Dmitri Dolgov

are you looking to do as a self-driving car?

I mean, it sounds funny, but I think people maybe don't realize that there are many different things that you're looking to solve for, where you're looking to get the person to their destination, you're looking to get them there reasonably promptly, but also drive quite smoothly, and also have many lines of safety, and also not annoy other drivers and get honked at, and you know, and, and, and.

So what are some of the reward functions or kind of

things you're optimizing for that maybe are not obvious to people?

It seems like one of the issues that...

has quickly emerged with self-driving is the fact that people can't have nice things or you know not everyone is nice to the robots and so you know whether you're you know driving through a dodgy area or getting blocked or you know maybe I'm not going to drop you off here maybe I'm going to go around the block and you know drop you somewhere better but all of these as you say kind of other human issues how do you go about solving those?

It feels like the drop-off is actually a pretty nuanced part of the self-driving journey, like the highway stuff and the, you know, the 35 mile an hour roads, like that is all nailed, but there's just like a lot of nuance in the drop-off experience.

Can you see one of those flatbed trucks with just like a bunch of stuff piled in it and you're driving behind it?

I don't know.

I always find it very nerve-wracking.

It looks a bit... I know.

Yeah, yeah.

And we've seen them...

leave a trail.

Yes, yes.

Yeah, okay.

So it's a different set of problems.

But I feel like the general sentiment with Waymo is that the driving has mostly now been solved by you guys and it's kind of a question of scaling up and maybe some super long tail stuff, really snowy conditions.

Like, is that your sense internally or is there actually much more nuance to it than that?

Was it the case, I mean, my impression not knowing anything is that in the early days there was maybe a lot of San Francisco specific work or Phoenix specific work in the early markets, whether it be mapping or something else.