00:00SPEAKERWhat was your first car Brad that I ever drove? Yeah, what'd you learn to drive on? Oh god
00:04SPEAKERWhat year was it? It was a Ford Taurus Oh station classic
00:07SPEAKERIt was a Ford Taurus station wagon 90 Oh gosh, probably an 80 80 so 91 really like a 91 92
00:15SPEAKERWe had one of those when I was a kid. It's like a beige
00:18SPEAKEROurs was just blue sky blue just the most family ass 90s ass car. It looked like a station wagon
00:24SPEAKERIt looked like it was from the future though kinda. Yeah, I did have like a sleek rounded
00:27SPEAKERSo this is almost like some kind of mid-century vision of futuristic spaceships or something
00:33SPEAKERYeah, it looked like it should go a lot faster than it did
00:36SPEAKERMy first car the first car my parents were like, well, we don't care about this car enough that we're gonna let you drive it
00:41SPEAKERI mean, I grew up driving tractors and stuff on the farm and pick up trucks and all that
00:44SPEAKERBut the first one they let me out on the road with was a 1985 Ford station wagon
00:49SPEAKERThere was one year where they didn't put a model number or name on the station wagon
00:54SPEAKERIt was it was station wagon Ford station wagon 1984 1985 credible. It was really good. I
01:00SPEAKERI'm not saying I would want to own a station wagon, but I miss station wagons
01:03SPEAKERThat's why I have an SUV. Yeah, it's cuz it turns out SUVs are kind of cheap station wagons
01:09SPEAKERReally premium because they're for people who don't want to be seen driving SUVs or vans. Wait, do they still make them? Yeah shit
01:15SPEAKERYeah, there's a lot of them Wow
01:16SPEAKERThe Volvo makes them. Okay. I mean, I guess Subaru makes I was gonna say is an Outback
01:22SPEAKERkind of a quasi
01:24SPEAKERGina Gina would tell you that one of them either the forester of the Outback is a station wagon
01:29SPEAKERThe other one's an SUV. I can't tell the difference
01:31SPEAKERThe Outback is like when two extremely different breeds of dog get together and have puppies
01:36SPEAKERBut like one's really tall and one's really small and like a dog with like a massive torso and tiny little legs
01:41SPEAKERYeah, the Outback is like half station wagon half SUV of cars corgi of cars
01:52SPEAKER[Music]
02:16SPEAKERHey everybody, welcome to another episode of Brad and Will made a tech pod. We're making one right now. I'm Will
02:21SPEAKERI mean, maybe we should have considered the tense of the name
02:23SPEAKERLook sitting we are in the middle of recording it podcast came out as fast man. That's true
02:28SPEAKERWe were like, hey
02:29SPEAKERlet's do this real quiet like and just release it out to a couple of people in our communities and then all of a sudden
02:33SPEAKERit was on reddit and
02:35SPEAKERMessage boards and real it is real arms race out there. Yeah podcast market is both saturated and cutthroat
02:41SPEAKERLook, we got to get out before those fuckers at NPR roll out their own tech
02:45SPEAKERWhat single topic tech podcast how many more late night hosts can this market withstand?
02:51SPEAKERBefore it all just collapses in on itself. Jimmy Fallon only has so many hours in the day. Yeah. Yeah, so this week
02:58SPEAKERI don't think we've any housekeeping. No, no, no, no housekeeping belongs at the end. Okay, how do you think of some by then?
03:05SPEAKERThat's uh, let's move on to the topic at hand. We're gonna talk about autonomy
03:09SPEAKERAutonomy not on is that a good idea, but seems dangerous. Look, do you believe in free will? Oh, man
03:15SPEAKERDo humans have free will is everything pretty pretty predestined predestined?
03:22SPEAKERAnd is this is my hand even the same color for you as for me I actually
03:27SPEAKERYes, I don't have an answer to that question. Oh
03:30SPEAKERMaybe okay, maybe less. So you feel I feel like it's like less in free will the older I get be
03:36SPEAKERI was gonna say the older I get the less I believe in free will less
03:39SPEAKERI wonder if I or anyone else has any actual agency in the conduct of their affairs. I
03:44SPEAKERSee, I'm different. I think that we all have agency, but I just don't think it matters because okay
03:48SPEAKERWell, yeah, he's gonna push us in the direction. I want so anyway, this is really far afield
03:52SPEAKERPodcast is supposed to go but I actually agree with you
03:55SPEAKERBut we were gonna talk about autonomous cars. Yes, specifically. They don't have free will I guess not no
04:01SPEAKERNo, no, they're just a series of algorithms working together and in unison
04:05SPEAKERPresumably to make your vehicle go where you want it to go. I don't know. Did you read that Stephen King story trucks?
04:10SPEAKERNo, but I read Christine. Is it the same thing?
04:13SPEAKERKinda, what's your favorite Stephen King? Are you Stephen King guy? I like his short stories a lot. Oh, yeah
04:18SPEAKERThe collections are oh, yeah, the first two three collections are amazing nightmares and dream scapes. Yeah skeleton crew
04:24SPEAKERYeah, I've only read like two of his natural novels though. The stands pretty good a little verbose
04:28SPEAKERI like the Dark Tower stuff a lot some cases. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Anyway, killer cars. Yeah killer cars
04:33SPEAKERNo, no the whole life. No, no, no run people over. Oh, no the okay. Yes. They look people are gonna get run over
04:39SPEAKERWe should get that out of the way up front. Yeah. Well, I think the difference there is in the Stephen King story
04:43SPEAKERIt's malicious in the real world. It's just indifferent. I
04:46SPEAKERmean
04:47SPEAKERYeah, so, okay this we're jumping right into the deep end here
04:51SPEAKERYeah, but the upshot is I look up some stats for this before we started. Okay, according to AAA the American Automobile
04:59SPEAKERAssociation a large automobile lobbying slash user support group
05:06SPEAKERThe average American does 2.2 trips a day in a car. They spend 51 minutes a day in the car
05:11SPEAKERThey drive thirty one point five miles every day. There are two hundred and twenty five point eight million drivers
05:17SPEAKERWhich means if you add all that up
05:19SPEAKERIt's about seventy billion person hours a year in a car. That's a lot of Americans
05:26SPEAKERThat's maybe arguably too much. Well, I mean you look you gotta get to work. You gotta go
05:30SPEAKEROh, yeah, I have I have a really skewed perspective on this whole issue because I have lives. Yeah in San Francisco not just
05:38SPEAKERNear a city but in a city for going on 17 years
05:41SPEAKERYou're one of those coastal urban elites that doesn't drive basically
05:44SPEAKERYeah
05:44SPEAKERSo I just have like a very limited perspective like it's really weird for me every time I get in a modern car
05:50SPEAKERBecause those are those instances are so few and far between like let's put it in perspective
05:54SPEAKERLike I have not driven regularly since I moved here and I bet it's been at least a decade since I was even behind the wheel
06:00SPEAKERPeriod. Yeah, I remember when we first started whiskey. I think you still had a driver's license
06:04SPEAKERYou still I still I'm still why you still like this straight of California?
