Andrej Karpathy leaves Tesla(twitter.com)
twitter.com
Andrej Karpathy leaves Tesla
https://twitter.com/karpathy/status/1547332300186066944
440 comments
FSD beta tester here. I think they are minimum 3 years away from anything exciting beta.. but the localization, mapping, and visualization are not the reason. I don't think LIDAR would contribute substantially to improvement.
The fundamental flaws are in the decision-making being based upon 10-30 second feature memory, ignoring features outright, and only depending on visible road features instead of persisted map data.
For instance, near my house there's an intersection where it will try to use a turn-only lane with a red arrow when it's trying to go straight thru a light. 100% of the time. Even if I'm in the correct lane with no traffic around.
That's because the turn arrow on the ground is worn off. It is not a perception problem, it is
a) ignoring the obvious red turn arrow signal's significance for lane selection deliberately b) makes no attempt to persist or consult map data for 'which lanes go where' c) it completely disregards painted lines on the ground in the "no drive here" striping.
Also one block from my house, FSD will stay still indefinitely waiting for trash cans (displayed as trash cans) to clear the leftmost lane so that it will turn left.
None of the failures I encounter are due to lack of perception.
The fundamental flaws are in the decision-making being based upon 10-30 second feature memory, ignoring features outright, and only depending on visible road features instead of persisted map data.
For instance, near my house there's an intersection where it will try to use a turn-only lane with a red arrow when it's trying to go straight thru a light. 100% of the time. Even if I'm in the correct lane with no traffic around.
That's because the turn arrow on the ground is worn off. It is not a perception problem, it is
a) ignoring the obvious red turn arrow signal's significance for lane selection deliberately b) makes no attempt to persist or consult map data for 'which lanes go where' c) it completely disregards painted lines on the ground in the "no drive here" striping.
Also one block from my house, FSD will stay still indefinitely waiting for trash cans (displayed as trash cans) to clear the leftmost lane so that it will turn left.
None of the failures I encounter are due to lack of perception.
> I think they are minimum 3 years away from anything exciting beta
I think that's optimistic. Ten plus years.
There's too many exceptions. In my home town, an intersection. Imagine, if you will:
Traveling westbound there's four straight ahead lanes. There's a traffic light for each straight lane. The traffic lights will alternate "left two straight, green; right two straight red" and then "left two straight, red; right two, green". It does this because there's a tunnel and a roundabout right there. I guarantee that FSD will choke on this.
I think that's optimistic. Ten plus years.
There's too many exceptions. In my home town, an intersection. Imagine, if you will:
Traveling westbound there's four straight ahead lanes. There's a traffic light for each straight lane. The traffic lights will alternate "left two straight, green; right two straight red" and then "left two straight, red; right two, green". It does this because there's a tunnel and a roundabout right there. I guarantee that FSD will choke on this.
If the pavement is clearly marked i would give it a good chance. We have a 6-way intersection with similar lighting that it succeeds at... Other than completely and recklessly disregarding the clearly visible "no turn on red" sign.
We also have a road with a reversible lane in the middle. Thankfully it recognizes the red X sign for this. Unfortunately, if it's driving for 11 seconds without seeing anothee, it will suddenly decide to merge into the incoming lane to make an upcoming left...
We also have a road with a reversible lane in the middle. Thankfully it recognizes the red X sign for this. Unfortunately, if it's driving for 11 seconds without seeing anothee, it will suddenly decide to merge into the incoming lane to make an upcoming left...
Relying on pavement being clearly marked is untenable.
Completely agree. I think this is part of the hazard of the fsd training ethos that 'san francisco is the hardest case.' It completely dodges the issue that California actually maintains safe road markings compared to most other states.
I think in Japan or China this approach could actually work, but there is zero hope for it to work generally in the US.
I think in Japan or China this approach could actually work, but there is zero hope for it to work generally in the US.
The elephant in the room is fraud.
Tesla has been collecting thousands of dollars, each, from car buyers and utterly failing to deliver what it represented, and keeping the money year after year. Would be let GM, Toyota, or Audi do this? Where is the criminal prosecution? Where are the refunds?
Tesla has been collecting thousands of dollars, each, from car buyers and utterly failing to deliver what it represented, and keeping the money year after year. Would be let GM, Toyota, or Audi do this? Where is the criminal prosecution? Where are the refunds?
I wouldn't call it fraud.
I bought it knowing it was in beta and with no timeline for production release. They haven't represented it as anything more than that.
Being along for the journey is a big part of why I decided to pay.
I bought it knowing it was in beta and with no timeline for production release. They haven't represented it as anything more than that.
Being along for the journey is a big part of why I decided to pay.
Elon Musk has literally said in a public conference keynote that robotaxis would be running in 2019, and earning Tesla owners 30k/yr since 3 years ago, and that it would be financially foolish to buy anything but a Tesla.
Can you cite that? I've heard lots of those claims repeated but never first-hand
A journalist said "He said he thinks the program can be implemented as early as next year."
Is not
"literally said in a public conference keynote that robotaxis would be running in 2019"
Is not
"literally said in a public conference keynote that robotaxis would be running in 2019"
Did you watch the video in the link? Musk says "next year, for sure, we will have over 1 million robotaxis on the road".
Here is a longer video of that announcement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GnH_C6NrOM
Here is a longer video of that announcement: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GnH_C6NrOM
Could they rely on something in the smallprint? "You're paying for access to features as they become available, no guarantee that they will" etc.
Juries have in the past often not been swayed by fine print, where consumers are involved. It seems to be there mainly to dissuade angry consumers from suing, rather than to win cases based on it.
I would not, personally, be so dissuaded.
I would not, personally, be so dissuaded.
>I think they are minimum 3 years away
I vividly remember a conversation I had with an acquaintance who had recently taken an engineering position with an AV company that occurred circa late 2018. He claimed that they were at most 1 year away. In fact, his exact words were something along the lines of "They're already here. It's just a few edge cases to work out and some regulatory hurdles to overcome."
The reality is that the first 80% of the problem had been solved quickly and significant progress had been made at the time on the next 10%. The end was in sight. Unfortunately, that next 10% ended up taking as long as the first 80% to solve, and the final 10% will likely take decades if it's even possible.
I vividly remember a conversation I had with an acquaintance who had recently taken an engineering position with an AV company that occurred circa late 2018. He claimed that they were at most 1 year away. In fact, his exact words were something along the lines of "They're already here. It's just a few edge cases to work out and some regulatory hurdles to overcome."
The reality is that the first 80% of the problem had been solved quickly and significant progress had been made at the time on the next 10%. The end was in sight. Unfortunately, that next 10% ended up taking as long as the first 80% to solve, and the final 10% will likely take decades if it's even possible.
It’s naive to call yourself beta tester. People who have access to beta are basically just a part of PR exercise by Tesla, that tries to hide lack of meaningful progress towards multiple missed deadlines.
You aren’t beta testing complex automation system that’s operating on public roads. To do any meaningful testing you should have defined operation domain, specific behaviors to test, direct line to the engineering team to report issues, etc, etc.
You aren’t beta testing complex automation system that’s operating on public roads. To do any meaningful testing you should have defined operation domain, specific behaviors to test, direct line to the engineering team to report issues, etc, etc.
You're thinking of QA testing. Beta testing is the final stage of testing before release and aims to test the system in as close as realistic environment as possible - that's why betas are often seeded to the general public, you want to find out if your system doesn't work on some configuration or circumstances that you didn't anticipate in internal testing. Better to have it fail for a limited number of users who signed up for that possibility than to have to do a Cyberpunk style recall.
> You're thinking of QA testing. Beta testing is the final stage of testing before release and aims to test the system in as close as realistic environment as possible - that's why betas are often seeded to the general public, you want to find out if your system doesn't work on some configuration or circumstances that you didn't anticipate in internal testing.
I'm thinking of being an unwitting test crash dummy on public roads and sidewalks for "Full Self Driving". They just slap the binding legal agreements and waivers on their drivers, but it is tantamount to fraud. I'd rather this didn't exist on public roads in such numbers, and that people don't have to pay to be free Tesla drivers, beta testers, and data points instead of being considered people.
I'm thinking of being an unwitting test crash dummy on public roads and sidewalks for "Full Self Driving". They just slap the binding legal agreements and waivers on their drivers, but it is tantamount to fraud. I'd rather this didn't exist on public roads in such numbers, and that people don't have to pay to be free Tesla drivers, beta testers, and data points instead of being considered people.
QA testing doesn't exist for FSD. And you're applying standards used to test apps to share dickpics to a software that's moving killing machines in shared environment with other people.
It's not acceptable to have it fail for limited number of users. As my kid who may get killed by the failure didn't sign up for it.
How would you feel if this was a standard for aircrafts? "Let's just push this change to a small portion of the fleet, and boy, if that plane crashes, it's soooo much better if all our planes would crash. High five, where's my bonus?!".
It's not acceptable to have it fail for limited number of users. As my kid who may get killed by the failure didn't sign up for it.
How would you feel if this was a standard for aircrafts? "Let's just push this change to a small portion of the fleet, and boy, if that plane crashes, it's soooo much better if all our planes would crash. High five, where's my bonus?!".
That’s not 3 years away, it’s lacking fundamental knowledge of the world, which might require GAI to begin with. It is just shitty drive assist features sold as much more.
it definitely needs a broad knowledge base about all things road/traffic/sign related, but that's definitely not G nor fundamental.
still a very hard problem.
but what it requires is a consistent world model. and if it detects that the current stretch of road is incomprehensible for its model it should safely disengage.
of course Tesla opted for the cowboy version of this, and turned the confidence of the model up .. without having a good model :|
still a very hard problem.
but what it requires is a consistent world model. and if it detects that the current stretch of road is incomprehensible for its model it should safely disengage.
of course Tesla opted for the cowboy version of this, and turned the confidence of the model up .. without having a good model :|
Agree I think 5-6 is more likely
3 years was my minimum, assuming they scrap their current model and begin working on one with real geo-spatial awareness now.
They have the data for it already.
To over-essentialize the problem with their approach, you simply cannot safely drive in Atlanta as a person who has never seen the streets. Humans are no exception. You have to know how each road works, and remember that for next time.
3 years was my minimum, assuming they scrap their current model and begin working on one with real geo-spatial awareness now.
They have the data for it already.
To over-essentialize the problem with their approach, you simply cannot safely drive in Atlanta as a person who has never seen the streets. Humans are no exception. You have to know how each road works, and remember that for next time.
Realistically its 20 years away.
Isn't Tesla supposed to be producing Optimus, their human-like android, next year?
Elon has been over-promising(i.e. flat out lying) about self-driving every year since.. 2014(there's a youtube video compilation of it)?
It seems like his strategy is to just come up with increasingly grandiose promises every year when he fails to deliver on his past promises. He's trapped in his swirling vortex of bullshit. Very worrying to see Karpathy leaving...
Elon has been over-promising(i.e. flat out lying) about self-driving every year since.. 2014(there's a youtube video compilation of it)?
It seems like his strategy is to just come up with increasingly grandiose promises every year when he fails to deliver on his past promises. He's trapped in his swirling vortex of bullshit. Very worrying to see Karpathy leaving...
I can forgive a lot of grandiosity as long as he keeps delivering more than his competitors.
Steve Jobs was also known for his “reality distortion field”, so maybe it comes with the territory.
That said, FSD progress seems asymptotic and the Optimus thing always seemed like bullshit.
Steve Jobs was also known for his “reality distortion field”, so maybe it comes with the territory.
