#147 – Dmitri Dolgov: Waymo and the Future of Self-Driving Cars
Lex Fridman Podcast
Lex Fridman
4.7 • 13.6K Ratings
🗓️ 20 December 2020
⏱️ 149 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Dmitri Dolgov is the CTO of Waymo, an autonomous vehicle company. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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EPISODE LINKS:
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Waymo’s Website: https://waymo.com
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OUTLINE:
Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.
(00:00) – Introduction
(07:46) – Computer games
(12:52) – Childhood
(15:24) – Robotics
(16:14) – Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology
(18:26) – DARPA Urban Challenge
(28:46) – Waymo origin story
(44:27) – Waymo self-driving hardware
(53:00) – Connected cars
(58:53) – Waymo fully driverless service in Phoenix
(1:03:14) – Getting feedback from riders
(1:11:28) – Creating a product that people love
(1:17:18) – Do self-driving cars need to break the rules like humans do?
(1:24:03) – Waymo Trucks
(1:29:41) – Future of Waymo
(1:42:53) – Role of lidar in autonomous driving
(1:55:53) – Machine learning is essential for autonomous driving
(1:59:55) – Pedestrians
(2:06:32) – Trolley problem
(2:11:00) – Book recommendations
(2:22:26) – Meaning of life
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | The following is a conversation with Dmitry Dalgov, the CTO of Weimo, which is an autonomous |
| 0:06.3 | driving company that started as Google Self-Driving Car Project in 2009 and became Weimo in 2016. |
| 0:14.0 | Dmitry was there all along. Weimo is currently leading in the fully autonomous vehicle space |
| 0:19.5 | in that they actually have an at-scale deployment of publicly accessible autonomous vehicles |
| 0:25.8 | driving passengers around with no safety driver, with nobody in the driver's seat. This, to me, |
| 0:34.1 | is an incredible accomplishment of engineering on one of the most difficult and exciting |
| 0:39.6 | artificial intelligence challenges of the 21st century. Quick mention of a sponsor followed |
| 0:45.2 | by some thoughts related to the episode. Thank you to Trial Labs, a company that helps businesses |
| 0:51.5 | apply machine learning to solve real world problems. Blinkist and App I use for reading through |
| 0:57.6 | summaries of books, better help online therapy with a licensed professional and cash app. |
| 1:03.5 | The App I use is a money to friends. Please check out the sponsors in the description to get |
| 1:08.5 | a discount at the support this podcast. As a side note, let me say that autonomous and semi-autonomous |
| 1:14.6 | driving was the focus of my work at MIT and is a problem space that I find fascinating and full of |
| 1:20.9 | open questions from both robotics and a human psychology perspective. There's quite a bit |
| 1:27.2 | that I could say here about my experiences in academia on this topic that revealed to me, |
| 1:33.6 | let's say the less admirable size of human beings. But I choose to focus on the positive |
| 1:39.8 | on solutions. I'm brilliant engineers like Demetri and the team at Weimo who work tirelessly to |
| 1:46.0 | innovate and to build amazing technology that will define our future. Because of Demetri and |
| 1:52.1 | others like him, I'm excited for this future. And who knows, perhaps I too, will help contribute |
| 1:59.2 | something of value to it. If you enjoyed this thing, subscribe on YouTube, review it with five stars |
| 2:04.8 | on App a podcast, follow on Spotify, support on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter, |
| 2:10.1 | Alex Friedman. As usual, I'll do a few minutes of ads now and no ads in the middle. I try to make |
... |
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