Brandon Buckley

We’ve blew right by the Turing test and now AGI is in rear view mirror too

Product >> Brand

@JerryJorgenson3 @wholemars Huh? These two aren’t related. You don’t know what you’re talking about.

@wholemars True, but the use of LIDAR is a symptom of lazy engineering. It's fast to get a LIDAR system up and running, but LIDAR can never be a general purpose solution due to its reliance on high detailed maps.

LIDAR has almost nothing to do with this issue. This is a deep learning problem.

@deedydas Those who embrace change have a completely different mindset than what you're reporting here.

The vibes in SF feel pretty frenetic right now. The divide in outcomes is the worst I've ever seen. Over the last 5yrs, a group of ~10k people - employees at Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI, Nvidia, Meta TBD, founders - have hit retirement wealth of well above $20M (back of the envelope AI estimation). Everyone outside that group feels like they can work their well-paying (but <$500k) job for their whole life and never get there. Worse yet, layoffs are in full swing. Many software engineers feel like their life's skill is no longer useful. The day to day role of most jobs has changed overnight with AI. As a result, 1. The corporate ladder looks like the wrong building to climb. Everyone's trying to align with a new set of career "paths": should I be a founder? Is it too late to join Anthropic / OpenAI? should I get into AI? what company stock will 10x next? People are demanding higher salaries and switching jobs more and more. 2. There’s a deep malaise about work (and its future). Why even work at all for “peanuts”? Will my job even exist in a few years? Many feel helpless. You hear the “permanent underclass” conversation a lot, esp from young people. It's hard to focus on doing good work when you think "man, if I joined Anthropic 2yrs ago, I could retire" 3. The mid to late middle managers feel paralyzed. Many have families and don't feel like they have the energy or network to just "start a company". They don't particularly have any AI skills. They see the writing on the wall: middle management is being hollowed out in many companies. 4. The rich aren’t particularly happy either. No one is shedding tears for them (and rightfully so). But those who have "made it" experience a profound lack of purpose too. Some have gone from <$150k to >$50M in a few years with no ramp. It flips your life plans upside down. For some, comparison is the thief of joy. For some, they escape to NYC to "live life". For others still, they start companies "just cuz", often to win status points. They never imagined that by age 30, they'd be set. I once asked a post-economic founder friend why they didn't just sell the co and they said "and do what? right now, everyone wants to talk to me. if i sell, I will only have money." I understand that many reading this scoff at the champagne problems of the valley. Society is warped in this tech bubble. What is often well-off anywhere else in the world is bang average here. Unlike many other places, tenure, intelligence and hard work can be loosely correlated with outcomes in the Bay. Living through a societally transformative gold rush in that environment can be paralyzing. "Am I in the right place? Should I move? Is there time still left? Am I gonna make it?" It psychologically torments many who have moved here in search of "success". Ironically, a frequent side effect of this torment is to spin up the very products making everyone rich in hopes that you too can vibecode your path to economic enlightenment.

Vibe coding is gaming

I think 4.7 got dumber

@om_patel5 Extrinsic motivation, whether in the form of streaks, leaderboards, or territory, is temporary. If you want to be a runner, motivation must be found from within.

THIS GUY VIBE CODED A RUNNING APP WITH CLAUDE CODE IN A WEEKEND THAT TURNS YOUR CITY INTO A BATTLEFIELD he wanted a reason to go outside so he built an app where you claim real territory on a map just by running through it every street you run on becomes yours. your neighborhood turns into your turf, but other runners can take it from you by running the same streets imagine runners waking up at 4am just to claim their blocks before anyone else does the territory mechanic is what makes this different from every other running tracker because it gives you a reason to care about your next run, not just the one you just finished if this idea is executed and marketed correctly it'll blow up on the app store most fitness apps try to motivate you with stats and streaks, but this one actually motivates you with competition over real streets in your actual city vibe coded in a weekend by a guy who doesn't even know how to code

@Polymarket Man y’all are miserable. This is likely a software recall which will be quickly resolved.

JUST IN: Waymo recalls 3,791 robotaxis after one drove onto a flooded road.

@VeryBullishGuy @Polymarket Remind me how many robotaxi trips Tesla completes per week? Sit down, Chris.

@Polymarket And people were comparing this dogshit to Tesla

@GavinNewsom I don’t want free diapers. I want lower taxes.

HUGE NEWS: California just became the FIRST state in America to provide FREE DIAPERS to all new parents. Launching this summer. Since I became Governor, we have made preschool FREE, school meals FREE, and expanded paid family leave. Stop talking about lowering costs for families — DO IT!

@gncv @wholemars Uber has invested hundreds of millions into AV startups, so clearly they support the industry. Some of those partnerships include financing and managing fleets of AVs. So tell me again how they’re not prepared? They’re in the arena.

Whatever Uber says about “supporting” autonomous vehicles, I take with a grain of salt. Their entire business is built on owning zero cars while desperate drivers bear all the costs, risks, and responsibility — and Uber takes the lion’s share of the fare. Autonomy destroys that model. To survive, Uber must either partner with (or exploit) an AV company that actually owns the fleet, or start owning cars themselves and compete head-on in the real market. I don’t believe they’re positioned to do either

sounds like they are campaigning against autonomy to save their business

CA permits secured! We’re excited to share that Nuro has received two key regulatory approvals for the next phase of our robotaxi program with @Uber and @LucidMotors: A @CA_DMV driverless permit to expand public-road validation without safety drivers, and a @californiapuc permit to begin carrying passengers in a regulated pilot. Learn more: nuro.ai/blog/nuro-secu… #selfdriving #autonomousvehicles #drivenbynuro

@omg_fsd This guy feels the heat

Fixed it.

How do we make autonomy superhuman, scalable, and safe? Nuro co-founder @zhujiajun unpacks end-to-end (E2E) systems and the myth of AV 2.0 in his latest Driverless Debates blog: nuro.ai/blog/the-archi… #autonomousvehicles #selfdriving #drivenbynuro #driverlessdebates

Spending more while getting less is usually a good sign of corruption, fraud, waste and incompetence. Our education system in California is profoundly broken.

We're shakin' and bakin'

What sensors does an autonomous vehicle need? Nuro co-founder and co-CEO @zhujiajun unpacks the debate and the approach we’ve taken at Nuro in his new blog post: nuro.ai/blog/the-senso… #autonomousvehicles #selfdriving #perception #vision #lidar

The TSLA thesis depends on (1) Tesla cracking L4 reasonably soon, (2) other AVs never using on a cost competitive alternative, (3) Tesla being just as safe as others, (4) customers not willing to pay for safer options or preferences and (5) a winner take all market 🤔

@lennysan The sky is falling, again!

Chilling

@niccruzpatane May the better product win

The world’s most expensive robotaxi 😂