That said, FSD progress seems asymptotic and the Optimus thing always seemed like bullshit.
Yes, but Steve Jobs delivered. He was rude and whatnot, but far from a fraud.
And Jobs' "reality distortion field" was primarily used to motivate / burn-out his team by demanding things that were technically very difficult but feasible (one of the original anecdotes was about reducing the boot-time for the original Macintosh), not something like solving AGI which FSD would ~apparently require.
I fully believe Elon and Jim Keller truly thought the deep learning HW delivered by Tesla was capable of self-driving in the early 201x time frame because, frankly, a lot of us did. More than likely, like the rest of us, they slowly came to see that the problem was much more difficult, and deep learning much less capable, than we had originally envisioned. Most of us didn't make a bunch of stupid promises to shareholders based on the original, incorrect assumptions though. Unlike Elon, we're able to admit we were wrong.
As someone who has worked for almost a decade with safety critical software, system design and functional safety analyses (both aerospace and automotive) etc. I don't think I ever met anyone who believed they would be anywhere near FSD/Level-5 what-have-you in the timeframe they presented.
The only ones I met who thought so was managers and software developers and ML-people, i.e. people who has never in their life seen the level of effort it actually takes to get something qualified for RTCA or other safety standards.
The only ones I met who thought so was managers and software developers and ML-people, i.e. people who has never in their life seen the level of effort it actually takes to get something qualified for RTCA or other safety standards.
> As someone who has worked for almost a decade with safety critical software, system design and functional safety analyses
And you were right, but most people aren't like you, and people like you don't drive the discussion on what trends are coming. The world needs more folks with your background. Generally no one wants to listen to folks like you because you come off as a Debbie Downer despite being correct most of the time.
And you were right, but most people aren't like you, and people like you don't drive the discussion on what trends are coming. The world needs more folks with your background. Generally no one wants to listen to folks like you because you come off as a Debbie Downer despite being correct most of the time.
Hah, to be fair I am somewhat of a Negative Nancy from time to time ;)
I think Mercedes has a reasonably sensible game-plan as far as I know. They currently have Level-3 on some highways in Germany which is still freaking hard to achieve, but still a narrow enough scope that you might be able to pull it off.
Time will tell, my bet is its still 10+ years off.
I think Mercedes has a reasonably sensible game-plan as far as I know. They currently have Level-3 on some highways in Germany which is still freaking hard to achieve, but still a narrow enough scope that you might be able to pull it off.
Time will tell, my bet is its still 10+ years off.
ML approach for FSD was critized right from the start by mobileeye CEO who gave a very thorough talk on why that couldn't possibly work. I think the talk is still on youtube.
The guy was critized for being old school and not having adapted to the latest tech (including by elon musk when he dumped mobileeye), but in fact he was just plain right.
i think the tech community owes him an apology.
The guy was critized for being old school and not having adapted to the latest tech (including by elon musk when he dumped mobileeye), but in fact he was just plain right.
i think the tech community owes him an apology.
Until any FSD solution delivers, it's far too early to vindicate the mobileye CEO. As it stands, even with additional (expensive) sensors, it seems very likely that ML will be required regardless. Running purely off sensors is not going to be feasible when braking distances alone are greater than the sensors will be able to accurately measure.
He did give a second talk a few years later explaining how the purely cognitive aspect may be handled by ML, and the total system probably going to end up being a mix.
But his fundamental opposition to ML for things related to safety was, IMHO absolutely correct.
But his fundamental opposition to ML for things related to safety was, IMHO absolutely correct.
Betting on vision-only self-driving was still a very bad bet, not only in hindsight. The competition all added additional sensors.
You don’t think SpaceX and Tesla have delivered quite a lot? FSD is really the only big project I can think of this far behind, and maybe Cybertruck. I don’t think it’s fair to ignore all his other accomplishments.
Solar rooftops hasn't gone anywhere. Boring company and Hyperloop didn't go anywhere.
Let's face it Neuralink isn't going anywhere too.
Tesla wasn't started by Musk and relies heavily on Panasonic battery developments and SpaceX and Starlink is good old fashioned ex-NASA and MIT talent.
What does Musk actually do? Annoy the SEC, go on Joe Rogan to smoke weed and have more girlfriends per hour than Gengis Khan?
Let's face it Neuralink isn't going anywhere too.
Tesla wasn't started by Musk and relies heavily on Panasonic battery developments and SpaceX and Starlink is good old fashioned ex-NASA and MIT talent.
What does Musk actually do? Annoy the SEC, go on Joe Rogan to smoke weed and have more girlfriends per hour than Gengis Khan?
Ok troll.
If you had a point you wouldn't be so flippant.
I made my point. Pointing to additional examples of grandiosity (some might call ambition) doesn't invalidate it. Neither do attacks on his character or lame arguments like "Tesla wasn't started by Musk" ignoring that he grew the company from 4 people to 100,000 people. Or that somehow recruiting large amounts of NASA and MIT talent is a bad thing? That's good leadership.
Seriously? Either you're trolling or you have some irrational hatred of the guy.
Seriously? Either you're trolling or you have some irrational hatred of the guy.
Oh you don't get what I mean. Yeah those things are good and I'm grateful for the progress SpaceX is making. What I want to know is how much is really attributable to Musk and what his Ego is really worth at the end of the day.
Lets remember the only reason he's around today is because some very rich people and NASA bailed him out. SpaceX left to just Musk's ability, ego and resources died in 2008.
He relies so much on mysticism for parting people from their money, eventually some people get fed up with the 'mysterious future and repeated failure' business model.
Expectations around his personal abilities should be lowered. His track record is not that great and it's a fact people call trolling. Sorry, not sorry.
The abilities that made spacex and tesla were hundreds of highly skilled engineers. Elon just raised money and is the face brand for japanese battery tech.
He's not worth worshipping and his incompetence is covered by idolatry.
Lets remember the only reason he's around today is because some very rich people and NASA bailed him out. SpaceX left to just Musk's ability, ego and resources died in 2008.
He relies so much on mysticism for parting people from their money, eventually some people get fed up with the 'mysterious future and repeated failure' business model.
Expectations around his personal abilities should be lowered. His track record is not that great and it's a fact people call trolling. Sorry, not sorry.
The abilities that made spacex and tesla were hundreds of highly skilled engineers. Elon just raised money and is the face brand for japanese battery tech.
He's not worth worshipping and his incompetence is covered by idolatry.
I would care more about NASA “bailing him out” if there were even a single other reusable orbital class rocket.
“Just raised money” is patently false. He’s known for being extremely hands on with both Tesla and SpaceX.
I maintain you’re either trolling or ignorant.
“Just raised money” is patently false. He’s known for being extremely hands on with both Tesla and SpaceX.
I maintain you’re either trolling or ignorant.
HN safely ignores anything positive about Elon because they prefer to think the richest man on the planet is both an idiot and also a failure in everything he does
he's been doing it on starlink too, but he gets a pass on HN for that one.
Isn't starlink pretty good though? I'm in a city, but I know people in rural areas that rave about it.
starlink is great for some. my comments aren't necessarily about whether it's overall good or not: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32095920
Do elaborate please. I always get that feeling but I'm not able to put it in words.
I've elaborated and gotten shouted down enough on the old threads that it's not worth repeating the whole thing. tldr:
1) the beams are not full, so many users are getting unrealistic service since they're not doing traffic shaping in those areas yet.
2) the areas that are full are seeing significantly worse speeds and latencies. see Reddit.
3) Elon said <20 ms pings will be normal. they're averaging 30-40ms in full areas.
4) it's not financially viable without many more users, higher costs, and cheaper launches.
1) the beams are not full, so many users are getting unrealistic service since they're not doing traffic shaping in those areas yet.
2) the areas that are full are seeing significantly worse speeds and latencies. see Reddit.
3) Elon said <20 ms pings will be normal. they're averaging 30-40ms in full areas.
4) it's not financially viable without many more users, higher costs, and cheaper launches.
I don't recall Tesla ever saying they were producing Optimus as a product any time soon. He's said prototype demo later this year. A prototype is very far from a finished product. As a product businesses/consumers can buy, at least 5+ years from now.
Production ready by 2023: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/08/elon-musk-says-tesla-is-aimi...
Elon in 2024: “by 2026 we’ll have actual, real teleportation”
Elon in 2026: “by 2028 we’ll have FTL drives”
Elon in 2028: “time machine!”
Elon in 2026: “by 2028 we’ll have FTL drives”
Elon in 2028: “time machine!”
> Elon in 2028: “time machine!”
Well, to be fair, he only has to hit _that_ goal - at which point he can go back in time at his leisure and fix all the others. And he could hit even the time machine goal as late as he wants, and it won't matter.
Well, to be fair, he only has to hit _that_ goal - at which point he can go back in time at his leisure and fix all the others. And he could hit even the time machine goal as late as he wants, and it won't matter.
This sounds like solid evidence for the fact that he won't ever get his hands on a time machine.
Or it'll be like the time machine in Primer, where you can't go back before the time machine was turned on.
That kinda only works if we’re the only civilization in the universe, right? What if some other civilization discovered it a long time ago?
Something something 'light cone.' If the machine was turned on a million years ago in another star system and then brought to Earth, the Primer model would put you in the other star system when you climb out of the machine. And then you'd need to make your way back to Earth. (It's unclear to me whether you would continue aging while sitting in the box and waiting for a million years to go by in reverse... But I assume you would.)
So I think the 'other civilization' thing only works if they're already approximately here with a running machine.
So I think the 'other civilization' thing only works if they're already approximately here with a running machine.
Then they might have been using it this whole time. If they kept to themselves we would have no idea.
[deleted]
I think we can tell for certain that time travel will never be invented because if it were to happen, then logically we’d already be experiencing people visiting us from the future.
> Elon in 2028: “time machine!”
We might well have one - back to the stone age based on the potential to escalate ongoing conflicts...
We might well have one - back to the stone age based on the potential to escalate ongoing conflicts...
Elon said they might have a prototype in 2022. He didn’t give any other timelines.
He said production ready by 2023. Read my other reply to a sibling post which already made the same claim you did.
Yeah, but Google's vision + lidar tech also doesn't seem any better at solving it either. They have been working on this problem the longest and they aren't even confident enough to produce a product with it. Google is probably the leader in AI and AI research. They are also the leader in data and mapping. They have billions of cash to play with. Yet it seem like they haven't gotten any closer at solving this problem as well.
They are just going about it better but not trying to selling it.
Any reason why everyone seems to be stuck on this problem?
They are just going about it better but not trying to selling it.
Any reason why everyone seems to be stuck on this problem?
Waymo and Cruise routinely have driverless cars on city streets. In California, all collisions, however minor, have to be reported, and DMV posts them on their web site.[1] Most are very minor. Here's a more serious one from last month:
"A Cruise autonomous vehicle ("Cruise AV") operating in driverless autonomous mode, was traveling eastbound on Geary Boulevard toward the intersection with Spruce Street. As it approached the intersection, the Cruise AV entered the left hand turn lane, turned the left turn signal on, and initiated a left turn on a green light onto Spruce Street. At the same time, a Toyota Prius traveling westbound in the rightmost bus and turn lane of Geary Boulevard approached the intersection in the right turn lane. The Toyota Prius was traveling approximately 40 mph in a 25 mph speed zone. The Cruise AV came to a stop before fully completing its turn onto Spruce Street due to the oncoming Toyota Prius, and the Toyota Prius entered the intersection traveling straight from the turn lane instead of turning. Shortly thereafter, the Toyota Prius made contact with the rear passenger side of the Cruise AV. The impact caused damage to the right rear door, panel, and wheel of the Cruise AV. Police and Emergency Medical Services were called to the scene, and a police report was filed. The Cruise AV was towed from the scene. Occupants of both vehicles received medical treatment for allegedly minor injuries."
