I work in a related field to this, so I can try to guess at what's happening behind the scenes. Initially, most companies had very complicated non-machine learning algorithms (rule-based/hand-engineered) that solved the motion planning problem, i.e. how should a car move given its surroundings and its goal. This essentially means writing what is comparable to either a bunch of if-else statements, or a sort of weighted graph search (there are other ways, of course). This works well for say 95% of cases, but becomes exponentially harder to make work for the remaining 5% of cases (think drunk driver or similar rare or unusual events).

Solving the final 5% was where most turned to machine learning - they were already collecting driving data for training their perception and prediction models, so it's not difficult at all to just repurpose that data for motion planning.

So when you look at the two kinds of approaches, they have quite distinct advantages over each other. Hand engineered algorithms are very good at obeying rules - if you tell it to wait at a crosswalk or obey precedence at a stop sign, it will do that no matter what. They are not, however, great at situations where there is higher uncertainty/ambiguity. For example, a pedestrian starts crossing the road outside a crosswalk and waits at the median to allow you to pass before continuing on - it's quite difficult to come up with a one size fits all rule to cover these kinds of situations. Driving is a highly interactive behaviour (lane changes, yielding to pedestrians etc), and rule based methods don't do so well with this because there is little structure to this problem. Some machine learning based methods on the other hand are quite good at handling these kinds of uncertain situations, and Waymo has invested heavily in building these up. I'm guessing they're trained with a mixture of human-data + self-play (imitation learning and reinforcement learning), so they may learn some odd/undesirable behaviors. The problem with machine learning models is that they are ultimately a strong heuristic that cannot be trusted to produce a 100% correct answer.

I'm guessing that the way Waymo trains its motion planning model/bias in the data allows it to find some sort of exploit that makes it drive through crosswalks. Usually this kind of thing is solved by creating a hybrid system - a machine learning system underneath, with a rule based system on top as a guard rail.

Some references:

1. https://youtu.be/T_LkNm3oXdE?si=_p499XuQeAlz9BYq
2. https://youtu.be/RpiN3LyMLB8?si=Rkihso_88VECLUXa

(Apologies for the very long comment, probably the longest one I've ever left)

I remember seeing a video from inside a waymo waiting to make a left against traffic.

It turned the wheel before moving, in anticipation of the turn. Which is normal for most drivers I see on the road.

It's also the exact opposite of what you should do for safety and legality.

Keep the wheel straight until you're ready to move, turning the wheel before the turn means that if someone rear ends you, you get pushed into traffic, not along your current lane.

It's the social norm, not the proper move.

this is not on Waymo. it's on the absolute sold out pieces of shit that allow Waymo and other cunts like Elon to experiment with human lives for money.

I'm sure a strong legal case can be made here.

An individual driver breaking the law is bad enough but the legal system can be "flexible" because it's hard to enforce the law against a generalized (bad) social norm and then each individual law breaker can argue an individual case etc.

But a company systematically breaking the law on purpose is different. Scale here matters. There are no individualized circumstances and no crying at a judge that the fine will put this single mother in a position to not pay rent this month. This is systematic and premeditated. Inexcusable in every way.

Like, a single cook forgetting to wash hands once after going to the bathroom is gross but a franchise chain building a business model around adding small quantities of poop in food is insupportable.

And again... If I break the law, I get a large fine or go to jail. If companies break the law, they at worst will get a small fine

Why does this disconnect exist?

Am I so crazy to demand that companies are not only treated the same, but held to a higher standard? I don't stop ar a zebra, that is me breaking the law once. Waymo programming their cars noy to do that is multiple violations per day, every day. Its a company deciding they're above the law because they want more money. Its a company deciding to risk the lives of others to earn more money.

For me, all managers and engineers that signed off on this and worked on this should he jailed, the company should be restricted from doing business for a month, and required to immediately ensure all laws are followed or else...

This is the only way we get companies to follow the rules.

Instead though, we just ask compi to treat laws as suggestions, sometimes requiring small payments if they cross the line too far.

People, and especially journalists, need to get this idea of robots as perfectly logical computer code out of their heads. These aren't Asimov's robots we're dealing with. Journalists still cling to the idea that all computers are hard-coded. You still sometimes see people navel-gazing on self-driving cars, working the trolley problem. "Should a car veer into oncoming traffic to avoid hitting a child crossing the road?" The authors imagine that the creators of these machines hand-code every scenario, like a long series of if statements.

