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Comment by alphabetting | Hacker News Reader

The whole point of AVs is that they are a safety layer.

No, the whole point of AVs, like any other product of a for-profit business, is that they make the manufacturers money.

A part of the sales pitch for AVs is that autonomy acts as a safety layer.

As with any sales pitch, the interest of the manufacturer is often more in getting people to believe the pitch than in it being true, validating that it is true is a concern of outside parties. Insofar as AV adoption requires loosening existing rules to allow them, that includes regulatory authorities.

Profitability will be needed for companies to succeed but it's not the point. Do you think Google's main motivation behind starting AV work 14 years ago and incinerating billions on it over the years was really rooted in speculative profit years down the road?

> Profitability will be needed for companies to succeed but it's not the point.

Yes, it is.

> Do you think Google's main motivation behind starting AV work 14 years ago and incinerating billions on it over the years was really rooted in speculative profit years down the road?

Yes, along with a pile of other moonshots. That's what moonshots are for.

There's a lot of profit potential in AVs, and even if you fail at it there is a lot of potential for profitable spinoffs of the research.

And if you fail at both, well, moonshots are high-risk, high-reward.

> incinerating billions on it over the years

To add to your comment, the billions "incinerated" in Waymo (~$5bn) is about what New York City pays for a single subway station qua shopping mall.

> Do you think Google's main motivation behind starting AV work 14 years ago and incinerating billions on it over the years was really rooted in speculative profit years down the road?

yes!!!

imagine if everyone that commutes could watch ads, sorry, use Google's valuable products and services for an extra 3 hours a day

> Do you think Google's main motivation behind starting AV work 14 years ago and incinerating billions on it over the years was really rooted in speculative profit years down the road?

Honest question: why do you think Google funded this?

Yes, of course.

They are theoretically a safety layer when we have proven they work. If they do not work well, then they aren't actually safer.

I haven't seen anything that indicates they don't work well. My anecdotal experience is feeling much safer inside and around them in comparison to vehicles with humans behind the wheel.

There are plenty of anecdotes of AVs behaving terribly, but anecdotes are beside the point. Normally when a company wants to introduce a dangerous new product on the market the burden of proof is on them to prove that it's safe enough. For various reasons tech companies have gotten to do this in reverse by testing on the public to find out how safe they are.

What does the article indicate then? Everything working as intended? I am wondering if the pedestrian that was dragged six meters by a autonomous machine felt much safer.

The AVs do not work well in the edge cases - exactly in those situations where humans can apply common sense and behave accordingly. Exactly the cases that sceptics seemed to be worried about, and it turns out that the sceptics were right.

I hope AVs will not be allowed on public roads where I live in the next decades.

A safety layer that kills people in novel ways... GPs whole point is that companies should have to prove that they are safe, not just assert that they probably will be and then test on public non-volunteers.

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