Now, this shows the strengths and weaknesses of the system. The Cruise vehicle was making a left turn from Geary onto Spruce. Eastbound Geary at this point has a dedicated left turn lane cut out of a grass median, two through lanes, a right turn bus/taxi lane, and a bus stop lane. It detected cross traffic that shouldn't have been in that lane and was going too fast. So it stopped, and was hit.
It did not take evasive action, which might have worked. Or it might have made the situation worse. By not doing so, it did the legally correct thing. The other driver will be blamed for this. But it may not have done the thing most likely to avoid an accident. This is the real version of the trolley problem.
[1] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicle-industry-services/auto...
[2] https://earth.google.com/web/@37.78169591,-122.45337171
[3] https://patch.com/california/san-francisco/speed-limit-lower...
"A Cruise autonomous vehicle ("Cruise AV") operating in driverless autonomous mode, was traveling eastbound on Geary Boulevard toward the intersection with Spruce Street. As it approached the intersection, the Cruise AV entered the left hand turn lane, turned the left turn signal on, and initiated a left turn on a green light onto Spruce Street. At the same time, a Toyota Prius traveling westbound in the rightmost bus and turn lane of Geary Boulevard approached the intersection in the right turn lane. The Toyota Prius was traveling approximately 40 mph in a 25 mph speed zone. The Cruise AV came to a stop before fully completing its turn onto Spruce Street due to the oncoming Toyota Prius, and the Toyota Prius entered the intersection traveling straight from the turn lane instead of turning. Shortly thereafter, the Toyota Prius made contact with the rear passenger side of the Cruise AV. The impact caused damage to the right rear door, panel, and wheel of the Cruise AV. Police and Emergency Medical Services were called to the scene, and a police report was filed. The Cruise AV was towed from the scene. Occupants of both vehicles received medical treatment for allegedly minor injuries."
Now, this shows the strengths and weaknesses of the system. The Cruise vehicle was making a left turn from Geary onto Spruce. Eastbound Geary at this point has a dedicated left turn lane cut out of a grass median, two through lanes, a right turn bus/taxi lane, and a bus stop lane. It detected cross traffic that shouldn't have been in that lane and was going too fast. So it stopped, and was hit.
It did not take evasive action, which might have worked. Or it might have made the situation worse. By not doing so, it did the legally correct thing. The other driver will be blamed for this. But it may not have done the thing most likely to avoid an accident. This is the real version of the trolley problem.
[1] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicle-industry-services/auto...
[2] https://earth.google.com/web/@37.78169591,-122.45337171
[3] https://patch.com/california/san-francisco/speed-limit-lower...
I think the way I would say it is, after a few tens to hundreds of thousands of such events, we'll be able to estimate the parameters of the human preference functions associated with a non-fatal trolley problem (the real trolley problem is irrelevant to the car ML folks, they are not aiming to maximize global utility) and that will help guide our confidence in rolling out more.
For all the woe and gloom in the news reporting, Google (and Cruise)'s rollouts have been more or less what I expected: no enormous accidents that were clearly caused by a computer, but instead, a small number of small accidents usually due to the human driver of another vehicle doing something wrong. That seems to lead towards greater acceptance of self-driving cars and confidence that they are roughly as good as an attentive newbie.
The next big situation, I think, will be some really large-scale pileup with massive damages and deaths, and a press cycle where the self-driving car gets blamed. But the self-driving car collected a forensic quality audit log, which of course will aid the police in determining which human caused the accident.
For all the woe and gloom in the news reporting, Google (and Cruise)'s rollouts have been more or less what I expected: no enormous accidents that were clearly caused by a computer, but instead, a small number of small accidents usually due to the human driver of another vehicle doing something wrong. That seems to lead towards greater acceptance of self-driving cars and confidence that they are roughly as good as an attentive newbie.
The next big situation, I think, will be some really large-scale pileup with massive damages and deaths, and a press cycle where the self-driving car gets blamed. But the self-driving car collected a forensic quality audit log, which of course will aid the police in determining which human caused the accident.
I've been reading those DMV reports for years, and there are clear patterns which repeat. One is where an autonomous vehicle started to enter an intersection with poor sight lines to the cross street. Sensing cross traffic, it stopped, and was then rear-ended by a human-driven vehicle that was following too closely. Waymo has that happen twice at the same intersection in Mountain View. There's a tree in the median strip there which blocks the view from their roof sensor until the vehicle starts to enter the intersection. So the Waymo system advances cautiously until it has good sensor coverage, then accelerates or stops as required.
Humans tend not to do that, and, as a result, some fraction of the time they get T-boned.
Humans tend not to do that, and, as a result, some fraction of the time they get T-boned.
> Humans tend not to do that
AI should absolutely mimic the behavior of real (good) drivers.
Although that's not what you're describing here, another problem for AI could result from it knowing more than an average driver; for example, if a high-mounted LIDAR were able to see around corners and let the car decide it's "safe" to do a turn that no human would attempt for lack of visibility, that could cause problems.
(Also, it's surprising that an autonomous car doesn't detect that another car is following it too closely, and slows down appropriately in anticipation. How is this not taken into account.)
AI should absolutely mimic the behavior of real (good) drivers.
Although that's not what you're describing here, another problem for AI could result from it knowing more than an average driver; for example, if a high-mounted LIDAR were able to see around corners and let the car decide it's "safe" to do a turn that no human would attempt for lack of visibility, that could cause problems.
(Also, it's surprising that an autonomous car doesn't detect that another car is following it too closely, and slows down appropriately in anticipation. How is this not taken into account.)
> This is the real version of the trolley problem
An autonomous vehicle has to protect its occupants at the expense of everything else (or, at the very least, appear to do so in a convincing manner), because otherwise no one will step inside.
(At the very least, if a machine is going to sacrifice me or my family to save a third party, I need to know what hierarchy it is following, and how it was decided and by whom.)
But what this incident seems to illustrate is that it's difficult for a self-driving car to share the road with human drivers, and behave like a human -- meaning, allowing human drivers anticipate what it will do.
I drive a motorcycle and a bike in Paris; the reason I'm still alive is because after so many years of this I can tell what all the other cars will do at all times, before they know it themselves.
But an autonomous vehicle that would behave so differently from a human driver as to be unpredictable, would be terrifying.
An autonomous vehicle has to protect its occupants at the expense of everything else (or, at the very least, appear to do so in a convincing manner), because otherwise no one will step inside.
(At the very least, if a machine is going to sacrifice me or my family to save a third party, I need to know what hierarchy it is following, and how it was decided and by whom.)
But what this incident seems to illustrate is that it's difficult for a self-driving car to share the road with human drivers, and behave like a human -- meaning, allowing human drivers anticipate what it will do.
I drive a motorcycle and a bike in Paris; the reason I'm still alive is because after so many years of this I can tell what all the other cars will do at all times, before they know it themselves.
But an autonomous vehicle that would behave so differently from a human driver as to be unpredictable, would be terrifying.
Totally agree; beginner and truly dangerous drivers share a quality: unpredictability. Even the most aggressive, fast drivers can easily be accounted for when defensive driving. Unpredictable drivers are how collisions happen when speed and weather are not factors.
Even the simple automatic emergency braking features in my model 3 result in some dangerously unpredictable behaviour at times. I have them set as off and insensitive as possible and they still do some awful stuff from time to time. I was on a road trip in northern Ontario this week passing a service vehicle moving very slowly along the shoulder on the right. I was doing 105 km/hr in the right lane of a 3 lane road: 2 lanes in my direction and 1 opposing. The 2nd lane switches directions every 5-10 km to serve as a passing zone. Posted speed limit is 80 km/hr, but prevailing speeds on this road are 90-110 and you’d never be ticketed for anything under 110 in this region. There was a truck gaining on me coming up on the left, so I signalled left and partially moved over to give the service vehicle some room, but didn’t fully take the left lane to let the faster truck know I would let them through as they came past. Very common pattern on this type of road and circumstance. The AEB slammed on the brakes as I came level with the service vehicle despite the fact there was plenty of space to complete the pass. I wasn’t expecting my car to slow down let alone apply emergency braking force, so in my surprise I nearly collided with the service vehicle. I have no idea what the other drivers thought, but neither of them could have possibly been predicting or expecting me to slam on the brakes. I was really upset with the car since it took a highly dangerous action in an otherwise perfectly safe and common situation. And that was the automatic stuff that can’t be turned off; I don’t let autopilot drive ever because it is the worst type of driver: unpredictable. The choices it made in the extremely short time I tested it about lane placement, follow distance, defensive driving (and the complete lack thereof), and general behavioural clues provided to other drivers were genuinely terrifying.
Even the simple automatic emergency braking features in my model 3 result in some dangerously unpredictable behaviour at times. I have them set as off and insensitive as possible and they still do some awful stuff from time to time. I was on a road trip in northern Ontario this week passing a service vehicle moving very slowly along the shoulder on the right. I was doing 105 km/hr in the right lane of a 3 lane road: 2 lanes in my direction and 1 opposing. The 2nd lane switches directions every 5-10 km to serve as a passing zone. Posted speed limit is 80 km/hr, but prevailing speeds on this road are 90-110 and you’d never be ticketed for anything under 110 in this region. There was a truck gaining on me coming up on the left, so I signalled left and partially moved over to give the service vehicle some room, but didn’t fully take the left lane to let the faster truck know I would let them through as they came past. Very common pattern on this type of road and circumstance. The AEB slammed on the brakes as I came level with the service vehicle despite the fact there was plenty of space to complete the pass. I wasn’t expecting my car to slow down let alone apply emergency braking force, so in my surprise I nearly collided with the service vehicle. I have no idea what the other drivers thought, but neither of them could have possibly been predicting or expecting me to slam on the brakes. I was really upset with the car since it took a highly dangerous action in an otherwise perfectly safe and common situation. And that was the automatic stuff that can’t be turned off; I don’t let autopilot drive ever because it is the worst type of driver: unpredictable. The choices it made in the extremely short time I tested it about lane placement, follow distance, defensive driving (and the complete lack thereof), and general behavioural clues provided to other drivers were genuinely terrifying.
> By not doing so, it did the legally correct thing. The other driver will be blamed for this. But it may not have done the thing most likely to avoid an accident. This is the real version of the trolley problem.
It performed the only sane solution to the problem - stopping. You can't possibly predict what the most likely thing is to avoid an accident, because there is a multitude of factors beyond just 2 cars moving towards each other. Are there pedestrians present? Other parked cars? Storefronts with customers inside? How close to the sidewalk? Trees? Construction/Debris?
Once we get AI working better than 99.9% of humans on roads with speed limits of up to 30 mph - we can expand it to faster roads and introduce advanced behaviors. But for now, stopping in uncertainty is the best available option.
It performed the only sane solution to the problem - stopping. You can't possibly predict what the most likely thing is to avoid an accident, because there is a multitude of factors beyond just 2 cars moving towards each other. Are there pedestrians present? Other parked cars? Storefronts with customers inside? How close to the sidewalk? Trees? Construction/Debris?
Once we get AI working better than 99.9% of humans on roads with speed limits of up to 30 mph - we can expand it to faster roads and introduce advanced behaviors. But for now, stopping in uncertainty is the best available option.
