.net/2018/5/31/17390030/uber-ceo-dara-khosrowshahi-code-conference-interview
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mannykannot
The article is actually saying that Dara Khosrowshahi would like to talk to
Alphabet about this matter, which is not surprising given how Uber's own
project is going. There's no indication of enthusiasm for this on Alphabet's
part, however.

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heisenbit
I agree and even if these talks would be going on what are the chances that
Alphabet would be happy for him to go to the press at this stage?

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mannykannot
Good point - maybe Alphabet already passed up on this opportunity, and the
goal in this interview was to give the impression that Uber is doing something
about its automation problem.

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mdorazio
Another way of looking at this: after the Phoenix accident, Uber realized that
its own autonomous tech is woefully inadequate and years behind Waymo's, so
now they're trying to play nice to not get left behind.

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cfadvan
I think that everyone in this industry is also starting to realize that far
from a quick race to be first, this is actually the start of a long slog. With
the realization that full autonomy isn’t a few years, but at least a few
decades away, collaboration rather than throat-slitting becomes a more
sensible strategy.

~~~
dougmwne
I'd be very interested to hear you up unpack your prediction of "decades
away." It seems possible to predict technology developments for the next few
years, but I struggle to see how predicting decades away can have any evidence
or meaning. I think what people mean is "this isn't theoretically impossible
but no-one has any idea how to build it and it may in fact be impossible or
impractical." Tech that's decades away probablly shouldn't receive any
corporate r&d dollars at all.

Given how many billions are being currently spent on self driving, there's
going to be a lot of dissapointed investors if they've just been sold snake
oil, and anything decades out absolutely is snake oil in the corporate world.

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ghaff
Historically, big corporate R&D labs spent sizable sums on speculative
research that, in many cases, didn't amount to anything.

In the case of the auto manufacturers, subsets of autonomous driving are
interesting. If a car can truly be hands and eyes-off on highways (and the
tech for that is fairly close), that's a product that almost sells itself.

I'm much more skeptical about driverless cars doing arbitrary pickups and
dropoffs. I do think that anyone who is investing on the assumption that an
Uber will be able to offer that in a few years is going to be disappointed. It
will happen but not quickly with a few caveats like maybe fixed locations can
be established to simplify the problem.

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TillE
This is such a well-defined problem with clear constraints, it's not the kind
of R&D that can fail in the sense of a drug with unacceptable side effects or
a high-tech fighter jet which becomes an overpriced boondoggle. It's simple
navigation of paved, mapped roads with an array of sensors. Except perhaps for
really harsh weather, even the edgiest edge cases are pretty limited in scope.

The absolute worst case scenario, within a couple years, is that you have
limited deployment in favorable conditions, with fail-safes and human
operators ready to take over remotely.

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robotresearcher
You understated the constraints and missed the most important one: _almost
never, ever kill anyone_. Driving around is relatively easy. Driving around
and almost never killing anyone is much harder.

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mrguyorama
You have to do better than not killing anyone. Every single accident,
including ones not your fault, will be used against you to argue that your
systems are death traps. You can't injure people, or cause property damage, or
even be rear ended. You have to produce cars that are able to drive so
defensively, that insurance is no longer necessary

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gfo
I'd really prefer any company working on self-driving technology collaborate
anyway. I don't see it as important for getting users on the platforms as
suggested in the article or even as a 'business' decision.

As we begin adopting automated driving, there comes a point where it's helpful
to have the systems communicating intentions with each other; part of the
issue with driving manually is the uncertainty over other drivers' intent.
Using automation and letting drivers talk in this manner would likely reduce
crashes down to manual driver fault and significant bugs or sensor errors as
it's adopted more. This isn't what they're after at the moment, but
encouraging collaboration in this space could make that an easier path moving
forward.

Not to mention, a single accepted protocol with higher adoption could allow a
single car to gain much more valuable data beyond what's in their immediate
vicinity, but could tell them what's going on nearby and even real-time
traffic data along the route.

As for now, imagine the years of experience each technology has being combined
into one super-driver. I know it's not that simple - each company may be
representing the data differently - but I don't expect that to be an issue
that couldn't resolve itself. Couldn't this significantly push this tech
forward? (Note: I don't have the answer, this is my suspicion. I'm hoping some
discussion could highlight situations where this has had a bad result, if
any).

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ProAm
Let's let Uber fold and just let Google take the reins here.

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jacksmith21006
Would keep more people alive.

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johanj
Direct link to recode.net: [https://www.recode.net/2018/5/31/17390030/uber-
ceo-dara-khos...](https://www.recode.net/2018/5/31/17390030/uber-ceo-dara-
khosrowshahi-code-conference-interview)

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jxub
And so it looks that the development of the autonomous cars will ironically be
collaborative instead of autonomous...

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JasonFruit
'Autonomous' is an adjective.

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repsilat
So is "mobile". It used to be awkward and embarrassing when someone said
things like "focusing on mobile" but then we got used to it I guess. The same
might happen here (though "driverless" will probably be more common than
"autonomous".)

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JasonFruit
I don't have to like it. I am still bothered by "mobile", "solar", "nuclear"
(or "nookyular"), and the rest. I'm willing to die on this hill — or to stand
on it, waving my arms, showing that one man at least cares about the English
language.

