alt.hn

5/2/2026 at 3:38:17 PM

Uber wants to turn its drivers into a sensor grid for self-driving companies

 https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/01/uber-wants-to-turn-its-millions-of-drivers-into-a-sensor-grid-for-self-driving-companies/

by nickvec

5/2/2026 at 9:32:17 PM

> “The bottleneck is data.”

This seems to be wishful thinking on the part of Uber, and also Tesla. Google StreetView data is probably sufficient. Waymo's expansion into new cities does not seem to be delayed much by the need for more data.

Most of the reported problems with self-driving come from transient situations. More mapping data will not help with those.

China has the Beijing High-level Autonomous Driving Demonstration Zone, where traffic cams and other sensors let vehicles see beyond their own sightlines.[1] That's been going on since 2020. That's the ultimate in sensing - full real time road info.

The Beijing test area is getting some expansion. The new direction seems to be to focus on airports and railroad stations, so that driverless cars can be aware of congestion in detail. That makes sense.

[1] https://sinocities.substack.com/p/inside-chinas-connected-ve...

by Animats

5/3/2026 at 1:18:30 AM

One question I am genuinely wondering about is whether a self-driving car _is_ cheaper than a human driver, once all of the externalities are priced in. In SF right now a Waymo is typically priced a little under an Uber (actually quite a bit under if you count that no one has got around to asking for tips for AIs yet). I am sure the running costs of each Waymo vastly exceed the costs of a human driver to Uber...

by throwyawayyyy

5/3/2026 at 1:44:04 AM

Good question. We know that Waymo has about one remote operator/customer service rep per 40 vehicles. Waymo also operates vehicle garages for charging, cleaning, and maintenance. Those probably all add up to roughly what it costs a rental car company to operate a car. Maybe more, because there's more complex maintenance, maybe less, because they park themselves.

There's also a huge sunk R&D cost and an ongoing R&D cost that probably dwarfs operating costs. But the per-car cost drops as more cars are deployed.

On the other hand, robot vehicles can have higher utilization than single-owner vehicles. They can be on the road as long as there are customers. Observation of their parking lots indicates most of the cars are out on the road about 12 hours a day.

by Animats

5/3/2026 at 2:03:44 AM

Here’s the other thing: taxi/rideshare driving can essentially function as a jobs program. It’s a basic job anyone can do without significant training. From a government planning perspective, you can’t just assume that all your displaced labor force can skill up.

What I noticed about China is that they employ a lot of people to stand around in nice looking government (non-police) uniforms and do various menial work or not much at all.

The US does this to a perhaps a lesser extent with jobs like TSA agents.

Sure, I guess you can do UBI, but what if that’s less efficient overall?

Example given with made up numbers:

Status quo, an Uber driver makes $20/hour out of a revenue of $50/hour total covering vehicle operating costs and platform fees.

Self-driving cars: self-driving cars cost $40/hour to operate, UBI pays someone a wage of $20/hour since there’s no job available. This basically means that rideshares now cost $10/hour more to operate than before.

Or, maybe that person on UBI makes $10/hour instead of $20/hour and gets a worse job to cover the difference.

Obviously there are many flaws and assumptions with the way I present this scenario but it’s a really good question to bring up whether putting everyone out of work is actually going to be a net positive.

Regarding what you said about driver hours, it’s not unheard of to run multiple drivers on multiple shifts with the same vehicle. Not all rideshare drivers own the vehicle nor use it as a personal vehicle. But the other factor is that the drivers who do use personal vehicles effectively subsidize the fact that they can only drive it for a human-length shift. Waymo has to buy every car (more expensive than a normal car) and use it only for business purposes while an uber driver can just use the same used Toyota Prius they use to take their kids to soccer practice.

by dangus

5/3/2026 at 6:42:45 AM

The reason that math works out just fine is because the self driving company makes revenue of $50, pockets $10, its the government that's going to have to figure out how to find $20 to pay UBI. IN other words its not their problem, the math works out just fine for them.

by haritha-j

5/3/2026 at 2:27:54 AM

Taxis would be a terrible jobs program because cars are the worst possible means of transportation for everyone except the person in the car.

Run a jobs program building public transit instead. We built an entire nation on unskilled workers laying rail, we can do it again and it will benefit everyone, not just car manufacturers.

by estimator7292

5/3/2026 at 3:10:54 AM

I work in self driving and strongly agree with this. I may have had some of the coolaid, but I genuinely believe that self driving cars are the only thing that can pry Americans from their cars. Once ownership falls, people will stop voting against better options.

by 0xfaded

5/3/2026 at 10:18:09 PM

lol yeah right.

Many people actually like driving their cars. Who are you to decide they shouldn’t be allowed to do this? Cars are more than just ‘get me from point A to B’.

by eueheu

5/4/2026 at 3:52:57 AM

I have no problem with people driving cars. I just don't want to subsidize them. Get rid of street parking, add congestion pricing. Set road taxes such that they actually cover the costs of the roads.

The reason it would be unreasonable in America today is because there is no alternative, and people are expected to be able to commute long distances. Bring in alternatives and it becomes logical.

Look at the cities in Japan, most people live within a 15 minute walk of a subway station, but people still drive.

by 0xfaded

5/3/2026 at 12:14:02 PM

I totally agree with you here but I decided not to get into this issue as well.

by dangus

5/3/2026 at 12:31:44 AM

Context is super important.

Unlike web services that giants like google provide (e.g search), waymo and other AVs essentially cannot fail. Like at all. It is suspectible to ‘randomness’ of nature that can be the difference between life and death.