> It performed the only sane solution to the problem - stopping. You can't possibly predict what the most likely thing is to avoid an accident, because there is a multitude of factors beyond just 2 cars moving towards each other. Are there pedestrians present? Other parked cars? Storefronts with customers inside? How close to the sidewalk? Trees? Construction/Debris?
Not only there are other factors, but you also need to predict what the other human driver will do. As stated in a sibling comment this is a huge part of safe driving.
> Once we get AI working better than 99.9% of humans on roads
But what you stated above require AGI, so what's the plan to get there? It's even more blurry than commercial fusion at that point.
Not only there are other factors, but you also need to predict what the other human driver will do. As stated in a sibling comment this is a huge part of safe driving.
> Once we get AI working better than 99.9% of humans on roads
But what you stated above require AGI, so what's the plan to get there? It's even more blurry than commercial fusion at that point.
> In California, all collisions, however minor, have to be reported.
Just to be clear, this statement only applies to AVs, right?
Just to be clear, this statement only applies to AVs, right?
Yes, this applies to autonomous vehicles being tested in the state. Tesla skirts this rule by reporting their system (including the supposedly ‘Full Self-Driving’ beta) as level 2 driver assistance features. That marks them out of scope for the regulation of reporting collisions (and crucially system disconnections).
Yes.
Because self-driving has a bunch of tricky edge cases and most of them will kill people. Problems with hundreds of important edge cases cannot be solved by simply throwing more training data at the problem; that's how you solve AI problems in a "dumb" manner, and it works for lots of problems (like recognizing dogs in images) -- but not for self-driving.
To solve the self-driving problem we need "smart" A.I., which means we have to approach it with systematic engineering, and the solution will probably involve some combination of better sensors, introspectable neural nets, symbolic A.I., and logical A.I.
To solve the self-driving problem we need "smart" A.I., which means we have to approach it with systematic engineering, and the solution will probably involve some combination of better sensors, introspectable neural nets, symbolic A.I., and logical A.I.
I remain convinced that "real" self driving (as in: go ahead and sleep in the backseat) will never happen without changes to road infrastructure and possibly some sort of segregation between robot-driven cars and people-driven cars.
Things like traffic signals that actively communicate their status to nearby robot cars (more than just a red lamp that can be occluded by weather, other vehicles, or mud on the camera lens). Or lane markings that are more than just reflective paint, but can be sensed via RF. Rules around temporary construction that dictate the manner of signage and cone placement that the robot cars can understand. The cones might have little transponders in them, I don't know.
But without a massive leap forward in AI capability, our current road system—optimized for human drivers over the past century—is not going to work.
If we can't make the cars just as smart as an alert and capable driver, then maybe we need to meet halfway and make the roads a littler "dumber" (simpler) to accommodate the robots.
Things like traffic signals that actively communicate their status to nearby robot cars (more than just a red lamp that can be occluded by weather, other vehicles, or mud on the camera lens). Or lane markings that are more than just reflective paint, but can be sensed via RF. Rules around temporary construction that dictate the manner of signage and cone placement that the robot cars can understand. The cones might have little transponders in them, I don't know.
But without a massive leap forward in AI capability, our current road system—optimized for human drivers over the past century—is not going to work.
If we can't make the cars just as smart as an alert and capable driver, then maybe we need to meet halfway and make the roads a littler "dumber" (simpler) to accommodate the robots.
> Things like traffic signals that actively communicate their status to nearby robot cars (more than just a red lamp that can be occluded by weather, other vehicles, or mud on the camera lens). Or lane markings that are more than just reflective paint, but can be sensed via RF. Rules around temporary construction that dictate the manner of signage and cone placement that the robot cars can understand. The cones might have little transponders in them, I don't know.
The problem you then face is that any of those could be forged / faked without some kind of way of securely validating the message in some way. You could cause absolute chaos by driving down the road broadcasting false messages. It's a little harder to hack and modify traffic light signals, for example. But we've also seen hackers screw up Tesla cars by sticking stuff on the back of their car to deliberate mislead it based on vision.
The problem you then face is that any of those could be forged / faked without some kind of way of securely validating the message in some way. You could cause absolute chaos by driving down the road broadcasting false messages. It's a little harder to hack and modify traffic light signals, for example. But we've also seen hackers screw up Tesla cars by sticking stuff on the back of their car to deliberate mislead it based on vision.
> You could cause absolute chaos by driving down the road broadcasting false messages
Even without self-driving cars, an "attacker" can go into a theater and yell "fire" and cause a stampede.
They can get a high-viz vest and clipboard, and stand in intersections directing cars to take detours they don't need and holding up traffic.
My point here is that society has a lot of trust baked in. We trust people don't just yell "fire" without reason. Just because it's FSD cars doesn't mean people will start broadcasting the equivalent of "fire" constantly. It's already easy to cause accidents.
Even without self-driving cars, an "attacker" can go into a theater and yell "fire" and cause a stampede.
They can get a high-viz vest and clipboard, and stand in intersections directing cars to take detours they don't need and holding up traffic.
My point here is that society has a lot of trust baked in. We trust people don't just yell "fire" without reason. Just because it's FSD cars doesn't mean people will start broadcasting the equivalent of "fire" constantly. It's already easy to cause accidents.
Those attacks don't scale. They're also tied to a person or people who need to be physically present, making it possible to arrest them.
The consequences of potential attacks on centrally-orchestrated traffic are a lot more severe. Hack the control node, and you can stop traffic nation-wide. Or cause mass accidents that overwhelm first responders. And they can be executed by anyone, anywhere in the world, for a cost within range of many medium-size corporations (let alone nation states).
I won't comment on the challenges of the approach Tesla et al. are currently taking, but I don't think central control is the panacea commenters in this thread are making it out to be (and I'm personally glad this isn't the route we're pursuing).
The consequences of potential attacks on centrally-orchestrated traffic are a lot more severe. Hack the control node, and you can stop traffic nation-wide. Or cause mass accidents that overwhelm first responders. And they can be executed by anyone, anywhere in the world, for a cost within range of many medium-size corporations (let alone nation states).
I won't comment on the challenges of the approach Tesla et al. are currently taking, but I don't think central control is the panacea commenters in this thread are making it out to be (and I'm personally glad this isn't the route we're pursuing).
An attacker can already do this, at scale. Whether it be overriding traffic lights to show green in all directions, or taking down critical air traffic control systems.
It’s like arguing that we can’t possibly build autonomous cars because then someone might turn it into an autonomous bomb.
Keep in mind that solving this is “worth” about 40,000 lives a year in the US - nearly $1 trillion in economic damages a year in life and property.
Bad things can always be done with good tools. As always, you provide layers of protection that make sense and in the end must rely on the underlying fabric of civilization to persevere.
It’s like arguing that we can’t possibly build autonomous cars because then someone might turn it into an autonomous bomb.
Keep in mind that solving this is “worth” about 40,000 lives a year in the US - nearly $1 trillion in economic damages a year in life and property.
Bad things can always be done with good tools. As always, you provide layers of protection that make sense and in the end must rely on the underlying fabric of civilization to persevere.
> You could cause absolute chaos by driving down the road broadcasting false messages.
I’ve personally tested creating a fake toad sign and my tesla reads it as a real sign just fine.
I wonder what happens to autopilot on a 70mph freeway when it encounters a 5mph limit sign…
I’ve personally tested creating a fake toad sign and my tesla reads it as a real sign just fine.
I wonder what happens to autopilot on a 70mph freeway when it encounters a 5mph limit sign…
Bad bad things.
I've had my Tesla on a highway either lose GPS precision and believe I was on an adjacent local road..
It immediately reduced speed from 60mph to 25mph .. aggressively.
This falls into a pattern of Tesla autopilot/NoA where it just doesn't seem to have much memory or foresight.
For example the car is driving itself on the highway, it knows it's been on the highway, for 20 minutes. I am not even in the exit lane, it knows what lane I am in. How could it think I am suddenly on the local road below the highway based solely on the GPS pin movement in the span of a second, without having moved to the exit lane and gone down the exit ramp?
For an example of lack of foresight - the car will happily speed towards an obvious semi-distant slowdown right until it needs to aggressively break from 60mph down to 30mph as it approaches following distance of the nearest car. I also find it can get really weird in stop&go traffic, not easing into speed, down to a stop very well as if it has only GO or STOP.
It immediately reduced speed from 60mph to 25mph .. aggressively.
This falls into a pattern of Tesla autopilot/NoA where it just doesn't seem to have much memory or foresight.
For example the car is driving itself on the highway, it knows it's been on the highway, for 20 minutes. I am not even in the exit lane, it knows what lane I am in. How could it think I am suddenly on the local road below the highway based solely on the GPS pin movement in the span of a second, without having moved to the exit lane and gone down the exit ramp?
For an example of lack of foresight - the car will happily speed towards an obvious semi-distant slowdown right until it needs to aggressively break from 60mph down to 30mph as it approaches following distance of the nearest car. I also find it can get really weird in stop&go traffic, not easing into speed, down to a stop very well as if it has only GO or STOP.
> For example the car is driving itself on the highway, it knows it's been on the highway, for 20 minutes. I am not even in the exit lane, it knows what lane I am in. How could it think I am suddenly on the local road below the highway based solely on the GPS pin movement in the span of a second, without having moved to the exit lane and gone down the exit ramp?
Oh wow. This happens often with a car-mounted GPS (or on a phone) and it's pretty annoying. Sometimes the GPS instructs you to do a U-turn at the next available fork in the road, and it takes a moment to understand what's going on.
But in a self-driving car it's terrifying! And absurd.
Oh wow. This happens often with a car-mounted GPS (or on a phone) and it's pretty annoying. Sometimes the GPS instructs you to do a U-turn at the next available fork in the road, and it takes a moment to understand what's going on.
But in a self-driving car it's terrifying! And absurd.
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This is, of course, something that regular old meat intelligence is susceptible to as well. Remove stop signs, and you’ll cause accidents.
> any of those could be forged / faked without some kind of way of securely validating the message
Any reason routine crypto methods would not solve this? Seems like one of the easier parts to me.
Any reason routine crypto methods would not solve this? Seems like one of the easier parts to me.
Who controls the signing keys and the whole signing process? What about key revocation if someone steals the key? Will a municipality in Texas really be willing to not be allowed to create a new stoplight without approval from the federal agency in charge of the keys? What’s to stop someone stealing a “real” stoplight from bumfuck nowhere and putting it in the middle of the 101 at rush hour? What about replay attacks? What about signal jamming? Etc. etc.
You raise some genuine possible concerns but generically I'd probably tend to just say, "laws will stop them" just like they already stop someone deliberately endangering lives by placing a real fake stop light in the middle of the 101 at rush hour.
The real concern would be whether someone can engineer a terrorist level mass scale attack but as long as it requires physical tampering that adds up to a tremendous amount of work. So if the signalling is largely burned into fixed infastructure it eliminates a lot of that or at least sets the bar high enough that its probably more work than various other types of attack that are likely to be just as impactful.
The real concern would be whether someone can engineer a terrorist level mass scale attack but as long as it requires physical tampering that adds up to a tremendous amount of work. So if the signalling is largely burned into fixed infastructure it eliminates a lot of that or at least sets the bar high enough that its probably more work than various other types of attack that are likely to be just as impactful.
ADS Mode B (used everywhere for airplanes) already works this way, and there is no authentication or signing whatsoever. It's a single global broadcast frequency (1090MHz).
> The problem you then face is that any of those could be forged / faked without some kind of way of securely validating the message in some way. You could cause absolute chaos by driving down the road broadcasting false messages.
