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Uber Knows...

Lex DeVille

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Uber Begins Its Endgame: Replacing Humans

We thought it was Uber vs. taxis but it was Uber vs. humans all along.

This isn't just one company.

If you're building a startup and plan to compete you HAVE to think like this.

Automation is NOT going away. It's going to be all there is.

Uber used humans to get a foot in the door.

They built capital they can use to fund the real company, an automated fleet.

Those who own robots win. But I'm sure it's still too far in the future to think about for your startup... ;)

1200x-1.jpg
 
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luniac

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How are they gonna make it hacker proof? HOW?

I ride the new york subway every single day and at the high speeds the train travels i take comfort in the automated train emergency brakes and the live operator following the color lights along the tunnel.

What safety precautions and emergency brake systems will there be in automated road vehicles? and will they be enough to prevent casualties in a high speed safety situation. After all the big selling point of automated cars is SPEED, and its obviously exponentially more complex to automate countless cars on city streets and highways vs train tracks.

I am afraid.

edit:
scratch the automatic braking part.... goddamn it lol...
http://gothamist.com/2015/05/21/mta_braking.php
 

luniac

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shit... from the here and there research i've done, auto cars "see" the environment using cameras.
The camera input is then parsed using image analysis algorithms to determine wtf all the little shapes and colors really are.

To me that shit is so prone to error it should be relegated to face detection on your camera and joke apps on your phone. This is not something i want in a goddamn high speed vehicle!
 
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Lex DeVille

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How are they gonna make it hacker proof? HOW?

That's for them to figure out. Or maybe for you if you need a business idea. ;)

Fear of what might happen won't stop technology or automation. If it did we wouldn't have computers.

It's pretty clear that most vehicles will be automated over the next 10 years.

Most people will spend time finding reasons (read excuses) why it's bad.

Meanwhile Uber will rake in billions of dollars because they took action to make the inevitable real.

To me that shit is so prone to error

Not as prone as humans.
 
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Fox

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To me that shit is so prone to error it should be relegated to face detection on your camera and joke apps on your phone.

I will take my chances with the robots over the guy working a 16 hour shift while going through his second divorce.

True story: My girlfriend and I took a taxi here (Colombia) a few weeks ago. The driver kept nodding off and was having micro sleeps. We hit a patch of slow moving traffic and he just fell asleep. We thought it was funny so we just left him to see what happened. Other cars just drove around him and no one beeped. He slept for a good 30 seconds, woke up and just went back to driving. I don't think he even knew it had happened.
 

luniac

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That's for them to figure out. Or maybe for you if you need a business idea. ;)

Fear of what might happen won't stop technology or automation. If it did we wouldn't have computers.

It's pretty clear that most vehicles will be automated over the next 10 years.

Most people will spend time finding reasons (read excuses) why it's bad.

Meanwhile Uber will rake in billions of dollars because they took action to make the inevitable real.



Not as prone as humans.


We'll see about that. ONE catastrophe is all it takes to derail the automation movement.
Just like when the Hindenburg crashed and burned in jersey which destroyed the zeppelin industry and changed the course of history.

yes the computer is not as error prone as a human, but when it does error out it'll cause a 150 mile per hour collision compared to a human error 50 mph collision. You're going to see crashes with ~0% survival chance.

leave the automation for nonhuman transport, i can see the appeal of that.
 
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Vigilante

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We'll see about that. ONE catastrophe is all it takes to derail the automation movement.
Just like when the Hindenburg crashed and burned in jersey which destroyed the zeppelin industry and changed the course of history.

yes the computer is not as error prone as a human, but when it does error out it'll cause a 150 mile per hour collision compared to a human error 50 mph collision. You're going to see crashes with ~0% survival chance.

leave the automation for nonhuman transport, i can see the appeal of that.

I don't think a fatality will derail anything.

A kid was decapitated at a theme park a few weeks ago. It closed that ride. Not even that park. Not every park.

I think society will accept a predicted mortality rate in exchange for technology advancement.

There's fatality rates today every time you get into your vehicle. Drivers are playing probability games.

Society is sick as F*ck. We'll accept a few fatalities on the way towards progress, just like the Space Shuttle Challenger.
 

Lex DeVille

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We'll see about that. ONE catastrophe is all it takes to derail the automation movement.
Just like when the Hindenburg crashed and burned in jersey which destroyed the zeppelin industry and changed the course of history.

yes the computer is not as error prone as a human, but when it does error out it'll cause a 150 mile per hour collision compared to a human error 50 mph collision. You're going to see crashes with ~0% survival chance.

leave the automation for nonhuman transport, i can see the appeal of that.