A lot of so called ‘smart’ people are going to find themselves getting humbled by the real world.

Humans are able to make sense of the world around them through things like intuition. Machines do not possess this characteristic.

by ieiee

5/3/2026 at 12:38:37 AM

(in Homer Simpson voice) Machines do not possess this characteristic SO FAR.

by bitwize

5/3/2026 at 7:32:13 AM

(in Comic Book Guy voice) The Amiga had Intuition way back in 1985.

by dosisking

5/3/2026 at 7:25:40 PM

Epic comeback.

by bitwize

5/3/2026 at 12:47:11 AM

It can be quite possible that we can figure out most things but intuition remains a mystery.

by ieiee

5/2/2026 at 11:31:17 PM

Data should help transient situations as well.

by chung8123

5/3/2026 at 2:28:46 AM

> Google StreetView data is probably sufficient.

This is an extraordinary claim. Self driving cars just need 15 ft grid panoramic images that are months or years stale? What experience are you basing this claim on?

by svnt

5/2/2026 at 11:42:20 PM

[dead]

by aaron695

5/2/2026 at 5:02:00 PM

> The insight driving the program, Naga said, is that the limiting factor for AV development is no longer the underlying technology. “The bottleneck is data,” he said. “[Companies like Waymo] need to go around and collect the data, collect different scenarios. You may be able to say: in San Francisco, ‘At this school intersection, I want some data at this time of day so I can train my models.’ The problem for all these companies is access to that data, because they don’t have the capital to deploy the cars and go collect all this information.”

You can’t be the CTO of Uber wanting to do AVs, and get the data collection requirement shockingly wrong.

Waymo’s bottleneck has never been data. When they want data about a school intersection in SF at a certain time of day, they just... synthetically generate it and simulate: https://waymo.com/blog/2026/02/the-waymo-world-model-a-new-f...

Waymo is able to deploy with less (but targeted and high quality) data collection by having world class simulation capabilities. Not that they haven't collected huge amounts of data as it's no doubt important (I've heard their onboard storage is transferred and emptied every few days), it's just not a bottleneck. They have the most efficient operation in the AV industry.

The best example of why data collection isn’t the bottleneck is Tesla. They boast about billions of miles of data, yet they’re struggling to put out fully autonomous vehicles.

by ra7

5/2/2026 at 5:55:57 PM

> When they want data about a school intersection in SF at a certain time of day, they just... synthetically generate it and simulate

I think it's more about detecting changes to the world. You need boots on the ground, so to speak, to see that new speed limit sign or the new lane paint. The Waymo vehicle can no doubt react to changes in the world when it encounters them, relaying them back to the mothership, but it's better to know about them in advance.

by simmonmt

5/2/2026 at 6:27:12 PM

Most AVs, definitely Waymo vehicles, are self mapping. They can detect environment changes and relay it to the entire fleet. That's because they map using the same vehicles as the fleet.

by ra7

5/2/2026 at 6:34:28 PM

>You need boots on the ground, so to speak, to see that new speed limit sign or the new lane paint.

It'll shock you to know that you can simply get this from governments, some even provide this in API form

by delfinom

5/2/2026 at 7:06:17 PM

It probably won't shock you to know that those sources of data can be months to even years delayed from what's actually out in the world.

by dmd

5/2/2026 at 7:20:53 PM

no visual data, you need picture data for that. companies like NC tech do it for like $1m a city. or thereabouts.

by KaiserPro

5/2/2026 at 7:06:07 PM

> or the new lane paint.

I'd be surprised if this is a thing outside the biggest US (and European, for that matter) cities, judging from Google StreetView there are lots of streets in US cities/towns with almost no paint lines at all.

by paganel

5/2/2026 at 7:10:24 PM

Do you mean in the API? I live in an European country and I don't think I ever saw an asphalt road without paint lines. This varies a lot between countries though.

by msm_

5/2/2026 at 11:20:05 PM

Small country side roads routinely lack a central line in Sweden. Even smaller roads can lack the side lines too. And I'm talking asphalt roads here still. The same happens on many residential streets in towns and cities.

But sure, it would be rare to have a large road or street without markings. But most roads aren't large. Most travelled kilometers happen on large roads, but that is not the same thing as most roads. And many individual journeys would involve at least a little bit of small roads at the beginning, end or both.

And of course, if they are covered with snow and ice during the winter you can't see the markings anyway.

by VorpalWay

5/2/2026 at 7:20:08 PM

Many American roads don't have lines. Residential roads, parking lots, many business driveways have limited markings.

Then there's roads with just the center line markers with no road should markings.

Then there's a whole class of roads of lines over "demarked" old lines that weren't demarked well, or lines fading that should've been painted a long time ago.

I'm surprised you've never seen a non-perfect road?

by ThunderSizzle

5/2/2026 at 8:50:56 PM

Here in Bucharest there are quite a lot of big boulevards that do not have them, either because they haven’t been repainted over in a long time or because they laid new asphalt without bothering to repaint the lines (this happens a lot, unfortunately, and is very frustrating).

by paganel

5/2/2026 at 7:05:37 PM

That’s dumb then. It shows it’s just brute force rather than AI.

A human doesn’t need to be shown every single road that exists in order to drive.

by MagicMoonlight

5/3/2026 at 1:42:33 AM

That's true, but the human can do a much better job planning for the journey if they know what to expect along the way.

