YouSaid · the spoken record

Chris Urmson

lines on the record: 131
first: 2017-09-04
most recent: 2017-09-04
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“The minute they can automate you, my friend, they're going to automate your work and they probably already have in lots of ways, which is interesting. It's definitely an interesting question for all of us, I think. And I'm so glad someone as thoughtful as you is thinking about it. You're more thoughtful than most people. Most people are like, let's invent it. Who cares?”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We instead will no longer have to subsidize it, and then we have this extra money that's sat around in the city and transit authority coffers that we can use in different ways.”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“with the self-driving cars, the self-driving cars, if we get reasonable occupancy in them, and there really are a public transit, then today we subsidize public transit about 90% of it is subsidized by. We”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I think it's going to be Kind of the net, it's going to be a good thing. And I think in general, the advance of technology has been a good thing. But it requires us to be thoughtful and it requires us to come together and figure out how do we help those that are displaced? How do we move them into new roles? How do we even think about that? It is something I worry about. Unfortunately, it's in the state of academic worry One concrete way to think about this. We talked earlier about public transit And you can imagine bus drivers lose their jobs. And that's certainly one way that the pendulum could swing. An alternative is we put the bus drivers on the core routes that are driving the buses. We don't hire any more bus drivers, but we face this technology in over time and we support it.”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's important. And it's not a broader challenge that we're facing that isn't just self-driving cars. I think the automation is going to kick in broadly.”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My vision, this is the answer And, you know, honestly, it hurts a little bit not to be able to do that because I recognize the implications of what we're doing. I just, I'm not smart enough. And I think we need to attack it together.”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, there were some clear social good from that, but it wasn't distributed uniformly. Like any change is not distributed uniformly. And so it's part of our community, part of our political leadership, part of our social activism is finding the right way to bring society, all of society along with that. And I think we've fallen short. It's clear that we've fallen short, right? I don't think we would be in the political situation we are today if we had not fallen short. And I would love to be able to tell you.”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Blaming you. No, no, I appreciate that. I think we all are, right? And I think that this is one of the saddest things for me about what's happening in the political world right now is we are faced with a variety of challenges. It started early with factory automation. It started with globalization. And these are things that have been good, much like self-driving. I think on an earthwide perspective, the globalization was a bad thing, right? I think it tied countries together, it raised the economies in parts of the world that wouldn't otherwise have. Yeah, it made us interdependent in a way that prevents some war. And so...”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. Well, who's responsible then? I think one of the things that Silicon Valley is not responsible, very similar to a lot of companies that make things and change things. But who is the government? Because then you could lead to, you know, we're right in the middle of populist political situation. Could get worse.”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's a lot of scale in this business, right? A lot of ecosystem. And on the other hand, you have the opportunity to make people safer on the road and save tens of thousands of lives. Save energy. save energy which is good for the environment good for the planet you can decrease congestion give everybody back more time you can give access to people you know probably a commensurate number of people that can't drive today As those who drive for a living, and you give them the freedom now to go and contribute to the economy, have a job, and work in a way they may not otherwise be able to. And so it's difficult, right? No matter what you do, whether I go by lunch at Subway or Jack in the Box, that has some implication. And I don't mean to be trite about this.”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, no, this is actually something I do think about a fair bed, and it's a real challenge. This ends up being a trade-off in social goods.”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. I won't finish up on the social concept of it, which we talked to a lot of Silicon Valley people about is if you're going to make all these cars self-driving cars and autonomous vehicles, do you have a responsibility to those who lose their jobs? Do you think about that as an inventor?”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A lot of money going towards it, but even a lot of money when you start thinking about buying cars starts to get factored down pretty quickly.”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At least. And just part of that is it takes about 15 years for a car to cycle through the American, what we call the car park, right? The cars on the road. Part of it is the technology's not ready yet, and there's going to be continued kind of development on it over time to get to the point where it can really be deployed. And part of it is that unlike a web app or a mobile app, the adoption, there's actually investment you have to make to adopt it. And so it's going to have a slower rollout.”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, when Tesla and SpaceX, their mission is just tremendous, right? And I've got to believe for the folks there, that's incredibly motivating.”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, they didn't call it that at the time. I think he coined that later. And so on the one hand, that would be It would make the future happen, at least the 1970 something future happened. On the other hand, it seems like there's other ways that we can, you know, Digging holes seems hard.”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Tunnel boring, yeah. Yeah. So on the one hand, I remember reading books about the future, and it was all going to be vacuum pods moving under the ground.”