Correction: he was trapped in Scottsdale, AZ’s airport parking. And he apparently “almost” missed his flight. (“I missed my flight already” was apparently mistaken or exaggerated.)
Still, stuck in a slow-cruising FSD taxi that won’t let you out feels like a particularly tedious form of hell.
This vintage tune was my first thought:
That’s what happens when you don’t vote for George O’Brien!
Waymos do seem to get stuck in infinite loops on occasion:
The idea some vehicle somewhere got confused and did multiple loops is sorta unsurprising. The idea it eventually decided on its own to stop looping is to me the more surprising result.
Unless that was an intervention by a remote human in a control center.
Neural nets typically have a “temperature” setting that allows them to occasionally choose a prediction with less than the highest confidence value (that’s why ChatGPT conversations are different each time). Maybe sometimes they just have to wait long enough for the “exit the loop here” prediction to get picked.
There is one particular parking lot at the Oxnard Harbor where I am around once a month. When I try to FSD home from there it will go in an endless loop in the lot. I try again with every new software release and it’s the same thing. I suspect that it’s a map issue and the car is expecting an exit where there isn’t one.
The majority of my interventions in FSD(S) are due to mapping or routing errors, rather than actual driving errors. Just this morning I needed to make a left turn, and the route had me going past the street, then making a u-turn and come back, even though there is a perfectly good left turn lane where I wanted to go. This meant I had to take over from FSD(S).
It makes lots of sense that if there is a mapping or routing error in the parking lot, the car will be stuck driving in circles, because it can never find the exit. There should be some form of memory where the self driving realizes it is in a loop, and asks for help, or tries a different exit.
Should Waymo add some self-defense mechanisms?
Please put down your weapon. You have 20 seconds to comply.
Nothing can go wrong. Go wrong. Go wrong. Go wrong …
Maybe a bit off topic. Vandals attack and destroy a Waymo in Beverly Hills.
https://ktla.com/news/local-news/vandals-in-southern-california-attack-waymo-driverless-taxi/
Psst. Look 3 posts up from yours. 
“Beverly Grove”, not “Beverly Hills”. When I first read about this I assumed Beverly Grove was a lower income/inner city neighborhood of LA–but it turns out not to be: median family income of $119,000/year.
Beverly Grove is immediately adjacent to Beverly Hills. and much more ordinary but with a hefty contribution of semi-high end retail & dining. BG is ordinary comfy-class professionals with Mercedes. BH is the people with several Mercedes and a driver or two.
Well I fucked that up
And now we’re in Q4, and Musk has said flat-out that HW3 will not be enough. They’ll continue pushing out updates for a while, but eventually upgrade everyone (he said he’s kinda glad that not too many people bought FSD back then).
So, that’s everyone who paid the $15K who gets the HW4 upgrade?
Yes. Or $3k in my case.
To be clear, they promised previously that everyone will be upgraded if it proves necessary. The change is that yes, it turns out to be necessary.
Do you think a lawsuit is likely from people who didn’t pay for that upgrade?