One example, from the end of the journey: knowing in advance where the actual entrance to the business is, or the specific curb cut that leads to the residence, makes it easier and far less error prone to decide exactly where the journey should end. Even humans have a hard time figuring out the right access point for a business or residence. This is a job for an offline process, fed by as many data sources as possible.

by simmonmt

5/2/2026 at 7:17:21 PM

Just a bunch of sophisticated if statements, I guess.

by ThunderSizzle

5/2/2026 at 5:56:12 PM

Yeah I'm not so sure this CTO is on the mark here, but to be fair, I do think some of this IRL long tail/edge case data is important for Waymo. The simulation software is super interesting to me - the real world can be so chaotic, and even if they could generate every possible real life case, there needs to be validation on whether the Waymo driver is responding in the optimal way. They certainly haven't solved this problem, you can see some of their growing pains in all of these articles - floods in Austin, more and more interactions with emergency vehicles that first responders seem to believe are getting worse, etc.

Tesla on the other hand has billions of miles of data, yet because there is a limit to camera-only techniques, that data isn't that useful is it? They have no ground truth data to evaluate their camera system on, which is why sometimes you see those Teslas driving around with lidar rigs mounted on them. Going camera-only is just asking for trouble.

by suddenexample

5/2/2026 at 6:16:26 PM

I agree real world data is important for Waymo. I didn't mean to say it wasn't, so I've edited my comment to reflect that. It's just that data is not some magic bullet to achieve self driving like Tesla and others suggest.

Of course, Waymo still has much more room for improvement. But it's much more efficient to supplement less but higher quality IRL data with large amounts of synthetic data, than to run a million data collection vehicles 24x7 because most IRL data is boring and useless.

Waymo said 6 years ago they simulate 20 million miles every single day [1]. Clearly, it's working for them given their scale of deployment right now.

[1] https://waymo.com/blog/2020/04/off-road-but-not-offline--sim...

by ra7

5/2/2026 at 6:27:16 PM

Although most of the real-world data is probably boring, collecting more of it likely makes discovering rare edge cases more likely. But since they happen rarely, I imagine that after discovering them, they would then need to figure out how to simulate them.

by skybrian

5/2/2026 at 7:19:53 PM

> The best example of why data collection isn’t the bottleneck is Tesla.

Exactly. plus any delivery company/dashcam company can provide a bunch of data where ever there is any sizeable population.

About 8 years ago, that data would have been really valuable, but at best its nice to have.

the only thing that is valuable is the breadth of different cars, but even then its not that much of a differentiator.

by KaiserPro

5/2/2026 at 7:06:52 PM

The biggest difference, is Uber has vehicles around the world. So there's more data from countries with different rules from the US. Signage is definitely different between the US and Europe.

by Sardtok

5/2/2026 at 9:04:40 PM

I.. am amused by the confidence on display, but I can't say that I am not concerned that people are confidently stating that real world data is not useful, because it can be just simulated. One would think that, by now at least, we know that simulation is at best an imperfect copy.

And I don't like the idea of even more data being harvested and used.. I just find the dismissal.. odd.

by iugtmkbdfil834

5/2/2026 at 9:18:51 PM

“Real world data is not the bottleneck” != “Real world data is not useful”

No one is suggesting the latter.

by ra7

5/2/2026 at 9:25:16 PM

Parent's post noted that it is not a bottleneck, because it can be readily simulated ( and thus not useful ). I am not sure if QED is too much in this case, but I stand by my amusement. Or are you arguing that real world data is somehow less useful than simulated data? It is very confusing. I would accuse of nitpicking, but I just noticed you are the parent:D You can certainly speak for yourself.

by iugtmkbdfil834

5/2/2026 at 9:37:37 PM

> and thus not useful

Again, I’m not suggesting this. Bottleneck has a specific meaning. It means Waymo is limited by not having the ability to collect data. Well, clearly that’s not true because Waymo already has a reasonably scaled deployment across a dozen cities that no one else has and can handle millions of scenarios.

Real world data is absolutely required, but more of it doesn’t give you magical self driving ability as Uber’s CTO suggests. If it were the case, you’d see Tesla achieve fully autonomous driving years ago.

by ra7

5/2/2026 at 10:19:15 PM

I accept your argument. I may have been a little too nitpicky and you do have several good points.

by iugtmkbdfil834

5/2/2026 at 5:59:19 PM

> The best example of why data collection isn’t the bottleneck is Tesla. They boast about billions of miles of data, yet they’re struggling to put out fully autonomous vehicles.

Well, TBF, the tesla data was complete garbage with earlier vehicles. They had cheap and somewhat bad cameras in the earlier vehicles that was only somewhat recently updated. And even then, I don't think Tesla is at the end of their hardware journey. I think they don't think that either, which is why they've gone to a subscription only model for self driving vehicles.

Waymo, on the other hand, has gathered less data, but more high quality data. They do the expensive mapping of a city which is a big part of why their vehicles have early on been able to do some pretty impressive feats. The drawback is getting that high quality data takes a lot of time and resources.

by cogman10

5/2/2026 at 7:22:38 PM

> And even then, I don't think Tesla is at the end of their hardware journey.

I dunno about that. Tesla seems completely adrift, pretending to pivot with random forays into humanoid robotics or whatever, to the point that I wouldn't be surprised if they exited the consumer vehicle space altogether within the next decade. They have no answer for Chinese competitors.

by kibwen

5/2/2026 at 8:45:25 PM

I recently watched some videos related to the production of cybercab, which has now started public testing. They’ve still done some great engineering, to the point that the car is now assembled like a matchbox car. All the drive components are contained in a single package for a FWD configuration that the body just drops down on. The car now has no controls besides the screen and door pulls. The materials are all lower cost and they even found a way to skip painting the cars. All of this should help them cut costs significantly.