Sounds like a job for...blockchain.
Sounds like a job for...blockchain.
> I remain convinced that "real" self driving (as in: go ahead and sleep in the backseat) will never happen without changes to road infrastructure and possibly some sort of segregation between robot-driven cars and people-driven cars.
Yep, I talk to people working in traffic engineering, and their mindset is always building new road tech and road-side and cloud infra to support autonomous driving. They have no expectation of fully autonomous vehicle without road and infrastructure assistance.
And from historical perspective, the coming of automotive and the replacement of horse and other animal carts, are exactly facilitated by the road transformation; which has been the single largest scale infrastructure in human history.
It makes no sense that an even bigger transformation of the vehicle would require less drastic road transformation.
Yep, I talk to people working in traffic engineering, and their mindset is always building new road tech and road-side and cloud infra to support autonomous driving. They have no expectation of fully autonomous vehicle without road and infrastructure assistance.
And from historical perspective, the coming of automotive and the replacement of horse and other animal carts, are exactly facilitated by the road transformation; which has been the single largest scale infrastructure in human history.
It makes no sense that an even bigger transformation of the vehicle would require less drastic road transformation.
Which is funny because everything sort of comes back to trains.
The very marginal benefits of laying road vs track more or less disappear when automation in play.
Is is really worth maintaining the ability to go off road/track when you’re not even driving anymore?
The very marginal benefits of laying road vs track more or less disappear when automation in play.
Is is really worth maintaining the ability to go off road/track when you’re not even driving anymore?
Yes. You bring up a great point: With some infrastructure improvements we could have "virtual" trains. Vehicles would talk to each other on the highway and organize into closely-spaced convoys. Only the lead vehicle would need an active human driver; the rest could follow at extremely close distances--drafting off each other--and would not need a human driver (or their human drivers could go off-duty). The point of using asphalt rather than rails is that it makes it easy to switch between individual car mode and automated virtual train mode.
This idea is not new and it mostly applies to freight convoys but I think it also has merit for ad hoc passenger car convoys on long highway trips.
This idea is not new and it mostly applies to freight convoys but I think it also has merit for ad hoc passenger car convoys on long highway trips.
> With some infrastructure improvements we could have "virtual" trains. Vehicles would talk to each other on the highway
I think the idea is to get rid of the roads and have the robo vehicles travel instead on tracks. That increases fuel efficiency and bypasses a lot of AI challenges.
I think the idea is to get rid of the roads and have the robo vehicles travel instead on tracks. That increases fuel efficiency and bypasses a lot of AI challenges.
Not only that. Overhead electrical solves a lot of the mining/environmental impact of batteries.
It’s the low-key case that Elon will be remembered poorly (like Robert Moses’ rapidly degrading legacy) for
1) Having the wrong vision for EVs (but successfully executing non it anyway)
2) Making space travel cheap (thereby increasing the amount of carbon energy dedicated to it) without really improving an average human’s quality of life
It’s the low-key case that Elon will be remembered poorly (like Robert Moses’ rapidly degrading legacy) for
1) Having the wrong vision for EVs (but successfully executing non it anyway)
2) Making space travel cheap (thereby increasing the amount of carbon energy dedicated to it) without really improving an average human’s quality of life
Plus messing up astronomy and maybe helping bring about Kessler syndrome. Good point about overhead electrical.
Exactly. All edge cases disappear when you lay tracks on the road.
I wonder if all the "hype" from the Ubers and Googles about imminent self-driving is not actively harmful in that it is probably sucking out the oxygen from any perceived need to implement these things.
This is mostly what I believe to be the case, and as I argue here[0], it doesn't even make any sense.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31968482
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31968482
What you are describing is essentially railway system.
It’s almost as if we should invest in public transportation and try to reduce cars rather than make a train car for each individual!
But for people, in the same way as for parcels, power, cable, fiber-optic, there's the last mile problem. Europe has almost solved it with high speed trains and efficient city transit. Then, it solves nothing for all those folks living in rural areas and having to drive f-150s.
> Then, it solves nothing for all those folks living in rural areas and having to drive f-150s.
Fortunately thats not a lot of people.
When electricity was being rolled out, Westinghouse and Edison didn’t bellyache about not being able to provide electricity to rural areas. They electrified all the cities.
Rural areas will just never be able to pay for modern infrastructure. And… thats ok, its not a lot of people.
Fortunately thats not a lot of people.
When electricity was being rolled out, Westinghouse and Edison didn’t bellyache about not being able to provide electricity to rural areas. They electrified all the cities.
Rural areas will just never be able to pay for modern infrastructure. And… thats ok, its not a lot of people.
Perhaps the urban areas should grow their own food?
I think the point was that in rural areas they'll still use cars or something, because it's way more efficient for the low density there. In cities, you would switch away from cars as much as possible. I don't think the commenter meant we'd "abandon the hicks" or something rude like that; the rural folks who farm and do other important jobs are a crucial part of our society for sure.
I’m going to guess you don’t live in Europe? Plenty of cars here.
But it is solving the last-mile problem
> Things like traffic signals that actively communicate their status
This is a thing in Europe, and even some US cities - my Audi has traffic sign recognition and when at a compatible intersection knows what the light is at (by radio, not by light), and how long until it changes (will show a countdown in seconds til the next light change).
This is a thing in Europe, and even some US cities - my Audi has traffic sign recognition and when at a compatible intersection knows what the light is at (by radio, not by light), and how long until it changes (will show a countdown in seconds til the next light change).
> optimized for human drivers over the past century
Are our roads really? Most in cities over a certain age are just haphazard relics of times gone by, and don't get me started on "stroads" which are good for nobody
Are our roads really? Most in cities over a certain age are just haphazard relics of times gone by, and don't get me started on "stroads" which are good for nobody
> If we can't make the cars just as smart as an alert and capable driver, then maybe we need to meet halfway and make the roads a littler "dumber" (simpler) to accommodate the robots.
This aspect of FSD has always fascinated me and I'm a little surprised it doesn't get more discussion. Meeting halfway. At what point could/would/should FSD influence the environment around it?
For example - a poorly painted road sign*. Tesla/Waymo could say "We cannot support L5 FSD on this road until you fix this sign." If it meant a step forward in autonomy, Tesla/Waymo could even offer to share the cost of that improvement!
There are a million reasons why implementation of that would be problematic. Costs and incentives would be all over the place. But I am more interested in the framing: The machines are the ones that need to adapt. Which is essentially hoping for continued hardware improvements or a spaghetti mess of if/else statements. ie "do this weird thing if you see this other weird thing in front of you". Can we get rid of the weird thing and avoid the engineering challenge altogether?
* Yes, this is an overly simple example. Some environment changes could be so large that they would require a full redesign of a city/buildings/traffic patterns. But surely there are classes of improvements where some are easier than others.
This aspect of FSD has always fascinated me and I'm a little surprised it doesn't get more discussion. Meeting halfway. At what point could/would/should FSD influence the environment around it?
For example - a poorly painted road sign*. Tesla/Waymo could say "We cannot support L5 FSD on this road until you fix this sign." If it meant a step forward in autonomy, Tesla/Waymo could even offer to share the cost of that improvement!
There are a million reasons why implementation of that would be problematic. Costs and incentives would be all over the place. But I am more interested in the framing: The machines are the ones that need to adapt. Which is essentially hoping for continued hardware improvements or a spaghetti mess of if/else statements. ie "do this weird thing if you see this other weird thing in front of you". Can we get rid of the weird thing and avoid the engineering challenge altogether?
* Yes, this is an overly simple example. Some environment changes could be so large that they would require a full redesign of a city/buildings/traffic patterns. But surely there are classes of improvements where some are easier than others.
massive AI leap? but we can ask language models about how to drive through an intersection and it will list the steps correctly (and wildly incorrectly at other times)
what's missing is combining this kind of "human concept relations" model (language, rules, minimal reasoning, text encoded human preferences) with perception, and safety (which means that the model should know that if other cars are driving just fine in front then it's unlikely that the road is on fire, or that the low certainty crack in the road is okay if two other cars already went over it unimpeded, if the road marks and the signs are inconsistent, but other vehicles have formed a slow but consistent pattern of traffic then that's the local ruleset, and so on)
it's still a very hard problem. and the required amount of compute is still bonkers, the required amount of data and training is still absolutely huge, and the whole problem of safely disengaging, handling the asleep/drunk passengers (likely target audience after all)... are all hard problems too :)
what's missing is combining this kind of "human concept relations" model (language, rules, minimal reasoning, text encoded human preferences) with perception, and safety (which means that the model should know that if other cars are driving just fine in front then it's unlikely that the road is on fire, or that the low certainty crack in the road is okay if two other cars already went over it unimpeded, if the road marks and the signs are inconsistent, but other vehicles have formed a slow but consistent pattern of traffic then that's the local ruleset, and so on)
it's still a very hard problem. and the required amount of compute is still bonkers, the required amount of data and training is still absolutely huge, and the whole problem of safely disengaging, handling the asleep/drunk passengers (likely target audience after all)... are all hard problems too :)
You can get a self driving car ride and sleep in the back in Arizona, from Waymo. If you're on a special list, it sounds like you can do it in SF today with Cruise. Your claim is manifestly false.
`possibly some sort of segregation between robot-driven cars and people-driven cars.` just build out public transit at that point, what's the difference.
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What if we just, you know, walk a bit more instead?
Or even cycle? I hear great things.
Or even cycle? I hear great things.
The pattern of zoning and development that the U.S. has used for the past 70 years assumes that nobody wants to walk or cycle anywhere and that they feel so strongly about it that they want cities to be built such that people will die if they attempt to do so. I grew up in a neighborhood where the elementary school was about half a mile away... on the other side of a five lane highway with no crosswalk and no sidewalk on the other side. Zero chance to assert your independence as a kid. Zero chance to live responsibly as an adult.
A part of the reason people wish they had FSD so badly is because they want to be rescued from this fundamental failure of NA-style urban planning that necessities driving, all the time, across both short and long distances.
A part of the reason people wish they had FSD so badly is because they want to be rescued from this fundamental failure of NA-style urban planning that necessities driving, all the time, across both short and long distances.
This is changing though. Cities are getting bikes and bike lanes. They’re building dense developments close to transit. ebikes + protected bike lanes + TOD might be the solution.
I certainly hope so, and I've since moved to a place that is much more friendly for cycling; however if you go back to where I'm from (which for the purposes of this topic really could be one of any untold hundreds of counties in the U.S.), there are no signs of improvement or change. It's just the largest urban cores that seem to slowly be getting it. There is a breathtakingly large amount of suburban sprawl where the conversation about this topic is completely broken, and for the people willing to admit there even is a problem, they believe that the solution is one more lane, or one more stop sign, or just educating drivers a little bit better and nobody wants to talk about things like traffic calming, or upzoning, or cycle paths or anything else that makes anything other than car trips safe and desirable.
Good point
Clearly you live in a large city and find everything you want there.
This is a bit of an oddity of US urban planning. The US has maybe 10 big to very big cities, where people can get around on foot, and then a host of what are called cities in the US but are essentially just collections of shopping centres, office parks, industrial estates, vaguely near each other.
It doesn't work like that in most countries; small cities and towns are navigable on foot and public transport.
It doesn't work like that in most countries; small cities and towns are navigable on foot and public transport.
Public transport often means buses, though, so self-driving AI is still very relevant there.
