Navigating the Unknown

The self-driving car technology you’re working on at Waymo is so complex. What is your strategy for making complicated decisions, in many cases, with very little data, because this is a whole new territory, arena you’re entering and trying to create?

I think first and foremost is making sure safety is foundational. And so that’s in our values, that’s in our methodologies, that’s in how when it’s time to make a decision, we sort of gate the decision. I think that’s really important, one.

I think, two, being a culture that’s iterative. This isn’t technology that goes from a lab to a release 100% in a lab. It actually has to be deployed in communities, in order to get to that next level because we need the feedback, we need the real world miles.

Deployed in the community but also under a lot of scrutiny, right? People are watching you, and if there’s any even misstep in safety, for example, it is all over the news.

That's right.

That's a lot of pressure.

That’s exactly right. I think that’s exactly right. And I think that’s why really having the foundation internally gives the team collectively, and certainly me, a lot of fortitude for, you know, one’s going to…Like you said, an autonomous vehicle does something wrong, it’s much more notable. Some of it is because we’re really comfortable with human driving today. We’re really comfortable with, you know, 94% of all accidents being caused by human error, whether that’s drinking or anger or fatigue or distraction.

And we have to make people a little more uncomfortable with that in order for this technology to feel necessary. And because we don’t experience those fatalities as mass casualties, it’s very easy to think... Most people don’t know 1.35 million people are killed globally in crashes every year. And I think when you don’t know that, you think, why is there a robocar on my street? Not like, yeah, you know, if this thing can do better than my neighbor who always buzz drives, then I welcome it. And I think it’s just a paradigm shift that we’ll have to go through as a society.