| One of the earliest videos involved a blind user going to a drive through. At the very least, we can safely assume given that a Google car can't even find a parking space, that it operated on a preprogrammed route to use the drive through. Months after Urmson was bragging about Waymo's ability to interpret hand signals, a Google engineer confirmed to a Slate reported that your cars would run a stoplight if Google's maps didn't already tell it the stoplight was there, and to look for it. And of course, that Waymo cars could not function on a road that wasn't excrutiatingly mapped to centimeter detail in advance. While Google's marketing their upcoming launch of Waymo as a service being "fully autonomous", the car has to be remote controlled by a contractor when it gets confused. Google likes to brag, like you did, about the "X number of miles", while intentionally ignoring real statistics that matter. (Driving the same mile over and over can be thousands of miles, but gains you really no understanding of the world of driving. Circling Mountain View isn't really as valuable as you'd believe.) Contiguous miles without failure is a super interesting statistic for driving capability, but Google would not like to advertise that it fails and needs human help as often as one currently fills up on gas. That sort of statistic has usually showed up in the DMV reports while Google hasn't talked about it much. Hilariously, they're launching their service in Arizona where they don't have to disclose those statistics. When "no accountability" is what leads to the location choice for a product launch, you have to ask what they have to hide. There's a huge discrepancy in the practical reality of what the technology has been capable of and what Waymo has claimed it can do. It's been so repetitively dishonest, I don't think I could ever trust the company or the cars based on their behavior alone. |
>the car has to be remote controlled by a contractor
For legal compliance.
I'll repeat the question you avoided: if Waymo isn't an innovator or a leader in this space, what companies are, and what are they doing to demonstrate their superiority?
Your argument appears to be tautological. Google is not innovative, therefore nothing Google is doing can be innovative. If Google appears to be doing something that is innovative, someone else is doing it better or Google is lying.
No evidence can convince you of the contrary, because that evidence is simply Google using its immense power to mislead you or the person you're talking to.