If you could replace double-decker buses that arrive every 15–30 minutes with self-driving minibuses that arrive every 3–5 minutes, that would be great! (for everyone except the bus drivers who lose their jobs)
If you could replace double-decker buses that arrive every 15–30 minutes with self-driving minibuses that arrive every 3–5 minutes, that would be great! (for everyone except the bus drivers who lose their jobs)
Typically in cities the biggest constraint on bus frequency is bus congestion at bus stops (and to a lesser extent congestion in bus lanes), not number of buses. To the point where banning cash on buses can meaningfully increase system throughput, as it decreases lag time at bus stops. This can be alleviated with planning where people have to transfer to get anywhere (moving buses out of chokepoints) but in practice people don't like that.
Actually, I suspect this makes self-driving a particularly _bad_ solution for city buses; getting into the bus stops takes some manoeuvring, particularly when there are other buses there.
One place that self-driving buses could be interesting (and indeed there are already a couple of systems like this) is on fully/near-fully segregated lines, where they don't have to deal with human-operated traffic. Another would be small towns, but you're looking at full magic level 5 at that point.
Actually, I suspect this makes self-driving a particularly _bad_ solution for city buses; getting into the bus stops takes some manoeuvring, particularly when there are other buses there.
One place that self-driving buses could be interesting (and indeed there are already a couple of systems like this) is on fully/near-fully segregated lines, where they don't have to deal with human-operated traffic. Another would be small towns, but you're looking at full magic level 5 at that point.
I think a lot of those problems are solvable in principle, although unfortunately it’s probably not practical and incremental enough to actually happen...
I’m envisaging a system of minibuses, either AI-driven or at least dynamically directed by a central control system. People would use a phone app to book journeys; the app would tell them where to get on and where to transfer, and the central control system would optimise the fleet to get everyone where they need to go.
With much smaller buses, and electronic tap-in rather than cash payments, stops should be fast enough that buses can just queue up in order at each stop, hopefully mitigating the parking difficulties you mentioned (modulo breakdowns, medical emergencies, etc). Likewise, if transfers are fast and easy, hopefully they’d be less objectionable to travellers.
Requiring a phone isn’t ideal as it limits accessibility and privacy. There could also be pre-printed tickets, with QR codes that you scan at the bus stop to see the route info.
Why minibuses and not just taxis? I suspect there’s a good balance to be made between efficient road usage (buses) and efficient routing for each traveller (cars).
I’m also envisaging that if this system were to take off, personal cars could be gradually removed from city centres! Again, that makes life easier for the AI vehicles.
This is all pie-in-the-sky stuff, I know; but I do feel like there are ways we could radically improve city transport mostly using existing roads, rather than building new rails or tunnels.
I’m envisaging a system of minibuses, either AI-driven or at least dynamically directed by a central control system. People would use a phone app to book journeys; the app would tell them where to get on and where to transfer, and the central control system would optimise the fleet to get everyone where they need to go.
With much smaller buses, and electronic tap-in rather than cash payments, stops should be fast enough that buses can just queue up in order at each stop, hopefully mitigating the parking difficulties you mentioned (modulo breakdowns, medical emergencies, etc). Likewise, if transfers are fast and easy, hopefully they’d be less objectionable to travellers.
Requiring a phone isn’t ideal as it limits accessibility and privacy. There could also be pre-printed tickets, with QR codes that you scan at the bus stop to see the route info.
Why minibuses and not just taxis? I suspect there’s a good balance to be made between efficient road usage (buses) and efficient routing for each traveller (cars).
I’m also envisaging that if this system were to take off, personal cars could be gradually removed from city centres! Again, that makes life easier for the AI vehicles.
This is all pie-in-the-sky stuff, I know; but I do feel like there are ways we could radically improve city transport mostly using existing roads, rather than building new rails or tunnels.
I mean there's a reason for the slow and steady trend of North Americans leaving small towns for big cities.
Semi-rural. Everything I need is within walking distance. I can take a very short car trip for larger groceries or have them delivered inexpensively.
That's literally the point of cities. Living outside of a city has its tradeoffs.
And we haven't even adressed that drving is not a purely technical endeavor, it's largely a social one.
A social one where you use experience to make inferences about what is going to happen next. Who hasn't observed an aggressive driver coming up from behind, weaving around other cars and said to themselves something like "that guy is going to cut me off, better ease off the gas so there's a little extra room in front for when he does". That level of situational awareness isn't coded for is it?
Edit: I have a whole mental model for other drivers and different approaches for them. Someone driving like a grandma? Pass when available. Nervous/erratic/lost driver? Keep extra distance then pass as soon as possible. Aggressive driver? Relax, give some space and let them get ahead. And so on. I get that stereotyping is bad but ignoring the subtle signals other drivers give off seems like it would be myopic. An AI that doesn't anticipate what others will do on the road will always be reactive rather than proactive.
Edit: I have a whole mental model for other drivers and different approaches for them. Someone driving like a grandma? Pass when available. Nervous/erratic/lost driver? Keep extra distance then pass as soon as possible. Aggressive driver? Relax, give some space and let them get ahead. And so on. I get that stereotyping is bad but ignoring the subtle signals other drivers give off seems like it would be myopic. An AI that doesn't anticipate what others will do on the road will always be reactive rather than proactive.
Most self-driving vehicles aren't just coded; they incorporate some form of ML as well. Categorizing patterns of behaviors is well within the reach of ML algorithms, but my understanding is we have far more basic problems to solve first (Tesla's seems to struggle with object tracking over time, which would be a necessary first step to recognizing patterns).
Developing object tracking and a sense of object permanence would be a pretty big prerequisite.. And here I was thinking about the RL model needed to decide what to do in the presence of other agents.
How many people have been killed by Cruise or Waymo cars for the number of miles they've driven?
I maintain the position that if self-driving cars handle the most common situations as well as average human beings, there won't be a strong drive to make cars that drive significantly better than humans. Cruise and Waymo are collecting a limited version of that dataset right now. It's unclear how many deaths because some details are being kept under wraps.
I maintain the position that if self-driving cars handle the most common situations as well as average human beings, there won't be a strong drive to make cars that drive significantly better than humans. Cruise and Waymo are collecting a limited version of that dataset right now. It's unclear how many deaths because some details are being kept under wraps.
Introspectable neural nets is quite literally an oxymoron.
I disagree with you. On the contrary, I think it can only be solved by throwing more data, but much more data that we have available now, to get first a smart AI that has common sense about the world (a world model). Then we can start trying to drive in it.
The counterexample to your point is that brand new 16-year-old human drivers seem to do a pretty good job of driving with very little training data. Yes, they do kill people and they're much worse drivers than 40-year-olds who have much more training data, but the fact that 16YOs kill as few people as they do with so little training data means some other mechanism than raw data quantity is important.
What do you mean by little data though?
They’ve been absorbing years of data classifying traffic and things like that.
They’ve been absorbing years of data classifying traffic and things like that.
It's not a counterexample. Your 16-year old human has millions of years of evolution into its brain. That's a lot of pre-training data.
Are you suggesting that orange cones and semi-trailers cutting you off were common on the African savannah?
I'm suggesting all of this is just finetuning a very generic and powerful object recognition and tracking ability of the brain
Misread “systemic engineering” for “synthetic engineering” on first go - was thinking that may be some new ai application
> Any reason why everyone seems to be stuck on this problem?
Because it's really, really difficult. A lot of AI-ish stuff pretty rapidly gets to the point where it _looks_ quite impressive, but struggles to make the jump to actual feasibility. Like, there were convincing demos of voice recognition in the mid-90s. You could buy software to transcribe voice on your home computer, and people did. And, now, well, it's better than in the mid-90s certainly, but you wouldn't trust it to write a transcript, not of anything important. Maybe in 2040 we'll have voice recognition that can produce a perfect transcript, and human transcription will be a quaint old-fashioned concept. But I wouldn't like to bet on it, honestly.
And voice recognition is arguably a far, far easier problem.
Because it's really, really difficult. A lot of AI-ish stuff pretty rapidly gets to the point where it _looks_ quite impressive, but struggles to make the jump to actual feasibility. Like, there were convincing demos of voice recognition in the mid-90s. You could buy software to transcribe voice on your home computer, and people did. And, now, well, it's better than in the mid-90s certainly, but you wouldn't trust it to write a transcript, not of anything important. Maybe in 2040 we'll have voice recognition that can produce a perfect transcript, and human transcription will be a quaint old-fashioned concept. But I wouldn't like to bet on it, honestly.
And voice recognition is arguably a far, far easier problem.
I'm old enough to remember all the breathless pronouncements in 2015 about how self-driving cars would be everywhere within 5 years. I was skeptical then and I'm still skeptical that it will ever happen outside of some limited range of well known paths that have been pre-determined to be safe - ie we'll have (and we do have) some self driving cars but they'll essentially be on a closed course and will not leave the course. There are already some small bus lines like that - the bus just goes around a closed circuit picking up and dropping off people always taking the same route.
As a transportation planner, I’m so deep in a bubble that I didn’t realize people actually believed the “FSD is right around the corner” stuff.
we're still trying to convert to electric, self dirving is far out there
These are mostly unrelated. Some of Waymo's vehicles are ICE.
My mistake, I trying to imply to `mass adpotion of` and bungled it
I'd argue that voice recognition is in a worse place now — It creates a FALSE sense that it can do a good transcription, when it is actually corrupted in the worst way.
I took part in a legal deposition where an "AI Transcription Software" was being used. When I received the transcript it had numerous errors, but they were all subtle. More common names were inserted in place of the name that I said, e.g., "Kennedy" instead of "Kemeny". "You have a [something]" was transcribed as "I have a [something]", completely reversing the meaning. And many more errors.
The common thread between the errors was that what was inserted into the transcript would have been the MOST EXPECTED word or phrase, instead of the ACTUAL MORE SURPRISING (surprising in an information-theory way) word or phrase. It's evident that on top of the phoneme recognition layer, this transcription software checked questionable items against tables/graphs of most likely words to occur near the other words it confidently identified in that context. Makes a transcription sound great, but it is WRONG.
The result was that the "AI Transcription" actively destroyed key information and hid that destruction under the guise of a smoothly edited transcription.
Although this surely was not the intent of the system's creators, I cannot think of a better way to make a more evil transcription system.
I took part in a legal deposition where an "AI Transcription Software" was being used. When I received the transcript it had numerous errors, but they were all subtle. More common names were inserted in place of the name that I said, e.g., "Kennedy" instead of "Kemeny". "You have a [something]" was transcribed as "I have a [something]", completely reversing the meaning. And many more errors.
The common thread between the errors was that what was inserted into the transcript would have been the MOST EXPECTED word or phrase, instead of the ACTUAL MORE SURPRISING (surprising in an information-theory way) word or phrase. It's evident that on top of the phoneme recognition layer, this transcription software checked questionable items against tables/graphs of most likely words to occur near the other words it confidently identified in that context. Makes a transcription sound great, but it is WRONG.
The result was that the "AI Transcription" actively destroyed key information and hid that destruction under the guise of a smoothly edited transcription.
Although this surely was not the intent of the system's creators, I cannot think of a better way to make a more evil transcription system.
I also imagine it is a space where...you very quickly get to a product that seems magical...but you can see in the data the places where your magical product will regularly be unable to make clear decisions. Unlike a lot of traditional product development, that knowledge makes it very hard for you to release, because the liability and ethical problems are very real.
It's somewhat unfair because we used to simply collect less comprehensive data on performance and therefore know less about our corner cases - but you don't get to live in the future without dealing with the problems of the future.
It's somewhat unfair because we used to simply collect less comprehensive data on performance and therefore know less about our corner cases - but you don't get to live in the future without dealing with the problems of the future.
