In a conversational segment, the speakers discuss Waymo’s autonomous vehicles as the safest drivers on the planet, attributing their accident‑free record to a hive‑mind system where thousands of cars share data and learn from each other instantly. They note a paradox: despite this superior safety, many people remain hesitant to ride in driverless cars, often feeling more comfortable with human‑driven rides like Uber, even though those can be erratic. The dialogue then pivots to a broader business lesson: organizations should embrace failure as a learning tool, echoing Thomas Edison’s view that each unsuccessful attempt brings one closer to success. They illustrate this with the story of an experimenter named Esen, who endured dangerous, even harmful, experimental failures (acidic reactions, minor explosions, lung issues, deafness) yet persisted, using each setback to refine his approach. The speakers argue that, like Waymo’s collective learning, businesses can accelerate progress by sharing failures, mitigating risks, and fostering a culture that sees failure as a necessary step toward innovation.
Chapters
Safest driver today in the world, hands down, is artificial intelligence. There's a car system called Waymo.
Uh-huh.
Have you seen those?
Yeah, actually we have a little bit of a news article about it.
Oh, I can't wait to talk about it. Chris and I were, were recently out in Arizona. We landed in Phoenix and we're sitting waiting for a car and a car goes by and Chris is like, there is no one.
It's not like there's no passenger. There's no one in the car.
There's no one in the car. There's no driver. There's no passenger. She's like, there's a car just went by. I'm like, oh my God, that's Waymo. I've seen, I've heard of it. I haven't seen it. And another one came by. So I, as we're sitting there waiting for our ride, I go on Google and Waymo argues, and I believe it, it is The most accident-free driver of all time. What they do is they have this hive mind of their hundreds or thousands of cars, and they're sharing information, and they're learning from each other rapidly. Where an individual, the only learning is, I got in a car accident, I'll try to avoid that again. I cut the curve too short and I hit—
I'll look over my right shoulder better next time. Yeah.
Yeah, it's a very slow process. We need to have these failures to learn. And when we can expedite the process through a group mind, or in this case, artificial intelligence, the better outcome comes so much faster. But ironically, there still is hesitancy. Like, I don't know if I feel safe getting into a car. But honestly, I question if I feel safe getting into one of these Ubers where the dude is like, what is it? How are you driving? How do you even know an Uber anymore?
I know, I know. Christopher always says, they're doing 40 in like a 65-mile-an-hour, we're gonna die. Oh, I'm the reverse. They're going too fast for you. I'm like, they're doing 80 in a 30.
Like, what the hell's going on? Oh yeah, there's that too.
There's that too.
So we have to embrace failure. We also have to admit it's scary and difficult, but Edison's framing of you find a way that doesn't work is something we need to embrace. Yeah. Now, we can also mitigate failure. It's not just be Mr. Rando, try things out, and if this explodes, we'll see what happens. Right. Esen had cases like that. He tried mixes and concoctions that caused acidic responses, minor explosions. It almost caused blindness for him. He had lung problems because he breathed in this stuff.
No.
He was notably deaf, like could not hear a word. Maybe also facilitated through some of the experiments he was doing. Maybe it was purely biological or genetics. But nonetheless, none of those impedances caused him to stop. If anything, it fostered a greater growing intensity because he's finding ways that don't work. He's that much closer to a way that does work.