06:09SPEAKERBut uh every time I get in a car
06:11SPEAKERWhich is like maybe once every year or two at this point, you know
06:14SPEAKERI gotta go back home to visit or yeah
06:16SPEAKERI'm like my parents have got a new car or something like that
06:18SPEAKERlike every time I get in a modern vehicle, I feel like I have jumped ahead in time like a decade well because because like
06:24SPEAKERWithout fail there are like one or two new
06:26SPEAKERdrive-assist features that weren't there the last time I was in a car and it's just like it feels like technology is just like
06:31SPEAKERhurtling forward in that
06:34SPEAKERCategory it's funny because a few years ago I was when I was still working at tested
06:39SPEAKERI was like commuting back and forth every day and it was I was like why am I I should be actually get an electric
06:43SPEAKERCar and I started driving then like doing the loaner weekend loaners for a bunch of electric cars and I got into one of them
06:49SPEAKERI think was the BMW i3 and it has it had it basically like in driving up 19th
06:55SPEAKERIt would just drive for you would stay in the lane. It would do all the acceleration and braking. That's a BMW BMW
07:01SPEAKERso I guess that's actually kind of what I'm getting at here is that like
07:05SPEAKERself-driving cars felt like such a forward-facing initiative initially, like it was the Tesla's of the world and like
07:12SPEAKERTech companies. Yeah and tech adjacent companies were the ones pushing this vision of the self-driving future
07:18SPEAKERAnd I feel like instead these features are just back dooring their way into everyday cars of every make and model
07:24SPEAKERI mean the driving part of cars has it's like starting with adaptive cruise control
07:30SPEAKERWhich uses either cameras or radar to tell how far away you are from the car in front of you on the freeway
07:34SPEAKERLike that was the beginning of this and that was a little 10-15 years ago
07:38SPEAKERYeah, like Cadillac had it years and years ago as I recall
07:41SPEAKERThe the thing that's interesting is like the other stuff has kind of crept up like lane keeping and obstacle avoidance
07:48SPEAKERSo I've never heard the term lane keeping. I mean, it's pretty self-evident
07:52SPEAKERBut I've been in cars that have it in the last few months and like that was the big one to me
07:57SPEAKERWas it's not like the car is making
07:59SPEAKERYou know like full-on intentional right-hand turns and stuff
08:02SPEAKERBut it is some degree of self steering like like self self guidance is the big one to me
08:07SPEAKERIt can see the lines on the road and stay inside them
08:10SPEAKERLike that was kind of that was the moment where I was just like, oh wow
08:12SPEAKERThis stuff is just trickling down into everyday cars
08:14SPEAKERNow this is not like you don't need a Tesla with three firmware updates to get this sort of thing anymore
08:19SPEAKERIt's funny. We were one of the other electric cars I drove
08:22SPEAKERI might have been this might have been the beat of YouTube
08:24SPEAKERBut it had a camera on the front as part of the lane keeping and all that stuff
08:28SPEAKERBut it also would recognize speed limit signs
08:30SPEAKERSo it would see the speed limit sign and like the little HUD would be like
08:33SPEAKEROh, you're going since 75 and it's a 65 mile an hour zone. So like that's that stuff is there
08:38SPEAKERIt's been creeping in for a long time
08:40SPEAKERbut like to me
08:43SPEAKERself-driving car means
08:44SPEAKERLike the the audio of the future from iRobot where he just gets in and there's no wheel full-on like lack of human intervention
08:50SPEAKERLike you just there's a chair you buckle yourself in you like there's a doodle around on your phone
08:54SPEAKERYeah, there's a big TV in the car and you just get in and watch TV
08:57SPEAKERYeah, while your hardcore pornography the entire time you're driving to work your invisible robotic chauffeur just takes you where you're going
09:03SPEAKERWe're not we're not there yet, obviously, although I mean
09:07SPEAKERLike in test cases people have gotten close the Waymo the stuff that Waymo was doing with that bubble car that they're not making anymore
09:13SPEAKERIs Waymo the one that Google bought Waymo is what what is Google's self-driving car?
09:18SPEAKERYou remember Google Google is now alphabet and Waymo is the W
09:23SPEAKEROkay, which is the self-driving car part of it. Is that how they're actually running alphabet?
09:27SPEAKERThey're like attempting or they don't think it's unclear if they create 26 subsidiaries one with each
09:33SPEAKERThat's very super villain. It's from from Sergey Brin secret volcano layer. Do you know alphabetic evil?
09:41SPEAKERNo, they took that out. That's good
09:45SPEAKERSo first off apologies for only using American data for this it's we were one of the larger car driving populaces
09:52SPEAKERSo it was the easiest place to go for this
09:54SPEAKERThe I can't help but pointing out that you were wearing a shirt with a muni terrain on it right now
09:59SPEAKERI am yeah, just a little bit of the artist is a Miss Goldbaum. Well, he's an irony for you there
10:05SPEAKERYeah, he sells a bit sell shirts all over the bear. He's great. I love him
10:10SPEAKERAmerican driving stats we did that. Here's the thing
10:13SPEAKER40,000 people a year die in car. Yeah. Yeah in the u.s
10:17SPEAKERYeah, there's another 4.5 million that are seriously injured and the definition of seriously injured is a little bit unclear
10:24SPEAKERBut I assume it seems like it means a visit to the hospital
10:26SPEAKERI mean it's a it is a leading cause of death, right? It is like I'm sure it's like heart disease
10:30SPEAKERI'm gonna say it's not in the realm of heart disease and cancer. It's one of the
10:34SPEAKERDental death terms of accidental death. It's very high. Yeah
10:38SPEAKERIt's about it's more than 1% of the population are in a serious car accident every which is a lot of fine
10:44SPEAKER6,000 pedestrians are killed each year. Yeah, so I even before we got together to do this
10:48SPEAKERI had seen somewhere recently that that number is climbing quite a bit
10:52SPEAKERAll both of those numbers are climbing and like I for whatever reason just in the last year or two
10:56SPEAKERI have really started living in fear as I walk around downtown
10:59SPEAKERWell, I mean downtown especially downtown San Francisco is a terrifying place for pedestrians because real don't pay attention
11:05SPEAKERThe pedestrians like everybody there's a lot of people on both
11:09SPEAKERI'm gonna get shit from the audience for this but there's people on both sides that are involved because in downtown San Francisco
11:14SPEAKERPeople jaywalk like crazy and like don't respect the the hey stop walking now signs that people can turn right
11:21SPEAKERYeah, and that makes some people turn right crazy, which it's not ever right for them to smash into somebody
11:25SPEAKERBut everybody the whole situation is right for fit. Anyway, it's a bad
11:30SPEAKERI mean like I am a stringent follower of kind of pedestrian standards
11:33SPEAKERYeah, and legal requirements and I still live in fear constantly just because there's so much chaos. People are crazy. Yeah
11:41SPEAKERSo
11:42SPEAKERThe National Safety Council who's been tracking this since the 1920s
11:47SPEAKERVehicle safety stuff since the 1920s said that the numbers have generally been increasing since the Great Recession which was 2007 2008 2009
11:55SPEAKERPresumably due to driver behavior, but there's this is a correlation not necessarily thing
12:00SPEAKERThey specifically cited distracted and drowsy driving and said that maybe the opioid epidemic is committing as well
12:07SPEAKERI have to imagine texting while driving is a big part of that distracted texting
12:12SPEAKERDistracted like sure dicking around with your phone when you should be paying attention to the road sure is killing people
12:16SPEAKERAnother thing that came to mind is the rise of right share stuff. I I would imagine
12:21SPEAKERI mean, there are a lot of like kind of not fully professional drivers out there trying to get places very quickly now
12:27SPEAKERYeah, like I have no data to back that up, but I have seen statistics that
12:32SPEAKERTraffic congestion in cities has gotten dramatically worse due to ride share like people double parking waiting for a pickup and stuff like that
12:38SPEAKEROh, yeah, I see perennial. You can't drive down Valencia anymore. So you ever drivers parked in bus stop lanes
12:43SPEAKERIt had bus stops like all the time. Yeah
12:46SPEAKERIt's it's like it's it's an interesting
12:50SPEAKERIt's an interesting problem. The point is self-driving cars don't have to be better
12:55SPEAKERThey don't be perfect to be better to be good to be a good thing in terms of safety in terms of safety
13:01SPEAKERHuman cost of driving. Yeah, I I guess I agree with you in terms of like cold hard statistics
13:06SPEAKERI do I do think that I would just guess that the public has a very low tolerance for
13:13SPEAKERautomated cars killing people though
13:14SPEAKERLike I don't think it's gonna take too many more of those for people to really turn against the idea kind of wholesale
13:19SPEAKERI mean you say that but you look at the number of millions of miles driven by you know
13:24SPEAKERThe tech like at this well, we'll get into the levels and stuff in a minute. That's where it gets weird
13:29SPEAKERSo far most of the self-driving
13:32SPEAKERrelated
13:34SPEAKERFatalities have been related to like the assistance technology. So like lane keeping failing obstacle avoidance failing stuff like that
13:40SPEAKERYeah, I was trying to resist earlier when you're talking about the stop sign identification
13:43SPEAKERYeah, like I know that's probably a later in the show topic
13:45SPEAKERbut like, you know, my immediate question is like hey what happens when that is misidentified or when it's like
13:51SPEAKERRight chooses the wrong choice for what it thinks the shape is or you know
13:56SPEAKERI feel it feels like that maybe is a little bit of a rigid system that isn't necessarily adapted to changing road conditions
14:02SPEAKERWell, so they were looking at it was recognizing speed limits not stop signs. Oh, oh, it was actually like like identifying the number
14:10SPEAKERI mean that it's an easy. It's a visual number. My lights reflect back high contrast easy - um, it's it's an interesting like
14:19SPEAKERlike this a lot of people we talked about self-driving cars a lot on this is only a test back in like
14:25SPEAKER2013 2014 when like Waymo was starting to demo their cars and
14:30SPEAKERIt was like the probably the height of like the optimism around it, right?
14:34SPEAKERLike peak kind of Silicon Valley narrative like wave of the future like this is how it's gonna be in five years
14:39SPEAKERLike we're gonna run everything when Elon Musk on the Model S and was like look
14:43SPEAKERThis is a this is gonna be a complete tier 5 self-driving car and whatever time frame
14:47SPEAKERSo were they talking in terms of those levels even back then has that been like because today wouldn't you?
