[HN Gopher] GM's Cruise alleged to rely on human operators to ac... ___________________________________________________________________ GM's Cruise alleged to rely on human operators to achieve "autonomous" driving Author : midnightdiesel Score : 96 points Date : 2023-11-04 20:59 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com) | mlinhares wrote: | The title isn't news at all as every single trustworthy | autonomous driving solution MUST HAVE human operators somewhere | to take over but the actual article is a good summary of Cruise's | current situation and I'd guess the competition as well. | dventimi wrote: | Where is the article does it even support the title? I'll | reread it but I didn't see anything about human operators. | potatolicious wrote: | > _" Half of Cruise's 400 cars were in San Francisco when the | driverless operations were stopped. Those vehicles were | supported by a vast operations staff, with 1.5 workers per | vehicle. The workers intervened to assist the company's | vehicles every 2.5 to five miles, according to two people | familiar with is operations. In other words, they frequently | had to do something to remotely control a car after receiving | a cellular signal that it was having problems."_ | | Title of the post should be edited though since it's not the | headline of the piece and this information, while | interesting, isn't the main thrust of the article. | Animats wrote: | That's a terrible disengagement rate. Cruise claimed in | 2020 "Cruise, for comparison, clocked 831,040 miles with a | disengagement rate of 0.082 (per 1000 miles)" [1] | Something's not right here. | | [1] https://www.engadget.com/2020-02-27-waymo- | disengagement-cali... | AlotOfReading wrote: | Companies measure multiple disengagement rates for | different purposes. The DMV numbers are usually safety | rate numbers, as in "if a human hadn't intervened there | may have been an accident or near miss". The specifics | vary company-to-company, and they'll have a large | document somewhere laying out exactly what the criteria | are. The numbers in the article are some other metric, | though I have no idea what. I'm a bit skeptical that it's | the average over their entire ODD, given that it's much | higher than my own experiences and most of their vehicles | were running around the outer city at night, where they | seemingly did okay. | | It could reflect some particular ODD (e.g. downtown at | rush hour) where the vehicles didn't do nearly as well, | or something else entirely. | creer wrote: | It's buried pretty deep all the way at the end. | KennyBlanken wrote: | I thought HN very strictly required the title to be the | original article's title unless the title was really, really | bad? | donsupreme wrote: | > staff intervened to assist Cruise's vehicles every 2.5 to | five miles | dventimi wrote: | https://archive.ph/2023.11.04-050448/https://www.nytimes.com... | haltist wrote: | It's not an allegation. It's the same as using human feedback for | tuning large language models. There are no autonomous cars | currently regardless of what is written on the marketing | brochures. In various "emergency" situations the cars phone home | and ask a human operator to take over the controls. | throwaway5959 wrote: | The latency on that has to be massive. | jonhohle wrote: | Why? UAVs are piloted remotely, video games are played | remotely with sub-100ms latency. | | Getting a remote driver connected might a while, but | afterwards it seems like a mostly solved (in practice) | problem. | notahacker wrote: | UAVs don't have to deal with traffic (the thought of | driving a vehicle with the latency and intermittent | connectivity of my drone horrifies me) and when someone | dies in a video game they respawn... | pests wrote: | No lag compensation. Extremely server-authoritative. | throwaway5959 wrote: | I wasn't talking about signal latency, I was talk about the | time it took for an operator to sign on and take control. | haltist wrote: | It's good enough for the routes that Cruise uses in the city. | SkyPuncher wrote: | It might not actually matter. Since the car can operate | autonomously already, the operator doesn't necessarily need | to literally drive the car. They might simply need to hop in | to verification of actions in unusual situations. | | I'm imagining a situation where a car comes across a parked | truck on a one-way road (common in cities). A human operator | comes in the loop to ensure that it's actually safe to switch | lanes and pass. Check for things like emergency vehicles, | unusual pedestrians, etc. They don't need to literally take | the wheel, just confirm that the vehicle can take a specific | action. | hartator wrote: | There is an emergency every 2-5 miles? | alkonaut wrote: | That sounds pretty low if it's city driving or poor | conditions. I know some of the trial cities are basically | easy mode (wide streets, almost never snows..) but still. | KennyBlanken wrote: | First off: not even close. Waymo has a disengagement rate | of 0.076 per 1,000 miles. | | Second: You're shifting the goalposts from the grandparent | comment's assertion that these interventions are to be | expected in an "emergency", when the frequency of the | interventions shows they're clearly not "emergency" | interventions but part of normal operation. | l33t7332273 wrote: | > It's the same as using human feedback for tuning large | language models | | It isn't remotely the same. This would be like if human | operators typed some of chatGPTs answers | haltist wrote: | OK, you must know more than I do about how human feedback is | used for tuning large language models. | ra7 wrote: | This is completely incorrect. Remote operators cannot "take | over controls" at all and hence cannot help in any "emergency" | i.e. safety critical situation (e.g. preventing a crash). All | they can do is _assist_ the vehicle with things drawing a path | to get around a parked vehicle, instructing it to do a multi- | point turn when it's stuck and so on. | | What the article says is that Cruise vehicles need some sort of | assistance every 2.5 to 5 miles (I highly doubt this number is | accurate). Not that they're getting into emergency situations | that frequently. | haltist wrote: | Do you work at Cruise? | ra7 wrote: | No. | haltist wrote: | Then you wouldn't know if I was completely incorrect or | not. | ra7 wrote: | I do because I know self driving companies have talked | about how remote operations work. It doesn't involve | taking control of the vehicle. | | Here's a Waymo engineer explaining how they can't | joystick a car: | https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/s/2ujFLZoLbo | | And here is Zoox's video about their teleoperations: | https://youtu.be/NKQHuutVx78?si=4PDnG0gQm6lEnp9v | | No reason to believe Cruise is doing any different. If | you have evidence of the contrary, please share it. | haltist wrote: | So you are 100% certain that remote operators can not | take over the car? | ra7 wrote: | Based on what I know, yes. Why would they want to do it | with the latencies involved? It's not a reliable | solution, so it's not used in any safety critical path. | haltist wrote: | > In addition to allowing emergency crews to access and | move vehicles, Cruise says that it is also providing its | own remote "assistance advisors" the ability to | conditionally route its Chevrolet Bolts. This means that | if law enforcement directs Cruise to route its vehicles | away from an emergency scene, those advisors will | maneuver the cars in a way that satisfies the request. | The AV provider also says that it has enhanced the | ability of these remote operators to clear a scene, | should an issue arise.[1] | | 1: https://www.thedrive.com/news/cruises-solution-to- | robotaxis-... | ra7 wrote: | Can you explain how this supports your assertions? | Because this doesn't say they can take over control of | the vehicle or prevent an emergency in the first place. | They clear the cars by plotting a new path. | haltist wrote: | You seemed very certain that I was completely incorrect. | My point is that you should consider that you might not | have all the details and if you haven't actually worked | at an AV company then you do not know what capabilities | are granted to remote operators in emergency and non- | emergency situations. | ra7 wrote: | You are still incorrect and unable to prove anything you | claimed. The burden of proof is on you when you | confidently say they can "take over controls". | haltist wrote: | I wasn't proving anything. The fact is there are articles | explaining that remote operators can take over the | controls in an emergency situation and that's exactly | what you were denying. In any case, this discussion has | run its course. You can continue to believe autonomous | cars can not be remotely controlled and I'll believe what | I wrote since I'm pretty sure it's correct. Every AV | company has emergency procedures for remote takeover and | it makes sense that they would because current ML tools | and techniques are not good enough for self-driving cars | and other kinds of autonomous applications. | ra7 wrote: | Hmm, no. No article explains remote operator can _take | over controls_. There 's an important distinction between | taking over and instructing a car what to do. You don't | seem to get that. | | > You can continue to believe autonomous cars can not be | remotely controlled and I'll believe what I wrote since | I'm pretty sure it's correct. Every AV company has | emergency procedures for remote takeover | | If your proof is "I believe these companies are lying" | and nothing else, then this is not a discussion worth | having. | pauljurczak wrote: | Here is a quote from https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDriving | Cars/comments/a0w3nb/way...: | | "Back in the Waymo office, a "remote assist driver" can | view the feeds of eight of the vehicle's external- and | internal-facing cameras and a dashboard showing what the | software is "thinking," such as if it is preparing to | stop, or the position of other objects around it. The | remote drivers can monitor multiple vehicles at once. If | a vehicle gets stuck, the remote assist driver can tell | the car how to drive around a construction site or some | other obstacle by using their computer to manually draw a | trajectory for the car to follow." | RobotToaster wrote: | Relevant XCKD https://xkcd.com/1897/ | batmansmk wrote: | Having to be remotely operated every 2.5 to 5 miles seem to | defeat most of the economics of self driving cars. | | Back of the napkin math, cars drive at an average of 18mph in | cities, so every 10-20min. Let's assume it takes over for 1min, | and that you need remote drivers not too far for ping purposes, | so at the same hourly rate. To guarantee you'll be able to take | over all demands immediately, due to the birthday paradox, you | end up needing like 30 drivers for 100 vehicles? It's not that | incredible of a tech... | spondylosaurus wrote: | Yeah, the driver-to-passenger ratio is still way less efficient | than a train or even a bus. | pj_mukh wrote: | Just FYI, Most autonomous car companies have backup drivers. | | Its the disengagement rate that drives the number of operators | you need per driver and therefore the economics. Theoretically, | this rate should be improving steadily at all these companies. | | Cruise seems to have a bad disengagement rate _right now_ ( | <5miles seems really low), but methinks nytimes might be | partaking in some obfuscation here. | | Waymo's