Datasets:
Languages:
English
Multilinguality:
monolingual
Size Categories:
n<1K
Language Creators:
found
Source Datasets:
original
Tags:
karpathy,whisper,openai
WEBVTT | |
00:00.000 --> 00:03.120 | |
The following is a conversation with Chris Sampson. | |
00:03.120 --> 00:06.000 | |
He was a CTO of the Google self driving car team, | |
00:06.000 --> 00:08.880 | |
a key engineer and leader behind the Carnegie Mellon | |
00:08.880 --> 00:12.000 | |
University autonomous vehicle entries in the DARPA Grand | |
00:12.000 --> 00:16.160 | |
Challenges and the winner of the DARPA Urban Challenge. | |
00:16.160 --> 00:20.100 | |
Today, he's the CEO of Aurora Innovation, an autonomous | |
00:20.100 --> 00:21.360 | |
vehicle software company. | |
00:21.360 --> 00:23.600 | |
He started with Sterling Anderson, | |
00:23.600 --> 00:25.960 | |
who was the former director of Tesla Autopilot, | |
00:25.960 --> 00:30.120 | |
and drew back now, Uber's former autonomy and perception lead. | |
00:30.120 --> 00:32.880 | |
Chris is one of the top roboticists and autonomous | |
00:32.880 --> 00:36.320 | |
vehicle experts in the world, and a longtime voice | |
00:36.320 --> 00:38.840 | |
of reason in a space that is shrouded | |
00:38.840 --> 00:41.320 | |
in both mystery and hype. | |
00:41.320 --> 00:43.600 | |
He both acknowledges the incredible challenges | |
00:43.600 --> 00:46.480 | |
involved in solving the problem of autonomous driving | |
00:46.480 --> 00:49.760 | |
and is working hard to solve it. | |
00:49.760 --> 00:52.400 | |
This is the Artificial Intelligence podcast. | |
00:52.400 --> 00:54.720 | |
If you enjoy it, subscribe on YouTube, | |
00:54.720 --> 00:57.920 | |
give it five stars on iTunes, support it on Patreon, | |
00:57.920 --> 00:59.720 | |
or simply connect with me on Twitter | |
00:59.720 --> 01:03.240 | |
at Lex Friedman, spelled F R I D M A N. | |
01:03.240 --> 01:09.120 | |
And now, here's my conversation with Chris Sampson. | |
01:09.120 --> 01:11.960 | |
You were part of both the DARPA Grand Challenge | |
01:11.960 --> 01:13.880 | |
and the DARPA Urban Challenge teams | |
01:13.880 --> 01:17.040 | |
at CMU with Red Whitaker. | |
01:17.040 --> 01:19.720 | |
What technical or philosophical things | |
01:19.720 --> 01:22.240 | |
have you learned from these races? | |
01:22.240 --> 01:26.600 | |
I think the high order bit was that it could be done. | |
01:26.600 --> 01:30.200 | |
I think that was the thing that was | |
01:30.200 --> 01:34.880 | |
incredible about the first of the Grand Challenges, | |
01:34.880 --> 01:38.160 | |
that I remember I was a grad student at Carnegie Mellon, | |
01:38.160 --> 01:45.360 | |
and there was kind of this dichotomy of it | |
01:45.360 --> 01:46.720 | |
seemed really hard, so that would | |
01:46.720 --> 01:48.800 | |
be cool and interesting. | |
01:48.800 --> 01:52.800 | |
But at the time, we were the only robotics institute around, | |
01:52.800 --> 01:55.560 | |
and so if we went into it and fell on our faces, | |
01:55.560 --> 01:58.360 | |
that would be embarrassing. | |
01:58.360 --> 02:01.120 | |
So I think just having the will to go do it, | |
02:01.120 --> 02:02.880 | |
to try to do this thing that at the time | |
02:02.880 --> 02:05.000 | |
was marked as darn near impossible, | |
02:05.000 --> 02:06.960 | |
and then after a couple of tries, | |
02:06.960 --> 02:08.420 | |
be able to actually make it happen, | |
02:08.420 --> 02:12.320 | |
I think that was really exciting. | |
02:12.320 --> 02:15.040 | |
But at which point did you believe it was possible? | |
02:15.040 --> 02:16.960 | |
Did you from the very beginning? | |
02:16.960 --> 02:18.000 | |
Did you personally? | |
02:18.000 --> 02:19.800 | |
Because you're one of the lead engineers. | |
02:19.800 --> 02:21.800 | |
You actually had to do a lot of the work. | |
02:21.800 --> 02:23.880 | |
Yeah, I was the technical director there, | |
02:23.880 --> 02:26.120 | |
and did a lot of the work, along with a bunch | |
02:26.120 --> 02:28.420 | |
of other really good people. | |
02:28.420 --> 02:29.760 | |
Did I believe it could be done? | |
02:29.760 --> 02:31.080 | |
Yeah, of course. | |
02:31.080 --> 02:32.760 | |
Why would you go do something you thought | |
02:32.760 --> 02:34.800 | |
was completely impossible? | |
02:34.800 --> 02:36.260 | |
We thought it was going to be hard. | |
02:36.260 --> 02:37.800 | |
We didn't know how we were going to be able to do it. | |
02:37.800 --> 02:42.880 | |
We didn't know if we'd be able to do it the first time. | |
02:42.880 --> 02:45.960 | |
Turns out we couldn't. | |
02:45.960 --> 02:48.400 | |
That, yeah, I guess you have to. | |
02:48.400 --> 02:52.960 | |
I think there's a certain benefit to naivete, right? | |
02:52.960 --> 02:55.440 | |
That if you don't know how hard something really is, | |
02:55.440 --> 02:59.600 | |
you try different things, and it gives you an opportunity | |
02:59.600 --> 03:04.120 | |
that others who are wiser maybe don't have. | |
03:04.120 --> 03:05.720 | |
What were the biggest pain points? | |
03:05.720 --> 03:08.880 | |
Mechanical, sensors, hardware, software, | |
03:08.880 --> 03:11.800 | |
algorithms for mapping, localization, | |
03:11.800 --> 03:13.680 | |
just general perception, control? | |
03:13.680 --> 03:15.320 | |
Like hardware, software, first of all? | |
03:15.320 --> 03:20.120 | |
I think that's the joy of this field, is that it's all hard | |
03:20.120 --> 03:25.360 | |
and that you have to be good at each part of it. | |
03:25.360 --> 03:32.360 | |
So for the urban challenges, if I look back at it from today, | |
03:32.360 --> 03:38.960 | |
it should be easy today, that it was a static world. | |
03:38.960 --> 03:40.800 | |
There weren't other actors moving through it, | |
03:40.800 --> 03:42.480 | |
is what that means. | |
03:42.480 --> 03:47.080 | |
It was out in the desert, so you get really good GPS. | |
03:47.080 --> 03:51.400 | |
So that went, and we could map it roughly. | |
03:51.400 --> 03:55.160 | |
And so in retrospect now, it's within the realm of things | |
03:55.160 --> 03:57.840 | |
we could do back then. | |
03:57.840 --> 03:59.720 | |
Just actually getting the vehicle and the, | |
03:59.720 --> 04:00.680 | |
there's a bunch of engineering work | |
04:00.680 --> 04:04.760 | |
to get the vehicle so that we could control it and drive it. | |
04:04.760 --> 04:09.600 | |
That's still a pain today, but it was even more so back then. | |
04:09.600 --> 04:14.280 | |
And then the uncertainty of exactly what they wanted us to do | |
04:14.280 --> 04:17.040 | |
was part of the challenge as well. | |
04:17.040 --> 04:19.440 | |
Right, you didn't actually know the track heading in here. | |
04:19.440 --> 04:21.480 | |
You knew approximately, but you didn't actually | |
04:21.480 --> 04:23.520 | |
know the route that was going to be taken. | |
04:23.520 --> 04:24.920 | |
That's right, we didn't know the route. | |
04:24.920 --> 04:28.600 | |
We didn't even really, the way the rules had been described, | |
04:28.600 --> 04:29.800 | |
you had to kind of guess. | |
04:29.800 --> 04:33.360 | |
So if you think back to that challenge, | |
04:33.360 --> 04:36.960 | |
the idea was that the government would give us, | |
04:36.960 --> 04:40.320 | |
the DARPA would give us a set of waypoints | |
04:40.320 --> 04:43.520 | |
and kind of the width that you had to stay within | |
04:43.520 --> 04:46.800 | |
between the line that went between each of those waypoints. | |
04:46.800 --> 04:49.280 | |
And so the most devious thing they could have done | |
04:49.280 --> 04:53.280 | |
is set a kilometer wide corridor across a field | |
04:53.280 --> 04:58.280 | |
of scrub brush and rocks and said, go figure it out. | |
04:58.520 --> 05:01.920 | |
Fortunately, it really, it turned into basically driving | |
05:01.920 --> 05:05.000 | |
along a set of trails, which is much more relevant | |
05:05.000 --> 05:07.920 | |
to the application they were looking for. | |
05:08.760 --> 05:12.080 | |
But no, it was a hell of a thing back in the day. | |
05:12.080 --> 05:16.640 | |
So the legend, Red, was kind of leading that effort | |
05:16.640 --> 05:19.120 | |
in terms of just broadly speaking. | |
05:19.120 --> 05:22.040 | |
So you're a leader now. | |
05:22.040 --> 05:25.000 | |