14:52SPEAKERYou know coming up here to record this was the first time I have ever heard it classified that way
14:56SPEAKEROh, that's been around for a while. So that's SAE which is I think the standards of automotive excellence or something
15:02SPEAKERIt's it's one of the organization bodies. It's the same people that decide that all oil filters
15:07SPEAKERConsortiums who should work the same way. Here we go again. But yeah, they've established five levels
15:11SPEAKERWe can just jump ahead to that because I think that might be useful for for
15:15SPEAKERfor helping
15:18SPEAKERhelping understand helping contextualize this stuff and the idea here is like this is a little bit off of the beaten path for our
15:24SPEAKERNormal format because it's a this is a huge topic and there's a lot to get into but we thought maybe a survey level
15:29SPEAKERkind of slightly deeper than an overview but like
15:34SPEAKERSetting the stage for future conversations about this stuff
15:38SPEAKERSo levels of automation according to SAE level zero is no automation that's just meat behind the wheel
15:43SPEAKERThat's what I do every day also
15:46SPEAKERHmm. Well, you know what? I'll let you go through these before I ask questions
15:49SPEAKERWell, so like the question I started to ask was is there actually a car a current car being sold right now like a current
15:54SPEAKERmodel year
15:56SPEAKERThat has no automation whatsoever. What that would even fit that classification at this point
15:59SPEAKERIt seems like almost everything has something but again, like I don't know if power steering and things like that
16:03SPEAKERWell, so power steering wouldn't count. No, because that's the entirely the users in. Yeah, that's why that's why I'm getting ahead of her
16:08SPEAKERNo, no, it's okay. But like cruise control, I think probably fits in that category
16:13SPEAKERAlthough cruise control only maintains like non adaptive cruise control. Yeah
16:17SPEAKERMost cars even the ones that are loaded up with all this stuff today. You can turn that off if you want
16:22SPEAKERSo like if you think about it you buy a Volvo that has all their adaptive cruise control and object avoidance and all their safety
16:28SPEAKERstuff
16:28SPEAKERYou can still turn off all that stuff and drive it just like I would a 1985 Ford Ranger
16:33SPEAKERWhich was the first car I ever bought right manual transmission. Yeah
16:37SPEAKERYeah, I did not I did not learn on a manual transmission, but then I had to drive one
16:42SPEAKERRegularly a few years later
16:44SPEAKERI and it really made me wish I had learned on one to begin with I got rid of my manual transmission when I moved
16:48SPEAKERTo San Francisco for fairly obvious reasons because yes here would have killed me. Yeah, it was a
16:52SPEAKERLast car I drove regularly was a five-speed 94 Civic. Yeah, and yeah when I moved out here gone
16:59SPEAKERWell, I never thought about bringing it to begin with but when I got here and saw the hills and the way that you had
17:03SPEAKERto like nope
17:05SPEAKERStart from a stop on a like a full-on 45-degree incline. No, thank you. Just oh my god sidewalks with stairs burnout
17:12SPEAKERyour transmission
17:14SPEAKERSilly and burn the clutch or the clutch. Um, okay, so level zero is no automation
17:18SPEAKERThe human behind the wheel is entirely responsible for everything about the car level one is some driver assistance
17:25SPEAKERThe car controls the steering or the speed but not both simultaneously
17:29SPEAKERso like
17:30SPEAKERAdaptive cruise control is an example of this where you get on the freeway you say I want to go 75 miles an hour and
17:35SPEAKERIt monitors what's in ahead of you and behind you or specifically ahead of you so you don't rear-end anybody
17:42SPEAKERAnd then but it can't like change lanes to pass a slow-moving car in the in your current lane
17:47SPEAKERIs this just a matter of classification that these are?
17:49SPEAKERConsidered that you can't have both of those and be level one. Like there's nothing mutually exclusive
17:53SPEAKERI don't know about that about say lane keeping and adapt. I think it is
17:56SPEAKERI think that's more they're just saying if you have more than one of those then you assume then you send to the next level
18:01SPEAKERYeah, okay, exactly
18:03SPEAKERSo the drivers responsible for everything takes over if the system fails to act
18:07SPEAKERSo like if the car if the car doesn't recognize that there's another car in front of you the radar doesn't work for whatever reason
18:13SPEAKERThe drivers responsible for taking over a lot of this is a mixture of like what the cars capable of and where the drivers responsible
18:19SPEAKERThat's that's the that's the thing that's interesting about this whole kind of framework for thinking about this and I assume in those
18:25SPEAKERSituations the drivers got pretty much like split-second override control like it's it's as yeah
18:29SPEAKERLike it's as simple as like the flick of a wrist or tapping the brake or something to disengage those stuff, right?
18:34SPEAKERYeah, so like with cruise control if you tap the brake the cruise control turns off, right?
18:38SPEAKERthere are pauses basically if you're doing lane keeping and
18:42SPEAKERYou bump the lane
18:45SPEAKERThe you know do the lane change signal the half up half down then it'll let you pull then it
18:50SPEAKERStops pushing the car back into the lane if you're pushing against it or in some cars if you push against the lane keeping enough
18:57SPEAKERThen it's like oh you want to change lanes or do something
19:00SPEAKERI'll let I'll back off that sounds a little unsettling to me. It's me and maybe that's up. Okay, so I don't like it
19:05SPEAKERlike I was gonna say maybe this this is just me again not having driven a car for ages, but like
19:11SPEAKERYou know turning off the cruise control feels pretty natural like it's not a big deal
19:15SPEAKERbut I feel like the second that you feel the wheel fighting against your it's not a good feeling or desire to move it in a
19:20SPEAKERCertain direction like no, yeah, okay
19:22SPEAKERSo I drive back and forth to LA fairly often and I usually don't want to put miles on my old beater cars to do
19:28SPEAKERThat so I will like rent a car and often I get like the Hyundai's or Nissan's or whatever from Enterprise
19:35SPEAKERThat that have plane keeping and like the more advanced self-driving stuff and it's always jarring
19:42SPEAKERLike it is if it's I found the later model Nissan stuff is pretty good
19:47SPEAKERLike I actually trust it driving down five which is one of the most profoundly boring stretches of highway
19:52SPEAKERYou can drive on in North America very flat and straight and lots of cow lots of lots of cows
19:58SPEAKERbut but
20:00SPEAKERYeah, that feeling that feeling of the wheel pushing back when you're trying to get out of the lane is is is challenging
20:05SPEAKERI feel like there's probably just a kind of a very
20:08SPEAKERmomentary kind of feeling in the pit of your stomach right of like oh this thing is not obeying what I wanted to do and then
20:12SPEAKERAnd then you're your conscious brain takes over and you're like, oh, I just have to push enough to disengage
20:16SPEAKERI think you get past that part pretty quickly
20:18SPEAKERit's just it's just
20:19SPEAKERThe bigger problem is when it misreads the lane or like when you reach a place where the roads splitting and it's trying to go
20:25SPEAKERThe wrong way and you're fighting against that sounds horrifying. I mean it releases
20:30SPEAKERBut I I'm I'm not I haven't spent enough time with those cars to be confident in
20:35SPEAKERLike how they behave right in those circumstances and I don't think I mean honestly it's like it's like being around a wild animal
20:42SPEAKERRight. It's like it's like having a little kid around a dog. You don't know how the car is gonna react
20:47SPEAKERTo an unexpected stimuli in the same way. You don't know how a dog's gonna react to the two-year-old yank in its tail
20:52SPEAKERI was gonna say like when you're driving, I mean maybe a little less
20:55SPEAKERSo when you're on a flat straight road like that, but like yours your sensory perception is already kind of saturated, right?