should be much better already. Curious by how much | though. | cheriot wrote: | Wages can fall off a cliff within modest distances. To use | unemployment rate as a proxy for driver pay, Bakersfield, CA | 7.5% and San Francisco, CA 3.5%. Go a little farther to Los | Vegas 5.7% and one can avoid California's minimum wage. | batmansmk wrote: | The current taxi market is already structured that way: | drivers in SF aren't from SF. So no competitive advantage | there, or not significant enough to change the game yet. | SkyPuncher wrote: | > you end up needing like 30 drivers for 100 vehicles? | | What? That's literally insane compared to the current standard | of 100 drivers for 100 vehicles. They're literally reducing 70% | of the labor cost compared to uber/lyft/etc. | | It's pretty reasonable to expect that this will improve over | time as well. This is exactly how you want a startup to roll | out a new technology. | | * Build a pretty good base implementation | | * Do things that don't scale for the edge cases | | * Reduce the things that don't scale over time | | Even if they can only improve this to 10 for 100, that's still | a massive improvement. | | In my area, a small, rural city, this would literally be a game | changer. Right now, there's a single Uber within 15 minutes - | if I'm lucky. Meanwhile, cruise could drop a handful of car in | town, let them idle (at no cost), then pay a driver for a few | minutes of intervention every now and then. | | This also enables intercity transit. Most of that is highway | miles. Outside of the start and end, those are easy and | predictable. You could have dozens/hundreds of miles where | Cruise can compete with the cost of privately owned vehicles. | | Lastly, this makes it feasible for Cruise to reposition cars | between cities without huge costs. Currently, that's basically | impossible. Any human driven car needs to offer the driver a | ride in the opposite direction. | alex_young wrote: | https://web.archive.org/web/20231104212102/https://www.nytim... | causality0 wrote: | I thought being a social media moderator and being constantly | exposed to violence, racism, and child pornography was bad. | Having your whole day being a series of "quick, don't let these | people die!" moments seems like the worst tech job on earth. | wolverine876 wrote: | > Two months ago, Kyle Vogt, the chief executive of Cruise, | choked up as he recounted how a driver had killed a 4-year-old | girl in a stroller at a San Francisco intersection. "It barely | made the news," he said, pausing to collect himself. "Sorry. I | get emotional." | | ... | | > Cruise's board has hired the law firm Quinn Emanuel to | investigate the company's response to the incident, including its | interactions with regulators, law enforcement and the media. / | The board plans to evaluate the findings and any recommended | changes. Exponent, a consulting firm that evaluates complex | software systems, is conducting a separate review of the crash, | said two people who attended a companywide meeting at Cruise on | Monday. | | After the first [edit: the first performative charade, about | little girl in a stroller], why should we trust the second isn't | also a performative charade? What independence or credibility | does some hired law firm have, that the company itself does not? | How about using an independent third party? | wmf wrote: | Independent third parties don't work for free and if you pay | them (by your logic) they're no longer independent. The best | you can probably hope for is a government investigation. | wolverine876 wrote: | There are ways to do it. Non-profits don't need payment, | always, and their mission isn't profit. For example, | companies have worked with environmental non-profits on | internal climate change and other issues. | raldi wrote: | Can you explain what you mean by "after the first"? | simonw wrote: | Presumably they meant that the first paragraph they quoted | looked to them like a "performative charade". | wolverine876 wrote: | Yes. I'll clarify. | raldi wrote: | What would it have looked like if it had been sincere? | wolverine876 wrote: | The first thing? He wouldn't have mentioned it at all. He | would discuss the benefits and costs, without this now | cliche talking-point framing that they repeat | incessently. See my other comment for some quick | explanation of talking points. | ciabattabread wrote: | Cruise is trying to save itself from getting shut down by GM. I | guess it would look slightly better for optics if the GM board | hired them instead of Cruise's board. But it's the same money, | and it's GM's decision at the end. | pj_mukh wrote: | Hmm? I saw it exactly the opposite. A lot of people in the | autonomous driving industry are driven by exactly what Vogt | describes (little girl in the stroller etc.). See also Chris | Urmson of Waymo fame's TED talk, he talks about a similar | motivation[1]. | | Its a fallacy everyone conveniently ignores. The woman the | Cruise car ran over was actually first hit by a human driver | _who is still at-large_ , not a peep about him. The press kinda | just accepts this as the "cost of doing business". | | The way I see it, Vogt sincerely believes autonomous cars will | make things safer from the #2 killer of Children under 19 | (outside of guns) by a _wide_ margin [2] and therefore | accelerated the rollout past what was safe. I see no evidence | otherwise. | | [1] | https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_urmson_how_a_driverless_car_... | | [2] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmc2201761 | sroussey wrote: | We have become so desensitized to human deaths due to cars | even though those numbers are higher than violent acts of | terrorism et al that actually kill far fewer people each | year. | | Many people have to be killed AT ONCE for it to be news | worthy these days. | oldgradstudent wrote: | In the US on average, there's a fatality every ~85 million | miles driven, and that's an average that includes | motorcyclists without helmets, old unsafe unmaintained cars, | the worst roads, and adverse weather conditions. | | Cruise barely drove a few million miles with new modern cars, | good weather, the ability to choose optimal roads and | weather, and yet it already severely injured a pedestrian. | | We can argue about Cruise hitting the pedestrian, but | reportedly, the major injuries were caused by Cruise, after | reaching a complete stop, deciding it has to clear the road, | and dragging the screaming pedestrian and ending with the | axle over the pedestrian. | pj_mukh wrote: | I'm not sure why you're comparing fatality miles vs no- | fatality-accident-that-cruise-didn't-cause miles (i.e. we | have no idea how safe Cruise would be if there were no | human drivers on the road) | | That's not even close to a fair comparison. We just have to | admit that there isn't a fair comparison yet and everyone's | just got an axe to grind. | oldgradstudent wrote: | > I'm not sure why you're comparing fatality miles vs no- | fatality-accident-that-cruise-didn't-cause miles | | Because it's not that everyone ignores road fatalities, | it's just that cruise hasn't driven (in terms of miles | amd conditions) nowhere near to what might result in a | fatality with human drivers. | | Even then, in an incident they've not initiated, they've | unnecessariliy made an existing bad situation far far | worse. | | > (i.e. we have no idea how safe Cruise would be if there | were no human drivers on the road) | | Self-driving cars have to exist in a world with human | drivers, pedestrians, and the rest of reality. No one | cares how well Cruise does in a sterile environment. | | They should not only not cause incidents, they should | also not make existing incidents far worse because of | terrible decisions. | pj_mukh wrote: | " They should not only not cause incidents, they should | also not make existing incidents far worse because of | terrible decisions." | | Just FYI, it made this terrible decision because people | were mad at cruise for stopping in the middle of the road | to decide if it was safe to proceed. They were asked to | change that behavior and pull over and they did, this | time just dragging a human along. | | So yes let's set these absurdly high standards, while we | leave children to fend for themselves against human | drivers that have met non-existent standards on a | continual basis. | | But then let's actually leave the autonomous cars on the | road to test if they're actually meeting them. | | As you agreed, some statistic they figure out in a | sterile or simulation environment doesn't actually | matter. Let's put them back on the road.. | patrick451 wrote: | This is the problem with self driving cars. A human has | the awareness to pull over when it's appropriate and also | is able to recognize they just ran over somebody and it's | best to stop completely. But AVs seem to just have a dumb | if/else statement to control this behavior (yes, I know | it is _actually_ more complex than that, I work in this | space. But that is how they behave). | | Driving is infinitely complex. It's becoming increasingly | clear that the current approach to AVs not up to the | challenge. | pj_mukh wrote: | A humans awareness is not constant. It waxes and wanes, | even more so with cellphones in hand. | | The status quo is indefensible so setting up moving | unknowable goal posts for something to replace them | doesn't make sense to me. | | This particular problem can be easily solved by cameras | in the under carriage to make sure there aren't humans | shoved in there by other bad drivers. I wouldn't mind | making that a requirement across the board and moving on | to the next challenge the unpredictability of human | drivers throws at a repeatable robotic system. | | There is no evidence that there is a magical different | approach that will work better. | patrick451 wrote: | > A humans awareness is not constant. It waxes and wanes, | even more so with cellphones in hand. | | And even with supposedly* perfectly consistent awareness, | the automation still failed catastrophically. | | > The status quo is indefensible so setting up moving | unknowable goal posts for something to replace them | doesn't make sense to me. | | AVs are not better than the status quo, making them even | less defensible. A human would not have drug that poor | women for 20 feet because it was compelled to execute a | pull-over maneuver. Even an OCD psychopath knows better. | | * None of these things run _actual_ realtime operating | systems with fixed, predictable deadlines. Compute | requirements can vary wildly depending on the | circumstance. When compute spikes, consistency drops. A | robot can only way approximate constant awareness by | massively undersubcribing the compute budget. | pj_mukh wrote: | "AVs are not better than the status quo" | | We don't have the data to claim this, this confidently, | and the only way to get the data is let the experiment | keep running _in the real world_ (only place that | matters). | | There will obviously with holes in the awareness (literal | missing cameras under the car) _that 's what the testing | is for_. If someone says they can sit in a room, in a | simulation environment and come up with all potential | crazy things humans can do around autonomous cars, they | are lying to you. | | To me, its either this, or we pull all human drivers off | the road, restructure our cities and put em on public | transit (wholly support this). | | I re-iterate: The status quo is unacceptable and | indefensible. The human driver who _actually caused the | accident_ has still not been held to account (and | probably never will be). | | P.S: I accept your point about the system being non- | realtime. Though I think there are some critical safety | systems (LIDAR/RADAR cutoffs etc.) that might have a | real-time response? | oldgradstudent wrote: | > We don't have the data to claim this, this confidently, | and the only way to get the data is let the experiment | keep running in the real world (only place that matters). | | How about we start with something simpler: have Waymo, | Cruise and their likes produce a rigorous safety case[1] | arguing why their vehicles are safe. | | Once the safety case is in the open, we can also evaluate | how well their system satisfy the claims in the safety | case, and if the assumption do not hold, we can stop the | experiment. | | They are experimenting on humans. The usual requirement | is informed consent. | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety_case | pj_mukh wrote: | This is just..more paperwork, but sure, highly unlikely | that these companies don't have this report built | internally already. And like I said, there will be | scenarios not covered by it, because we simply don't know | what they are and can't think it up. | | But if we're doing this, lets also make human Drivers do | this, and for real parity, make sure all human drivers | are kitted out with all the same cameras and logging | systems we ask of from autonomous car companies, auto | submitted to the DMV. | | Then analyze all the reports on an annual basis to see if | the human and/or autonomous agent should be allowed to | continue to operate on the road. | | I think people forget that driving is not a right but a | privilege, I agree that both humans and autonomous agents | should earn this privilege. | | P.S: If the claim is that a one-time DMV driving test is | enough, then that should be enough for autonomous cars as | well (I'm not making that claim) | oldgradstudent wrote: | > I agree, but if we're doing this, lets also make Human | Drivers do this, and for real parity, make sure all human | drivers are kitted out with all the same cameras and | logging systems we ask of from autonomous car companies, | auto submitted to the DMV. | | Human drivers are the status quo. Once you consistently | show that self driving can do better there would be a | point in discussing that. | | The problem is that you can't because such technology | simply does not exist. There is no perception technology | that is reliable enough. There is no prediction | technology that is reliable enough. | | To me it is obvious that Cruise and Waymo (and their | likes) simply cannot withstand any serious scrutiny. | | > P.S: If the claim is that a one-time DMV driving test | is enough, then that should be enough for autonomous cars | as well (I'm not making that claim) | | The DMV driving test is just one element. We also know | how human develop and what skills they acquire and when. | | We don't let them drive until they're 15-17 (depending on | local laws) because they lack certain abilities earlier | than that. For example, humans acquire object permanance | at around 24 months. | | The Cruise incident shows that Cruise vehicles lack | object permanance. They should not be elegible even for a | DMV appointment. | wolverine876 wrote: | > A lot of people in the autonomous driving industry are | driven by exactly what Vogt describes (little girl in the | stroller etc.). See also Chris Urmson of Waymo fame's TED | talk, he talks about a similar motivation[1]. | | To me, that's evidence that it's performative. First, it's a | talking point; it looks, smells, walks and talks just like | typical corporate/industry framing and messaging, with even a | 'think of the children!' line, and the redirection (from the | safety of autonomous cars, the topic, to whatabout something | else). Second, its repetition by Urmson is further evidence - | that's how talking points work. Third, the public's reptition | of it, in surprising detail, such as in your comment, is also | what we'd expect. Finally, throw in some tears, 'I get | emotional' lines, etc. (per the NYT article), and I don't | know how it can be missed. | | Could it all be legit? Anything is possible - including fully | autonomous cars! | pj_mukh wrote: | Whether the corporate honchos are "sincere" or not is | wholly irrelevant to me (and frankly unknowable). | | "Think of the children" is usually a vapid misdirect, | except of course in _the objective measurable leading cause | of death_ right? So in terms of issues where "something | must be done", this should be objectively pretty high. | | Either we drastically reduce the number of cars on the road | and restructure American society around public transit (I | wholly support this), or we take the humans out of the | equation by making things autonomous. Or some combination | of both. | | I dont care if this happens under some grand socialist | program if we so hate corporations/industries, but it needs | to happen _yesterday_. | | The rest is just status quo protection which is | unacceptable. | pests wrote: | > performative charade | | How is it performative? | | Is it not sad that a 4-year-old girl in a stroller got killed | by a car? That it barely made the news? | | Or is that just not sad and is normal these days? | minwcnt5 wrote: | It was a pretty huge news story actually (in SF). Kyle has a | strong penchant for hyperbole. | wolverine876 wrote: | Lots of sad things happen. Why is a sophisticated public | communicator taking the time to tell this very self-serving | story, tear up about it, etc.? It's not incidental; he | prepared it. | | Spare me your trolling. | pests wrote: | Sorry you are so