> You could buy software to transcribe voice on your home computer, and people did. And, now, well, it's better than in the mid-90s certainly, but you wouldn't trust it to write a transcript, not of anything important.
Is this the fault of software or people generally frequently using bad sound equipment in poor and noisy conditions, such as talking on the phone while driving, on the street, poor connection, wind/rain, etc. ?
Personally, because English isn't my first language, I frequently "fail" to transcribe what is being said and have to ask the other person to repeat themselves. It seems like an AI voice transcriber in 2022 is going to work better than me.
Is this the fault of software or people generally frequently using bad sound equipment in poor and noisy conditions, such as talking on the phone while driving, on the street, poor connection, wind/rain, etc. ?
Personally, because English isn't my first language, I frequently "fail" to transcribe what is being said and have to ask the other person to repeat themselves. It seems like an AI voice transcriber in 2022 is going to work better than me.
Even in ideal recording conditions, machines are quite bad at transcribing human speech. Look at subtitles on live TV shows, typically produced these days by machine transcription; they're typically barely usable.
Those subtitles are how I learned english in the states. They're actually quite good.
Not sure what you're talking about really.
Not sure what you're talking about really.
>Any reason why everyone seems to be stuck on this problem?
ML maximalism focused on the narrow problem of 'solving driving' while not recognizing that any task as complex as driving requires probably something closer to general intelligence, and theoretically the field has been impoverished in favor of "throw more graphics cards at everything".
ML maximalism focused on the narrow problem of 'solving driving' while not recognizing that any task as complex as driving requires probably something closer to general intelligence, and theoretically the field has been impoverished in favor of "throw more graphics cards at everything".
Couldn't agree more. Especially when it comes to city driving, which would obviously be necessary for robotaxis, when AI zealots promise "it'll be here in a year or two", I always wondered "Have these people ever driven in the city?" I mean, to drive in a city, you basically:
1. Need to understand all standard signage (seems possible with AI).
2. Need to understand all "unstandard" signage (not sure how possible).
3. Need to understand the cop with the thick NY accent yelling at you saying "Can't you see there's been an accident and the road is covered with glass you dufus? Turn the F around."
I can certainly see AI solving the problem of driving in specially designed limited access highways (which could also support normal human drivers), and that alone would be a huge benefit, but I never saw how so many were willing to make the leap to "robotaxis that can drive you anywhere in the city."
1. Need to understand all standard signage (seems possible with AI).
2. Need to understand all "unstandard" signage (not sure how possible).
3. Need to understand the cop with the thick NY accent yelling at you saying "Can't you see there's been an accident and the road is covered with glass you dufus? Turn the F around."
I can certainly see AI solving the problem of driving in specially designed limited access highways (which could also support normal human drivers), and that alone would be a huge benefit, but I never saw how so many were willing to make the leap to "robotaxis that can drive you anywhere in the city."
4. Need to understand the cop who is directing people into lanes by jutting his chin subtly in different directions when you make eye contact with him
5. Need to understand that occluded objects have not vanished from the universe never to be seen again
5. Need to understand that occluded objects have not vanished from the universe never to be seen again
6. Need to reasonably predict what that human that just made eye contact with you would likely do next, and how that's different from what he might do when he doesn’t make eye contact with you. And all of that differs if you're in NYC or SF or small town, Indiana
7. Need to constantly read other drivers' body language (or "car language"?) and infer what their intensions are. I can constantly tell what a driver is literally thinking, by picking up on their subtle motions. Drifting over slightly (they're looking to change lanes but haven't yet turned on their blinker), they're slow to respond to green lights, or acceleration of forward traffic (e.g. they're on the phone, texting, etc.) I even routinely look at the eyes of the driver in front of me by looking in their rear-view mirror (yes this entirely possible and actually helpful). Are they looking down at their phone in their lap?
8. Generally understand the true context of things you're seeing. E.g a 4x8 sheet of plywood in the road, a squashed piece of road kill, a large metal pipe, a stopped vehicle, a baby carriage, a dishwasher, a tumbling large slab of styrofoam (all things I've encountered in the last year).
9. Is there a stopped firetruck in front of me (I list this because of the ludicrous fact that a Tesla plowed full-speed into such an obstacle).
8. Generally understand the true context of things you're seeing. E.g a 4x8 sheet of plywood in the road, a squashed piece of road kill, a large metal pipe, a stopped vehicle, a baby carriage, a dishwasher, a tumbling large slab of styrofoam (all things I've encountered in the last year).
9. Is there a stopped firetruck in front of me (I list this because of the ludicrous fact that a Tesla plowed full-speed into such an obstacle).
7. Need to understand that drunk person staggering along the roadside has been repeatedly slipping off the sidewalk and there's a non-zero chance they trip and fall right in front of you.
8. Need to understand that sometimes the stripes you see aren't the real stripes, you're driving near sunset and are seeing the sun reflected off of old stripes that were painted over with glossy black (wtf WSDOT).
7.5. Need to understand that the drink person staggering _inside_ the robotaxi has just thrown up in the backseat. After they are dropped off, the robotaxi cannot pick up any new customers.
This is a dance move known as the "tenderloin lurch". Well, not really, the Tenderloin Lurch is when a person staggers up to a crosswalk, waits until they have a NO WALK sign and proceeds to cross, while ignoring all the drivers who about to run them over.
I sincerely hope you are not this unpleasant in social settings.
when I float that joke in social settings in SF, everybody nods sagely
I've been in situations like this. In SF. I grew up here.
What you describe is the classic west coast non-confrontationalism. You're probably annoying enough that it's simply not worth it to counter anything you say because you just dive into a petty and self-aggrandizing argumentative mode.
Brash and confused conservatives think everyone agrees with them, but in reality people don't want to get caught up in absolute bullshit by joining any kind of interaction with them. This is a common pattern by now. You would do well to recognize it.
What you describe is the classic west coast non-confrontationalism. You're probably annoying enough that it's simply not worth it to counter anything you say because you just dive into a petty and self-aggrandizing argumentative mode.
Brash and confused conservatives think everyone agrees with them, but in reality people don't want to get caught up in absolute bullshit by joining any kind of interaction with them. This is a common pattern by now. You would do well to recognize it.
Even then, even if you can solve every case involving actual roads with perfect markings and intact signs and functioning signals, I’ve found myself just this week:
- driving across an unmarked grassy mound to park a car at a store in their designated area.
- paying a fee with coins to enter and exit a toll road.
- stopping to move around roadworks based solely on hand signals from one of the workers.
These aren’t even scratching the surface in terms of edge cases that could be encountered regularly.
- driving across an unmarked grassy mound to park a car at a store in their designated area.
- paying a fee with coins to enter and exit a toll road.
- stopping to move around roadworks based solely on hand signals from one of the workers.
These aren’t even scratching the surface in terms of edge cases that could be encountered regularly.
Agreed.
People point at statements like "it just needs to drive better than the average driver" and "well lots of idiots drive".
On the flip side, lots of intelligent people with other skills do not have the confidence & comfort to drive outside of their towns local roads, or at all.
There are problem sets for ML like quant trading or phone album image tagging where you just need to be right 51% of the time to make money / be novel & useful.
We've seen plenty of examples showing ML is not appropriate for life&death problems like being the primary reviewer of diagnostic imaging for cancer screening.
The bar for ML to drive a car is much much higher, and I'm not even sure we have the right sensor suites feeding into the models, not to mention the compute capacity to operate at low enough latency.
People point at statements like "it just needs to drive better than the average driver" and "well lots of idiots drive".
On the flip side, lots of intelligent people with other skills do not have the confidence & comfort to drive outside of their towns local roads, or at all.
There are problem sets for ML like quant trading or phone album image tagging where you just need to be right 51% of the time to make money / be novel & useful.
We've seen plenty of examples showing ML is not appropriate for life&death problems like being the primary reviewer of diagnostic imaging for cancer screening.
The bar for ML to drive a car is much much higher, and I'm not even sure we have the right sensor suites feeding into the models, not to mention the compute capacity to operate at low enough latency.
Driving is a social problem, not a technical one. It's functionally the same as walking down a crowded sidewalk. The car is just a tool, just an extension of our bodies.
We can't build a robot which can walk down a sidewalk without running into people either. The sensor tech and mapping fidelity are red herrings. People drive well because only people are good at predicting human behavior.
We can't build a robot which can walk down a sidewalk without running into people either. The sensor tech and mapping fidelity are red herrings. People drive well because only people are good at predicting human behavior.
This. I'm always amazed by a skilled taxi driver maneuvering their car at a busy street in Tokyo with bustling pedestrians and bikes, some of them are old and slow and others ignoring traffic lights, just passing them by centimeters. It's like as if the car is a part of their body and they're threading though a crowd. They have to anticipate everyone else's move. The cars really look like people here and others treat them as ones.
Sort of. Your wording actually assumes down to its core that driving is inherently social, when in fact I think it may be only provisionally social. Driving currently “is social” in a few senses, But of course the important (and obvious) one is that it currently involves accounting for human-operated vehicles.
Alternatively, an autonomous vehicle operator in a homogenous network full of other autonomous operators has capabilities and characteristics that greatly simplify failure modes. Maybe even majority autonomous, partially heterogeneous? You can literally slow or stop the whole show to deal with a catastrophic event. It’s still “social” but probably much reduced from the scenario where you’ve got the full scope of human expressivity behind the wheel.
The REAL problem is how do we take our roads to the crossover point where those simplified network features become accessible.
Alternatively, an autonomous vehicle operator in a homogenous network full of other autonomous operators has capabilities and characteristics that greatly simplify failure modes. Maybe even majority autonomous, partially heterogeneous? You can literally slow or stop the whole show to deal with a catastrophic event. It’s still “social” but probably much reduced from the scenario where you’ve got the full scope of human expressivity behind the wheel.
The REAL problem is how do we take our roads to the crossover point where those simplified network features become accessible.
This assumes that roads are used exclusively by autonomous vehicles, when our roads are not used exclusively by motor vehicles to begin with.
> “This assumes our roads are used exclusively by autonomous vehicles”
I not only assume it, I say it out loud: “[fully autonomous, …] maybe even majority homogenous, partly heterogenous?”
> “When our roads are not used exclusively by motor vehicles to begin with.”
I’m not following what you’re saying here in the context of the earlier clause. If you mean not used exclusively by autonomous vehicles, yes, and that’s why I’m pointing out the provisional aspect.
I not only assume it, I say it out loud: “[fully autonomous, …] maybe even majority homogenous, partly heterogenous?”
> “When our roads are not used exclusively by motor vehicles to begin with.”
I’m not following what you’re saying here in the context of the earlier clause. If you mean not used exclusively by autonomous vehicles, yes, and that’s why I’m pointing out the provisional aspect.
You know, I could be snide, and say, “We’ve already invented that — it’s called a train.” :D
But I’ve thought the same, too. If every car on the road is robot-controlled then it changes the problem. Modulo failures, discrete algorithms should behave predictably towards each other, like the unix API philosophy.
It seems hard to get there, though. Even today it’s a PITA to maintain API boundaries in simple libraries, never mind make sure that the new Tesla v12.4 Full Self Driving For Real This Time doesn’t trigger edge cases in Volvo v7.7a Actually Real Self-Driving We Promise.
Can we make software that allows cars to behave as predictably as rail cars, but without the rails? Maybe, but I expect only on limited-access freeways. I’m sure these robot-driven cars will remain incompatible with common road uses cases like pedestrians, cyclists, and children chasing balls.