What have you learned from Red about leadership? | |
05:25.000 --> 05:26.200 | |
I think there's a couple things. | |
05:26.200 --> 05:31.080 | |
One is go and try those really hard things. | |
05:31.080 --> 05:34.480 | |
That's where there is an incredible opportunity. | |
05:34.480 --> 05:36.560 | |
I think the other big one, though, | |
05:36.560 --> 05:40.680 | |
is to see people for who they can be, not who they are. | |
05:41.720 --> 05:43.720 | |
It's one of the things that I actually, | |
05:43.720 --> 05:46.080 | |
one of the deepest lessons I learned from Red | |
05:46.080 --> 05:50.200 | |
was that he would look at undergraduates | |
05:50.200 --> 05:55.200 | |
or graduate students and empower them to be leaders, | |
05:56.120 --> 06:00.320 | |
to have responsibility, to do great things | |
06:00.320 --> 06:04.480 | |
that I think another person might look at them | |
06:04.480 --> 06:06.600 | |
and think, oh, well, that's just an undergraduate student. | |
06:06.600 --> 06:07.720 | |
What could they know? | |
06:08.680 --> 06:12.720 | |
And so I think that kind of trust but verify, | |
06:12.720 --> 06:14.480 | |
have confidence in what people can become, | |
06:14.480 --> 06:16.680 | |
I think is a really powerful thing. | |
06:16.680 --> 06:20.440 | |
So through that, let's just fast forward through the history. | |
06:20.440 --> 06:24.160 | |
Can you maybe talk through the technical evolution | |
06:24.160 --> 06:26.200 | |
of autonomous vehicle systems | |
06:26.200 --> 06:29.960 | |
from the first two Grand Challenges to the Urban Challenge | |
06:29.960 --> 06:33.560 | |
to today, are there major shifts in your mind | |
06:33.560 --> 06:37.240 | |
or is it the same kind of technology just made more robust? | |
06:37.240 --> 06:39.840 | |
I think there's been some big, big steps. | |
06:40.880 --> 06:43.720 | |
So for the Grand Challenge, | |
06:43.720 --> 06:48.720 | |
the real technology that unlocked that was HD mapping. | |
06:51.400 --> 06:54.200 | |
Prior to that, a lot of the off road robotics work | |
06:55.160 --> 06:58.480 | |
had been done without any real prior model | |
06:58.480 --> 07:01.400 | |
of what the vehicle was going to encounter. | |
07:01.400 --> 07:04.880 | |
And so that innovation that the fact that we could get | |
07:05.960 --> 07:10.960 | |
decimeter resolution models was really a big deal. | |
07:13.440 --> 07:18.200 | |
And that allowed us to kind of bound the complexity | |
07:18.200 --> 07:19.680 | |
of the driving problem the vehicle had | |
07:19.680 --> 07:21.040 | |
and allowed it to operate at speed | |
07:21.040 --> 07:23.800 | |
because we could assume things about the environment | |
07:23.800 --> 07:25.360 | |
that it was going to encounter. | |
07:25.360 --> 07:29.720 | |
So that was the big step there. | |
07:31.280 --> 07:35.280 | |
For the Urban Challenge, | |
07:37.240 --> 07:39.280 | |
one of the big technological innovations there | |
07:39.280 --> 07:41.040 | |
was the multi beam LIDAR | |
07:41.960 --> 07:45.760 | |
and being able to generate high resolution, | |
07:45.760 --> 07:48.680 | |
mid to long range 3D models of the world | |
07:48.680 --> 07:53.680 | |
and use that for understanding the world around the vehicle. | |
07:53.680 --> 07:56.600 | |
And that was really kind of a game changing technology. | |
07:58.600 --> 08:00.000 | |
In parallel with that, | |
08:00.000 --> 08:04.360 | |
we saw a bunch of other technologies | |
08:04.360 --> 08:06.120 | |
that had been kind of converging | |
08:06.120 --> 08:08.440 | |
half their day in the sun. | |
08:08.440 --> 08:12.560 | |
So Bayesian estimation had been, | |
08:12.560 --> 08:17.560 | |
SLAM had been a big field in robotics. | |
08:17.840 --> 08:20.760 | |
You would go to a conference a couple of years before that | |
08:20.760 --> 08:24.880 | |
and every paper would effectively have SLAM somewhere in it. | |
08:24.880 --> 08:29.320 | |
And so seeing that the Bayesian estimation techniques | |
08:30.720 --> 08:33.400 | |
play out on a very visible stage, | |
08:33.400 --> 08:36.520 | |
I thought that was pretty exciting to see. | |
08:38.080 --> 08:41.560 | |
And mostly SLAM was done based on LIDAR at that time. | |
08:41.560 --> 08:44.560 | |
Yeah, and in fact, we weren't really doing SLAM per se | |
08:45.600 --> 08:47.480 | |
in real time because we had a model ahead of time, | |
08:47.480 --> 08:51.040 | |
we had a roadmap, but we were doing localization. | |
08:51.040 --> 08:53.560 | |
And we were using the LIDAR or the cameras | |
08:53.560 --> 08:55.400 | |
depending on who exactly was doing it | |
08:55.400 --> 08:57.560 | |
to localize to a model of the world. | |
08:57.560 --> 09:00.160 | |
And I thought that was a big step | |
09:00.160 --> 09:05.160 | |
from kind of naively trusting GPS, INS before that. | |
09:06.640 --> 09:09.840 | |
And again, lots of work had been going on in this field. | |
09:09.840 --> 09:13.040 | |
Certainly this was not doing anything | |
09:13.040 --> 09:16.840 | |
particularly innovative in SLAM or in localization, | |
09:16.840 --> 09:20.200 | |
but it was seeing that technology necessary | |
09:20.200 --> 09:21.800 | |
in a real application on a big stage, | |
09:21.800 --> 09:23.080 | |
I thought was very cool. | |
09:23.080 --> 09:24.000 | |
So for the urban challenge, | |
09:24.000 --> 09:28.600 | |
those are already maps constructed offline in general. | |
09:28.600 --> 09:30.920 | |
And did people do that individually, | |
09:30.920 --> 09:33.600 | |
did individual teams do it individually | |
09:33.600 --> 09:36.440 | |
so they had their own different approaches there | |
09:36.440 --> 09:41.440 | |
or did everybody kind of share that information | |
09:41.720 --> 09:42.880 | |
at least intuitively? | |
09:42.880 --> 09:47.880 | |
So DARPA gave all the teams a model of the world, a map. | |
09:49.640 --> 09:53.240 | |
And then one of the things that we had to figure out | |
09:53.240 --> 09:56.080 | |
back then was, and it's still one of these things | |
09:56.080 --> 09:57.280 | |
that trips people up today | |
09:57.280 --> 10:00.280 | |
is actually the coordinate system. | |
10:00.280 --> 10:03.080 | |
So you get a latitude longitude | |
10:03.080 --> 10:05.040 | |
and to so many decimal places, | |
10:05.040 --> 10:07.360 | |
you don't really care about kind of the ellipsoid | |
10:07.360 --> 10:09.560 | |
of the earth that's being used. | |
10:09.560 --> 10:12.240 | |
But when you want to get to 10 centimeter | |
10:12.240 --> 10:14.400 | |
or centimeter resolution, | |
10:14.400 --> 10:18.520 | |
you care whether the coordinate system is NADS 83 | |
10:18.520 --> 10:23.520 | |
or WGS 84 or these are different ways to describe | |
10:24.200 --> 10:26.760 | |
both the kind of non sphericalness of the earth, | |
10:26.760 --> 10:31.080 | |
but also kind of the, I think, | |
10:31.080 --> 10:32.080 | |
I can't remember which one, | |
10:32.080 --> 10:33.600 | |
the tectonic shifts that are happening | |
10:33.600 --> 10:37.000 | |
and how to transform the global datum as a function of that. | |
10:37.000 --> 10:41.020 | |
So getting a map and then actually matching it to reality | |
10:41.020 --> 10:42.880 | |
to centimeter resolution, that was kind of interesting | |
10:42.880 --> 10:44.040 | |
and fun back then. | |
10:44.040 --> 10:46.760 | |
So how much work was the perception doing there? | |
10:46.760 --> 10:51.760 | |
So how much were you relying on localization based on maps | |
10:52.480 --> 10:55.760 | |
without using perception to register to the maps? | |
10:55.760 --> 10:58.000 | |
And I guess the question is how advanced | |
10:58.000 --> 10:59.800 | |
was perception at that point? | |
10:59.800 --> 11:01.960 | |
It's certainly behind where we are today, right? | |
11:01.960 --> 11:05.840 | |
We're more than a decade since the urban challenge. | |
11:05.840 --> 11:08.640 | |
But the core of it was there. | |
11:08.640 --> 11:13.120 | |
That we were tracking vehicles. | |
11:13.120 --> 11:15.640 | |
We had to do that at 100 plus meter range | |
11:15.640 --> 11:18.320 | |
because we had to merge with other traffic. | |
11:18.320 --> 11:21.240 | |
We were using, again, Bayesian estimates | |
11:21.240 --> 11:23.860 | |
for state of these vehicles. | |
11:23.860 --> 11:25.580 | |
