We sat down with Dr. Missy Cummings, who served as one of the U.S. Navy’s first female fighter pilots and now works as the director of George Mason University’s Autonomy and Robotics Center. Cummings, an engineer, has been studying autonomous systems for years – today, we break down the autonomy challenge in self-driving cars: how they work, their enormous limitations and a path to a feasible self-driving future. 

Episode Links: 

• Lidar breaks down in the rain: https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/24/10/2997?utm_source=www.thedeepview.co&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=openai-launches-o1-unveils-200-subscription-tier
• George Mason’s Autonomy and Robotics Center: https://marc.gmu.edu/
• Waymo’s self-driving statistics: https://www.thedeepview.co/p/the-complicated-statistics-behind-safe-self-driving-cars
• Waymo’s steady expansion: https://waymo.com/blog/2024/12/next-stop-miami/
• All the investigations into Tesla’s systems: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/12/09/tesla-accused-of-fraudulent-misrepresentation-of-autopilot-in-crash-.html
• A breakdown of why AI confabulates: https://mitsloanedtech.mit.edu/ai/basics/addressing-ai-hallucinations-and-bias/

Outline: 
1:39 – From airplanes to AVs
3:57 – What makes self-driving cars tick
9:00 – The risk of edge cases
12:49 – The hallucination problem
18:36 – How do we verify if a self-driving car is safe, in a safe way? 
24:02 – Waymo and the scaling of safety data
29:40 – The hardware behind self-driving
31:33 – Limitations of Lidar
37:57 – The misconceptions of self-driving cars
40:16 – A self-driving future

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Artificial intelligence is a complicated topic, bound by a number of complex threads — technical science, ethics, safety, regulation, neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, investment and — above all — humanity. On The Deep View: Conversations, Ian Krietzberg, host and Editor-in-Chief at The Deep View, breaks it all down, cutting through the hype to make clear what's important and why you should care.