As far as the self driving, they may be far off still, it’s hard for me to get a read on that and this vehicle is a bet that they will be able to achieve it - right down to the braille in the cabin, so maybe that’s why they still fail. The thing I will say is that despite the PR disaster that the CEO is, which gives us that feeling that the company has lost its mind, it seems they are still quietly doing some advanced engineering.

by twobitshifter

5/2/2026 at 7:30:02 PM

Well, let me rephrase, the previous stated goals of Tesla around self driving cars isn't complete with the current hardware.

by cogman10

5/2/2026 at 6:15:40 PM

Didn't they need the data from the 200 million miles or so from actual driving before they could get to the generative model though? Data isn't everything, as you point out with Telsa (mainly because they decided to forego using lidar it would seem), but it is pretty fundamental.

by gcheong

5/2/2026 at 6:43:15 PM

> before they could get to the generative model though?

Is that the right kind of model for this particular application?

by ninjagoo

5/2/2026 at 6:12:12 PM

Waymo might very well be missing specific kinds of data (e.g more incidents/accidents, near-collisions etc)

Also, Uber’s data might be useful for eval, not training (e.g « here is how Waymo would behave vs human drivers therefore it is safer »)

by whiplash451

5/2/2026 at 6:22:25 PM

> Waymo might very well be missing specific kinds of data (e.g more incidents/accidents, near-collisions etc)

Accidents and near-collisions are exactly the kind of scenarios perfect for simulation. You don't test them out in the real world and risk injuries/deaths. You need to have confidence they're handled before you deploy.

by ra7

5/2/2026 at 7:14:08 PM

Again, how do you know you've handled it correctly without ground truth? Simulation without ground truth is a garbage in garbage out situation.

by pishpash

5/2/2026 at 6:40:07 PM

I find the idea of learning from simulated data so unintuitive. How can you radically improve your model with just your model? I take it people do it, so it must work, but i just don’t understand it at all.

by bobro

5/2/2026 at 6:46:06 PM

Well there's a world simulation model and then the driving model.

You can imagine improving i.e. a specialized math model (problem in, theorem out) with a normal LLM that knows lots of problems and theorems generally.

by ianm218

5/2/2026 at 7:22:31 PM

I think people are skipping over the fact that Google has had cars driving around taking photos for 20 years. I imagine that was used to build the world model in the first place.

by anon84873628

5/2/2026 at 7:47:08 PM

They're two different models - you can use the world model to train (or test like Wayve) a different car-driving model.

The world model is basically intended as a more true-to-life simulator.

by ainch

5/3/2026 at 12:27:03 AM

"You can’t be the CTO of Uber wanting to do AVs, and get the data collection requirement shockingly wrong."

Problem 1: Cost and privacy constrain limit data collection.

Problem 2: It makes not much sense to collect and store data that you already have. Yet you don't know that when collecting if it is useful or not.

Problem 3: P2P in urban setting fails at edge cases which by definition are rare to collect.

All of these problems limit AV scaling.

by jsemrau

5/2/2026 at 7:41:03 PM

Yes, the way to make these things safer is to make up data and simulate on that.

Do you hear yourself?

by cyanydeez

5/2/2026 at 7:44:47 PM

That’s literally how it works right now, so yeah.

by ra7

5/2/2026 at 8:19:54 PM

>Mapping out every intersection, sign, and signal Before our Waymo Driver begins operating in a new area, we first map the territory with incredible detail, from lane markers to stop signs to curbs and crosswalks. Then, instead of relying solely on external data such as GPS which can lose signal strength, the Waymo Driver uses these highly detailed custom maps, matched with real-time sensor data and artificial intelligence (AI) to determine its exact road location at all times.

https://waymo.com/waymo-driver/

That AI part is doing a lot of heavy lifting. They're using real data. We already know synthetic data is dangerous. Explains a lot of if you think it's more reliant on that than real data.

by cyanydeez

5/2/2026 at 8:25:49 PM

Mapping and simulation have very different purposes. Doesn’t look like you’re familiar with the basics of AV technology. Explains a lot why you’re confused about how real world and simulated data is used.

by ra7

5/3/2026 at 10:33:11 AM

the word synthetic says it doesn't exist in reality.

by cyanydeez

5/3/2026 at 2:06:58 AM

Do you know anything about engineering?

by krupan

5/2/2026 at 4:27:12 PM

I feel like they should have done this 6 years ago. Most AV companies already have tons of their own data today. But how would it work to install expensive LIDAR sensors on privately-owned vehicles?

by nerdsniper

5/2/2026 at 4:59:19 PM

FWIW, a large fraction of Uber drivers aren't actually driving their own personal cars, at least around me nowadays. They're either rented or some sort of fleet vehicle (complete with TCP #)

by Rebelgecko

5/2/2026 at 4:53:42 PM

Exactly my take as well. This would have been the right diversification move a decade ago.

Uber did invest early in self driving back in 2015, but in 2018 there was a fatality which pretty much deleted their whole program. And looks like it's taken them way too long to try picking it back up.

by themanmaran

5/2/2026 at 4:41:12 PM

I was working at Lyft 8 years ago and suggested this to the head of AV program then. They didn't listen.

by mohsen1

5/2/2026 at 6:21:36 PM

Most AV companies already have tons of their own data today.

Real-world data spoils faster than a gas station banana.

