It looks like Wayno really understood the problem.
It explains concisely why it's a bad idea to roll our incremental progress, how difficult the problem really is, and why you should really throw all sensors you can at it.
I also appreciate the "we don't know when it's going to be ready" attitude. It shows they have a better understanding of what their task actually is than anybody who claims "next year" every year.
https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/12/waymo-second-robotaxi-reca...
I don't mean Waymo is bad or unsafe, it's pretty cool. My point is about true automation needing data and intelligence. A lot more data than we currently have, because the problem is in the "edge" cases, the kind of situation the software has never encountered. Waymo is in the lead for now but they have fewer cars on the road, which means less data.
All they needed was one systems safety engineering student
So the gradual rollout strategy is actually great.
Tesla wants to do "all or nothing", and ends up with nothing for now (example with Europe, where FSD is sold since 2016 but it is "pending regulatory approval", when actually, the problem is the tech that is not finished yet, sadly).
It's genuinely a difficult problem to solve, so it's better to do it step-by-step than a "big-bang deploy".
It seemed like most players in tech a few years ago were using legal shenanigans to dodge liability here, which, to me, indicates a lack of seriousness toward the safety implications.
For what it's worth, I wouldn't care if they called it "Penis Enlarger 9000" if it drove me around like it now does.
I think you misunderstood, or it's a terminology problem.
Waymo's point in the video is that in contrast to Tesla, they are _not_ doing gradual rollout of seemingly-working-still-often-catastropically-failing tech.
See e.g. minute 5:33 -> 6:06. They are stating that they are targeting directly the shown upper curve of safety, and that they are not aiming for the "good enough that the average user will stop paying attention, but not actually good enough to be left alone".
Since they targeted very low risk, they did a geographically-segmented rollout, starting with Phoenix, which is one of the easiest places to drive: a lot of photons for visibility, very little rain, wide roads.