Name: googlex-v2
Uploaded: 2014-10-13
Duration: 3 min 36 s
Description: googlex-v2

Self driving cars. It seems like something straight out of the Jetsons. And people are really excited about it. Talk to me about that initial conversation or conversations when the idea came up and, and how you guys then executed that? Yeah. Self driving cars not a new idea. I mean, it was talked about in the World's Fair in 1939. There's ads from Life Magazine from the 1950s. But for some reason it didn't quite become the real, the world of the Jetsons, very quickly. So, DARPA, the US government actually funded a couple of contests in the mid 2000s. And a bunch of the academics who developed the vehicles that ultimately, Stanford and Carnegie Mellon for example won the DARPA competitions. Larry Page and Sergei both thought, hey. This is an important technology. And it's actually a software problem. It's a computer science problem. It's not so much about the vehicle, but it's about the vehicle's decision engine and its ability to read the world around it. And initially, it was just engineers who were thinking about, okay. Can we meet this. Sort of do a 100, 000 fully autonomous miles. Drive a bunch of very challenging routes that Larry outlined. We wanted them to prove they could drive autonomously. And they went through the those stages, and in the last couple of years realized hey, we're really, we can do this. Because you really have to prove it. It's really research and development. And that's when I joined the project which was, okay, if this is gonna be a real technology which I now fully believe it is. How are we gonna introduce it to the market? When are we gonna introduce it? What are sort of, there's policy implications. There's also making sure consumers are comfortable. It has to be a very safe technology. And that's mostly where I spend my time is thinking about what's the product we're gonna bring. How are we gonna work with partners, and also educate the, the policy makers about the technology. So, it sounds like you have a lot of exciting things going on. But, you also have some challenges, policy challenges. You know, consumer behavioral issues and, and just kind of creating a shift in the way that they approach driving. And then also just a product issue in the sense of what, what is this product and what's it going to look like and how we're going to market it? So, talk a little bit about those challenges and how you're hoping to overcome them. Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't say they're challenges yet. It's been interesting and I think because of the safety story, I mean over a million people die every year in auto accidents. Accidents and 33, 000 in the US alone. People understand, particularly in the world of mobile devices, that driving seems. It's actually a fairly dangerous activity. But if you're gonna really solve the safety issue, you need to take the human out of the equation cuz 93 % of accidents are really humans. I'm making mistakes. And so I think the chal, so I've been surprised actually. I haven't seen a lot of the challenges, because people are very excited. There's also a lot of people who are thinking about their elderly parents and losing their freedom. And so I feel like we're in a moment now where there's a lot of consumer interest. Policy makers are really just in a learning phase. But, I imagine when you see your first unmanned car. Right, cuz this will be fully autonomous. No steering wheel, no pedals, driving down the street in your neighborhood. You're gonna have a reaction. And our hope is that we give everyone a chance to try it and to understand it. So that they can accept it. But bringing that aspect of it to market, is probably going to be. The most interesting part of my next couple of years. [ LAUGH ] Let alone like making a business out of it. Right. Which I think would be a next step. First, we gotta get it done.