We had to deal with a bunch of the problems | |
11:25.580 --> 11:26.920 | |
that you think of today, | |
11:26.920 --> 11:29.820 | |
of predicting where that vehicle's going to be | |
11:29.820 --> 11:31.060 | |
a few seconds into the future. | |
11:31.060 --> 11:32.380 | |
We had to deal with the fact | |
11:32.380 --> 11:35.320 | |
that there were multiple hypotheses for that | |
11:35.320 --> 11:37.660 | |
because a vehicle at an intersection might be going right | |
11:37.660 --> 11:38.780 | |
or it might be going straight | |
11:38.780 --> 11:40.620 | |
or it might be making a left turn. | |
11:41.500 --> 11:44.120 | |
And we had to deal with the challenge of the fact | |
11:44.120 --> 11:47.600 | |
that our behavior was going to impact the behavior | |
11:47.600 --> 11:48.960 | |
of that other operator. | |
11:48.960 --> 11:53.480 | |
And we did a lot of that in relatively naive ways, | |
11:53.480 --> 11:54.820 | |
but it kind of worked. | |
11:54.820 --> 11:57.080 | |
Still had to have some kind of solution. | |
11:57.080 --> 11:59.960 | |
And so where does that, 10 years later, | |
11:59.960 --> 12:01.520 | |
where does that take us today | |
12:01.520 --> 12:04.260 | |
from that artificial city construction | |
12:04.260 --> 12:07.000 | |
to real cities to the urban environment? | |
12:07.000 --> 12:09.160 | |
Yeah, I think the biggest thing | |
12:09.160 --> 12:14.160 | |
is that the actors are truly unpredictable. | |
12:15.720 --> 12:18.800 | |
That most of the time, the drivers on the road, | |
12:18.800 --> 12:23.800 | |
the other road users are out there behaving well, | |
12:24.080 --> 12:25.880 | |
but every once in a while they're not. | |
12:27.080 --> 12:32.080 | |
The variety of other vehicles is, you have all of them. | |
12:32.080 --> 12:35.840 | |
In terms of behavior, in terms of perception, or both? | |
12:35.840 --> 12:36.680 | |
Both. | |
12:38.740 --> 12:40.520 | |
Back then we didn't have to deal with cyclists, | |
12:40.520 --> 12:42.800 | |
we didn't have to deal with pedestrians, | |
12:42.800 --> 12:44.800 | |
didn't have to deal with traffic lights. | |
12:46.260 --> 12:49.400 | |
The scale over which that you have to operate is now | |
12:49.400 --> 12:51.120 | |
is much larger than the air base | |
12:51.120 --> 12:52.720 | |
that we were thinking about back then. | |
12:52.720 --> 12:55.420 | |
So what, easy question, | |
12:56.280 --> 12:59.720 | |
what do you think is the hardest part about driving? | |
12:59.720 --> 13:00.560 | |
Easy question. | |
13:00.560 --> 13:02.560 | |
Yeah, no, I'm joking. | |
13:02.560 --> 13:07.440 | |
I'm sure nothing really jumps out at you as one thing, | |
13:07.440 --> 13:12.440 | |
but in the jump from the urban challenge to the real world, | |
13:12.920 --> 13:15.320 | |
is there something that's a particular, | |
13:15.320 --> 13:18.480 | |
you foresee as very serious, difficult challenge? | |
13:18.480 --> 13:21.080 | |
I think the most fundamental difference | |
13:21.080 --> 13:25.340 | |
is that we're doing it for real. | |
13:26.760 --> 13:28.960 | |
That in that environment, | |
13:28.960 --> 13:31.880 | |
it was both a limited complexity environment | |
13:31.880 --> 13:33.240 | |
because certain actors weren't there, | |
13:33.240 --> 13:35.380 | |
because the roads were maintained, | |
13:35.380 --> 13:37.360 | |
there were barriers keeping people separate | |
13:37.360 --> 13:39.400 | |
from robots at the time, | |
13:40.840 --> 13:43.300 | |
and it only had to work for 60 miles. | |
13:43.300 --> 13:46.160 | |
Which, looking at it from 2006, | |
13:46.160 --> 13:48.960 | |
it had to work for 60 miles, right? | |
13:48.960 --> 13:50.940 | |
Looking at it from now, | |
13:51.880 --> 13:53.720 | |
we want things that will go and drive | |
13:53.720 --> 13:57.160 | |
for half a million miles, | |
13:57.160 --> 14:00.020 | |
and it's just a different game. | |
14:00.940 --> 14:03.480 | |
So how important, | |
14:03.480 --> 14:06.080 | |
you said LiDAR came into the game early on, | |
14:06.080 --> 14:07.880 | |
and it's really the primary driver | |
14:07.880 --> 14:10.240 | |
of autonomous vehicles today as a sensor. | |
14:10.240 --> 14:11.920 | |
So how important is the role of LiDAR | |
14:11.920 --> 14:14.800 | |
in the sensor suite in the near term? | |
14:14.800 --> 14:16.740 | |
So I think it's essential. | |
14:17.920 --> 14:20.480 | |
I believe, but I also believe that cameras are essential, | |
14:20.480 --> 14:22.120 | |
and I believe the radar is essential. | |
14:22.120 --> 14:26.280 | |
I think that you really need to use | |
14:26.280 --> 14:28.720 | |
the composition of data from these different sensors | |
14:28.720 --> 14:32.640 | |
if you want the thing to really be robust. | |
14:32.640 --> 14:34.360 | |
The question I wanna ask, | |
14:34.360 --> 14:35.600 | |
let's see if we can untangle it, | |
14:35.600 --> 14:39.320 | |
is what are your thoughts on the Elon Musk | |
14:39.320 --> 14:42.340 | |
provocative statement that LiDAR is a crutch, | |
14:42.340 --> 14:47.340 | |
that it's a kind of, I guess, growing pains, | |
14:47.760 --> 14:49.920 | |
and that much of the perception task | |
14:49.920 --> 14:52.120 | |
can be done with cameras? | |
14:52.120 --> 14:55.440 | |
So I think it is undeniable | |
14:55.440 --> 14:59.360 | |
that people walk around without lasers in their foreheads, | |
14:59.360 --> 15:01.880 | |
and they can get into vehicles and drive them, | |
15:01.880 --> 15:05.600 | |
and so there's an existence proof | |
15:05.600 --> 15:09.600 | |
that you can drive using passive vision. | |
15:10.880 --> 15:12.720 | |
No doubt, can't argue with that. | |
15:12.720 --> 15:14.680 | |
In terms of sensors, yeah, so there's proof. | |
15:14.680 --> 15:16.000 | |
Yeah, in terms of sensors, right? | |
15:16.000 --> 15:20.200 | |
So there's an example that we all go do it, | |
15:20.200 --> 15:21.380 | |
many of us every day. | |
15:21.380 --> 15:26.380 | |
In terms of LiDAR being a crutch, sure. | |
15:28.180 --> 15:33.100 | |
But in the same way that the combustion engine | |
15:33.100 --> 15:35.260 | |
was a crutch on the path to an electric vehicle, | |
15:35.260 --> 15:39.300 | |
in the same way that any technology ultimately gets | |
15:40.840 --> 15:44.380 | |
replaced by some superior technology in the future, | |
15:44.380 --> 15:47.740 | |
and really the way that I look at this | |
15:47.740 --> 15:51.460 | |
is that the way we get around on the ground, | |
15:51.460 --> 15:53.920 | |
the way that we use transportation is broken, | |
15:55.280 --> 15:59.740 | |
and that we have this, I think the number I saw this morning, | |
15:59.740 --> 16:04.060 | |
37,000 Americans killed last year on our roads, | |
16:04.060 --> 16:05.380 | |
and that's just not acceptable. | |
16:05.380 --> 16:09.460 | |
And so any technology that we can bring to bear | |
16:09.460 --> 16:12.860 | |
that accelerates this self driving technology | |
16:12.860 --> 16:14.640 | |
coming to market and saving lives | |
16:14.640 --> 16:17.320 | |
is technology we should be using. | |
16:18.280 --> 16:20.840 | |
And it feels just arbitrary to say, | |
16:20.840 --> 16:25.840 | |
well, I'm not okay with using lasers | |
16:26.240 --> 16:27.820 | |
because that's whatever, | |
16:27.820 --> 16:30.720 | |
but I am okay with using an eight megapixel camera | |
16:30.720 --> 16:32.880 | |
or a 16 megapixel camera. | |
16:32.880 --> 16:34.640 | |
These are just bits of technology, | |
16:34.640 --> 16:36.360 | |
and we should be taking the best technology | |
16:36.360 --> 16:41.360 | |
from the tool bin that allows us to go and solve a problem. | |
16:41.360 --> 16:45.160 | |
The question I often talk to, well, obviously you do as well, | |
16:45.160 --> 16:48.280 | |
to sort of automotive companies, | |
16:48.280 --> 16:51.360 | |
and if there's one word that comes up more often | |
16:51.360 --> 16:55.280 | |
than anything, it's cost, and trying to drive costs down. | |
16:55.280 --> 17:00.280 | |
So while it's true that it's a tragic number, the 37,000, | |
17:01.400 --> 17:04.880 | |
the question is, and I'm not the one asking this question | |
17:04.880 --> 17:05.820 | |
because I hate this question, | |
17:05.820 --> 17:09.960 | |
but we want to find the cheapest sensor suite | |