If your AV company is relying on data from six years ago, you're going to kill someone.

by reaperducer

5/2/2026 at 6:36:37 PM

"Our goal is not to make money out of this data" is doing a lot of heavy lifting for a company that just committed $10B to robotaxis and is taking equity in the same AV companies it would be supplying. The actually interesting part isn't the sensor grid, that's years away and has real consent, compensation, and regulatory problems nobody's talking about. It's shadow mode: letting AV companies sim-run their models against millions of real Uber trips without putting a car on the road. That works today. That's the product. The sensor grid is the press release. Shadow mode is the business. Also completely absent from this article: do the drivers whose cars become "rolling data collection platforms" get anything? A cut? A notification? A commemorative badge? Uber has a rich history of finding creative ways to extract value from its driver network, so I'm sure they've thought carefully about this.

by samagragune

5/2/2026 at 4:21:29 PM

I'm old. Was anyone else's reaction to wonder what Uber was doing for audio-video companies?

The original title says "self-driving" and that's much more clear.

by jdeibele

5/2/2026 at 4:53:21 PM

Sometimes AV is supposed to mean Anti Virus or Alternative Vote and that's really confusing because it really means Audio Visual. Anything else, no.

I saw the title and thought it can't be AV, they must mean AI and made a typo.

by rjmunro

5/2/2026 at 5:18:01 PM

Immediately after leaving this thread I saw a post on Bluesky where someone was discussing the GUARD act and used AV to mean "age verification." It's out of control!

by brendoelfrendo

5/2/2026 at 4:29:38 PM

I was also picturing Uber drivers with a bundle of composite video cables in their hands.

by darknavi

5/2/2026 at 4:38:44 PM

AV obviously stands for Adult Video.

by philipov

5/2/2026 at 5:17:32 PM

Yeah apparently JAV is a Toyota that drives itself now

by xp84

5/2/2026 at 5:39:24 PM

Rumor has it that some adults video are filmed in a taxi so I guess it figures.

by whynotmaybe

5/2/2026 at 5:25:35 PM

Sorry, having “self-driving” in the title went over the HN title char limit, so I opted for AV (autonomous vehicles) instead.

by nickvec

5/2/2026 at 5:19:50 PM

Superficial comment

by bonoboTP

5/2/2026 at 7:21:25 PM

Pithy reply

by KaiserPro

5/2/2026 at 4:51:07 PM

AV stands for anti vehicle.

by darth_avocado

5/2/2026 at 5:25:21 PM

Augmented Virtuality?

by dalmo3

5/2/2026 at 5:26:10 PM

Adult Video.

by thaumasiotes

5/2/2026 at 4:27:12 PM

I read it first as anti virus lol

by jhfdbkofdchk

5/2/2026 at 5:00:01 PM

How useful are these generic sensor inputs for AVs? Like, how much more valuable is a Waymo’s data for a Waymo than something Uber collects?

by JumpCrisscross

5/3/2026 at 2:46:30 PM

Uber really did a lot of damage to the NYC's energy and personality, i won't miss them when they're gone. Both the delivery app and terrible ride share. The chinatown car services are still close to half the price of uber for those that don't know.

by ghstinda

5/2/2026 at 6:56:28 PM

I remember Travis Kalanik spouting the talking points about self-driving in 2017, that after Waymo, Tesla had the advantage because they had the best data, that they were going to crack self-driving soon. Then I remember Dara scuttling Uber’s entire self driving division in 2019.

Self-driving is possible but it requires a massive sustained investment in custom hardware on the car, in real and simulation testing, in painstaking software developlment covering tens of thousands of scenarios, realtime remote control failsafes, fleet management capabilities in every city. Waymo is the only company that comes close to the right approach. All these other Elons, GM, Uber CEOs are just jangling shiny objects in front of investors. A moonshot on the financial model for what are otherwise mature stagnant businesses.

by 33MHz-i486

5/2/2026 at 6:29:00 PM

Isn’t this a pivot I always thought Uber wanted to automate their whole fleet instead of having to pay people ?

by zitterbewegung

5/2/2026 at 6:36:46 PM

Uber was working on self driving ten years ago. They had cars on the road loaded with cameras and sensors specifically to collect data. Then they negligently killed a woman crossing a street.

This isn't a pivot, this is them trying to sheepishly reenter the race they were dramatically ejected from.

by bastawhiz

5/2/2026 at 9:10:21 PM

The main reason Uber sold their self driving R&D unit was because they couldn't afford it. So they sold it to another company taking a 25% stake in Aurora and Uber CEO joined their board, the company is still operating automated trucking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_Innovation?wprov=sfti1

They run trucks for Fedex in Texas and wants to offer an "Uber Freight network"

by dmix

5/2/2026 at 6:36:16 PM

This exactly; self driving was a large part of their valuation iirc.

by le-mark

5/2/2026 at 6:56:13 PM

The part I don't fully understand is what leverage this gives Uber over anyone else? Uber doesn't have the fleet management, mechanics, cleaners or even storage facilities. They do have the most used taxi app, but that seems like a very small edge.

There's nothing stopping the car makers from running their own taxi service and they already have networks of mechanics and cleaner as well as some level of storage. They'd need to scale up, but they don't need to start from zero.

Ubers success is in large part build on not having to own AND MANAGE their cars. With self-driving cars that advantage disappears, unless they're gaming that "drivers" will buy the cars and lease it to them.

by mrweasel

5/2/2026 at 4:43:12 PM

I'm honestly surprised that Tesla never took advantage of all the cameras in all its cars to do some kind of mapping project. I always thought that was incredibly valuable data. Sort of an automatically crowd-sourced street view.

by LeoPanthera

5/2/2026 at 4:55:34 PM

Some people would tell me that they do, but only for training their internal self-driving AI.