21:01SPEAKERI mean you're already having to pay attention everything around you and I kind of a heightened degree. Yeah, so adding another layer of
21:07SPEAKERThings you need to worry about like adding adding the potential for the car to do something
21:11SPEAKERIt shouldn't and you having to watch out for that and correct it
21:14SPEAKERWell, maybe like more trouble than it's worth
21:17SPEAKERI mean so the question is is your inattentiveness while you're driving down the boring-ass road more dangerous or is
21:24SPEAKERThe one in a million times that the car messes up. Well, I mean if you're not paying attention sickle rate of failure
21:30SPEAKERIs that low then? Well, I mean, I don't know what the I'm pulling an arbitrary number
21:34SPEAKERYeah, but I mean we are at we are at a point where there have been you know
21:38SPEAKERMillions and millions of miles driven with auto with Tesla's autopilot stuff. Oh, really? I don't know
21:42SPEAKERYeah, he talks about it on Twitter all the time
21:45SPEAKERI'm sure he does. Yeah, it's what it's anyway
21:50SPEAKERBut okay
21:51SPEAKERSo the point with driver one or level one is driver assistance steering or speed but not both and the driver is still responsible for
21:57SPEAKEREverything takes over the moment that just the system fails to operate
22:00SPEAKERLevel two is partial automation. So the car can steer accelerate and brake in certain circumstances
22:05SPEAKERBut the driver is still responsible for moment by moment
22:09SPEAKERstrategic tactical decisions like stop signs and traffic lights changing lanes
22:14SPEAKERavoiding obstacles and other dangers
22:17SPEAKERand this this is where
22:20SPEAKERThis is where kind of the modern autopilot like the Tesla autopilot
22:24SPEAKERAudis. Oh
22:27SPEAKERCatalog super crews and stuff like that. This is where the current Tesla stuff tops out
22:31SPEAKERThis is well, this is where we're at as of months ago. That's what's on the road right now
22:37SPEAKERI thought it was higher than that. So this will change lanes
22:41SPEAKERThe the the tactical decision of changing lanes is a is seems to be amorphous
22:47SPEAKERBut like on the freeway your Tesla will change lanes to pass somebody that's going too slow
22:52SPEAKERIf they're if the left lane is clear or whatever
22:56SPEAKERUsually you have to keep your hand on the wheel in order to keep this activated
23:00SPEAKERSo like you have to pretend you're paying attention, even though probably people don't pay attention
23:05SPEAKERLevel three is what they call conditional automation
23:10SPEAKERThis means that so the difference between two and three is that the car isn't keeping track of the environment so much
23:17SPEAKERLevel four level three. The car is tracking the environment
23:21SPEAKERSo if a pedestrian walks in front of the car
23:22SPEAKERIt will realize it's a pedestrian and know that the pedestrians gonna step out in front of the track
23:26SPEAKERSo when you use when you say environment you basically mean sort of shape recognition around the car
23:30SPEAKERI mean the the space, you know, if you're going 45 miles an hour, you have what 45 feet to stop
23:36SPEAKERSo it's the space that you require. The car has to be aware of the space
23:41SPEAKERAround it in order to stop and avoid hitting something. Okay
23:44SPEAKERWell, what I mean is is it just limited obstacles or would it be able to say?
23:48SPEAKERRealize that it's raining and that it that the pavement is gonna be more slippery and that is a very good question
23:53SPEAKERMore time to slow down than if it was dry
23:56SPEAKERYeah, I don't I assume in in level three. We're just talking about that
24:01SPEAKERI don't think we get into navigating weather until we get further down though. Yeah, that's my that was my assumption
24:05SPEAKERI just wanted to make sure that the thing I read about these SAE levels didn't mention weather until you get much higher much further
24:10SPEAKERDown the path, but I think it does bill straight point though that the driving
24:15SPEAKERwell, and safely is much more complex than
24:18SPEAKERJust saying hey, there's a you know, there's a deer in the road in front of me
24:22SPEAKERLike there are other factors there that well, it's more than saying just there's a thing in the road, right?
24:26SPEAKERThat's what I write. Like if you look at what the lidar gives you back. It's just like hey
24:29SPEAKERThere's something that's three feet tall in the road. Right? Is it a kid? Is it a deer?
24:32SPEAKERIs it a cone that you know, one of those big barrels that got blown into the thing? Is it safe to hit? Probably no
24:39SPEAKERAt level three the car manages most aspects of driving and monitors the environment
24:44SPEAKERThe driver is prompted when the car reaches the situation doesn't understand but it's more of a strategic choice
24:48SPEAKERSo it's like if it can't read the intersection and needs to know do I you know, do I take for example?
24:55SPEAKERThe i-5 grapevine split when you come out of i-5 you go and you go towards Bakersfield
25:01SPEAKERUsually staying right makes you take the exit and stay on the left makes you enter
25:06SPEAKERThe signage is bad human drivers mess this up. I did it last time I drove back in my life made that drive dozens of times
25:12SPEAKERThe cars if the car doesn't understand the situation
25:15SPEAKERIt'll prompt the driver usually by bumping the wheel or bringing a chime or some combination of the boat of all of all of those
25:20SPEAKERI mean that again just raises my hackles though that like I feel like the human tendency is gonna be to kind of disengage with
25:26SPEAKERWhat's going on if you don't have to pay attention to it, right?
25:28SPEAKERSo like I feel like there's some extra sort of cognitive spin up time
25:32SPEAKERIf you're sitting there on your phone or just like not I think that's a fair criticism
25:35SPEAKERYou're zoning out and what it what's required to get you back in the game is some kind of sound effect
25:40SPEAKERlike there's gonna be a second or two of like
25:42SPEAKERreturn to awareness right before you can react and like just you know, like
25:46SPEAKERMilliseconds count when when you're going 80 miles an hour. Yeah, so presumably this is going to alert you before such
25:54SPEAKERWith more than enough time to like read the situation assuming the car itself recognizes the this is still
26:01SPEAKERArguably a car that you're supposed to be paying attention to the entire time your drive
26:04SPEAKERYeah, again, like, you know, but the expectations and the reality of the way people will use it are yeah
26:09SPEAKERI've yelled for years about Tesla naming the autopilot autopilot because I think it's incredibly irresponsible because words mean shit. Yeah, who knew?
26:18SPEAKERAudis traffic jam pilot is a specific example of level three in that it can change lanes and like when you're stuck in
26:24SPEAKERTraffic you can hit the button. It'll just do do the TDM for you
26:30SPEAKERLevel four is high automation. This is the second highest level level five is the highest
26:35SPEAKERAnd this is that the car can operate without human input or oversight in certain conditions
26:40SPEAKERSo certain types of roads freeway urban etc or specific geographical area and probably this is limited to specific weather conditions, too
26:47SPEAKERSo you won't be able to it wouldn't be able to drive in the snow
26:50SPEAKERBut maybe it can handle light rain or whatever depending on what type of sensors it uses
26:54SPEAKERdriver made haven't made this so that what this means is once you you might have to drive your car to get onto the freeway and
27:02SPEAKEROnce you get on the freeway
27:03SPEAKERIt knows where you want to go and you just let take your hands off the wheel and go about your business
27:08SPEAKERThis isn't this doesn't exist outside of prototypes like the way most off really and and the standalone like experimental cars
27:15SPEAKERIt's actually and even even especially licensed cars and even here what you're describing sounds like anything that requires a lot of
27:21SPEAKERFrequent decision-making a lot of turns to make a lot of routing is still gonna be on the driver
27:25SPEAKERWell, I think because it goes freeway operation
27:27SPEAKERI mean it happens quickly, but it's pretty it's relatively simple right compared to driving on side streets and that sort of thing
27:32SPEAKERWell, it turns out it's complicated. Yeah
27:36SPEAKERAs a general rule the signal-to-noise ratio of good data to bad data on the freeway is pretty straightforward
27:42SPEAKERThat's kind of what I was getting like worst case the car can follow the car in front of it and it'll probably be okay
27:46SPEAKERRight just do what the other cars around it are doing, right?
27:49SPEAKERYou don't have to manage like like if you think about like the area around your office downtown
27:53SPEAKERWhere you're going up third Street and there's a million alleys and there's all these weird pull-offs and there's parking lots
27:59SPEAKERAnd there's strange roundabouts and bike lanes and just a hundred like very yeah noisy
28:04SPEAKERLike you said it's not elements to worry about well and like power lines and people and weird reflections and like construction
28:09SPEAKERYeah, exactly. Yeah constantly changing streets. Maybe the lines aren't painted on the road because they just repaved and that confuses things
28:17SPEAKERIt's it's complicated
28:20SPEAKERThe two modes for this are like
28:23SPEAKERlimited-use
28:25SPEAKERRide share type situation where the car just knows the area that you're in like that
28:30SPEAKERIt knows San Francisco super well and isn't allowed to operate outside of San Francisco
28:34SPEAKERbut it's good inside the inside those city limits or
28:37SPEAKERAlternately like a personally owned car that once you get on the freeway, you don't have to pay attention
28:41SPEAKERSo if you like want to go to Portland you get in the car put it on the freeway and just lay down and go
28:45SPEAKERTo sleep which sounds terrific. I'm there for that. Okay
28:49SPEAKERlook
28:50SPEAKERThen the last one is five is full automation
28:53SPEAKERWhich means it can basically operate in any condition that a human driver can regardless of weather or geography
28:58SPEAKERand the the example I saw for this was that Waymo has
29:03SPEAKERconverted a bunch of those Chrysler Pacifica's the the hybrid ones to
29:08SPEAKERServe as a testbed for that kind of driving. Okay, so is this off the drawing board yet level five those like are they even testing?
