Comment by thereisnospork
3 days ago
What 3 year old is judging the depth of a puddle before jumping in?
Regardless, consider what you are saying: how can you seriously compare a computer to a (young) human and your response is disappointment that the AI doesn't quite measure up? If it's comparable to a child today it will be comparable to a teen in a decade!
Google is claiming AGI is around the corner, isn’t that supposed to be at least comparable to a 3 year old?
I assume you don’t have kids or know any kids if you don’t think they’re able to judge puddle sizes at age 3.
Why shouldn’t I make the comparison? Waymo is attempting to replace human drivers. That means it needs to make something smarter than humans at driving.
The point that it is a reasonable comparison: being able to reasonably compare the performance of a lump of silicon to a human being at a complex task in the real world means the Overton window has shifted, massively, from say 5 years ago.
You compared it to a child, not a toaster. In a few years to a few decades I'm sure you will whine about how Waymo cant even measure up to Michael Schumacher and they should just throw in the towel. I mean how pathetic is it that their AGI with its petaflops of compute can't even out drive some meat bag from the previous century?
Recall that Waymo’s solution isn’t 100% AI or even close to it. It predates the LLM era and operates on streets that are 100% 3D mapped.
Real life humans take over operation of the vehicle when difficult situations occur. They don’t drive like a remote control but they drive by making decisions for the vehicle.
Cars have been “self-driving” in video games and other simulations for decades and they don’t need neural processing to avoid objects, follow traffic rules, and stay within lanes.
Google said AGI is around the corner, and yet Waymo still relies on a customized vehicle absolutely draped in lidar and other sensors. If AGI is around the corner they should be able to remove those sensors and go all cameras like Tesla (which of course we all know performs far worse and requires human supervision).
It’s not really some kind of gotcha Overton window shift the way you describe it to compare self driving to intelligent human drivers, especially when the self-driving isn’t being done using AI, and when self-driving is extremely late to market based on what was promised.