Self-Driving Uber — The world’s first Self-Driving Ubers

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@rrhoover It was always obvious that most of Uber's cost comes from paying their drivers. With technology, they are trying to lower that but now my question is, how are they gonna provide customer service. I know in the beginning they would have a driver and engineer in the car but eventually I am sure they would want to eliminate/lower those costs as well. So how are they going to manage lets say drunk people getting picked up at 2am and throwing up in the car?? haha. It seems to me that a driver or uber employee will always need to be present in it. I personally don't feel like sitting in a car all day and not doing anything while people get in and out and the car drives itself. haha

@cemedericarak @rrhoover Maybe they just add a camera in the interior. One person can easily keep tabs on a dozen cars. My guess at least

@cemedericarak @rrhoover My guess is heavy insurance (surely insurance firms are preparing themselves for this wave) + nightly vehicle maintenance (similar to how rental car companies currently operate). ^ per the tossing use case, maybe a camera in car with outsourced mechanical-turk type operation. They don't have to have no cost, just lower than hourly drivers.

@rrhoover As @jakewesorick says I find this on par with Google's controlled tests and not really "in-market" if there is a 'safety driver'. But it is still really cool! Overall, I'm more impressed with Tesla's ability to upgrade autopilot OTA on 100k+ cars being driven by real users across multiple scenarios. This creates an iterative, real-world testing platform that likely means they will have the best software, the fastest. (i'm assuming they can silently run data-collection experiments whether or not autopilot is 'on'). Eventually, it may not matter who is 'first' if the tech becomes a commodity. Will Uber be able to leverage their expertise in matching rider demand to offer the best service/prices? Or, will another player disrupt them by offering value added services or ad-supported 'free' rides? Exciting times...

@bentossell great way to spin a beta tech that's potentially fatal :) All kidding aside, this is a HUGE step!

@vivekmgeorge @bentossell apparently all tech is potentially fatal these days. We even have exploding smartphones! On a serious note, I'm all for this. I am 100% confident that robots can drive better than humans.

@vivekmgeorge @bentossell Humans are essentially fatal beta tech. Can't wait for our software update

@evankimbrell ha..fair, but if you wanted to get meta about it, one could say that about essentially everything we do :)

@bentossell @rrhoover PH feature request! add subsection (ie discussion, info, media, similar) for media mentions and list feature articles, either by curation, scraping the comments, or magic (read: ML). As I thought of this I was kinda expecting media to mean news not img/vid

@alexisohanian @raffi @jason 👍🏾

@xnet Was wondering if anyone else noticed this. Yeah, that would /technically/ be a violation in CA. Not sure about Pennsylvania's driving laws.

@juanbuis $$$$

@juanbuis Because Tesla is (or will be) a ride-hailing competitor to Uber with its own self-driving fleet. What's more surprising is, why aren't these Volvos? That's the auto maker partnership that Uber has promoted.

@grammakov redo: volvo needs uber, uber just needs a car company. tesla can build its own ridesharing network

@juanbuis Uber unlike Tesla, has the luxury of having ridiculous looking cars with equipment mounted on top of the roof and everything. If Tesla did that nobody would buy their cars. So Tesla has to work twice as hard to have the same level of autonomy as Uber cars since they have to factor in aesthetics. I think this is a huge advantage for Uber. It wont matter in the long term as every car gets to level 4 autonomy, but Uber can really get a jump start in the next few years if they use this to their advantage

@csfalcao - Apple will not back off because someone has a great product in first. The more the merrier I think - they will all be better if there is competition.

@csfalcao Apple was too busy disrupting the headphone jack :) But seriously, would love to see their version. Hope it has more than 1 button

@tariktech Maybe I'm wrong, but if Tesla brings nice EV to masses, and Uber self-driving car systems, what is left for car innovation from Apple? The iPhone wasn't the first cell phone, but it had a lot of first one's features on a cell phone.

@csfalcao - I'm not saying you're wrong - I am just saying that Apple consistently finds ways to innovate on what appears to be in a good place and they have never shied away from entering a market due to someone else's dominance. It could be related to the way you interact with the car, or it could just be privacy focused like the way they do machine learning on the device, but I am confident they will find a way to compete that is compelling for consumers.

@travisweathers Short term capital investment for long term returns, though.

@zssz works on this page though right? and on my tweet: https://twitter.com/bentossell/s...

@bentossell Yes, It does work here. When you press the Share button on YouTube then it prompts you with this message "This video is unlisted. Be considerate and think twice before sharing." Maybe Uber does not want that video to be shared publicly. Even the comments are disabled for it. Weird, but I can see the reason why.

@zssz strange though because they have shared the news with the world.... And if I can share it on twitter then doesnt make sense either

@jonpape 😂