Self-driving cars have already crashed. Yet the industry moves forward.

Thousands of planes have crashed. Yet new planes are built every day.

Multiple spacecraft have blown up. Yet SpaceX is still going.

And since Lockheed Martin is launching a zeppelin in 2018...

One catastrophe will not stop automation or technology.
 

IGP

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We'll see about that. ONE catastrophe is all it takes to derail the automation movement.
Just like when the Hindenburg crashed and burned in jersey which destroyed the zeppelin industry and changed the course of history.

yes the computer is not as error prone as a human, but when it does error out it'll cause a 150 mile per hour collision compared to a human error 50 mph collision. You're going to see crashes with ~0% survival chance.

leave the automation for nonhuman transport, i can see the appeal of that.

Some will argue that is actually safer... Right now, the odds are 1 in 113 that your cause of death will be from a car crash. (http://www.nsc.org/learn/safety-knowledge/Pages/injury-facts-chart.aspx)

Remove drunk drivers? Check
Remove texting while driving? Check
Remove putting on make up? Check
Remove falling asleep at the wheel? Check
Remove....

The list goes on and on. Any time you can remove the human element from something, things get safer. Sure, there will be bumps along the way.

I am already long (MBLY) in my IRA, but check them out. Now is great time to buy this stock and just forget about it!
 
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ApparentHorizon

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They built capital they can use to fund the real company, an automated fleet.

There will still be opportunities during the transition period. Like people renting out their automated cars when not in use.

It could be cheaper than buying and maintaining a fleet.

Car dealerships in large cities - that will be an interesting shake up as well.
 
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7.62x51

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Thanks for making this thread, I was thinking about this too.

I think this type of disruption is where new opportunities are born.

For example:

Fully autonomous pickup truck + Wifi Controlled Drone = Mobile Inspection Unit

So instead of sending an employee to the site, you can send the pickup truck and then control the drone when it gets there.

Also, notice how this type of technology will likely decrease the overall demand for personal vehicles, So why do the major automotive brands seem to be pushing towards this as well? Probably because they realize that it's inevitable, it's coming soon and properly re-positioning yourself now is the key to not becoming obsolete in the future.
 

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It's pretty clear that most vehicles will be automated over the next 10 years
Having worked with automation & engineering, I'd say 10 years is overly optimistic, even if just from an industrial/development perspective. I'd guess it will take 50 years or so.

Do you know how long it took for electronic fuel injection to take hold in automobiles? 40 years.
How about direct injection? 50 years.
How long did it take for turbochargers to reach the domestic auto market? 60 years.

Something this "game changing" will likely require a new generation of users to find acceptance. We "old fogies" that grew up with human driven vehicles will generally resist automated vehicles, but the next generation will accept them more readily.
 
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IGP

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Having worked with automation & engineering, I'd say 10 years is overly optimistic, even if just from an industrial/development perspective. I'd guess it will take 50 years or so.

Do you know how long it took for electronic fuel injection to take hold in automobiles? 40 years.
How about direct injection? 50 years.
How long did it take for turbochargers to reach the domestic auto market? 60 years.

Something this "game changing" will likely require a new generation of users to find acceptance. We "old fogies" that grew up with human driven vehicles will generally resist automated vehicles, but the next generation will accept them more readily.

Agreed, but you are talking about mass adoption... There is plenty of money to be made on the way up, even before critical mass is reached!

I don't think it will be 50 years though... Things are moving a much faster speed than they were 20-30 years ago.
 

JAJT

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People are overly worried and concerned with automation and death. It's a ridiculous argument (IMHO).

Yes, it needs to be safe, but the bar for making it safer than humans is pretty darn low - look at the off-the-cuff list Lex posted. There are dozens more, easily. Near-zero braking reaction time alone is HUGE. Elimination of hazardous tailgating is another.

And what about those fringe scenarios where it saves lives? There was a story a few weeks back where a guy having a heart attack (or some other emergency) told his tesla auto-pilot to go to the hospital while he experienced a fit that would have made traditional driving impossible.

Honestly, as someone who thinks most people on the road are out for murder/suicide, I can't wait until these become common place, warts and all.
 

Raoul Duke

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Autonomy
As the technology matures, all Tesla vehicles will have the hardware necessary to be fully self-driving with fail-operational capability, meaning that any given system in the car could break and your car will still drive itself safely. It is important to emphasize that refinement and validation of the software will take much longer than putting in place the cameras, radar, sonar and computing hardware.