I'm not sure about the privacy implications. You say "all its cars" but you actually mean "all its customers cars". The relationship between Uber and the cars/drivers is fairly different.

by rjmunro

5/2/2026 at 6:13:56 PM

Correct. Smart move. Had Inhad the option to do the same for my car, I wouldn’t mind doing it (provided that I be compensated for it).

by YVoyiatzis

5/2/2026 at 6:38:15 PM

Interesting way to encourage competition for its competitor. A single, scaled self-driving company is a massive threat to Uber.

by cheriot

5/2/2026 at 7:27:57 PM

Well, if they are making money out of the data, they should pay the drivers extra.

by luotuoshangdui

5/2/2026 at 5:11:50 PM

The world is heading to a very dark place!

by abubakir1997

5/2/2026 at 6:14:43 PM

There's a company doing this, and I don't think they were super successful

https://www.getnexar.com

by breppp

5/2/2026 at 6:08:30 PM

Will they pay the drivers for hosting the sensors?

Can the drivers charge a monthly late for hosting the sensors?

by vfclists

5/2/2026 at 6:14:04 PM

If Waymo is going to license the software, it can be tremendously useful, in particular given the variety of uber vehicles

by whiplash451

5/2/2026 at 5:19:04 PM

Uber wants to turn its drivers into a sensor grid for AV companies

Seems par for the course. Nintendo turned legions of Pokemon Go players into unpaid sensor grids for delivery robots.

by reaperducer

5/2/2026 at 4:33:37 PM

I asked an Uber driver, formerly a taxi driver in LA, how he felt about the fact that his driving data was being used to build his replacement.

He said he “didn’t care and besides what was he going to do about it anyway, it’s going to happen no matter what”

I asked if he had ever heard of collective bargaining or knew about unions and he said no.

I think we’re only about another generation before the only purpose for human labor is to train and check the outputs of a machine.

by AndrewKemendo

5/2/2026 at 4:38:00 PM

I'm not too worried about it. Yeah, it's bad that people don't understand how labor organizing works. It's bad they're not willing to stand up to shitty employers and take a little risk to make life better. But in this particular case the fear is totally illusory. It's just another silicon valley conman selling some warped "dream" that probably won't actually materialize[1]. "Autonomous Vehicles" are nowhere near production ready, and they're not going to be any time soon. Wake me up when a serious truck or car manufacturer starts rolling them out en masse, then I might start to get worried about it. Until then, it's just about the same category as flying cars--sure, we have these hexacopter contraptions which can (barely) lift a single person for 20min. Not interesting.

[1] Here's how you know:

  “Our goal is not to make money out of this data,” Naga said. “We want to democratize it.”

by jcgrillo

5/2/2026 at 4:58:05 PM

> Wake me up when a serious truck or car manufacturer starts rolling them out en masse, then I might start to get worried about it

I think enough people haven’t been in a Waymo to realise that the technology is basically here, and that we’re like 10 to 20 years of doubling away from AVs doing tens of millions of trips a day in America. By the time anyone has invested in true mass production of AVs, we’ll already be so far down that path that the policy deck will be dealt.

by JumpCrisscross

5/2/2026 at 5:00:00 PM

I've been to san francisco before, it doesn't even snow there

by jcgrillo

5/2/2026 at 5:04:28 PM

> it doesn't even snow there

My Subaru can lane keep in a Wyoming blizzard. There isn’t some unsolved technical problem with snow for any system with radar, i.e. anyone who isn’t Tesla.

Keep in mind that like a fifth of Americans and half of humans live somewhere is rarely or never snows.

by JumpCrisscross

5/2/2026 at 6:10:18 PM

I guess once they demonstrate it working smoothly and profitably in cities like Boston, NY, Detroit, etc. I'll be more concerned? Given that it doesn't really even work too well in places with good signage, lane markings, etc--not to mention no weather--I'm not worried yet. And frankly I'm done with "the future". If it doesn't deliver results now, it's not real. Until it's real, it's nothing to get alarmed about.

by jcgrillo

5/2/2026 at 6:33:49 PM

> cities like Boston

Couldn't come soon enough [1].

> Given that it doesn't really even work too well in places with good signage, lane markings, etc

Works fine in Phoenix, Miami and Los Angeles. Plenty of neighbourhoods there have non-existent, defaced and degraded signage and markings.

> Until it's real, it's nothing to get alarmed about

I don't think there is anything to be alarmed about, period. Driving is a silly job when you think about it. We made these machines to do our bidding, not enslave us behind their wheels.

My belief in a smooth roll-out is reinforced by those who would probably oppose AVs also not believing it's real. Once the first factory mass manufacturing AVs breaks ground, any limited local opposition can be preëmpted.

[1] https://waymo.com/blog/shorts/back-to-boston/

by JumpCrisscross

5/3/2026 at 12:03:39 AM

> My belief in a smooth roll-out is reinforced by those who would probably oppose AVs also not believing it's real. Once the first factory mass manufacturing AVs breaks ground, any limited local opposition can be preëmpted.

I'm having trouble parsing this. If I understand correctly, you're taking skepticism that AV's work as somehow reinforcement that they do work? I have no idea what "limited local opposition can be preempted" means either.. I guess to me it seems the problems are pretty real? Like, police departments are struggling to figure out how to deal with all the Waymos that just randomly tweak out and block traffic, or violate the rules of the road. This is what happens when a bunch of silicon valley con artists try to sell some half-baked plan--it's all about forcing it down everyone's throats and making it "uncool" to be opposed to it for any reason at all. Not merely fake it til you make it, but gaslight everyone into believing anyone who doesn't play along with the fantasy is wrong. Is that what you mean by "preempting local opposition"? Because that's super fucked up.