But that's just not how these things are made. They are not programmed; they are trained. In the case of self-driving cars, they are simply given a bunch of video footage and radar records, and the accompanying driver inputs in response to those conditions. Then they try to map the radar and camera inputs to whatever the human drivers did. And they train the AI to do that.

This behavior isn't at all surprising. Self-driving cars, like any similar AI system, are not hard coded, coldly logical machines. They are trained off us, off our responses, and they exhibit all of the mistakes and errors we make. The reason waymo cars don't stop at crosswalks is because human drivers don't stop at crosswalks. The machine is simply copying us.

The “social norms” line is likely because it was trained using actual driver data. And actual drivers will fail to stop. If it happens enough times in the training data and the system is tuned to favor getting from A to B quickly, then it will inevitably go “well it’s okay to blow through crosswalks sometimes, so why not most of the time instead? It saves me time getting from A to B, which is the primary goal.”

The reason is likely to compete with Uber, 🤦

A few points of clarity, as I have a family member who's pretty high up at waymo. First, they don't want to compete with uber. Waymo isn't really concerned with driverless cars that you or I would be owning/using, and they don't want (at this point anyway) to try to start a new taxi service. Right now you order an uber and a waymo car might show up. . They want the commercial side of the equation. How much would uber pay to not have to pay drivers? How much would a shipping company fork over when they can jettison the $75k-150 drivers?

Second, I know for a fact that the upper management was pushing for the cars to drive like this. I can nearly quote said family member opining that if the cars followed all the rules of the road, they wouldn't perform well, couching it in the language of 'efficiency.' It was something like, "being polite creates confusion in other drivers. They expect you to roll through the stop sign or turn right ahead of them even if they have right of way." So now the waymo cars do the same thing. Yay, "social norms."

A third point is that, as someone else mentioned, the cars are now trained, not 'programmed' with instructions to follow. Said family member spoke of when they switched to the machine learning model, and it was better than the highly complicated (and I'm dumbing down my description because I can't describe it well) series of if-else statements. With that training comes the issue of the folks in charge of things not knowing exactly what is going on. An issue that was described to me was their cars driving right at the edge of the lane, rather than in the center of it, and they couldn't figure out why or (at that point, anyway) how to fix it.

As an addendum to that third point, the training data is us, quite literally. They get and/or purchase people's driving. I think at one time it was actual video, not sure now. So if 90% of drivers blast through at the moment of the red light change if they can, it's likely you'll hear about it eventually from waymo. It's a weakness that ties right into that 'social norm' thing. We're not really training safer driving by having machine drivers, we're just removing some of the human factors like fatigue or attention deficits. Again, as I get frustrated with the language of said family member (and I'm paraphrasing), 'how much do we really want to focus on low percentage occurrences? Improving the 'miles per collision' is best at the big things.'

The recent Not Just Bike video about self driving cars is really good about this subject, very dystopic

Looks like the revisionist history podcast might need to revise thier episode about waymo... 😅

Speaking as someone who lives and walks in sf daily, they're still more courteous to pedestrians then drivers and I'd be happy if they replaced human drivers in the city. I'd be happier if we got rid of all the cars but I'll take getting rid of the psychopaths blowing through intersections.

It's interesting how waymos get more article against them compared to tesla.
There is a targeted campaign against waymo.
How can i not think the journalist is in bad faith, when he complain that the waymo doesn't stop... in case he run under another car ?

As an european, when I see this video, the problem isn't the automated cars, but the fact the car are allowed to go this fast on a lane without a traffic light to protect the pedestrian.

Edit:

Waymo admitted that it follows “social norms” rather than laws.

The reason is likely to compete with Uber, 🤦

Because they slowed down too much the traffic and have a campaign against them, about how they slowed too much the traffic, for respecting the law.

Move Fast and Break Things

How do you admit to intentionally ignoring traffic laws and not get instantly shutdown by the NTSB?

Being an Alphabet subsidiary I wouldn’t expect anything less, really.

Mario needs to set these empty cars on fire.

This is STUPID! I can't WAIT for President MUSK to ELIMINATE all these Pesky Rules preventing AI Cars from MOWING DOWN CHILDREN In Crosswalks!

It is an offense in Japan to not stop if someone is waiting before entering the crosswalk (and technically to progress until they are fully off the entire street, though I've had assholes whip around me for not breaking the law). People do get ticketed for it (though not enough, honestly). I wonder what they would do here.

Pedestrians have had it too easy long enough. If elected President I will remove the sidewalks and install moats filled with alligators and sharks with loose 2x4s to cross them. Trained snipers will be watching every crosswalk so if you want a shot at making it remember to serpentine. This is Ford™ country.