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't know much about Jeff Pecks. Okay, not working on this. No, I'm personally not working a flying. That's the craziest. Teleporter would be fantastic. That would solve the commute problem, put me out of a job. That would be great. I haven't seen a whole lot of it. So the boring company stuff. The idea of digging giant tunnels seems on the one hand. I remember looking at”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They're noisy. I don't want someone taken off a car in my neighborhood. You're right. Like, why would you want it? What about jetpacks? Come on. I don't know much about jetpacks. Okay, you're not working on this.”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Why? Yeah. I think because there is again, I think it's this density and congestion problem and that there's just so much resource available up there in terms of space. That if we can tap into that, maybe it makes it more livable. I worry a little bit about the sound. Right, and very noisy. Maybe this is a little too nimby, but there's going to be a lot of noise.”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. But even then, there's so much more space than there is on the ground, right? We're stuck on this surface. Once you get up there, you can segment all the eastbound traffic could be at one elevation, all the westbound at another, north and south. And so you don't end up a whole lot. That's where we're going.”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Else. It's like a giant drone that flies you over there, right? And that actually sounds pretty neat to me. And one of the neat things that's happened with drone technology is you've solved some of the reliability. The nice thing about being up in the sky is there's not a whole lot to hit.”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Then their bus system. I think there's some things that should be public good over time. And it feels like that's, you know, over time this might be something that becomes part of the utility of the city.”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or they don't go where you want. And the whole system of where do we set the routes is a very kind of political process that maybe is not the best that it could be.”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think you wouldn't need to. So, for someone like yourself who professes to hate driving, you only own a car because you need the convenience of it. If somebody were offering you the same service, but it would show up, you wouldn't have to worry about driving, and you knew it was going to be there and it was going to work. And it was as expensive or less than your current thing, then you would take it. And I think you see this in New York today, where a vast majority of people don't own cars because it's much more convenient to use”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And In what role does people would not own cars, right? Presumably they would hire, this is why Uber and Didi and all these companies have such big valuations because they're the reservation system essentially For these things, that you wouldn't own a car.”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What we need to find is a way to provide the same mobility that you and I take for granted. but that can scale to a much denser population. And I think that's one of the promises this technology has.”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think in a distant future. Yeah, I think there's going to be a long period of crossover where there's going to be people driving cars and self-driving cars together on the roads. And that'll be the most difficult time. And then once the technology starts to prove out, the opportunities, again, for safety, for low-cost mobility, for mobility for people who can't see or can't otherwise drive. Reducing congestion, right? All this stuff, cities will want, because we're only seeing in the US, we're seeing urbanization in China, they're seeing urbanization in a way that you can't, I can't comprehend. And so...”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so apparently I can't remember which state it was, it was somewhere east. When the first cars came out, there was a law in the books that you had to have somebody walking in front of your car with a red flag so that you wouldn't startle the horses.”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Where is the problem? Is it the sensor problem, or where is it humans, I'm guessing, is the biggest problem. People, other people, when you have that moment of mixing, probably when you mixed horses with cars was probably one of the more dangerous moments of car.”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then once you kind of are able to let that proverbial genie out of the bottle, at that point it becomes incremental to make it work in slightly more difficult places. And the big delta will be when you have a partner that can allow you to scale the technology because making 100 of something or making even $1,000 of something is manageable. But when we want to get to the point where the technology is proven and you want to scale it to the point where it can serve as a whole city or hopefully many cities, then you need somebody who knows how to make vehicles and somebody who knows how to make sensors.”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, right, and again, The safety arguments here are really all come down to statistics, right? It's a statistical argument that the rate at which bad things will happen is lower with the automation than it is with people. And so wherever you can find advantages to push the statistics in the right direction, then that's the way to think about this as an engineer.”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It would be much easier. That is what makes my job hard. Me. It also undercuts some of the value. Not people to move around. It'll be environments where it's relatively benign. So nice wide roads, maybe not as many people using them. I think that's part of the reason why somewhere like Arizona is appealing, right? It's a relatively modern city. It's so darn hot that you don't have a whole lot of people enjoying the outdoors.”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think within the next five years, you'll see transportation services fleets, vehicles, where in kind of some limited environments, they'll be on the road and you'll be able to get a ride in one.”