desensitized. | icedistilled wrote: | People like to say self driving cars are safer than human | drivers - but the human drivers that tend to do the most unsafe | antics seem to be the humans that are least likely to make use | of self driving cars. | evbogue wrote: | This is the same whacky theory I've been spreading about Tesla | self-driving for a year or so. "Imagine Tesla self-driving is | like some dude driving your car via videogame on the other side | of the world." | | Most people are pretty sure my theory is wrong. I have absolutely | no evidence this is true, it's just some crazy idea that popped | into my head one day. | cheeselip420 wrote: | Like some sort of fucked up Ender's Game situation. | evbogue wrote: | Yah, exactly. Even if it isn't real, the sci-fi stories you | can think of are endless. | | Like imagine there's some industrial block in Da Nang where | there are thousands of guys and gals who think they're RL for | some AI model somewhere. X takes a bathroom break and forgets | to turn over the controls to another specialist and when he | gets back he discovers the model has crashed. | | Next he reads on the news that there's been a fiery Tesla | crash somewhere near Oakland, and he realizes that something | is horribly wrong in his world. | | We could use multiple predictive language models to determine | what direction the story line takes next, but I imagine he | quits his job right then and there and is determined to find | out the truth behind the program. | | What will happen next? | | Better yet, base the story off-world so that we aren't so | close to the horrible reality of it -- if this is true and | it's probably not. | cheeselip420 wrote: | Cruise is leveraging human-in-the-loop to expand faster than they | otherwise would, with the hope that they will solve autonomy | later to bring this down. | | I don't think this is a viable strategy though given the enormous | costs and challenges involved. | | There doesn't exist a short-term timeline where Cruise makes | money, and the window is rapidly closing. They needed to expand | to show big revenues, even if they had to throw 1.5 bodies per | car at the problem. | | Prediction: GM will offload cruise, a buyer will replace | leadership and layoff 40% of the company. The tech may live to | see another day, but given the challenges that GM has generally | (strikes, EVs, etc), they can no longer endlessly subsidize | Cruise. | chaostheory wrote: | GM actually spun off Cruise in 2018. Honda now has shares in | Cruise. SoftBank used to own some as well, but GM bought out | their share last year | cheeselip420 wrote: | GM had FOMO and now it's time for FAFO. | dontblink wrote: | So Waymo/Google winning here in your opinion? | cheeselip420 wrote: | Waymo will have challenges scaling rapidly, but they may be | able to get some sort of favorable unit economics and expand | more slowly. | | Tesla has the scale and for some reason regulators give them | a pass. I wouldn't bet against Elon, but we aren't there | yet... | orwin wrote: | Writing off lidar that early is killing Tesla's chances | imho. The exec who took that decision should hate himself. | Retric wrote: | Human in the loop can be vastly cheaper than you might think. | | _If_ this lets them have the only level 5 system on the market | they could double that and millions would happily pay. Suppose | your a trucking company would you rather pay 50k / year or | 5k/year? That's a stupidly easy choice. | | Americans drive roughly 500 hours per year. If they can replace | 98% with automation and the other 2% with someone making | 20$/hour that only costs them ~200$/year, which then drops as | the system improves. | cheeselip420 wrote: | Human in the loop is fine. | | Negative unit economics and massive expansion are not. | Retric wrote: | Who says they can't recover the full cost? Cars don't last | forever, bake the cost in upfront or charge a monthly fee. | cheeselip420 wrote: | I'm not saying they can't - I'm saying they are running | out of time to do so, and with the DMV shutting them down | they've been hamstrung further. | | They are burning 100s of millions every quarter. They | needed to show either growth/expansion or some sort of | positive cash flow. They now have neither. | Retric wrote: | Ahh ok that fair. | | I don't think Cruse is doing very well. I'm more thinking | that the first nationwide level 5 system may have a human | in the loop. | wolverine876 wrote: | If humans need to remotely intervene for a car in motion, that | implies it could impact safety. | | If that's correct, then the remote signaling of a problem and the | human's response and control must have flawless availability and | low latency. How does Cruise achieve that? | | Cellular isn't that reliable. Maybe I misunderstand something. | mwint wrote: | Appears Cruise isn't giving these remote drivers a steering | wheel and gas; rather they make strategic decisions: Go around | this, follow this path, pull over, etc. The car is able to | follow a path on its own. Determining the correct path is where | it gets hard. | xyst wrote: | I get a feeling Cruise is going to get sold off within the next 5 | yrs. Waymo will likely be the leading provider for "autonomous | vehicle" software/hardware. | | Government Motors can only sustain such a loss on their books for | a short time. This is probably why Vogt has been pushing so hard | for market dominance. | tempsy wrote: | I wonder if there are rails to prevent a bad actor Cruise worker | from remote driving erratically... | neilv wrote: | > _Company insiders are putting the blame for what went wrong on | a tech industry culture -- led by the 38-year-old Mr. Vogt -- | that put a priority on the speed of the program over safety. | [...] He named Louise Zhang, vice president of safety, as the | company's interim chief safety officer [...]