29:14SPEAKERThey're they're they're doing the work to make those real nicely. Okay, but it's there's some question as to whether that we're
29:22SPEAKERYou know the timing on that whether we even have the technology needed a little bit of googling
29:26SPEAKERI did about level five automation before this suggested that it is a very long way off the the things that I have read
29:32SPEAKERLead me to believe that anybody that's saying there's level five automation coming in the next say
29:38SPEAKERAny determinate period of time is maybe blowing smoke? Okay?
29:43SPEAKERLike the biggest question that comes to mind for me with these higher tiers
29:46SPEAKERYeah is whether these are the sort of thing that are only feasible if every car is similarly equipped
29:52SPEAKERso that's part of the challenge of level five is that
29:55SPEAKERPresumably the early phases of level five is that we'll have either
30:01SPEAKERThey right now they have to operate with other cars because there's a bazillion, you know, 70 billion man that person
30:07SPEAKERThat's that's where it seems like most of the danger comes from is that robotic cars have to compete or not compete
30:12SPEAKERBut but coexist with unpredictable and fallible human drivers
30:16SPEAKERLike if every car on the road had the exact same robotic algorithms running it then you might feel like you could have some expectation
30:22SPEAKEROh, that's a terrible idea. And what if that algorithm has a failure point? Oh, well, sure. Sure
30:27SPEAKERI mean like it'll get hacked. Let's say let's say the system is robust and fairly trustworthy at a point
30:34SPEAKERSo blockchain is what you're saying? Yeah. Yeah with the robotic cards gonna be on the block, huh?
30:39SPEAKERJust leave your car idling all night to mine to mine. Oh, no, no, that's a terrible
30:44SPEAKERJust I'm gonna sit in the garage and watch it to make sure it's okay. That's safe, right?
30:48SPEAKERYeah, sitting in the garage with a running car. Well, it's electric though is it'll be fine. That's fair
30:53SPEAKERYeah, okay, all those all those all those bits all those. Yeah
30:58SPEAKERIt's so here's the thing I
31:01SPEAKERThink all of this is predicated on the fact that they have to be coexist with human driven cars
31:06SPEAKERThe benefits that computers have are that they can read situations and see things
31:10SPEAKERYou know very rapidly reaction time with the reaction time. Our reaction time is 45 miles on a like
31:15SPEAKERMy physics professor told me this or my physics teacher in high school told me that the human reactions
31:20SPEAKERHappen at about like once you get above 45 miles an hour. You're not able to react faster than then then
31:28SPEAKERLike your reaction speeds are slower than the the speed at which things will happen to you. Okay
31:32SPEAKERYeah, what I don't know that's true or not, but it sounds good. What is the the kind of common consensus on human reaction time?
31:39SPEAKERIs it like a second second and a half to go from perceiving something to being able to cognitively like process and react?
31:45SPEAKERI thought I feel it's gotta be faster than that. You think I mean you can catch a ball. Well, but I mean
31:51SPEAKERfor getting into like cognitive territory that were probably unquipped to exist or to
31:56SPEAKERSomething to discuss here, but I'm sure there are there are conscious versus subconscious reactions, right?
32:01SPEAKERThere are like there are lizard brain
32:03SPEAKERthere's reflexes and survival reflexes that happen much faster than having to like process sort of multiple variables and come up with a
32:11SPEAKERSo I would bet that if you like we could do an experiment with this
32:15SPEAKERI bet if you put you and I in a driving simulator
32:18SPEAKERI bet my reactions are faster than yours, even though I'm older than you just because I drive on the rag
32:25SPEAKERYeah, but I mean I guess you like driving stimuli what I'm getting at is like think about something new
32:30SPEAKERYou know, I guess catching the baseball flying at your face is a good example
32:33SPEAKERBut like think about how often you have reacted to things before you even consciously process what what it was
32:37SPEAKERYou were reacting to you know catching something or dropping something and yeah
32:41SPEAKERLike that like the drop and catch it with the same hand on the way down. That's always like it's back in your hand before you
32:45SPEAKERfully
32:47SPEAKERIntegrated the idea that you dropped it in the first place, right? It's funny
32:49SPEAKERI always feel like I think about that, but maybe I'm just like a host coming. This is a cognitive science question
32:54SPEAKERYeah, this is for your
32:56SPEAKERTreading into dangerous territory, but so so
33:00SPEAKERthe point is though all the cars have to do is be safer than
33:04SPEAKERYour average distracted driver who's like changing Spotify while they're trying to change six lanes across the freeway
33:11SPEAKERSure, and and we're better off as a whole like like fatality and injury numbers go down
33:15SPEAKERYeah
33:16SPEAKERlike if fatality and injury like just to be clear since the introduction of the smartphone in
33:20SPEAKER2007 fatality and injury numbers have been increasing until 2018 when he kind of leveled off for the first time
33:26SPEAKERYeah, also coincidentally one of the we started the hey don't drive distracted campaigns in like what 2017 maybe
33:33SPEAKERSo maybe maybe that stuff's finally working
33:36SPEAKERIt's it's unclear
33:40SPEAKERI think when we started talking about self-driving cars not eight years ago
33:43SPEAKERI was thinking about it in terms of these things can never kill people
33:47SPEAKERBut when you talk to the people who who are doing writing the code for these things and we're figuring it out
33:52SPEAKERLike people die in cars. It's gonna happen. There's gonna be situations where somebody's gonna die
33:56SPEAKERYeah, and the point is that we want to minimize those
34:01SPEAKERAgain, I you know it's a reiterate though
34:02SPEAKERI do I do feel like the public is going to have a pretty low tolerance for machines doing that
34:07SPEAKERI mean look there's always gonna be some Luddite in the middle of the country. Yeah, I mean I think I think you're right
34:13SPEAKERLike I think it is I genuinely I sincerely think it is easy as human beings to other
34:19SPEAKERautomated technology and see it as kind of an external threat as opposed to like
34:23SPEAKERYou know people identify with human error because they are themselves human and also make errors
34:27SPEAKERYeah, no one there and there's remunerations when there's a human error
34:32SPEAKERI like if I if I'm if I nail a pedestrian when I'm leaving here today. Yeah. Yeah, then I that's all dude
34:37SPEAKERI mean like yeah the ability of giant tech companies to escape liability. I feel like it's a whole separate issue here
34:42SPEAKERSo yeah, that is actually that's a question
34:45SPEAKERWe need to get an ethicist on for us. I want to know like if I'm if I'm driving my Volvo
34:49SPEAKERI have a vault if I theoretically if I have a Volvo that's self-driving and it tags somebody and
34:55SPEAKERAnd it's in level four level five and I'm driving it. I'm using it correctly
34:58SPEAKERAm I liable for that is Volvo liable for that is nobody liable for that?
35:02SPEAKERLike is this just it like because if you think about it as a society we take on shared risk on the reg
35:08SPEAKERRight, we like when you get on an airplane, we're basically saying hey, we're we assume
35:13SPEAKERThat the airline is working in its best interest to keep this safe and there will be some sort of small settlement if there's a tragedy
35:19SPEAKEROn the airline, but it's not like, you know, it's not like if it's not like if the airline does something negligent
35:25SPEAKERIt's not like say Boeing building 737 maxes and making them defective by design. That's another conversation
35:31SPEAKERYeah, they probably have conversations
35:33SPEAKERBut I mean the I feel like the I think it was uber right that had the fatality last year
35:38SPEAKERUber's had a couple of like the NTSB report on one of those fatalities just came out like in the last week or two
35:44SPEAKERIt's like that's been back in the headlines. This was the vault the Volvo they'd modified
35:49SPEAKERHit a bicyclist. I think right? Yes, that is. Yeah. Yeah, and what did that?
35:53SPEAKERWhat was the what was the finding out of the thing the report?