> Driving is a silly job when you think about it.

OK, so, literally everything that makes your life good you owe to these "silly" workers. Truck drivers make your life possible. You should probably think about that for a bit. Yes, it's a hard job. It's not a particularly fun one. It's dangerous. But it's absolutely necessary because despite the fantasists' and charlatans' claims it absolutely cannot be automated. For all we know, it may never be. That's not to say there's no reason to try--I would love to see road transport be made safer. But there's no clear path from where we are right now to that future, and to claim it's "obvious" or "inevitable" is simply to lie.

by jcgrillo

5/2/2026 at 6:55:48 PM

[dead]

by nradov

5/2/2026 at 4:40:21 PM

People don’t understand the slow motion horror movie that this is becoming. Labor demand begets population growth for all of human history. Demand conditions set the stage for population growth. Labor surplus set the stage for population declines. Again, this has been true for all of human history.

So what are we walking into? Not 8-11 billion happy cows. A crisis. People deciding not to reproduce. The human population declining. The irony as we achieve a technical pinnacle while justifying our own extinction by choice. The great filter as it turns out is actually capitalism, a race to business efficiency against all else including the incentives of your very own species. This is the mind virus.

by kjkjadksj

5/2/2026 at 5:23:48 PM

Preface: I am personally NOT into anti-growth ideas, and I also think it’s super alarming that the West especially seems to be intent on wiping itself out by lack of having kids.

But that said, supposing we are looking at 60 years from now having a few billion fewer people on Earth, just by attrition (lack of replacement) that is not automatically bad. We could afford to shrink in population - if there’s a floor to that contraction. If indeed there are way too many people in a decade for the available human jobs, then it could be the equilibrium is just a lower population. Which could be temporary - who knows what the future could bring, such as possible space colonization, which may need more humans and also give people the hope that I think Gen Y and Z have lacked, which is one reason for their low repro rates.

by xp84

5/2/2026 at 6:36:58 PM

Look at it from the very high level point of view of the ~500 or so richest people on the planet that rule everything: Planet Earth is basically a vacation resort for them that they control, and the remaining 7,999,999,500 of us are the staff that serve them and keep them entertained and comfortable. If that can still happen with only 6 billion, 2 billion, or 50 million of us, they are not going to care. When their wealth stops coming from other people's labor, they'll just dispose of us.

by ryandrake

5/2/2026 at 5:24:20 PM

"People deciding not to reproduce."

The complete destruction of the human through exploitation and control, as seen in the article, is a major reason people are too unhappy to start families.

The worst part? Most people don't even know why, so there's never a general public reaction to fix it.

by techteach00

5/2/2026 at 4:57:16 PM

this whole argument depends on the supposition that if brith rates ever drops below replacement rates, then that inexorably implies the extinction of the species. whether or not now is a good time, at some point growth has to stop. and there are plenty of conceivable social arrangement that are perfectly workable with a constant population size.

the only real argument for continued growth in to preserve the current structure of investment. that's your great filter, and it will result in economic collapse which isn't the same as extinction.

by convolvatron

5/2/2026 at 4:51:23 PM

There’s no “becoming”

It’s here and it’s been here for decades - it’s just finally impossible to ignore or wave away

Gig workers are self-chattelizing because there is no floor to the depravity that society will accept, and an endless supply of people who will chattelize themselves for a moment of pleasure

by AndrewKemendo

5/2/2026 at 4:58:55 PM

> an endless supply of people who will chattelize themselves for a moment of pleasure

Or perhaps they "chattelize" to survive?

There's not much pleasure to be had from gig work apart from the freedom to perhaps choose your own hours and perhaps be free of a human boss. Both of which are quite the opposite of chattelizing, in the short term.

by chimpanzee

5/2/2026 at 5:06:14 PM

Define survival first and we can have a conversation

They have birthday parties and loving embraces in deprived ghettos that have community solidarity

The most beautiful human interactions I’ve ever seen are in the absolute most deprived poor places including when I was working in the fucking Balad hospital in 2010

Virtue does not come from work

by AndrewKemendo

5/2/2026 at 5:08:25 PM

I won't debate the definition of survival with a "tired old" developer (oh sorry, "founder") who's idea of virtue is summed up in their own quote regarding creating yet another app for the Apple/Google chattel system:

"I rarely get to see my kids. That's a risk you have to take."

by chimpanzee

5/2/2026 at 5:28:22 PM

Oh this is so great!

I’ve been waiting for someone to pull that one out as a gotcha…

But hey good for you for doing a bunch of searching about me personally (because I intentionally use my name so that people can do precisely what you’re doing) which indicates that I have triggered you to the extent where you’ve taken time out of your day to go and look me up personally

by AndrewKemendo

5/2/2026 at 5:41:29 PM

I have ADHD so me searching the internet is like breathing. Nothing special.

And your quote, inflammatory marketing slop that it is, is top and center in the images after searching your name once. "A bunch of searching" is not required. There's not much out there about you that requires digging into, just the usual founders' must-haves (crunchbase profile, paid write-ups, personal blog etc). Nothing special there either.

But please do enjoy the extra attention from me. Because that is special. To me.

by chimpanzee

5/2/2026 at 5:01:12 PM

> for a moment of pleasure

The pleasure of being an Uber driver? Wouldn’t the better analogy be survival for most gig workers?

by JumpCrisscross

5/2/2026 at 5:05:05 PM

The majority of people have absolutely no foundational belief for their actions

it is simply how do I get more money sex property attention etc…

There are no monks door dashing

by AndrewKemendo

5/2/2026 at 5:07:44 PM

Are you serious? So when I drive Uber to pay rent and feed myself, it is actually because I want sex and attention?

