Could Cruise be the Theranos of AI? And is there a dark secret at the core of the entire driverless car industry?
We recorded 7 claims from this post. 4 were checked against evidence. 3 can’t be checked. 2 more are held. Read the post at its source.
Claims from this post (7)
In the order they appear in the post. Each quotation is the speaker’s words in this post. A label such as “Supported” or “Can’t be checked” is the claim’s current assessment; its page has the evidence and the reasons.
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Causal claim
“Certainly no commercial product could ever work at a profit if you needed remote operators anything like that often.”
Our reading: Certainly no commercial product could ever work at a profit if it needed remote operators anything like as often as Cruise reportedly does.
No horizon Evidence as of
Only if: if remote operators were needed anything like as often as reported
Assessment: SupportedSaid
Forecast
“Shareholders will certainly sue, and if it’s bad as it looks, I doubt that GM will continue the project, which was recently suspended.”
Our reading: Shareholders will sue over Cruise.
Settled before its deadline Evidence as of
Limitation: This assessment concerns the lawsuit prediction only.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Conditional forecast
“Shareholders will certainly sue, and if it’s bad as it looks, I doubt that GM will continue the project, which was recently suspended.”
Our reading: If the situation is as bad as it looks, GM probably will not continue the Cruise driverless project.
No horizon
Only if: if it's as bad as it looks
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Conditional forecast
“But it’s starting to feel like if the cars were actually left to their own devices, all hell would break loose.”
Our reading: It increasingly appears that Cruise cars would perform disastrously if left to operate without remote human help.
No horizon
Only if: if left without remote operators
Assessment: ContradictedSaid
Observation
“I realize there’s been almost zero public disclosure of how any of the driverless car companies are using remote operators. It’s not just Cruise.”
Our reading: Driverless car companies in general have disclosed almost nothing publicly about their use of remote operators.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: The result depends on reading the claim as about disclosure of operators’ roles, rather than complete quantitative transparency.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“The State of California should demand answers immediately, and share them with the public.”
Our reading: California should immediately demand that driverless car companies disclose their remote operator use and make the answers public.
No horizon
Assessment: SupportedSaid
Observation
“Update: A few hours after I posted this Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt essentially confirmed that their “driverless” cars need very regular human intervention:”
Our reading: Cruise's CEO essentially confirmed that Cruise's driverless cars require very regular human intervention.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: Supported for recurring operational assistance; strict necessity for safety is not established.
Held from this post (2)
These records did not pass every check, so nothing about them is published. Held is not a finding.
- The criteria are ambiguous. Our reading, not assessed: Cruise's vehicles, presented as autonomous, currently appear to be far from autonomous.
- The criteria are ambiguous. Our reading, not assessed: If Cruise's vehicles really need an intervention every few miles and 1.5 external operators per vehicle, then, subject to an important caveat about what the numbers mean, they don't seem to be even remotely close to what Cruise has been alleging to the public.