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by thesuitonym 402 days ago
It's not really moving the goalposts, though. The idea of a self driving car has always been "I can get in my car, tell it where I want to go, and then it goes there while I read a book."

Having navigation and music, and lane assist, and adaptive cruise control, and some cars that can operate autonomously in some environments is great, but it's not what we meant when we said self driving cars.
1 comments
colinmorelli 402 days ago
The point is not that those things were meant when we said self driving cars. It's that, at every step along the way, there were a group of people who doubted that cars could do that thing, and then they did that thing. And then the thing we said they can't do changed to something else.

Today, you absolutely can "get in a car, tell it where you want to go, and it goes there while you read a book" - it's literally what Waymo is and has been doing. And now we're saying it can't do it in Mumbai, so it's still not self-driving.

At some point, the distinction seems pointless. We are undeniably continuing to make progress on the road to autonomous driving, and it does work in certain scenarios today. To suggest things are slowing down because we haven't met the most reason interpretation of the words is neither helpful nor correct.

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zahlman 402 days ago
> It's that, at every step along the way, there were a group of people who doubted that cars could do that thing

...Can you cite that?

> And then the thing we said they can't do changed to something else.

...And they were the same people?

> We are undeniably continuing to make progress

Where did anyone deny this?

> To suggest things are slowing down

Where did anyone make this argument?

The quote from TFA:

> but the hype has promised completely autonomous cars reliably zipping about in rush hour traffic.

The author did not restrict that to SF, and is presumably referring to "hype" that "promised" this globally.

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colinmorelli 402 days ago
You conveniently left out the first part of the sentence you quoted:

> Currently available software may very well make human drivers both more comfortable and safe...

Which is objectively not what Waymo does, and whether intentional or not, invalidates the progress that has been made.

Also, immediately preceding that:

> Driverless vehicles in closed systems have been in use for a long time.

Which is also not what current frontier self driving technology is.

> Where did anyone make this argument?

The title of the article is quite literally "Is Winter Coming?"

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