35:56SPEAKERWas it basically I think it was basically not trained to identify shapes
36:00SPEAKERI would have to double check with the my understanding was that the Volvo cell collision avoidance stuff would have detected the bicyclists and the uber
36:07SPEAKERStuff didn't that is yeah
36:10SPEAKERAlso, the family of the deceased never hears that because that is I hope they sue the living shit out of uber
36:15SPEAKERIt was really tough to hear. I mean, here's the thing the thing about
36:20SPEAKERso
36:22SPEAKEROne of the problems with Silicon Valley in general is the tendency to move fast and break things which is great when you're talking about
36:28SPEAKERSmartphone apps and word processors and stuff like that when you get into a situation where you're talking about
36:33SPEAKER70 billion person hours in a car every year
36:37SPEAKERThey're like the potential for breaking things is becomes really tragic and this is the first example of that
36:42SPEAKERYeah
36:43SPEAKERthere have been a couple of Tesla autopilot fatalities that involved like
36:47SPEAKERsome dumbass watching a movie on his laptop while he was supposed to be driving the car and and stuff like that also tragic, but
36:54SPEAKERShouldn't like they are really fucking clear that you're supposed to be paying attention to behind the wheel
36:59SPEAKERThat was my first question was how they messaged those features and what the safety expectations of two drivers
37:03SPEAKERSo it like you click like every click-through license as always but also if you take your hands off the wheel for more than like five
37:10SPEAKERSeconds, it starts shaking the wheel and making buzzing noises inside the car. Okay, and eventually it'll just stop. Okay, that's okay
37:17SPEAKERThose are more rigorous safety standards than I would have expected but quite frankly just to be clear
37:21SPEAKERYou can bypass all of these rigorous safety standards by just draping
37:25SPEAKEROn the wheel while you have the laptop propped up with the right hand. So, you know pros and cons
37:31SPEAKERit's it's a
37:34SPEAKERIt
37:37SPEAKERMore than anything else, I think we've talked about on this podcast so far
37:41SPEAKERThis has the potential to kind of reshape society
37:43SPEAKEROh, yeah, right because like you you live in a world where you don't own a car you take the bus to work
37:48SPEAKERon the reg and I assume if you need a car you lift or you do a do a
37:53SPEAKEROn the spot like just to get somewhere quickly. Yeah or lift
37:57SPEAKERBut we also use the car on occasion for kind of Costco. Yeah. Yeah, I kind of personal stuff like that
38:03SPEAKERYeah
38:04SPEAKERyeah, I feel like there are so many kind of
38:08SPEAKERTopics that are gonna be very relevant in the near future that kind of dovetail into this right like there's like kind of the power
38:13SPEAKERof Silicon Valley and
38:15SPEAKERthe need to
38:17SPEAKERsort of rein in
38:18SPEAKERthe boundaries of their tech
38:21SPEAKERadvancement there's like urban planning and how that might need to change around both population density and
38:27SPEAKERPollution and how that needs to be decreased like that. There's a lot of stuff here
38:31SPEAKERwell, and you you look at you look at like what London did with the exclusion like they have a car exclusion zone where you
38:37SPEAKERHave to pay I think 20 pounds or something to get in to drive your car into the scent downtown central urban area of London
38:44SPEAKERTo relieve traffic congestion. Okay
38:46SPEAKERI was gonna ask if that was just a toll situation or if that was actually to bring about
38:49SPEAKERChanges in traffic patterns. It was like 15 years ago
38:52SPEAKERThey wanted it to be just cabs downtown instead of a million people trying to park and and and it's worked
38:59SPEAKERWhich again is the exact situation we have here now, they have the benefit of having a really robust public transit system
39:05SPEAKERYeah, which I mean like buses are good. They're okay
39:09SPEAKERThere'd be some a lot of like the problem we have in San Francisco
39:13SPEAKERIs that where the population is densest out on the west side of town?
39:16SPEAKERIt's mostly served by buses that run on streets. Yes, that is your subject to traffic congestion. Yeah sucks
39:21SPEAKERYeah, you have the wider problem in the Greater Bay Area of stuff like Bart not being expanded nearly as much as it should be
39:28SPEAKERYeah, we haven't we I mean to rampant nimby ism and so forth, but that's again
39:33SPEAKERIf part comes all of the undesirables. Yeah. Nope. I've been watching it happen for yeah
39:38SPEAKERThey say the quiet part loud as somebody who had to commute to north of the Golden Gate Bridge for a number
39:44SPEAKERGod, how did you even do that? I am very well acquainted with the people up here voting down Bart expansion over and over
39:50SPEAKERI forgot about that. We took the Golden Gate Transit bus
39:53SPEAKERIt was awful for me driving up 19th every day
39:56SPEAKERBut at least I didn't have to take the Golden Gate Transit bus. Yeah, which only ran once an hour
40:00SPEAKERYeah, and stopped after seven o'clock. My name was the last one I think. Yeah, I remember I stopped at 7 p.m
40:06SPEAKERIf I can get if you didn't get on that 7 p.m. Bus phone to get home. Well, I would take you home
40:12SPEAKERoccasionally
40:13SPEAKEROn the rag after you guys got there. Yes, but the first couple years if you missed that bus
40:18SPEAKERWas Jeff still in the city then or is he up north?
40:20SPEAKEROh, he's never been in so he's never been in the city. Ryan was over city then either they were both up north
40:24SPEAKERBut if you missed if you missed that 7 p.m. Bus your 20 minute bus ride turned into like a 90 minute bus ride
40:29SPEAKEROr a hundred dollar cab ride probably. Oh, it wasn't quite that much, but it was like 50. Well, okay, so it so
40:36SPEAKERThat's kind of the overview
40:39SPEAKERThe self-driving cars. It seems like like the thing that's happened is interesting is a everybody's gotten really pessimistic about level 5
40:46SPEAKERover the last few years
40:48SPEAKERAnd even like level 5 with caveats like you're not gonna drive in snow or ice
40:52SPEAKERpeople have gotten kind of pessimistic about
40:55SPEAKERthe other thing is
40:59SPEAKERLike
41:01SPEAKERIt seems to be like this is gonna end up being paired with electric cars
41:04SPEAKERso and and
41:06SPEAKERSome manufacturers may be wanting to move to a model where people don't ever buy cars again where you're just like subscribing to its service
41:13SPEAKERJust like everything else. Okay, so, you know instead of buying a car
41:17SPEAKERYou just you pay either pay per ride you pay a couple hundred bucks a month for access to either private or shared or whatever
41:24SPEAKERWhatever level you want
41:26SPEAKERWhich which I mean frankly like from an urban urban planning standpoint
41:31SPEAKERI look around as I spent 20 minutes trying to park outside your apartment how at how many?
41:37SPEAKERHow many people how many how much of our urban space we spend?
41:40SPEAKERParking cars like yeah
41:42SPEAKERlet's build some shared lots where they can plug in and just not and just have them driving around all the time because like my
41:48SPEAKERcar sits in the driveway I
41:50SPEAKERWhat I drive an average of 50 minutes a day it says so that means there's 23 hours and 10 minutes a day
41:55SPEAKERThat's just sitting
41:57SPEAKERDepreciating I'm fine. I'm fine. Not owning a car totally
42:00SPEAKERI am I'm 100% with you at this point having not had to deal with it for a very long time
42:04SPEAKERwell, like what you're describing sounds even more like a blending of
42:09SPEAKERSort of traditional private car operation and ownership and public transit like I feel like you're actually talking about
42:16SPEAKERSome kind of model where those two concepts just become one in some way well
42:20SPEAKERI mean I I mean obviously like the public or private ownership of the system is a major factor there, but like
42:26SPEAKERYeah, like you are you want your landlord to own a bunch of cars that he's sending out in the world to carry people around
42:31SPEAKEROh, yeah, I probably don't want that. I don't have a landlord right that seems not great right and at the same time
42:38SPEAKERI also don't want Tesla and Ford to be doing that. So yeah, I don't know what they I don't I don't
42:43SPEAKERBut from an urban planning standpoint, it would be really nice to reclaim the space that we use on bazillions of cars
42:50SPEAKERAbsolutely. Also, I mean we are talking about this for me and incredibly like urban centric
42:55SPEAKERYeah perspective and you know, I grew up on YouTube you did too. We both grew up in small-town America
43:00SPEAKERlike I like I know full well that more rural areas like this is a completely different conversation because the
43:05SPEAKERDensity is too low for this sort of thing to make sense
43:08SPEAKERWell and and like the number of times I've driven up my car in San Francisco off of a road or driveway or parking lot
43:15SPEAKERI think I can count on one hand, you know in in Tennessee. I grew up on a 15 acre farm
43:22SPEAKERyou know we
43:24SPEAKERLike constantly driving through gates and driving through fields and stuff like that
43:27SPEAKERLike those people who live places that are more rural even suburban probably aren't talking about self-driving cars anytime soon
43:34SPEAKERI think we're I think maybe maybe on interstates and freeways
43:37SPEAKERBut I think I think for people who are like suburban commuters
43:41SPEAKERIt's it's literally the same people that like electric cars are interested for interesting for you drive less than 50 miles a day
43:47SPEAKERYou spend a fair amount of time in the car you're spending, you know, four dollars a gallon on gas here in Northern, California
43:53SPEAKER450 a gallon on gas like it's it makes a lot of sense to have a self-driving electric car
43:59SPEAKERIt's just a matter of when is the right time to jump and whether it's something that you buy or subscribe to or what?
44:05SPEAKERThe model is and and what its limitations are, you know
44:08SPEAKERDoes it does it drive you can it drive me to your office downtown or is it only for going down to San Jose?
