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Comment by timeagain | Hacker News Reader

This is misanthropic tech vision at its finest. I got a job recommendation from an Uber driver. My aunt (against TOS) built a private driver business based on her personality after driving Lyft from the airport. I had a great conversation with a Somalian driver who’s favorite music artist was Dolly Parton. Once a driver saved me from a hairy situation with an irate customer who was chasing me and throwing things, I tipped him $20 and we laughed about it—I was just happy to have someone to witness the crazy.

Not to mention the thousands of people who currently make a respectable living driving people around.

But maybe I’m just one of those extroverts who doesn’t mind being around people.

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Great. I am happy you are satisfied with the quality of service you're given by human drivers. I would hope you would be equally happy with the increased enjoyment I experience from an automated driving experience.

We will have to agree to disagree on whether it's a beneficial change to society to disrupt human drivers with autonomous drivers. Personally, I found the argument that artists shouldn't be disrupted by AI much more defensible than saying drivers shouldn't be disrupted. It always seemed easy to look at previously disrupted jobs, like people getting up at 4AM to act as manual alarm clocks via peashooters on windows, and say yes, we should replace this simple act of labor with technology.

>But maybe I’m just one of those extroverts who doesn’t mind being around people.

Maybe. I had a very boring experience overall with mine. I wouldn't have noticed if they were replaced with bots. That could be my lack of extroversion (or maybe getting all introverts myself. Few gave a vibe of wanting to chat. Just a job, after all).

But for the short term, I'm paranoid right now about autonomous driving because it is far from technologically sound. Probably more sound than the average driver, but we know that we hold tech a lot more accountable than humans. humans hold liability in human issues, companies are liable for tech issues and have the money to spend to fight any issues that arise (as we can see in real time with Tesla).

> maybe I’m just one of those extroverts who doesn’t mind being around people

Sometimes I want a chauffeur, usually one I have a relationship with, often I want a reliable ride. We’re all better off for having the choice.

It would be nice to have an UberSSR option for sure, for the people that just want a ride.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FUQYPfL0Pg

> would be nice to have an UberSSR option for sure

They ask for temperature and conversation preferences when you order a black car, which I find somewhat funny.

>But maybe I’m just one of those extroverts who doesn’t mind being around people.

Maybe. Or you've just been "lucky" with the kinds of experiences you've had on Uber.

I've had some really annoying drivers, shitty drivers. People have reported assaults and some have ended up worse.

If this were a daily thing for people (which it could be in the future), I wouldn't want a 1on1 experience every day (twice a day) with a new driver each time, each with their own personalities, driving abilities, and needs at the moment. Forget that.

And how many people are killed by taxi or Uber drivers? Their stories matter too. If you're a pedestrian or cyclist you quickly realize how dangerous "professional" drivers are.

Your assumption is that Uber/Lyft will now disappear and you'll HAVE to ride Waymo?

Seems dubious to me. Can't you still call an Uber in SF, where they've had Waymo for a while?

I really don't see how a human-centered driving company survives with something that is near fully automated and new "drivers" can just be ordered up from Stellantis or whomever, provisioned, and sent on the road. The scaling laws just don't match up.

I say "near fully automated" because there's loads of operations involved, including human remote fleet management for when cars get stuck. But even that doesn't scale linearly with the amount of automated vehicles on the road, whereas Uber will always be at least 1:1 human:car.

What is the cost in SF? This early review says the same:

https://archive.ph/7mPWk

So I don't see the point of theorizing, when we can get real-world feedback from customers.

You're comparing costs now? The price for human powered uber's will always increase based on labor costs. The price to put an autonomous vehicle on the road and manage it will most likely decrease as more are deployed and Waymo gets better at operating them. Time will tell, but Uber will not last once Waymo gets good at scaling this stuff.

> You're comparing costs now? T

I'm comparing costs in other comments in this thread.

as I said, if Waymo is actually charging money now, then real data is much more credible than a theoretical analysis like yours.

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