Cruise CEO here. Some relevant context follows.

Cruise AVs are being remotely assisted (RA) 2-4% of the time on average, in complex urban environments. This is low enough already that there isn’t a huge cost benefit to optimizing much further, especially given how useful it is to have humans review things in certain situations.

The stat quoted by nyt is how frequently the AVs initiate an RA session. Of those, many are resolved by the AV itself before the human even looks at things, since we often have the AV initiate proactively and before it is certain it will need help. Many sessions are quick confirmation requests (it is ok to proceed?) that are resolved in seconds. There are some that take longer and involve guiding the AV through tricky situations. Again, in aggregate this is 2-4% of time in driverless mode.

In terms of staffing, we are intentionally over staffed given our small fleet size in order to handle localized bursts of RA demand. With a larger fleet we expect to handle bursts with a smaller ratio of RA operators to AVs. Lastly, I believe the staffing numbers quoted by nyt include several other functions involved in operating fleets of AVs beyond remote assistance (people who clean, charge, maintain, etc.) which are also something that improve significantly with scale and over time.

This is off the beaten path, but consider Abu-Mostafa et al.'s "Learning from Data". https://www.amazon.com/Learning-Data-Yaser-S-Abu-Mostafa/dp/...

I adore PRML, but the scope and depth is overwhelming. LfD encapsulates a number of really core principles in a simple text. The companion course is outstanding and available on EdX.

The tradeoff is that LfD doesn't cover a lot of breath in terms of looking at specific algorithms, but your other texts will do a better job there.

My second recommendation is to read the documentation for Scikit.Learn. It's amazingly instructive and a practical guide to doing ML in practice.

Andrei Jikh is on track to a similar amount but by selling poor financial advice haha.

Yes, in 2022 we have reached a point where the low-bar for being a youtube "financial influencer" is literally lacking a college degree but having experience as a magician.

If you haven't already, give the Fall of Civilizations podcast [1] a listen. It's one of my favourites - informative, engaging and peaceful listening - about how civilizations rise and fall. Episode 8 is about the Sumerians in Iraq and might give you a picture of how these people lived (if nearly 1500 years earlier).

[1]: https://fallofcivilizationspodcast.com/