In this conversational YouTube segment, the speakers discuss Waymo’s self‑driving cars as a concrete illustration of how artificial intelligence can become the safest driver on the planet. They describe Waymo’s “hive‑mind” system, where thousands of autonomous vehicles share data in real time, allowing rapid collective learning that dramatically reduces accidents compared with individual human drivers who only learn from personal mishaps. The dialogue then shifts to public hesitancy about riding in driverless cars, contrasting it with the everyday uncertainty of riding in human‑driven rideshares. Using this contrast, the speakers argue that businesses should embrace failure as a learning tool, echoing Thomas Edison’s philosophy that each unsuccessful experiment brings one closer to a solution. They cite the historical figure Esen, whose hazardous chemical experiments caused personal injury yet did not deter his pursuit of breakthroughs, illustrating the need to mitigate but not avoid failure. The overall message is that leveraging collective intelligence and a disciplined approach to failure can accelerate progress in both autonomous vehicle technology and business 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.
I'll look over my right shoulder better next time.
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's 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.
Yeah.
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. 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. 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.
Uh, 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.