Even once the software is highly refined and far better than the average human driver, there will still be a significant time gap, varying widely by jurisdiction, before true self-driving is approved by regulators. We expect that worldwide regulatory approval will require something on the order of 6 billion miles (10 billion km). Current fleet learning is happening at just over 3 million miles (5 million km) per day.

I should add a note here to explain why Tesla is deploying partial autonomy now, rather than waiting until some point in the future. The most important reason is that, when used correctly, it is already significantly safer than a person driving by themselves and it would therefore be morally reprehensible to delay release simply for fear of bad press or some mercantile calculation of legal liability.

According to the recently released 2015 NHTSA report, automotive fatalities increased by 8% to one death every 89 million miles. Autopilot miles will soon exceed twice that number and the system gets better every day. It would no more make sense to disable Tesla's Autopilot, as some have called for, than it would to disable autopilot in aircraft, after which our system is named.

It is also important to explain why we refer to Autopilot as "beta". This is not beta software in any normal sense of the word. Every release goes through extensive internal validation before it reaches any customers. It is called beta in order to decrease complacency and indicate that it will continue to improve (Autopilot is always off by default). Once we get to the point where Autopilot is approximately 10 times safer than the US vehicle average, the beta label will be removed.

Sharing
When true self-driving is approved by regulators, it will mean that you will be able to summon your Tesla from pretty much anywhere. Once it picks you up, you will be able to sleep, read or do anything else enroute to your destination.

You will also be able to add your car to the Tesla shared fleet just by tapping a button on the Tesla phone app and have it generate income for you while you're at work or on vacation, significantly offsetting and at times potentially exceeding the monthly loan or lease cost. This dramatically lowers the true cost of ownership to the point where almost anyone could own a Tesla. Since most cars are only in use by their owner for 5% to 10% of the day, the fundamental economic utility of a true self-driving car is likely to be several times that of a car which is not.

In cities where demand exceeds the supply of customer-owned cars, Tesla will operate its own fleet, ensuring you can always hail a ride from us no matter where you are.





https://www.tesla.com/blog/master-plan-part-deux
 
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7.62x51

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Having worked with automation & engineering, I'd say 10 years is overly optimistic, even if just from an industrial/development perspective. I'd guess it will take 50 years or so.

Do you know how long it took for electronic fuel injection to take hold in automobiles? 40 years.
How about direct injection? 50 years.
How long did it take for turbochargers to reach the domestic auto market? 60 years.

Something this "game changing" will likely require a new generation of users to find acceptance. We "old fogies" that grew up with human driven vehicles will generally resist automated vehicles, but the next generation will accept them more readily.

I asked my Dad the same question, he also said 50 years. This seems to be the probably-not-in-my-life-time-so-I-don't-pay-much-attention-to-it number.

https://www.quora.com/When-will-self-driving-cars-be-available-to-consumers
"I hope we'll have a large number of vehicles on roads within 3 years, and be mass producing them in 5." - Andrew Ng

http://www.driverless-future.com/?page_id=384
- Ford CEO announces fully autonomous vehicles for mobility services by 2021
- Volkswagen expects first self driving cars on the market by 2019
- GM: Autononomous cars could be deployed by 2020 or sooner
 

JAJT

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Something this "game changing" will likely require a new generation of users to find acceptance. We "old fogies" that grew up with human driven vehicles will generally resist automated vehicles, but the next generation will accept them more readily.

I don't think anyone expects a switch to be thrown and suddenly 100% of cars are automated. And honestly - it doesn't need to be anywhere close to 100% to be incredibly effective.

Let's assume for a second that a self-driving car is safer than a human driver in almost every situation (as in, it will make a better, faster, more logical decision given most situations). Not to say they'll be fatality free, just that the decisions it makes will typically be superior to most drivers. It would be safe to assume then that every single self driving car on the road is increasing the road safety of the community it resides in.

You wouldn't need 100% adoption for that to make a difference. Even a 1% increase in road safety would be huge.
 

firmwear

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I remember a coworker mentioning this incident to me way back when but I was too busy at the time to notice...

Volvo had been bought by some Chinese company, they wanted to show their automatic braking system, this is what happened.

I remembered the reference but I never bothered looking until now.

I have met representatives of Volvo (as well as other Swedish companies) over the years and I have personally never met a Swede I have not liked. I am convinced they are all raised as gentlemen.

However, these things happen.

I am sure they have come a long way since 2010, but do not drink the kool-aid 100%. There is a long way to go for this tech to be considered bulletproof.