Might want to remove the "Wizard" from your bio, it'd be far more accurate.

by chimpanzee

5/2/2026 at 5:26:33 PM

Yes that is correct

people want to get money so that they can have an “enjoyable life” very few indeed dedicate themselves to a virtue or an ethics above pleasure

“enjoyable life” as defined through pretty much the entirety of written human history consists of sex and play

So yes humanity is demonstrably composed of egoist consuming hedonists

by AndrewKemendo

5/2/2026 at 5:29:00 PM

> So yes humanity is demonstrably composed of egoist consuming hedonists

Okay. How does this advance the discussion? Obviously then that means opposing that means being anti-human.

by JumpCrisscross

5/2/2026 at 5:37:22 PM

There's no advancement of the discussion to be had.

If I may play his game:

He writes to boost his own ego. By way of making his claim, he seeks to appear wise and wizardly, for who else but he could have made such an astute observation and present it with such confidence; it must certainly be true and he must certainly be better than us.

And who would make such a claim, but the one who is pure enough to see through the muck and see the truth of the claim? He must not be one of the egoist consuming hedonists! He must be outside of them to have seen them!

Or not, perhaps he is one of these egoists and he knows it, and will happily admit it. And by doing so, he will raise himself up even further. For he knows his faults and he is not ashamed to have us know them too. We shall soon see.

In the end, he will soon have more sex. (He already got the attention.)

by chimpanzee

5/2/2026 at 7:22:02 PM

He’s a weirdo who’s literally a nobody in real life. He needs a reality check. So does that crisscross dude tbf. Comical to read the bluster in their posts. Like who are you? You’re literally no less common than the rest of us.

by enejje

5/2/2026 at 5:58:27 PM

It’s necessary to recognize the limitations of the individual’s and the system they comprise

If it is required to take action in the world as a person or anything that has the capability to do things then by function there is energy required to take action

If the actions of that population are detrimental to the global population, because local measurement of global externalities is ignored, then you have a population that is self-destructive simply because it cannot communicate or coordinate across all of the places that’s having impacts

The systems you currently live in are antihuman…yet entirely composed of humans acting for their own individual gain without the capability of considering the collective whole

Is it anti-human to suggest that existential threat that stems from a total failure of the biological organism to coordinate at the scale that it’s individual impacts have ?

Is it antihuman to claim that the population does not have the capability of being able to counter its own accelerating self-destructive behavior?

by AndrewKemendo

5/2/2026 at 6:31:14 PM

> The majority of people have absolutely no foundational belief for their actions

The majority of people have absolutely no choice for their actions

FTFY

Especially given that for an increasing number of folks the alternative to doing what you're told is starvation (food insecurity), homelessness, and death (from lack of healthcare).

by ninjagoo

5/2/2026 at 6:38:02 PM

> majority of people have absolutely no choice for their actions

The poorest Americans remain among the richest people in the world and across human history. Many people don't have material choices. Almost every American does.

by JumpCrisscross

5/2/2026 at 7:08:30 PM

If you can take even one action, you still have a choice

The fact of Harriet Tubman disproves your claim

by AndrewKemendo

5/2/2026 at 4:57:14 PM

It's more productive to discuss and bring to light the floor's underwriters than it is to blame gig workers for "chattel-izing themselves for a moment of pleasure".

by Avicebron

5/2/2026 at 4:38:50 PM

> I asked if he had ever heard of collective bargaining or knew about unions and he said no.

collective bargaining or unions do not prevent technological progress, but merely retard it in the hopes that their members can benefit at the cost of progress for everyone else. Look at dock workers and how they tried to prevent automation with unions.

by chii

5/2/2026 at 5:02:21 PM

Dock workers are really the best example. We should have been automating at least a decade ago. I don’t know why folks would think unions or collective bargaining should be used to prevent automation. You will just lose on the medium to long term.

Reminds me of when dockworkers resisted the shift to cargo containers. Those ports ultimately lost business in the end.

by infecto

5/2/2026 at 4:57:58 PM

Surely if we smash all the spinning machines, everyone will be better off!

by alex43578

5/2/2026 at 5:36:30 PM

Related:

Uber torches 2026 AI budget on Claude Code in four months

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47976415

by ChrisArchitect

5/2/2026 at 6:15:26 PM

How is that related?

by whiplash451

5/2/2026 at 6:43:44 PM

It’s not, but this guy is in probably 70% of threads posting what he thinks is the same submission. I’ve seen several instances where the posts are different but he just links it and says it’s a duplicate anyway. If he wants to be a mod so bad he should just apply for a job imo.

by pirates

5/2/2026 at 4:47:53 PM

So once again the employees should bring the data to replace them

by croes

5/2/2026 at 5:17:56 PM

Isn't Uber also replacing itself? If you use your human drivers to train other companies' robot taxis, aren't you gonna ruin both the human driver service and the data collection service?

by Hamuko

5/2/2026 at 6:01:47 PM

Shareholders won't like the plan of limiting growth. That's a really interesting point, what's the plan for when human drivers can no longer generate new data and they've already sold they what they've managed to collect to all the car markers who want to buy?

It sounds like a terrible business plan.

by mrweasel

5/2/2026 at 5:07:28 PM

[flagged]

by durgavisionify

5/2/2026 at 5:01:31 PM

I mean, yeah of course they do

by neuroelectron