_ | | I hope Chief Safety Officer isn't just a sacrificial lamb job, | like CISO tends to be. | | Is the "interim" part hinting at insufficient faith, and maybe | future blame will be put on how the VP Safety performed | previously (discovered after the non-interim person is hired)? | | > _[...] and said she would report directly to him._ | | Is the CSO nominally responsible for safety? | | Does the CSO have any leverage to push back when their | recommendations aren't taken, other than resigning? | KennyBlanken wrote: | @dang title not the same as original | ProAm wrote: | Cruise came out of YC if I recall? | ooterness wrote: | This was a plot point in Captain Laserhawk: All the self-driving | cars and flying drones were actually being remotely piloted by | prisoners in a massive VR facility. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Laserhawk:_A_Blood_Dra... | sroussey wrote: | Fully remote driven cars is another company (can't recall their | name). | DelightOne wrote: | > Having to be remotely operated every 2.5 to 5 miles | | Regarding Cruises' suspension, how likely is it that the backup | driver restarted the car to drive again after the car stopped | with the pedestrian below? | kvogt wrote: | Cruise CEO here. Some relevant context follows. | | Cruise AVs are being remotely assisted (RA) 2-4% of the time on | average, in complex urban environments. This is low enough | already that there isn't a huge cost benefit to optimizing much | further, especially given how useful it is to have humans review | things in certain situations. | | The stat quoted by nyt is how frequently the AVs initiate an RA | session. Of those, many are resolved by the AV itself before the | human even looks at things, since we often have the AV initiate | proactively and before it is certain it will need help. Many | sessions are quick confirmation requests (it is ok to proceed?) | that are resolved in seconds. There are some that take longer and | involve guiding the AV through tricky situations. Again, in | aggregate this is 2-4% of time in driverless mode. | | In terms of staffing, we are intentionally over staffed given our | small fleet size in order to handle localized bursts of RA | demand. With a larger fleet we expect to handle bursts with a | smaller ratio of RA operators to AVs. Lastly, I believe the | staffing numbers quoted by nyt include several other functions | involved in operating fleets of AVs beyond remote assistance | (people who clean, charge, maintain, etc.) which are also | something that improve significantly with scale and over time. | throwaway1104 wrote: | Keep it up, Kyle! All new tech will have hiccups and | opposition. Really enjoyed my ride experience when I visited | SF. | monero-xmr wrote: | Huge cojones on the CEO to risk public statements given the | enormous legal and regulatory pressure being applied. I | certainly wouldn't recommend this tactic! | averageRoyalty wrote: | I would. This is the correct step forward to building public | trust, which is incredibly essential to this industry and | onboarding a critical mass. | pj_mukh wrote: | "The stat quoted by nyt is how frequently the AVs initiate an | RA session. Of those, many are resolved by the AV itself before | the human even looks at things, since we often have the AV | initiate proactively and before it is certain it will need | help." | | Hoo boy, sure wish the NYT had clarified that. That changes | things significantly. | ra7 wrote: | Thanks for the clarifying! This makes a lot of sense. I think | NYT did a really poor job of explaining the remote assistance | bit. | tameware wrote: | Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect. | phkahler wrote: | >> Cruise AVs are being remotely assisted (RA) 2-4% of the time | on average, in complex urban environments. This is low enough | already that there isn't a huge cost benefit to optimizing much | further, especially given how useful it is to have humans | review things in certain situations. | | Funny, since I thought full autonomy was the goal of the | company. 2 percent human intervention isn't scalable. | amluto wrote: | Huh? 100% is scalable, and it's the common case today. 2% | scales just as linearly as 100% does. | tcoff91 wrote: | That 2% is not the person in the vehicle, it's cruise | employees. It doesn't scale because it is paid employees | intervening instead of the customer driving. It scales in | comparison to ride sharing competition but not in terms of | people owning the vehicles. | sroussey wrote: | That 2% is much cheaper than going for five nines | immediately. Nice bridge until then. | amluto wrote: | The real long term issue IMO is that this type of system | fails pretty badly if the wireless network fails over a | largish area. | polishTar wrote: | Other ridehail products like uber or lyft have 100% human | intervention all the time. I think that's what the parent | comment is referring to. | Rebelgecko wrote: | They'll just do what the robo-food delivery startups are | doing and outsource the driving to people in other | countries who make $5/day | dventimi wrote: | > it [does not scale] in terms of people owning the | vehicles | | Can you clarify what you mean here? | cheeselip420 wrote: | remote operation of vehicles often makes a lot of sense | economically, since you can effectively decouple drivers from | vehicles/riders. As you pointed out, this means you can shift | to deal with peak loads and all of that - great. | | Given everything you know now, was it wise to push for | expansion over improvements to safety and reliability of the | vehicles? On one hand, there is certainly value in expanding a | bit to uncover edge-cases sooner. On the other hand, I'm