44:13SPEAKERI don't know
44:13SPEAKERYeah, it almost sounds like I mean setting aside the just the technical difficulty of getting to level five. It almost sounds like maybe
44:21SPEAKERThat's just too extreme for what's practical for society
44:24SPEAKERlike I could almost see a situation where like 20 30 years from now people have just decided that like level two or three was actually
44:30SPEAKERthe highest we
44:32SPEAKERRealistically needed to go like that. Like maybe there's a maybe there's a happy medium between
44:36SPEAKERDirect user intervention and automation that is more ideal for safety standards and so forth
44:41SPEAKERUm, yeah trying to let computers run everything. I mean, I don't I don't think
44:46SPEAKERLike I think there's a real chance that my daughter who's now six years old almost seven
44:51SPEAKERWon't have to learn to drive in ten years when she when like she's already not interested in it
44:55SPEAKERShe thinks it's dangerous which is funny because when I was six I was like man, I want to learn how to drive
44:59SPEAKERYeah, yeah
45:00SPEAKERClassic the classic American teenage notion was like everybody can't wait to get a license and like be free of the parental yoke
45:05SPEAKERYeah, but like she's grown up and she when we travel places then we take lifts and stuff like that
45:11SPEAKERLike I often don't rent a car if I'm not going someplace that I'm gonna have to do
45:15SPEAKERYeah, if I'm going to an urban area than then renting a car is usually counterproductive
45:20SPEAKERI I don't I so I don't know. I don't I don't think we're gonna get into cars
45:24SPEAKERThey don't have steering wheels anytime soon
45:26SPEAKERYou know, I don't think we're gonna get in and hit our location on the map and have it just drive us there
45:31SPEAKERBut I mean, who knows we'll see. Yeah
45:34SPEAKERI think that's that's all I got. Yeah
45:37SPEAKERI mean I could ask questions all day about just about any topic, but here's one that is kind of related
45:42SPEAKEROkay, maybe it is really hit me
45:45SPEAKERIt gets into you know
45:48SPEAKERSo that's that entertaining territory of the fortunes of the rising and falling fortunes of Silicon Valley. Hmm
45:55SPEAKERDo you think that Uber's business model is doomed is uber be-doomed?
45:58SPEAKERlike the thing that is seem to be the case with uber for the last two three years is
46:03SPEAKERThey're just trying to corner the market
46:06SPEAKERJust in time for robotic cars to come online. I mean so they don't have to pay anybody anymore
46:11SPEAKERI like like they want everybody using their app
46:14SPEAKERYeah, and then they want for that market dominance to coincide with not having to pay human beings and just running a fleet of automatic
46:21SPEAKERCars, so the common wisdom is that they have spent the last ten years building market share, right?
46:27SPEAKERSo that and losing money on every ride because they're quarterly losses at this hundred dollars
46:32SPEAKERLike I think yeah, they're losing billions per quarter at this point. Yeah. No, it was it was only I can't remember
46:37SPEAKEROh, no
46:38SPEAKERIt was I saw the comparison I saw yesterday was Amtrak which lost like 20 million dollars last quarter
46:43SPEAKERVersus uber which lost almost a billion dollars. I think yeah, maybe that was a lot
46:46SPEAKERIt's an astronomical like they're not gonna make it right like the as this kind of
46:51SPEAKERGlorious level five future keeps getting pushed further and further off. Like it just seems like that can't be sustained
46:56SPEAKERWell, they don't need level five. They need level four
46:58SPEAKEROh if you think about most of uber they get most of uber is that most most of those ride share rides operate within a
47:04SPEAKERFairly fixed geographical area. Well, so okay. Let me refer back to my notes. Yeah, there's a good
47:10SPEAKERI thought level four still would need I mean anything that
47:14SPEAKERRequires a human being to be sitting in the car ready to act is kind of undermine their
47:19SPEAKERso for or fine
47:21SPEAKERFor techno dystopian future then but but for is can work operate without human oversight in specific conditions
47:28SPEAKERSo I see I see so as long as you're confining the V to the geographical routes to like a very small road types
47:35SPEAKERWell, I mean a very small but like San Francisco is seven miles by seven miles, right?
47:38SPEAKERI think that I think that fits spicy. I
47:44SPEAKERThink
47:46SPEAKERThey they a few years ago
47:48SPEAKERThey literally scooped up the entire Carnegie Mellon robotics department like hired all the professors out in one fell swoop more or less
47:54SPEAKEROkay, I feel like pretty consistently
47:59SPEAKERUber and this has changed a little bit in recent time because they've almost completely overhauled the entire management structure
48:05SPEAKERThey had a reputation for just going in and breaking laws willy-nilly
48:09SPEAKERWhich like if you're going up against established monopoly cab cab companies that kind of makes like I that's okay
48:16SPEAKERI it's not great. But whatever. Yeah, the old the old cab medallion model. I look
48:21SPEAKERTerrible. Well the problem with well, it seemed very good at keeping
48:26SPEAKERRegulating the number of cars on the road it regulated the number of cars on the road
48:29SPEAKERThat was the upside it regulated the drivers in a way that we don't currently very well with ride share
48:36SPEAKERThe downside is that they had no inclination to innovate
48:40SPEAKERso when we were, you know 2010 we all had smartphones and we have these screens that can call cars and
48:46SPEAKERYou still have to call the phone number and wait five minutes for the person and on New Year's Eve
48:50SPEAKERYou're never gonna get the answer like they didn't they didn't innovate in ways that were that reduce friction for users
48:57SPEAKERWhich is why uber and lyft were able to get a foothold now
49:00SPEAKERthe problem with uber and lyft is they've been losing money on every ride for like nine years now eight years now or something like
49:04SPEAKERthat and
49:06SPEAKERAlso uber has pretty clearly been building a robot, you know self-driving car fleet
49:12SPEAKERTechnology with the goal of replacing all these human drivers whether they're gonna keep getting money from venture capitalists long enough to make it
49:19SPEAKERTo that point remains to be seen right their record with self-driving is I think the worst of anyone out there that has a significant
49:25SPEAKERNumber of miles on the road. That's unsurprising. Yeah, like that
49:28SPEAKERLike like I said moving fast and breaking things is great when you're talking about word processors
49:31SPEAKERYeah, when it's when human lives are at stake. Yeah, or even just like proper massive property
49:37SPEAKERYeah, like you can't you can't destroy a $60,000 car
49:40SPEAKERparking
49:41SPEAKERParking a word processor, but it turns out if you're self parking shit doesn't work, right?
49:45SPEAKERYou can do a lot of damage to somebody else's vehicle. Sure
49:49SPEAKERso yeah, I think
49:51SPEAKERI don't know. I mean, I think that the other option is for them to figure out either charge more for rideshare
49:57SPEAKERwhich means people are gonna go back to cabs or public transit or
50:02SPEAKERFigure out a way to pay their drivers less which seems like I don't think that's an option at this point
50:06SPEAKERYeah, it's really bad already. So I I don't know
50:09SPEAKERI think I've talked to enough drivers of those services about what it's like working for those companies to
50:14SPEAKERAnd feel confident that that's not an option
50:16SPEAKERthat's my favorite like it's my favorite thing to ask them is like because it I didn't realize this until recently but the
50:22SPEAKERUber the way they get paid is different in every region like the rate they get paid per mile and all that stuff
50:27SPEAKERSo like if you're in Atlanta, you get paid differently than if you're in say Portland
50:30SPEAKERWhich is a small mostly compact urban area versus Atlanta, which is super sprawled out and really huge
50:37SPEAKERLike like in specifically in terms of like the number of rides you need to do a month in order for them to cover the
50:41SPEAKERLease of your of your car or whatever
50:44SPEAKERAnyway, it's um, yeah, it's a mess. I don't know. I don't know what the answer is
50:49SPEAKERI don't think uber is a good company. No, I felt that way for a very long time. I just use lyft
50:54SPEAKERDo you think I think but just to be clear if uber didn't exist, we'd all think lyft was a bad company, too
51:00SPEAKERI think oh, yeah. Yeah, I just yeah slightly less bad. Yeah, but the worst one
51:04SPEAKERDo you think let's say like does uber reach a point where they're like cash poor and they can't continue their burn rate, but they've
51:11SPEAKERLike is their market share big enough now that some company. I don't know who it would be. Somebody is gonna swoop in and
51:18SPEAKERPick up the pieces and do something with that, right?