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They're not literally on tracks, they're on roads and they're using GPS and figuring out where they are. But it's mostly a closed site. So you can go and see that today. I don't know exactly where they are, but I'm sure some folks accept to tell you. And you're seeing, starting to see some of the really high-end driver systems features where I think Audi just announced that they're 2019 or 2018 model. You'll be able to on a freeway, on a divided highway at less than 35 miles per hour, it'll stay in the lane and not bump into the cars around you. And you can read a book or whatever for however long the traffic jam lasts. So you're starting to see that today.”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we're already seeing this technology come to market today. So there are mines where you can go to where they have big hall trucks, they call them big dump trucks driving around with nobody in them. And so in those kind of close course environments, sure, where they're on track.”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. But I think at the center of this is there's going to be a lot of fighting over this stuff because everybody wants to sort of have the edge going forward. So let's talk about how quickly that edge is coming because there's lots of money going in. Every week there's a different self-driving car unit gets sold or there's some aspect of it. Let's talk about what it looks like. Where does it come first? Lewandowski had auto, which was the trucks. You were talking about working with Caterpillar long ago, military. Where do the first ones really emerge that are useful? Not completely accident proof, but pretty close.”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I, in fact, was supposed yesterday, so there's not much I can say. The good news is I don't know a whole lot. I obviously had some experience with Anthony and spent a lot of time with the team, but don't really know what they've found and what the true meat of the case is.”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we'll be agnostic. So, our intent is to build the self-driving vehicle capability. So there's a lot of companies, all the Tier 1 automotive suppliers are developing the driver system. So things where you're still driving, but it's keeping you in lane or doing adaptive cruise control. We want to work on the part that comes after that.”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, we'd like to be the system. So we're going to work on the software and we're going to build a reference architecture that will share with automotive partners that will include, these are the sensors you should have. These are roughly where you'd have them on the vehicle. And this is the computation you should have. And we'll be designing our software to work with that reference architecture, and then hopefully.”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We've been fortunate in our ability to raise money. So far, we've just taken a little bit of money from some folks who helped help me and my other co-founders think about how to start up a company.”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that's probably you're like, I wish I had a self driving car right now. Yes. So awful. Oh, well, then you, you know, if it's a stick shifter, you're lying a little bit.”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think a lot of Americans do. I think they take pride in it. I think that they do spend an hour or two a day in it. And people buy a car because what it says about them. And that's kind of their avatar on the road.”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. And so I think what this can do is so much of getting around is just mundane. Let's make that pleasurable. People are on their phone. People are wanting to do other things in the car. Instead of kind of continuing prohibition once this technology is out there, we now allow people to do what they want. And while they do that, there'll still be safe in the vehicle. And then for people who want to enjoy driving, go and drive in your spare time. Like go drive on Sunday afternoon when the roads aren't bad and you enjoy it.”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So people like to drive some of the time, right? There's an awful lot of driving that people do that they really hate. Road rage would not be a thing if people liked, truly liked driving so enjoyable.”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They could go a lifetime, many lifetimes before they would ever see that. And so that experience with the technology and kind of becoming falsely comfortable with the safety of it is one of the challenges. And also liking.”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it's not even that they grab for it, it's that they experience it for a while and it works, right? And maybe it works perfectly every day for a month. The next day it may not work. But their experience now is, oh, this works. And so they're not prepared to take over. And so their ability to kind of save it and monitor it decays with time. But when we think about the rate at which bad things happen, they're very low. In America, somebody dies in a car accident about 1.15 times per 100 million miles. It's like 10,000 years of an average person's driving. And so let's say the technology is pretty good, but not that good. Someone dies once every 50 million miles. We're going to have twice as many accidents and fatalities on the roads on average. But for any one individual,”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's amazing how quickly people go from, oh my goodness, how could it possibly work to, oh, all it does is drive. Right. And they do that in a matter of minutes to hours. And I think this is actually one of the biggest challenges with some of the semi-autonomous features is that”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, they are. I've been in some other cars. So, last thing humans, the idea of humans, I mean, obviously Tesla got a lot of press when that man died. That was just in a semi-autonomous car. But the idea is sleeping or doing something else or watching a movie or doing inhale. When I was in the car, I was like, where's the bar kind of thing? I think I'll text and things like that. But that was because I was in a parking lot at Google and I felt totally comfortable doing that. How do you switch humanity into that mode?”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Again, they would argue that a Volkswagen or a Daimler is a big. But you're right, there is an outside of that. But those two companies are investing heavily. Yes, they are.”
2017-09-04 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Chris Urmson, CEO, Aurora · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT