Dmitri Dolgov is co-CEO of Waymo, discussing the technical maturity and readiness of Waymo's autonomous vehicle stack for global commercial expansion.
Opinion
Dolgov: Pure pixels-in end-to-end models cannot easily achieve scale and safety
“If you think about this entire ecosystem of the driver, the simulator, the critic, if that's all you do, pixels in, trajectories out, it becomes very difficult to do all of those three and achieve the high level of safety and performance that we require, and i…”
Insight
Dolgov: Driver assist systems and full autonomy are fundamentally different problems
“And talk about the technology, and I see it just as fundamentally two different problems. There's driver assist systems, and then there is full autonomy. And I think it's deceptive to think of them as kind of incremental you know, on one spectrum of complexity…”
Insight
Dolgov: Autonomous vehicles require closed-loop RLFT, not just imitation learning
“And if all you did was kind of observing how other people drive when you trained the system, maybe observing, you know, just passively how people drive and how they interact maybe also, you know, driving the car yourself and then using imitative learning to tr…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Dolgov: Waymo Gen-6 Hardware Costs a Fraction of Gen-5
“It is very different from the fifth generation. It is simpler. It is more capable. It is much lower cost. It's thinking a fraction of the cost is, you know, comparable to what you would get like a fancy ADA system.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Dolgov: Waymo driver tech will eventually reach every US USPS address
“Eventually it will. Absolutely. There's no doubt in my mind. I think it's just a matter of when.”
Disclosure
Dolgov: Waymo distills driver, simulator, and critic from one foundation model
“The way we think about the, you know, building the Waymo driver it starts with a large off-board foundation model. I can imagine, you know, building a big model that understands how the physical world works and understands the, Important properties of what it …”