51:20SPEAKERI don't I'm not saying that they're too big to fail at this point
51:23SPEAKERBut they do have enough of a user base that I feel like surely
51:26SPEAKERSomebody even if they were on their last legs like somebody's gonna want to come in and do something with that
51:31SPEAKERCustomer base they've built up right, but I don't know what that is
51:33SPEAKERI don't know that the customer base has as much value like if you think about it
51:37SPEAKERMost people who use uber probably also have lyft on their phone or at least know enough of lyft to get the the competitor the main
51:44SPEAKERCompetitor and those are the drivers seem to be driving for both everybody
51:47SPEAKERThey all drive for both now because yeah
51:49SPEAKERThey that way they can switch back to whichever whichever one gives them the better deal on the lease
51:54SPEAKERBecause it seems like for most of the people I've talked to
51:56SPEAKERthe goal is to drive whatever you need you to get the lease covered and
52:00SPEAKERThen then you get the money like that doesn't come out of the money you make as a driver
52:05SPEAKERI don't I don't I honestly don't know I think I
52:11SPEAKERMean I think we're gonna have to wait and see what happens. I don't think I think uber is
52:17SPEAKERLook whoever whoever figures out the self-driving stuff if they do it in a patent patentable way is going to make so much money
52:24SPEAKERThat the self-driving stuff is just data collection like like the ride share stuff is just data collection
52:30SPEAKEROh, you know what that was that was one more thing
52:32SPEAKERI was gonna ask about was we were chatting about yeah before we started and you floated the idea of
52:38SPEAKERAnd even consider it working this way of individual cars out there sort of scanning their surroundings
52:44SPEAKERKeeping track of everything that they see yeah an encounter and reacting to that feeding well
52:49SPEAKERNot only that but feeding all that data back up to a central resource and like basically the idea of like
52:53SPEAKERSort of collective navigational data well, so so there's yeah
52:57SPEAKERThere's two ideas one is that the car should just react to the stimuli as it detects them without knowing nothing more than like where?
53:02SPEAKERThe roads are that is exactly what I assumed all self-driving. Yeah, but that's not it was just reading
53:07SPEAKERYou know instantaneous data around the car and reacting based on that
53:11SPEAKERBut it sounds like there is a lot of sort of cloud-based stuff backing that up. Well well so a lot of it is
53:18SPEAKERA lot of it as I understand then this is almost certainly a gross oversimplification
53:23SPEAKERBut a lot of the data that's being collected right now is used to train machine learning models
53:28SPEAKERfor things like image recognition and and like how to deal with things like that weird interchange at i-5 and grape at
53:35SPEAKERi-5 in Bakersfield right okay, so it sounds like it's less about having a gigantic data set that describes like an entire state's roadways and
53:42SPEAKERMore about just like more generalized behavior. Well, so the question is is should should
53:48SPEAKERWhich is the right which is the right answer is it that the car reacts only to the stimuli that it's presented?
53:52SPEAKERIn the moment or should all the cars be uploading stuff to a shared database, you know
53:57SPEAKERLike a super ways for all intents and do you even know about ways did they have ways when you still drove?
54:02SPEAKERNo, but I've seen okay uber driver sees it
54:05SPEAKERYeah
54:05SPEAKERso the point of ways is that it is that database right like if I'm driving along and I see a cop or
54:10SPEAKERConstruction or a traffic jam or whatever
54:12SPEAKERI tapped the little button distract myself for 10 seconds and and upload a little thing that says hey, there's a problem here
54:18SPEAKERIt seems dangerous. It's like three taps. It's it's totally it's totally fine Brad. It's not at all distracting sure
54:24SPEAKERBut the point is you can do that really quickly and and not have a big, you know, it's like that shared
54:31SPEAKERThat then becomes a shared resource. That's a value to everybody else that's using the app
54:35SPEAKERAnd that's why it says hey, there's 800,000 people using ways in your immediate vicinity right now
54:39SPEAKERI
54:41SPEAKERThink that probably the right answer is a combination of both of those things
54:44SPEAKERright is that all the cars are constantly uploading to build their own machine learning models and get them better and get the
54:50SPEAKERall the center like the sensor integration between the LIDAR and the and the
54:54SPEAKERCameras and the front bumper radar and the rear bumper radar and all the different things that are happening at any given moment
55:00SPEAKERin in the cars like immediate space and
55:03SPEAKERUsing those things to paint a better picture so that like every car isn't approaching every intersection blind for all intents and purposes
55:10SPEAKERI mean and then if you want to get to the crazy future where like you just get in the car everything self-driving and the
55:16SPEAKERCars are just weaving in through intersections with no stoplights anymore. Yeah, what what speeds could be possible when there are that's level six, right?
55:24SPEAKEREverything's a bullet train then. Yeah, but in order for that to work like
55:28SPEAKERLike you essentially think about how hard it is to get say a video game
55:32SPEAKERTo do no latency on a server that has a hundred people in it. I play PUBG
55:37SPEAKERSo this is a constant concern for me. Sure like there are no moving mechanical parts there. Yeah
55:43SPEAKERNo
55:43SPEAKERI don't think that's gonna I don't think I don't think we're ever going to get to a point that like the cars are weaving in
55:47SPEAKERBetween traffic like that gif that everybody shares when they talk about self-driving cars
55:51SPEAKERYeah on the internet or like the you know
55:52SPEAKERThe classic like Blade Runner conception of a bunch of flying cars crisscrossing each other and just constantly well crisscrossing is easy because they're high
55:59SPEAKERWell, yeah nights. Yeah. Yeah, sure. It's like airplanes there a thousand if you're going in different directions
56:03SPEAKERYou're at least a thousand feet different from each other. I think I can't remember. Yeah, that would make sense. That seems right
56:09SPEAKERYeah, anyway, they need they need TCP IP for cars
56:12SPEAKERSee my PS too much latency man. You need you got to get that UDP. Well, no you need you need to have checks
56:18SPEAKERAnyway, yeah, let's not open this can of workers. Yeah, so I don't know. I'm I'm
56:26SPEAKERLike I can't imagine that the next car I get isn't going to be
56:29SPEAKERHave at least some like at least at like a level 3 type situation where it can drive me on the freeway with minimal
56:36SPEAKERAttention that seems to be the way things are going. I mean, I'm I still like driving a manual transmission. So
56:41SPEAKERyeah, very new and frightening for me, but
56:45SPEAKERYeah, well, I mean we'll see you can't stand in the way of progress. I'm curious. I'm sure people in the audience have
56:50SPEAKERHave cars with varying levels of self-driving. Yeah, I would love to hear some feedback
56:54SPEAKERCuz again, like I said, this stuff is just quietly trickling out into the wider
56:59SPEAKERInstall base for lack of a better term of you know cars in America. Yeah, it's there there
57:04SPEAKERSo people people have more hands-on experience with this stuff now than you would think. Yeah, it's it's um, it's always interesting getting it
57:10SPEAKERLet me tell you it's always interesting getting in a rental and figuring how much the car is gonna drive for you
57:14SPEAKERI feel like that's that needs to be part of the rental onboarding process for each car
57:19SPEAKERThat's like hey, this car has this and this and this in fact
57:23SPEAKERactually one of the things that the that the National Safety Council said is
57:27SPEAKERThe best thing you can do to make yourself like they have when they did the fit in their fatality article
57:32SPEAKERThey had you know, here are ten things one of them is be a defensive driver
57:36SPEAKERYou know all the don't drive distracted if you're taking prescription medicine
57:40SPEAKERmake sure it's not going to impair your ability to drive because apparently
57:43SPEAKERLike opiates because their pills that come from the doctor people think I find it drive this when they're high as hell
57:50SPEAKERBut learning how to use your car's
57:52SPEAKERSafety features so collision avoidance stuff like that making sure that stuff's on and you're actively using it
57:57SPEAKERIt turns out it doesn't work if you don't turn it on so might as well turn it on
58:01SPEAKERIt tends to make you safer than not having it on I guess that's all we can hope for. Yeah
58:05SPEAKERI think that's it. Okay. Yeah, we we're last time for questions. I think scary future out there on the road, but
58:13SPEAKERYeah, maybe it'll get better. Yeah, what do you think about?
58:16SPEAKERYou know what? What's not scary though, Brad? What's that leaving a review for this podcast? Oh and iTunes. No, that's warm and fuzzy and friendly
58:23SPEAKERAnd everybody should try whether it's positive or negative. We just love seeing those reviews
58:27SPEAKERYeah, you want to vent about how this podcast is ruining your life
58:30SPEAKERHey, look at these asshats and look at what they said
58:32SPEAKERWe welcome all feedback every time I listen to this I scream at my radio in the car for the entire 45 minutes
58:37SPEAKERSo I'm about everything. Yeah, they're complete jerks
58:41SPEAKEROr you can let us know on Twitter. I'm Will Smith at Brad shoemaker is me
58:45SPEAKERYeah, the podcast is sweatpants tech. Yes at sweatpants tech. Yes. Yeah at sweatpants tech up
58:52SPEAKERAnd I guess that'll do it for us this week death. See you all next week room room
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