Comment by Natsu
19 hours ago
> But most humans would have been aware of the big picture scenario much earlier. Are there muliple kids milling around on the sidewalk? Near a school? Is there a big truck/SUV parked there?
Waymos constantly track pedestrians nearby, you can see it on the status screen if you ride in one. So it would be both better able to find pedestrians and react as soon as one was on a collision course. They have a bit more visibility than humans do due to the sensor placement, so they also can see things that aren't that visible to a person inside the car, not to mention being constantly aware of all 360 degrees.
While I suppose that in theory, a sufficiently paranoid human might outdo the robot, it looks to me like it's already well above the median here.
Do they speculate about things like “we’re near a school zone, kids are unloading, there might be a kid I’ve never seen behind that SUV?” (I’m legitimately asking I’ve never been in a Waymo).
It's not particularly meaningful to ponder the subjective experience of the waymo driving computer. Instead, focus on its externally visible behavior.
Asking whether an entity has modeled and evaluated a specific situation, using that evaluation to inform its decisions, is not about subjective experience.
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I was being informal with “speculate,” sorry. They could identify that sort of situation as a high-risk area in some way.