They still have a driver monitoring the computer as a failsafe... for good reason.

Experience.
 
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G

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Hard not to speculate about M&A when I read this.

So many large co.s that will want a piece of the market and pay to play.

Uber's growing fast enough to eventually buy Tesla. Google has a big investment in Uber, too. I could see Apple buying Lyft.

My bet would be Google taking a big swing, Tesla adding a service and car manufacturers buying tech.
 

lowtek

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For me, my comfort level depends on the implementation.

If the autonomy is achieved through advanced machine learning algorithms that use image recognition, then I'm OK with it, as this is basically how our brain functions anyway. There will be some mistakes, and some people will die. This sucks, but it will most likely be less than we currently have, and the algorithms can be updated to further reduce fatalities over time. Nobody's death will be in vain. There's a certain allure with that approach.

If the autonomy is achieved by connecting cars to each other and to infrastructure, then no way in hell would I be ok with that. Cyber security in autos is already a joke, and for such complex systems there will be far too many exploits available. The reason the existing exploits are not targeted is a lack of incentive, with respect to the money to be made holding corporate computers ransom. Imagine the payday when you lock 10,000 people in their car and don't let them out until they pay. Even less dramatic, but no less crippling, disabling starters on a fleet of vehicles until the owner coughs up a mountain of bitcoin.

Reducing the statistical background noise of automobile fatalities is all well and good, and a noble goal, but not at the expense of systemic built-in vulnerabilities that could have crippling consequences for the entire system.
 

Lex DeVille

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Getting back to the original point - big companies are paying attention and acting on automation.

They utilize human capabilities to grow fast with an eye on where the money will be later on.

New companies can follow similar patterns in different industries.

No need to debate yes self-driving vs. no self-driving.

Just consider the role automation will play in your favor in the future of your business.

Or how it will play in your competitor's favor when you don't feel comfortable adapting.
 
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lowtek

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Getting back to the original point - big companies are paying attention and acting on automation.

They utilize human capabilities to grow fast with an eye on where the money will be later on.

New companies can follow similar patterns in different industries.

No need to debate yes self-driving vs. no self-driving.

Just consider the role automation will play in your favor in the future of your business.

Or how it will play in your competitor's favor when you don't feel comfortable adapting.

Thanks for the prodding :)

Automation will play a role in my business, in fact I'm counting on it.

Specifically, I think machine learning has applications in any arena with optimization (read: just about everything). My eyes are peeled wide for opportunities to apply ML to problems I am facing. As marketing becomes more and more data driven, you can use algorithms to optimize every aspect of the marketing. The copy, the landing page, etc.
 

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Having worked with automation & engineering, I'd say 10 years is overly optimistic, even if just from an industrial/development perspective. I'd guess it will take 50 years or so.

Do you know how long it took for electronic fuel injection to take hold in automobiles? 40 years.
How about direct injection? 50 years.
How long did it take for turbochargers to reach the domestic auto market? 60 years.

Something this "game changing" will likely require a new generation of users to find acceptance. We "old fogies" that grew up with human driven vehicles will generally resist automated vehicles, but the next generation will accept them more readily.

They're already testing out driverless freight in EU - And we know about the tests Google and Tesla are performing in the US.
http://www.cnet.com/news/driverless-truck-convoy-platoons-across-europe/

The scope of this technology dwarfs fuel management.
  • Reduction in fatalities - gov't and the population will back this
  • Efficient transportation (less congestion) - gov't, biz, and pop will back this
  • Increased productivity and reduced costs - biz and maybe gov't with lobbying
Automation in general will exponentially grow due to computers and algorithms. The developments you're describing were invented in the early 1900, and were based on human effort.

Now we're aided by models and even AI.

Hell, there was one kid who implemented a learning algorithm in his bedroom and taught his Ford how to drive itself.

5-10 years is optimistic, but 50+ years is underestimating our potential, imo. Notwithstanding, gov't regulation of course.
 

OldFaithful

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Getting back to the original point - big companies are paying attention and acting on automation.

They utilize human capabilities to grow fast with an eye on where the money will be later on.

New companies can follow similar patterns in different industries.

No need to debate yes self-driving vs. no self-driving.
None the less, debating our own obsolescence can be fun and introspective.

Just consider the role automation will play in your favor in the future of your business.

Or how it will play in your competitor's favor when you don't feel comfortable adapting.
Quite true. Now this I can get behind!!
 
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Jav100

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What will happen when automation almost replaces us completely?

Utopia lifestyle where we only do what truly makes us happy?
 

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