not | convinced it was worth expanding before getting the business | sorted out. | | My guess is that given the relatively large fixed costs involve | in operating an AV fleet, that it makes some sense to expand at | least up to that sort of 'break even' point. Do we know what | that point is? Put differently, is there some natural "stopping | point" of expansion where Cruise could hit break-even on its | fixed costs and then shift focus towards reliability? | _boffin_ wrote: | The first thing that came to my mind after reading, "... | makes a lot sense" was the latency overhead that's incurred | when RA is activated and associating it with drunk driving | due to the increased response time. | | Maybe the article answers the following, but don't know since | I haven't read it yet. | | - median, p95, p99 latencies for remote assistance | | - max speed vehicle can go when RA is activated. | AlotOfReading wrote: | I think a lot of the confusion here is over what's meant by | "RA". This isn't a remote driving situation. It's like | Waymo, where the human can make suggestions that give the | robot additional information about the environment. | cheeselip420 wrote: | Exactly. Not all remote assists need a low-latency | connection. | sroussey wrote: | The relevant staffing section: | | > Those vehicles were supported by a vast operations staff, | with 1.5 workers per vehicle. The workers intervened to assist | the company's vehicles every 2.5 to five miles | | The NYT is definitely implying 1.5 workers per vehicle | intervene to assist driving at first read. Only after reading | the above comment do I notice that they shoved the statements | together using different meanings for "workers" as they didn't | have the actual statistic on hand. | MichaelTWorley wrote: | Best wishes to you! | flandish wrote: | So when low wage mechanical turk costs turn out cheaper than | engineering to improve driverless vehs... this will just be | another exploitative gig job for folks in remote locations? | | I don't trust proper attention will be given to improvements in | tech once profit and roi is considered compared to human labor | costs especially in lower wage nations. | gctwnl wrote: | I would consider this realistic service design, just as Meta's | Cicero (plays blitz Diplomacy) is smart design. It might work | as a service. | | What the answer glances over is that even with just 3% of the | time requiring human assistance (2 minutes out of every hour) | the term 'autonomous vehicle' is not really applicable anymore | in the sense everybody is using/understanding that term. The | idea behind that term assumed 'full' autonomy. _Self_ driving | cars. And there is no reason to assume that this is still in | sight. The answer puts that 'self-driving car' on the shelf. | | PS. Human assistent seems to me a difficult job, given the | constant speed and concentration requirements. | southerntofu wrote: | Hello Cruise CEO, there's a huge market for durable and | profitable "dumb" cars. Why don't you get on that market? In a | time when electronics represents over 30% of car costs and ~50% | of car failures, people like me would be happy to buy a car | that doesn't suck (low-tech) and can be maintained for decades | for a reasonable price. In the meantime, i'll keep buying old | Renault/Peugeot cars from the fifties/sixties i guess :( | dventimi wrote: | Why don't YOU get on that market if you think it's so | worthwhile? | jdjdjdhhd wrote: | Can spying be disabled on your cars? | dventimi wrote: | Wut | jdjdjdhhd wrote: | They have humans remotely watching you drive | patrick451 wrote: | It's telling that you declined a request for an interview, yet | still feel the need to clarify on HN. You'd be doing a lot | better with transparency and public trust by just taking the | interview. | dreamcompiler wrote: | Here we go again with a CEO who proclaims "autonomous cars are | safer than human-driven cars." And their definition of "safer" | conveniently ignores that autonomous cars _create new failure | modes_ which do not exist in manually-driven cars. | | It may be true that statistically fewer fatalities per mile | happen with autonomous cars than with human-driven cars. But | that's irrelevant. If the car kills one person because it did | something utterly stupid like driving under a semi crossing the | highway or dragging a pedestrian along the ground, the public | will not accept it. | | This is another example of the uncanny valley problem: Most | "smart" devices are merely dumb in new ways. If your "smart" | gizmo is only smart in how it collects private information from | people (e.g. smart TVs), or it's merely smarter than a toggle | switch, that's not what the public considers smart. It has to be | smarter than a reasonably competent human _along almost all | dimensions_ ; otherwise you're just using "smart" as a euphemism | for "idiot savant." Self-driving cars are a particularly | difficult "smart" problem because lives are at stake, and the | number of edge cases is astronomical. | bookofjoe wrote: | I've said this here before and I will repeat it: | | An overwhelming majority of Americans will choose 45,000 deaths | in car crashes annually (last year's number) in human-driven cars | over 450 deaths/year with all self-driving cars. | | In the American (and probably ALL) mind(s), human agency trumps | all. | 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: | "That is a rare level of talent," said Sam Altman, head of the Y | Combinator startup incubator. "I can see Kyle being the next CEO | of GM." | | https://www.vox.com/2016/3/11/11586898/meet-kyle-vogt-the-ro... | neonate wrote: | http://web.archive.org/web/20231105193346/https://www.nytime... ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-11-05 23:01 UTC)