17:09.960 --> 17:13.280 | |
that creates a safe vehicle. | |
17:13.280 --> 17:18.220 | |
So in that uncomfortable trade off, | |
17:18.220 --> 17:23.220 | |
do you foresee LiDAR coming down in cost in the future, | |
17:23.680 --> 17:26.680 | |
or do you see a day where level four autonomy | |
17:26.680 --> 17:29.880 | |
is possible without LiDAR? | |
17:29.880 --> 17:32.880 | |
I see both of those, but it's really a matter of time. | |
17:32.880 --> 17:36.040 | |
And I think really, maybe I would talk to the question | |
17:36.040 --> 17:37.840 | |
you asked about the cheapest sensor. | |
17:37.840 --> 17:40.360 | |
I don't think that's actually what you want. | |
17:40.360 --> 17:45.360 | |
What you want is a sensor suite that is economically viable. | |
17:45.680 --> 17:49.440 | |
And then after that, everything is about margin | |
17:49.440 --> 17:52.120 | |
and driving costs out of the system. | |
17:52.120 --> 17:55.360 | |
What you also want is a sensor suite that works. | |
17:55.360 --> 17:58.200 | |
And so it's great to tell a story about | |
17:59.600 --> 18:03.260 | |
how it would be better to have a self driving system | |
18:03.260 --> 18:08.040 | |
with a $50 sensor instead of a $500 sensor. | |
18:08.040 --> 18:10.520 | |
But if the $500 sensor makes it work | |
18:10.520 --> 18:14.760 | |
and the $50 sensor doesn't work, who cares? | |
18:15.680 --> 18:20.020 | |
So long as you can actually have an economic opportunity, | |
18:20.020 --> 18:21.520 | |
there's an economic opportunity there. | |
18:21.520 --> 18:23.760 | |
And the economic opportunity is important | |
18:23.760 --> 18:27.760 | |
because that's how you actually have a sustainable business | |
18:27.760 --> 18:31.120 | |
and that's how you can actually see this come to scale | |
18:31.120 --> 18:32.400 | |
and be out in the world. | |
18:32.400 --> 18:34.780 | |
And so when I look at LiDAR, | |
18:35.960 --> 18:38.880 | |
I see a technology that has no underlying | |
18:38.880 --> 18:42.420 | |
fundamentally expense to it, fundamental expense to it. | |
18:42.420 --> 18:46.080 | |
It's going to be more expensive than an imager | |
18:46.080 --> 18:50.360 | |
because CMOS processes or FAP processes | |
18:51.360 --> 18:55.080 | |
are dramatically more scalable than mechanical processes. | |
18:56.200 --> 18:58.320 | |
But we still should be able to drive costs down | |
18:58.320 --> 19:00.120 | |
substantially on that side. | |
19:00.120 --> 19:04.840 | |
And then I also do think that with the right business model | |
19:05.880 --> 19:07.560 | |
you can absorb more, | |
19:07.560 --> 19:09.480 | |
certainly more cost on the bill of materials. | |
19:09.480 --> 19:12.600 | |
Yeah, if the sensor suite works, extra value is provided, | |
19:12.600 --> 19:15.480 | |
thereby you don't need to drive costs down to zero. | |
19:15.480 --> 19:17.100 | |
It's the basic economics. | |
19:17.100 --> 19:18.820 | |
You've talked about your intuition | |
19:18.820 --> 19:22.200 | |
that level two autonomy is problematic | |
19:22.200 --> 19:25.920 | |
because of the human factor of vigilance, | |
19:25.920 --> 19:28.040 | |
decrement, complacency, over trust and so on, | |
19:28.040 --> 19:29.600 | |
just us being human. | |
19:29.600 --> 19:31.120 | |
We over trust the system, | |
19:31.120 --> 19:34.240 | |
we start doing even more so partaking | |
19:34.240 --> 19:37.180 | |
in the secondary activities like smartphones and so on. | |
19:38.680 --> 19:43.000 | |
Have your views evolved on this point in either direction? | |
19:43.000 --> 19:44.800 | |
Can you speak to it? | |
19:44.800 --> 19:47.480 | |
So, and I want to be really careful | |
19:47.480 --> 19:50.380 | |
because sometimes this gets twisted in a way | |
19:50.380 --> 19:53.040 | |
that I certainly didn't intend. | |
19:53.040 --> 19:58.040 | |
So active safety systems are a really important technology | |
19:58.040 --> 20:00.680 | |
that we should be pursuing and integrating into vehicles. | |
20:02.080 --> 20:04.280 | |
And there's an opportunity in the near term | |
20:04.280 --> 20:06.520 | |
to reduce accidents, reduce fatalities, | |
20:06.520 --> 20:10.320 | |
and we should be pushing on that. | |
20:11.960 --> 20:14.680 | |
Level two systems are systems | |
20:14.680 --> 20:18.080 | |
where the vehicle is controlling two axes. | |
20:18.080 --> 20:21.720 | |
So braking and throttle slash steering. | |
20:23.480 --> 20:25.680 | |
And I think there are variants of level two systems | |
20:25.680 --> 20:27.280 | |
that are supporting the driver. | |
20:27.280 --> 20:31.080 | |
That absolutely we should encourage to be out there. | |
20:31.080 --> 20:32.880 | |
Where I think there's a real challenge | |
20:32.880 --> 20:37.640 | |
is in the human factors part around this | |
20:37.640 --> 20:41.240 | |
and the misconception from the public | |
20:41.240 --> 20:43.600 | |
around the capability set that that enables | |
20:43.600 --> 20:45.640 | |
and the trust that they should have in it. | |
20:46.640 --> 20:50.000 | |
And that is where I kind of, | |
20:50.000 --> 20:52.920 | |
I'm actually incrementally more concerned | |
20:52.920 --> 20:54.440 | |
around level three systems | |
20:54.440 --> 20:58.440 | |
and how exactly a level two system is marketed and delivered | |
20:58.440 --> 21:01.840 | |
and how much effort people have put into those human factors. | |
21:01.840 --> 21:05.640 | |
So I still believe several things around this. | |
21:05.640 --> 21:09.440 | |
One is people will overtrust the technology. | |
21:09.440 --> 21:11.440 | |
We've seen over the last few weeks | |
21:11.440 --> 21:14.040 | |
a spate of people sleeping in their Tesla. | |
21:14.920 --> 21:19.920 | |
I watched an episode last night of Trevor Noah | |
21:19.920 --> 21:23.920 | |
talking about this and him, | |
21:23.920 --> 21:26.720 | |
this is a smart guy who has a lot of resources | |
21:26.720 --> 21:30.720 | |
at his disposal describing a Tesla as a self driving car | |
21:30.720 --> 21:33.480 | |
and that why shouldn't people be sleeping in their Tesla? | |
21:33.480 --> 21:36.560 | |
And it's like, well, because it's not a self driving car | |
21:36.560 --> 21:38.840 | |
and it is not intended to be | |
21:38.840 --> 21:43.840 | |
and these people will almost certainly die at some point | |
21:46.400 --> 21:48.040 | |
or hurt other people. | |
21:48.040 --> 21:50.080 | |
And so we need to really be thoughtful | |
21:50.080 --> 21:51.840 | |
about how that technology is described | |
21:51.840 --> 21:53.280 | |
and brought to market. | |
21:54.240 --> 21:59.240 | |
I also think that because of the economic challenges | |
21:59.240 --> 22:01.240 | |
we were just talking about, | |
22:01.240 --> 22:05.160 | |
that these level two driver assistance systems, | |
22:05.160 --> 22:07.280 | |
that technology path will diverge | |
22:07.280 --> 22:10.200 | |
from the technology path that we need to be on | |
22:10.200 --> 22:14.080 | |
to actually deliver truly self driving vehicles, | |
22:14.080 --> 22:16.920 | |
ones where you can get in it and drive it. | |
22:16.920 --> 22:20.800 | |
Can get in it and sleep and have the equivalent | |
22:20.800 --> 22:24.680 | |
or better safety than a human driver behind the wheel. | |
22:24.680 --> 22:27.520 | |
Because again, the economics are very different | |
22:28.480 --> 22:30.880 | |
in those two worlds and so that leads | |
22:30.880 --> 22:32.800 | |
to divergent technology. | |
22:32.800 --> 22:34.680 | |
So you just don't see the economics | |
22:34.680 --> 22:38.560 | |
of gradually increasing from level two | |
22:38.560 --> 22:41.600 | |
and doing so quickly enough | |
22:41.600 --> 22:44.480 | |
to where it doesn't cause safety, critical safety concerns. | |
22:44.480 --> 22:47.680 | |
You believe that it needs to diverge at this point | |
22:48.680 --> 22:50.800 | |
into basically different routes. | |
22:50.800 --> 22:55.560 | |
And really that comes back to what are those L2 | |
22:55.560 --> 22:57.080 | |
and L1 systems doing? | |
22:57.080 --> 22:59.840 | |
And they are driver assistance functions | |
22:59.840 --> 23:04.400 | |
where the people that are marketing that responsibly | |
23:04.400 --> 23:08.000 | |
are being very clear and putting human factors in place | |
23:08.000 --> 23:12.440 | |
such that the driver is actually responsible for the vehicle | |
23:12.440 --> 23:15.160 | |
and that the technology is there to support the driver. | |
23:15.160 --> 23:19.880 | |
And the safety cases that are built around those | |
23:19.880 --> 23:24.040 | |
are dependent on that driver attention and attentiveness. | |
23:24.040 --> 23:28.000 | |
And at that point, you can kind of give up | |
23:29.160 --> 23:31.240 | |
to some degree for economic reasons, | |
23:31.240 --> 23:33.480 | |
you can give up on say false negatives. | |
23:34.800 --> 23:36.200 | |
And the way to think about this | |
23:36.200 --> 23:39.320 | |
is for a four collision mitigation braking system, | |
23:39.320 --> 23:43.960 | |
if it half the times the driver missed a vehicle | |
23:43.960 --> 23:46.080 | |
in front of it, it hit the brakes | |
23:46.080 --> 23:47.680 | |
and brought the vehicle to a stop, | |
23:47.680 --> 23:51.640 | |
that would be an incredible, incredible advance | |
23:51.640 --> 23:53.040 | |
in safety on our roads, right? | |
23:53.040 --> 23:55.000 | |
That would be equivalent to seat belts. | |
23:55.000 --> 23:56.600 | |
But it would mean that if that vehicle | |
23:56.600 --> 23:59.440 | |
wasn't being monitored, it would hit one out of two cars. | |
24:00.600 --> 24:05.120 | |
And so economically, that's a perfectly good solution | |
24:05.120 --> 24:06.280 | |
for a driver assistance system. | |
24:06.280 --> 24:07.240 | |
What you should do at that point, | |
24:07.240 --> 24:09.240 | |
if you can get it to work 50% of the time, | |
24:09.240 --> 24:10.520 | |
is drive the cost out of that | |
24:10.520 --> 24:13.320 | |
so you can get it on as many vehicles as possible. | |
24:13.320 --> 24:14.760 | |
But driving the cost out of it | |
24:14.760 --> 24:18.800 | |
doesn't drive up performance on the false negative case. | |
24:18.800 --> 24:21.440 | |
And so you'll continue to not have a technology | |
24:21.440 --> 24:25.680 | |
that could really be available for a self driven vehicle. | |
24:25.680 --> 24:28.440 | |
So clearly the communication, | |
24:28.440 --> 24:31.600 | |
and this probably applies to all four vehicles as well, | |
24:31.600 --> 24:34.440 | |
the marketing and communication | |
24:34.440 --> 24:37.040 | |
of what the technology is actually capable of, | |
24:37.040 --> 24:38.400 | |
how hard it is, how easy it is, | |
24:38.400 --> 24:41.000 | |
all that kind of stuff is highly problematic. | |
24:41.000 --> 24:45.640 | |
So say everybody in the world was perfectly communicated | |
24:45.640 --> 24:48.400 | |
and were made to be completely aware | |
24:48.400 --> 24:50.000 | |
of every single technology out there, | |
24:50.000 --> 24:52.840 | |
what it's able to do. | |
24:52.840 --> 24:54.120 | |
What's your intuition? | |
24:54.120 --> 24:56.880 | |
And now we're maybe getting into philosophical ground. | |
24:56.880 --> 25:00.000 | |
Is it possible to have a level two vehicle | |
25:00.000 --> 25:03.280 | |
where we don't over trust it? | |
25:04.680 --> 25:05.800 | |
I don't think so. | |
25:05.800 --> 25:10.800 | |
If people truly understood the risks and internalized it, | |
25:11.160 --> 25:14.320 | |
then sure, you could do that safely. | |
25:14.320 --> 25:16.160 | |
But that's a world that doesn't exist. | |
25:16.160 --> 25:17.520 | |
The people are going to, | |
25:18.720 --> 25:20.760 | |
if the facts are put in front of them, | |
25:20.760 --> 25:24.440 | |
they're gonna then combine that with their experience. | |
25:24.440 --> 25:28.360 | |
And let's say they're using an L2 system | |
25:28.360 --> 25:30.800 | |
and they go up and down the 101 every day | |
25:30.800 --> 25:32.720 | |
and they do that for a month. | |
25:32.720 --> 25:36.200 | |
And it just worked every day for a month. | |
25:36.200 --> 25:39.000 | |
Like that's pretty compelling at that point, | |
25:39.000 --> 25:41.800 | |
just even if you know the statistics, | |
25:41.800 --> 25:43.400 | |
you're like, well, I don't know, | |
25:43.400 --> 25:44.760 | |
maybe there's something funny about those. | |
25:44.760 --> 25:46.920 | |
Maybe they're driving in difficult places. | |
25:46.920 --> 25:49.840 | |
Like I've seen it with my own eyes, it works. | |
25:49.840 --> 25:52.400 | |
And the problem is that that sample size that they have, | |
25:52.400 --> 25:53.880 | |
so it's 30 miles up and down, | |
25:53.880 --> 25:56.360 | |
so 60 miles times 30 days, | |
25:56.360 --> 25:58.720 | |
so 60, 180, 1,800 miles. | |
25:58.720 --> 26:03.280 | |
Like that's a drop in the bucket | |
26:03.280 --> 26:07.640 | |
compared to the, what, 85 million miles between fatalities. | |
26:07.640 --> 26:11.400 | |
And so they don't really have a true estimate | |
26:11.400 --> 26:14.440 | |
based on their personal experience of the real risks, | |
26:14.440 --> 26:15.640 | |
but they're gonna trust it anyway, | |
26:15.640 --> 26:16.480 | |
because it's hard not to. | |
26:16.480 --> 26:18.640 | |
It worked for a month, what's gonna change? | |
26:18.640 --> 26:21.640 | |
So even if you start a perfect understanding of the system, | |
26:21.640 --> 26:24.160 | |
your own experience will make it drift. | |
26:24.160 --> 26:25.920 | |
I mean, that's a big concern. | |
26:25.920 --> 26:28.160 | |
Over a year, over two years even, | |
26:28.160 --> 26:29.440 | |
it doesn't have to be months. | |
26:29.440 --> 26:32.920 | |
And I think that as this technology moves | |
26:32.920 --> 26:37.760 | |
from what I would say is kind of the more technology savvy | |
26:37.760 --> 26:40.880 | |
ownership group to the mass market, | |
26:42.640 --> 26:44.600 | |
you may be able to have some of those folks | |
26:44.600 --> 26:46.280 | |
who are really familiar with technology, | |
26:46.280 --> 26:48.840 | |
they may be able to internalize it better. | |
26:48.840 --> 26:50.800 | |
And your kind of immunization | |
26:50.800 --> 26:53.360 | |
against this kind of false risk assessment | |
26:53.360 --> 26:54.280 | |
might last longer, | |
26:54.280 --> 26:58.680 | |
but as folks who aren't as savvy about that | |
26:58.680 --> 27:00.880 | |
read the material and they compare that | |
27:00.880 --> 27:02.160 | |
to their personal experience, | |
27:02.160 --> 27:07.160 | |
I think there it's going to move more quickly. | |
27:08.160 --> 27:11.280 | |
So your work, the program that you've created at Google | |
27:11.280 --> 27:16.280 | |
and now at Aurora is focused more on the second path | |
27:16.600 --> 27:18.480 | |
of creating full autonomy. | |
27:18.480 --> 27:20.880 | |
So it's such a fascinating, | |
27:20.880 --> 27:24.560 | |
I think it's one of the most interesting AI problems | |
27:24.560 --> 27:25.600 | |
of the century, right? | |
27:25.600 --> 27:28.280 | |
It's, I just talked to a lot of people, | |
27:28.280 --> 27:29.440 | |
just regular people, I don't know, | |
27:29.440 --> 27:31.720 | |
my mom, about autonomous vehicles, | |
27:31.720 --> 27:34.520 | |
and you begin to grapple with ideas | |
27:34.520 --> 27:38.080 | |
of giving your life control over to a machine. | |
27:38.080 --> 27:40.040 | |
It's philosophically interesting, | |
27:40.040 --> 27:41.760 | |
it's practically interesting. | |
27:41.760 --> 27:43.720 | |
So let's talk about safety. | |
27:43.720 --> 27:46.240 | |
How do you think we demonstrate, | |
27:46.240 --> 27:47.880 | |
you've spoken about metrics in the past, | |
27:47.880 --> 27:51.880 | |
how do you think we demonstrate to the world | |
27:51.880 --> 27:56.160 | |
that an autonomous vehicle, an Aurora system is safe? | |
27:56.160 --> 27:57.320 | |
This is one where it's difficult | |
27:57.320 --> 27:59.280 | |
because there isn't a soundbite answer. | |
27:59.280 --> 28:04.280 | |
That we have to show a combination of work | |
28:05.960 --> 28:08.360 | |
that was done diligently and thoughtfully, | |
28:08.360 --> 28:10.840 | |
and this is where something like a functional safety process | |
28:10.840 --> 28:11.680 | |
is part of that. | |
28:11.680 --> 28:14.360 | |
It's like here's the way we did the work, | |
28:15.280 --> 28:17.160 | |
that means that we were very thorough. | |
28:17.160 --> 28:20.040 | |
So if you believe that what we said | |
28:20.040 --> 28:21.440 | |
about this is the way we did it, | |
28:21.440 --> 28:22.720 | |
then you can have some confidence | |
28:22.720 --> 28:25.200 | |
that we were thorough in the engineering work | |
28:25.200 --> 28:26.920 | |
we put into the system. | |
28:26.920 --> 28:28.920 | |
And then on top of that, | |
28:28.920 --> 28:32.000 | |
to kind of demonstrate that we weren't just thorough, | |
28:32.000 --> 28:33.800 | |
we were actually good at what we did, | |
28:35.280 --> 28:38.200 | |
there'll be a kind of a collection of evidence | |
28:38.200 --> 28:40.440 | |
in terms of demonstrating that the capabilities | |
28:40.440 --> 28:42.920 | |
worked the way we thought they did, | |
28:42.920 --> 28:45.320 | |
statistically and to whatever degree | |
28:45.320 --> 28:47.280 | |
we can demonstrate that, | |
28:48.160 --> 28:50.320 | |
both in some combination of simulations, | |
28:50.320 --> 28:53.080 | |
some combination of unit testing | |
28:53.080 --> 28:54.640 | |
and decomposition testing, | |
28:54.640 --> 28:57.000 | |
and then some part of it will be on road data. | |
28:58.160 --> 29:02.680 | |
And I think the way we'll ultimately | |
29:02.680 --> 29:04.000 | |
convey this to the public | |
29:04.000 --> 29:06.760 | |
is there'll be clearly some conversation | |
29:06.760 --> 29:08.200 | |
with the public about it, | |
29:08.200 --> 29:12.040 | |
but we'll kind of invoke the kind of the trusted nodes | |
29:12.040 --> 29:13.880 | |
and that we'll spend more time | |
29:13.880 --> 29:17.280 | |
being able to go into more depth with folks like NHTSA | |
29:17.280 --> 29:19.720 | |
and other federal and state regulatory bodies | |
29:19.720 --> 29:22.080 | |
and kind of given that they are | |
29:22.080 --> 29:25.200 | |
operating in the public interest and they're trusted, | |
29:26.240 --> 29:28.640 | |
that if we can show enough work to them | |
29:28.640 --> 29:30.000 | |
that they're convinced, | |
29:30.000 --> 29:33.800 | |
then I think we're in a pretty good place. | |
29:33.800 --> 29:35.000 | |
That means you work with people | |
29:35.000 --> 29:36.920 | |
that are essentially experts at safety | |
29:36.920 --> 29:39.000 | |
to try to discuss and show. | |
29:39.000 --> 29:41.720 | |
Do you think, the answer's probably no, | |
29:41.720 --> 29:42.920 | |
but just in case, | |
29:42.920 --> 29:44.360 | |
do you think there exists a metric? | |
29:44.360 --> 29:46.320 | |
So currently people have been using | |
29:46.320 --> 29:48.200 | |
number of disengagements. | |
29:48.200 --> 29:50.120 | |
And it quickly turns into a marketing scheme | |
29:50.120 --> 29:54.280 | |
to sort of you alter the experiments you run to adjust. | |
29:54.280 --> 29:56.280 | |
I think you've spoken that you don't like. | |
29:56.280 --> 29:57.120 | |
Don't love it. | |
29:57.120 --> 29:59.680 | |
No, in fact, I was on the record telling DMV | |
29:59.680 --> 30:01.960 | |
that I thought this was not a great metric. | |
30:01.960 --> 30:05.280 | |
Do you think it's possible to create a metric, | |
30:05.280 --> 30:09.440 | |
a number that could demonstrate safety | |
30:09.440 --> 30:12.320 | |
outside of fatalities? | |
30:12.320 --> 30:13.440 | |
So I do. | |
30:13.440 --> 30:16.560 | |
And I think that it won't be just one number. | |
30:17.600 --> 30:21.280 | |
So as we are internally grappling with this, | |
30:21.280 --> 30:23.560 | |
and at some point we'll be able to talk | |
30:23.560 --> 30:25.040 | |
more publicly about it, | |
30:25.040 --> 30:28.520 | |
is how do we think about human performance | |
30:28.520 --> 30:29.840 | |
in different tasks, | |
30:29.840 --> 30:32.160 | |
say detecting traffic lights | |
30:32.160 --> 30:36.200 | |
or safely making a left turn across traffic? | |
30:37.680 --> 30:40.080 | |
And what do we think the failure rates are | |
30:40.080 --> 30:42.520 | |
for those different capabilities for people? | |
30:42.520 --> 30:44.760 | |
And then demonstrating to ourselves | |
30:44.760 --> 30:48.480 | |
and then ultimately folks in the regulatory role | |
30:48.480 --> 30:50.760 | |
and then ultimately the public | |
30:50.760 --> 30:52.400 | |
that we have confidence that our system | |
30:52.400 --> 30:54.760 | |
will work better than that. | |
30:54.760 --> 30:57.040 | |
And so these individual metrics | |
30:57.040 --> 31:00.720 | |
will kind of tell a compelling story ultimately. | |
31:01.760 --> 31:03.920 | |
I do think at the end of the day | |
31:03.920 --> 31:06.640 | |
what we care about in terms of safety | |
31:06.640 --> 31:11.320 | |
is life saved and injuries reduced. | |
31:12.160 --> 31:15.280 | |
And then ultimately kind of casualty dollars | |
31:16.440 --> 31:19.360 | |
that people aren't having to pay to get their car fixed. | |
31:19.360 --> 31:22.680 | |
And I do think that in aviation | |
31:22.680 --> 31:25.880 | |
they look at a kind of an event pyramid | |
31:25.880 --> 31:28.600 | |
where a crash is at the top of that | |
31:28.600 --> 31:30.440 | |
and that's the worst event obviously | |
31:30.440 --> 31:34.240 | |
and then there's injuries and near miss events and whatnot | |
31:34.240 --> 31:37.320 | |
and violation of operating procedures | |
31:37.320 --> 31:40.160 | |
and you kind of build a statistical model | |
31:40.160 --> 31:44.440 | |
of the relevance of the low severity things | |
31:44.440 --> 31:45.280 | |
or the high severity things. | |
31:45.280 --> 31:46.120 | |
And I think that's something | |
31:46.120 --> 31:48.200 | |
where we'll be able to look at as well | |
31:48.200 --> 31:51.840 | |
because an event per 85 million miles | |
31:51.840 --> 31:54.440 | |
is statistically a difficult thing | |
31:54.440 --> 31:56.800 | |
even at the scale of the U.S. | |
31:56.800 --> 31:59.360 | |
to kind of compare directly. | |
31:59.360 --> 32:02.240 | |
And that event fatality that's connected | |
32:02.240 --> 32:07.240 | |
to an autonomous vehicle is significantly | |
32:07.440 --> 32:09.160 | |
at least currently magnified | |
32:09.160 --> 32:12.320 | |
in the amount of attention it gets. | |
32:12.320 --> 32:15.080 | |
So that speaks to public perception. | |
32:15.080 --> 32:16.720 | |
I think the most popular topic | |
32:16.720 --> 32:19.480 | |
about autonomous vehicles in the public | |
32:19.480 --> 32:23.080 | |
is the trolley problem formulation, right? | |
32:23.080 --> 32:27.000 | |
Which has, let's not get into that too much | |
32:27.000 --> 32:29.600 | |
but is misguided in many ways. | |
32:29.600 --> 32:32.320 | |
But it speaks to the fact that people are grappling | |
32:32.320 --> 32:36.160 | |
with this idea of giving control over to a machine. | |
32:36.160 --> 32:41.160 | |
So how do you win the hearts and minds of the people | |
32:41.560 --> 32:44.600 | |
that autonomy is something that could be a part | |
32:44.600 --> 32:45.520 | |
of their lives? | |
32:45.520 --> 32:47.640 | |
I think you let them experience it, right? | |
32:47.640 --> 32:50.440 | |
I think it's right. | |
32:50.440 --> 32:52.800 | |
I think people should be skeptical. | |
32:52.800 --> 32:55.680 | |
I think people should ask questions. | |
32:55.680 --> 32:57.000 | |
I think they should doubt | |
32:57.000 --> 33:00.120 | |
because this is something new and different. | |
33:00.120 --> 33:01.880 | |
They haven't touched it yet. | |
33:01.880 --> 33:03.640 | |
And I think that's perfectly reasonable. | |
33:03.640 --> 33:07.320 | |
And, but at the same time, | |
33:07.320 --> 33:09.320 | |
it's clear there's an opportunity to make the road safer. | |
33:09.320 --> 33:12.440 | |
It's clear that we can improve access to mobility. | |
33:12.440 --> 33:14.960 | |
It's clear that we can reduce the cost of mobility. | |
33:16.640 --> 33:19.480 | |
And that once people try that | |
33:19.480 --> 33:22.720 | |
and understand that it's safe | |
33:22.720 --> 33:24.440 | |
and are able to use in their daily lives, | |
33:24.440 --> 33:25.280 | |
I think it's one of these things | |
33:25.280 --> 33:28.040 | |
that will just be obvious. | |
33:28.040 --> 33:32.240 | |
And I've seen this practically in demonstrations | |
33:32.240 --> 33:35.560 | |
that I've given where I've had people come in | |
33:35.560 --> 33:38.840 | |
and they're very skeptical. | |
33:38.840 --> 33:40.440 | |
Again, in a vehicle, my favorite one | |
33:40.440 --> 33:42.560 | |
is taking somebody out on the freeway | |
33:42.560 --> 33:46.000 | |
and we're on the 101 driving at 65 miles an hour. | |
33:46.000 --> 33:48.400 | |
And after 10 minutes, they kind of turn and ask, | |
33:48.400 --> 33:49.480 | |
is that all it does? | |
33:49.480 --> 33:52.080 | |
And you're like, it's a self driving car. | |
33:52.080 --> 33:54.840 | |
I'm not sure exactly what you thought it would do, right? | |
33:54.840 --> 33:57.920 | |
But it becomes mundane, | |
33:58.840 --> 34:01.480 | |
which is exactly what you want a technology | |
34:01.480 --> 34:02.720 | |
like this to be, right? | |
34:02.720 --> 34:07.280 | |
We don't really, when I turn the light switch on in here, | |
34:07.280 --> 34:12.000 | |
I don't think about the complexity of those electrons | |
34:12.000 --> 34:14.200 | |
being pushed down a wire from wherever it was | |
34:14.200 --> 34:15.240 | |
and being generated. | |
34:15.240 --> 34:19.080 | |
It's like, I just get annoyed if it doesn't work, right? | |
34:19.080 --> 34:21.400 | |
And what I value is the fact | |
34:21.400 --> 34:23.080 | |
that I can do other things in this space. | |
34:23.080 --> 34:24.560 | |
I can see my colleagues. | |
34:24.560 --> 34:26.160 | |
I can read stuff on a paper. | |
34:26.160 --> 34:29.200 | |
I can not be afraid of the dark. | |
34:30.360 --> 34:33.320 | |
And I think that's what we want this technology to be like | |
34:33.320 --> 34:34.640 | |
is it's in the background | |
34:34.640 --> 34:37.120 | |
and people get to have those life experiences | |
34:37.120 --> 34:38.440 | |
and do so safely. | |
34:38.440 --> 34:42.160 | |
So putting this technology in the hands of people | |
34:42.160 --> 34:46.320 | |
speaks to scale of deployment, right? | |
34:46.320 --> 34:50.880 | |
So what do you think the dreaded question about the future | |
34:50.880 --> 34:53.560 | |
because nobody can predict the future, | |
34:53.560 --> 34:57.240 | |
but just maybe speak poetically | |
34:57.240 --> 35:00.880 | |
about when do you think we'll see a large scale deployment | |
35:00.880 --> 35:05.880 | |
of autonomous vehicles, 10,000, those kinds of numbers? | |
35:06.680 --> 35:08.240 | |
We'll see that within 10 years. | |
35:09.240 --> 35:10.240 | |
I'm pretty confident. | |
35:14.040 --> 35:16.040 | |
What's an impressive scale? | |
35:16.040 --> 35:19.200 | |
What moment, so you've done the DARPA challenge | |
35:19.200 --> 35:20.440 | |
where there's one vehicle. | |
35:20.440 --> 35:23.960 | |
At which moment does it become, wow, this is serious scale? | |
35:23.960 --> 35:26.520 | |
So I think the moment it gets serious | |
35:26.520 --> 35:31.520 | |
is when we really do have a driverless vehicle | |
35:32.240 --> 35:34.120 | |
operating on public roads | |
35:35.000 --> 35:37.960 | |
and that we can do that kind of continuously. | |
35:37.960 --> 35:38.880 | |
Without a safety driver. | |
35:38.880 --> 35:40.440 | |
Without a safety driver in the vehicle. | |
35:40.440 --> 35:41.560 | |
I think at that moment, | |
35:41.560 --> 35:44.400 | |
we've kind of crossed the zero to one threshold. | |
35:45.920 --> 35:50.200 | |
And then it is about how do we continue to scale that? | |
35:50.200 --> 35:53.960 | |
How do we build the right business models? | |
35:53.960 --> 35:56.320 | |
How do we build the right customer experience around it | |
35:56.320 --> 35:59.960 | |
so that it is actually a useful product out in the world? | |
36:00.960 --> 36:03.600 | |
And I think that is really, | |
36:03.600 --> 36:05.920 | |
at that point it moves from | |
36:05.920 --> 36:09.200 | |
what is this kind of mixed science engineering project | |
36:09.200 --> 36:12.360 | |
into engineering and commercialization | |
36:12.360 --> 36:15.840 | |
and really starting to deliver on the value | |
36:15.840 --> 36:20.680 | |
that we all see here and actually making that real in the world. | |
36:20.680 --> 36:22.240 | |
What do you think that deployment looks like? | |
36:22.240 --> 36:26.440 | |
Where do we first see the inkling of no safety driver, | |
36:26.440 --> 36:28.600 | |
one or two cars here and there? | |
36:28.600 --> 36:29.800 | |
Is it on the highway? | |
36:29.800 --> 36:33.160 | |
Is it in specific routes in the urban environment? | |
36:33.160 --> 36:36.920 | |
I think it's gonna be urban, suburban type environments. | |
36:37.880 --> 36:41.560 | |
Yeah, with Aurora, when we thought about how to tackle this, | |
36:41.560 --> 36:45.040 | |
it was kind of in vogue to think about trucking | |
36:46.040 --> 36:47.800 | |
as opposed to urban driving. | |
36:47.800 --> 36:51.280 | |
And again, the human intuition around this | |
36:51.280 --> 36:55.400 | |
is that freeways are easier to drive on | |
36:57.080 --> 36:59.280 | |
because everybody's kind of going in the same direction | |
36:59.280 --> 37:01.560 | |
and lanes are a little wider, et cetera. | |
37:01.560 --> 37:03.320 | |
And I think that that intuition is pretty good, | |
37:03.320 --> 37:06.040 | |
except we don't really care about most of the time. | |
37:06.040 --> 37:08.400 | |
We care about all of the time. | |
37:08.400 --> 37:10.880 | |
And when you're driving on a freeway with a truck, | |
37:10.880 --> 37:13.440 | |
say 70 miles an hour, | |
37:14.600 --> 37:16.240 | |
and you've got 70,000 pound load with you, | |
37:16.240 --> 37:18.880 | |
that's just an incredible amount of kinetic energy. | |
37:18.880 --> 37:21.440 | |
And so when that goes wrong, it goes really wrong. | |
37:22.640 --> 37:27.640 | |
And those challenges that you see occur more rarely, | |
37:27.800 --> 37:31.120 | |
so you don't get to learn as quickly. | |
37:31.120 --> 37:34.720 | |
And they're incrementally more difficult than urban driving, | |
37:34.720 --> 37:37.440 | |
but they're not easier than urban driving. | |
37:37.440 --> 37:41.640 | |
And so I think this happens in moderate speed | |
37:41.640 --> 37:45.280 | |
urban environments because if two vehicles crash | |
37:45.280 --> 37:48.120 | |
at 25 miles per hour, it's not good, | |
37:48.120 --> 37:50.120 | |
but probably everybody walks away. | |
37:51.080 --> 37:53.720 | |
And those events where there's the possibility | |
37:53.720 --> 37:55.800 | |
for that occurring happen frequently. | |
37:55.800 --> 37:58.000 | |
So we get to learn more rapidly. | |
37:58.000 --> 38:01.360 | |
We get to do that with lower risk for everyone. | |
38:02.520 --> 38:04.360 | |
And then we can deliver value to people | |
38:04.360 --> 38:05.880 | |
that need to get from one place to another. | |
38:05.880 --> 38:08.160 | |
And once we've got that solved, | |
38:08.160 --> 38:11.320 | |
then the freeway driving part of this just falls out. | |
38:11.320 --> 38:13.080 | |
But we're able to learn more safely, | |
38:13.080 --> 38:15.200 | |
more quickly in the urban environment. | |
38:15.200 --> 38:18.760 | |
So 10 years and then scale 20, 30 year, | |
38:18.760 --> 38:22.040 | |
who knows if a sufficiently compelling experience | |
38:22.040 --> 38:24.400 | |
is created, it could be faster and slower. | |
38:24.400 --> 38:27.160 | |
Do you think there could be breakthroughs | |
38:27.160 --> 38:29.920 | |
and what kind of breakthroughs might there be | |
38:29.920 --> 38:32.400 | |
that completely change that timeline? | |
38:32.400 --> 38:35.360 | |
Again, not only am I asking you to predict the future, | |
38:35.360 --> 38:37.360 | |
I'm asking you to predict breakthroughs | |
38:37.360 --> 38:38.360 | |
that haven't happened yet. | |
38:38.360 --> 38:41.440 | |
So what's the, I think another way to ask that | |
38:41.440 --> 38:44.320 | |
would be if I could wave a magic wand, | |
38:44.320 --> 38:46.720 | |
what part of the system would I make work today | |
38:46.720 --> 38:49.480 | |
to accelerate it as quickly as possible? | |
38:52.120 --> 38:54.200 | |
Don't say infrastructure, please don't say infrastructure. | |
38:54.200 --> 38:56.320 | |
No, it's definitely not infrastructure. | |
38:56.320 --> 39:00.600 | |
It's really that perception forecasting capability. | |
39:00.600 --> 39:04.840 | |
So if tomorrow you could give me a perfect model | |
39:04.840 --> 39:06.960 | |
of what's happened, what is happening | |
39:06.960 --> 39:09.200 | |
and what will happen for the next five seconds | |
39:10.360 --> 39:13.040 | |
around a vehicle on the roadway, | |
39:13.040 --> 39:15.360 | |
that would accelerate things pretty dramatically. | |
39:15.360 --> 39:17.600 | |
Are you, in terms of staying up at night, | |
39:17.600 --> 39:21.760 | |
are you mostly bothered by cars, pedestrians or cyclists? | |
39:21.760 --> 39:25.960 | |
So I worry most about the vulnerable road users | |
39:25.960 --> 39:28.480 | |
about the combination of cyclists and cars, right? | |
39:28.480 --> 39:31.960 | |
Or cyclists and pedestrians because they're not in armor. | |
39:31.960 --> 39:36.480 | |
The cars, they're bigger, they've got protection | |
39:36.480 --> 39:39.440 | |
for the people and so the ultimate risk is lower there. | |
39:41.080 --> 39:43.240 | |
Whereas a pedestrian or a cyclist, | |
39:43.240 --> 39:46.480 | |
they're out on the road and they don't have any protection | |
39:46.480 --> 39:49.720 | |
and so we need to pay extra attention to that. | |
39:49.720 --> 39:54.120 | |
Do you think about a very difficult technical challenge | |
39:55.720 --> 39:58.520 | |
of the fact that pedestrians, | |
39:58.520 --> 40:00.240 | |
if you try to protect pedestrians | |
40:00.240 --> 40:04.560 | |
by being careful and slow, they'll take advantage of that. | |
40:04.560 --> 40:09.040 | |
So the game theoretic dance, does that worry you | |
40:09.040 --> 40:12.480 | |
of how, from a technical perspective, how we solve that? | |
40:12.480 --> 40:14.560 | |
Because as humans, the way we solve that | |
40:14.560 --> 40:17.240 | |
is kind of nudge our way through the pedestrians | |
40:17.240 --> 40:20.000 | |
which doesn't feel, from a technical perspective, | |
40:20.000 --> 40:22.300 | |
as a appropriate algorithm. | |
40:23.200 --> 40:25.920 | |
But do you think about how we solve that problem? | |
40:25.920 --> 40:30.920 | |
Yeah, I think there's two different concepts there. | |
40:31.360 --> 40:35.820 | |
So one is, am I worried that because these vehicles | |
40:35.820 --> 40:37.600 | |
are self driving, people will kind of step in the road | |
40:37.600 --> 40:38.640 | |
and take advantage of them? | |
40:38.640 --> 40:43.640 | |
And I've heard this and I don't really believe it | |
40:43.760 --> 40:45.960 | |
because if I'm driving down the road | |
40:45.960 --> 40:48.400 | |
and somebody steps in front of me, I'm going to stop. | |
40:50.600 --> 40:53.660 | |
Even if I'm annoyed, I'm not gonna just drive | |
40:53.660 --> 40:56.400 | |
through a person stood in the road. | |
40:56.400 --> 41:00.400 | |
And so I think today people can take advantage of this | |
41:00.400 --> 41:02.560 | |
and you do see some people do it. | |
41:02.560 --> 41:04.180 | |
I guess there's an incremental risk | |
41:04.180 --> 41:05.880 | |
because maybe they have lower confidence | |
41:05.880 --> 41:07.720 | |
that I'm gonna see them than they might have | |
41:07.720 --> 41:10.400 | |
for an automated vehicle and so maybe that shifts | |
41:10.400 --> 41:12.040 | |
it a little bit. | |
41:12.040 --> 41:14.360 | |
But I think people don't wanna get hit by cars. | |
41:14.360 --> 41:17.080 | |
And so I think that I'm not that worried | |
41:17.080 --> 41:18.760 | |
about people walking out of the 101 | |
41:18.760 --> 41:23.760 | |
and creating chaos more than they would today. | |
41:24.400 --> 41:27.040 | |
Regarding kind of the nudging through a big stream | |
41:27.040 --> 41:30.040 | |
of pedestrians leaving a concert or something, | |
41:30.040 --> 41:33.520 | |
I think that is further down the technology pipeline. | |
41:33.520 --> 41:36.960 | |
I think that you're right, that's tricky. | |
41:36.960 --> 41:38.620 | |
I don't think it's necessarily, | |
41:40.360 --> 41:43.600 | |
I think the algorithm people use for this is pretty simple. | |
41:43.600 --> 41:44.800 | |
It's kind of just move forward slowly | |
41:44.800 --> 41:46.800 | |
and if somebody's really close then stop. | |
41:46.800 --> 41:50.880 | |
And I think that that probably can be replicated | |
41:50.880 --> 41:54.040 | |
pretty easily and particularly given that | |
41:54.040 --> 41:55.720 | |
you don't do this at 30 miles an hour, | |
41:55.720 --> 41:59.080 | |
you do it at one, that even in those situations | |
41:59.080 --> 42:01.200 | |
the risk is relatively minimal. | |
42:01.200 --> 42:03.640 | |
But it's not something we're thinking about | |
42:03.640 --> 42:04.560 | |
in any serious way. | |
42:04.560 --> 42:07.920 | |
And probably that's less an algorithm problem | |
42:07.920 --> 42:10.160 | |
and more creating a human experience. | |
42:10.160 --> 42:14.300 | |
So the HCI people that create a visual display | |
42:14.300 --> 42:16.260 | |
that you're pleasantly as a pedestrian | |
42:16.260 --> 42:20.760 | |
nudged out of the way, that's an experience problem, | |
42:20.760 --> 42:22.000 | |
not an algorithm problem. | |
42:22.880 --> 42:25.480 | |
Who's the main competitor to Aurora today? | |
42:25.480 --> 42:28.640 | |
And how do you outcompete them in the long run? | |
42:28.640 --> 42:31.200 | |
So we really focus a lot on what we're doing here. | |
42:31.200 --> 42:34.480 | |
I think that, I've said this a few times, | |
42:34.480 --> 42:37.960 | |
that this is a huge difficult problem | |
42:37.960 --> 42:40.320 | |
and it's great that a bunch of companies are tackling it | |
42:40.320 --> 42:42.320 | |
because I think it's so important for society | |
42:42.320 --> 42:43.800 | |
that somebody gets there. | |
42:43.800 --> 42:48.800 | |
So we don't spend a whole lot of time | |
42:49.120 --> 42:51.600 | |
thinking tactically about who's out there | |
42:51.600 --> 42:55.240 | |
and how do we beat that person individually. | |
42:55.240 --> 42:58.720 | |
What are we trying to do to go faster ultimately? | |
42:59.760 --> 43:02.640 | |
Well part of it is the leadership team we have | |
43:02.640 --> 43:04.200 | |
has got pretty tremendous experience. | |
43:04.200 --> 43:06.440 | |
And so we kind of understand the landscape | |
43:06.440 --> 43:09.160 | |
and understand where the cul de sacs are to some degree | |
43:09.160 --> 43:10.980 | |
and we try and avoid those. | |
43:10.980 --> 43:14.260 | |
I think there's a part of it, | |
43:14.260 --> 43:16.260 | |
just this great team we've built. | |
43:16.260 --> 43:19.080 | |
People, this is a technology and a company | |
43:19.080 --> 43:22.320 | |
that people believe in the mission of | |
43:22.320 --> 43:23.740 | |
and so it allows us to attract | |
43:23.740 --> 43:25.740 | |
just awesome people to go work. | |
43:26.800 --> 43:29.320 | |
We've got a culture I think that people appreciate | |
43:29.320 --> 43:30.460 | |
that allows them to focus, | |
43:30.460 --> 43:33.120 | |
allows them to really spend time solving problems. | |
43:33.120 --> 43:35.900 | |
And I think that keeps them energized. | |
43:35.900 --> 43:38.940 | |
And then we've invested hard, | |
43:38.940 --> 43:43.500 | |
invested heavily in the infrastructure | |
43:43.500 --> 43:46.540 | |
and architectures that we think will ultimately accelerate us. | |
43:46.540 --> 43:50.660 | |
So because of the folks we're able to bring in early on, | |
43:50.660 --> 43:53.540 | |
because of the great investors we have, | |
43:53.540 --> 43:56.780 | |
we don't spend all of our time doing demos | |
43:56.780 --> 43:58.660 | |
and kind of leaping from one demo to the next. | |
43:58.660 --> 44:02.820 | |
We've been given the freedom to invest in | |
44:03.940 --> 44:05.500 | |
infrastructure to do machine learning, | |
44:05.500 --> 44:08.600 | |
infrastructure to pull data from our on road testing, | |
44:08.600 --> 44:11.500 | |
infrastructure to use that to accelerate engineering. | |
44:11.500 --> 44:14.480 | |
And I think that early investment | |
44:14.480 --> 44:17.340 | |
and continuing investment in those kind of tools | |
44:17.340 --> 44:19.780 | |
will ultimately allow us to accelerate | |
44:19.780 --> 44:21.940 | |
and do something pretty incredible. | |
44:21.940 --> 44:23.420 | |
Chris, beautifully put. | |
44:23.420 --> 44:24.660 | |
It's a good place to end. | |
44:24.660 --> 44:26.500 | |
Thank you so much for talking today. | |
44:26.500 --> 44:47.940 | |
Thank you very much. Really enjoyed it. | |