But I’ve thought the same, too. If every car on the road is robot-controlled then it changes the problem. Modulo failures, discrete algorithms should behave predictably towards each other, like the unix API philosophy.
It seems hard to get there, though. Even today it’s a PITA to maintain API boundaries in simple libraries, never mind make sure that the new Tesla v12.4 Full Self Driving For Real This Time doesn’t trigger edge cases in Volvo v7.7a Actually Real Self-Driving We Promise.
Can we make software that allows cars to behave as predictably as rail cars, but without the rails? Maybe, but I expect only on limited-access freeways. I’m sure these robot-driven cars will remain incompatible with common road uses cases like pedestrians, cyclists, and children chasing balls.
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I feel I must link to one of my all-time favorite Reddit posts [1] about just this. Please do read.
https://np.reddit.com/r/CatastrophicFailure/comments/43juk4/...
https://np.reddit.com/r/CatastrophicFailure/comments/43juk4/...
I paid ~$10 for two rides after signing up as a regular ole user in Mesa AZ. It was great, the first ride was a bit nerve wracking, but the second felt very nice.
I certainly wouldn't argue with you that it isn't ready for prime time and wide distribution, but it is interesting to see their progress in San Francisco, a much different driving problem.
If it takes them 10 years to get to prod in Mesa, two (maybe three?) in SF, maybe they start shrinking that a lot in metros without winters. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I certainly wouldn't argue with you that it isn't ready for prime time and wide distribution, but it is interesting to see their progress in San Francisco, a much different driving problem.
If it takes them 10 years to get to prod in Mesa, two (maybe three?) in SF, maybe they start shrinking that a lot in metros without winters. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
> doesn't seem any better at solving it
I thought they had real self-driving taxis in Pheonix that you can order? Real ones, with no safety driver.
That definitely sounds "better", even if it is heavily geo-fenced.
I thought they had real self-driving taxis in Pheonix that you can order? Real ones, with no safety driver.
That definitely sounds "better", even if it is heavily geo-fenced.
Waymo has superior performance based on their historical statistics. It makes sense, since their lidar sensors capture more of the environment, and directly in 3D. Their AI also seems better QA’ed.
The Tesla AI Day[0] surprised me as it showed they only had a simple architecture for a very long time, simply feeding barely processed camera pixels to a DNN and hoping for the best with little more than supervised learning off human feeds. Their big claim to glory was that they rearchitectured it to produce a 2D map of the environment… which I thought they had years ago, and is still a far cry from the 3D modeling that is needed.
After all, sure, we humans only take two video feeds as input… But we can appreciate from it the position, intent, and trajectory of a wealth of elements around us, with reasonable probability estimates for multiple possibilities, sometimes pertaining to things that are invisible, such as kids crossing from nowhere when near a school.
Cruise also seems to have better tech; they had a barely-watched 2h30 description of their systems[1] which shows they do create a richer environment, evaluate the routing of many objects, and train their systems on a very realistic simulation, not just supervised training, which means it can learn from very low-probability events. They have a whole segment on including the probability that unseen cars may travel from perpendicular roads; Tesla’s creeping hit-or-miss are well-documented on Youtube.
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0z4FweCy4M
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJWN0K26NxQ
The Tesla AI Day[0] surprised me as it showed they only had a simple architecture for a very long time, simply feeding barely processed camera pixels to a DNN and hoping for the best with little more than supervised learning off human feeds. Their big claim to glory was that they rearchitectured it to produce a 2D map of the environment… which I thought they had years ago, and is still a far cry from the 3D modeling that is needed.
After all, sure, we humans only take two video feeds as input… But we can appreciate from it the position, intent, and trajectory of a wealth of elements around us, with reasonable probability estimates for multiple possibilities, sometimes pertaining to things that are invisible, such as kids crossing from nowhere when near a school.
Cruise also seems to have better tech; they had a barely-watched 2h30 description of their systems[1] which shows they do create a richer environment, evaluate the routing of many objects, and train their systems on a very realistic simulation, not just supervised training, which means it can learn from very low-probability events. They have a whole segment on including the probability that unseen cars may travel from perpendicular roads; Tesla’s creeping hit-or-miss are well-documented on Youtube.
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0z4FweCy4M
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJWN0K26NxQ
> After all, sure, we humans only take two video feeds as input…
No, we use both our perception and proprioception when we drive or walk for that matter. We have two accute visual sensors mounted in a housing with six degrees of freedom and a sensor feedback mechanism.
We also have fairly sensitive motion and momentum sensors all throughout our bodies. Additionally we have audio sensors feeding into our positional model.
All this data is fed into an advanced computing system that can trivially separate out sensor noise from useful signal. The computing system controls the vehicle, navigates, and even performs low priority background tasks like wondering if the front door of the house was locked.
We have dozens of integrated sensor inputs. It's just silly to assume we only use our eyes when driving. They're certainly an important sensor for driving but definitely not the only one.
No, we use both our perception and proprioception when we drive or walk for that matter. We have two accute visual sensors mounted in a housing with six degrees of freedom and a sensor feedback mechanism.
We also have fairly sensitive motion and momentum sensors all throughout our bodies. Additionally we have audio sensors feeding into our positional model.
All this data is fed into an advanced computing system that can trivially separate out sensor noise from useful signal. The computing system controls the vehicle, navigates, and even performs low priority background tasks like wondering if the front door of the house was locked.
We have dozens of integrated sensor inputs. It's just silly to assume we only use our eyes when driving. They're certainly an important sensor for driving but definitely not the only one.
All the vision-only maximalists also ignore how insufficient Tesla cameras are compared to your human eyes in terms of resolution, dynamic range and refresh rates.
If you ever review your Tesla Dashcam footage you'll see that you can rarely even make out a license plate. The cameras are not even HD, let alone UHD.
Further the refresh rate is a paltry 36fps.
Drive the car at high noon or night and you realize how poor the dynamic range is with highlights and/or shadows get lost.
If you ever review your Tesla Dashcam footage you'll see that you can rarely even make out a license plate. The cameras are not even HD, let alone UHD.
Further the refresh rate is a paltry 36fps.
Drive the car at high noon or night and you realize how poor the dynamic range is with highlights and/or shadows get lost.
They’ve also got real ones with no safety driver in San Francisco right now.
Yeah, but I am sure Tesla's software can do the same.
Depending on the route, you could probably even do it with comma.ai hardware.
When I think of FSD, I think any route under any condition.
Depending on the route, you could probably even do it with comma.ai hardware.
When I think of FSD, I think any route under any condition.
> Yeah, but I am sure Tesla's software can do the same.
They absolutely cannot. They won't even try, they require a driver to be there to be ready to take over with no notice. Their software also makes so many basic mistakes that even what they're allowing it to do is dangerously reckless.
They absolutely cannot. They won't even try, they require a driver to be there to be ready to take over with no notice. Their software also makes so many basic mistakes that even what they're allowing it to do is dangerously reckless.
There's been a lot of progress despite AVs not meeting intitial hyped predictions. Waymo and Cruise are operating driverless robotaxis in SF. We're probably a couple years from many major cities having them.
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We often can figure out how to take a product that works 90% and bring it to 99%, and then to 99.9%. The engineering challenges involved in each nine are often vastly more than the percentages indicate, but they're conceivable. With AI we have absolutely no idea how much effort might be required to get to that next level of reliability. We hope that bigger models, or better AI technology might get us there, but there's also a chance that they won't.
Probably because it's really, really, really hard to solve the thousands of edge cases that occur in real-world driving situations. I don't think FSD happens until government gets behind it and starts putting infrastructure behind it. If we start building roads (and cars) to be highly visible to AI one way or another, it all becomes much easier.
>If we start building roads (and cars) to be highly visible to AI one way or another, it all becomes much easier.
Or we could build 1-dimensional roads, which would make the AI's jobs much easier. Like, we could put down two parallel piece of metal, which vehicles could "hook" onto somehow...
Or we could build 1-dimensional roads, which would make the AI's jobs much easier. Like, we could put down two parallel piece of metal, which vehicles could "hook" onto somehow...
> Any reason why everyone seems to be stuck on this problem?
Because they're all trying visual- or line-of-sight methods only, I call this the "robo-human" fallacy in ML: trying to automate the processes that humans undergo so that you eventually have a drop-in replacement for a human. But that is a myopic and unimaginative approach because you could be re-assessing the system itself and eliminating inefficiencies that lead to poor performance.
In the autonomous vehicles space, there is massive potential for self-organizing swarm algorithms to control pelotons of cars, rather than individual cars with no intrinsic sense of the general flow of traffic. You wouldn't need a top-down "commander" style architecture, it could be designed so that cars only talk to their immediate neighbors and emergent patterns keep traffic flowing smooth and fast.
I have always been skeptical of the attempts to reduce the amount of information about the road that a car receives. (Moving from stereoscopic to monocular vision to save the cost of one camera seems just stupid.) But people who dream of "smart cities" really seem to see little more than The Jetsons in their mind, and it limits the scope of research to our detriment.
Because they're all trying visual- or line-of-sight methods only, I call this the "robo-human" fallacy in ML: trying to automate the processes that humans undergo so that you eventually have a drop-in replacement for a human. But that is a myopic and unimaginative approach because you could be re-assessing the system itself and eliminating inefficiencies that lead to poor performance.
In the autonomous vehicles space, there is massive potential for self-organizing swarm algorithms to control pelotons of cars, rather than individual cars with no intrinsic sense of the general flow of traffic. You wouldn't need a top-down "commander" style architecture, it could be designed so that cars only talk to their immediate neighbors and emergent patterns keep traffic flowing smooth and fast.
I have always been skeptical of the attempts to reduce the amount of information about the road that a car receives. (Moving from stereoscopic to monocular vision to save the cost of one camera seems just stupid.) But people who dream of "smart cities" really seem to see little more than The Jetsons in their mind, and it limits the scope of research to our detriment.
I’d like to hear an actual response from the people downvoting this comment. It’s an interesting perspective, and while I can imagine legit criticisims (SPOF, privacy concerns, coordination with vehicles outside the system, etc) actually articulating them would yield a more productive discussion than downvoting without comment.
Answer me this;
How is AI supposed to confidently distinguish a real stop sign from someone/something holding up a picture of a stop sign?
Yes, this is a weird edge case, but I think it gets at the core issue being that it takes way more sophistication to release this tech into the wild then ppl would like to admit.
How is AI supposed to confidently distinguish a real stop sign from someone/something holding up a picture of a stop sign?
Yes, this is a weird edge case, but I think it gets at the core issue being that it takes way more sophistication to release this tech into the wild then ppl would like to admit.
[deleted]
Zoox has solved it.
Has Zoox even gotten the permits to do fleet-scale driverless testing? Last I heard, they were still limited to 2 vehicles on specific streets in foster city. Doesn't seem very solved.
Google/Alphabet is stuck and will make advances in specific territories but will never get there without a fundamental change in approach. Their approach relies on very detailed mapping/modeling of specific terrain, so they can make a usable case sooner, but outside of the map/model territory, they're literally lost. And maps/models change constantly and rapidly.
Tesla is taking a fundamentally more broad and deep approach - working with the fundamental fact that a pair of visual sensors and a compute engine (eyes & brain) can successfully figure out driving in strange areas in real time, ergo, it should be possible without a map/model or lidar. Once they get it solved, it will be solved once and for all. Bigger gamble, bigger payoff. Equipping the car with dozens of eyes is the easy part. The question is whether enough compute power can be brought to bear on solving the recognition problems, and the edge cases. They have obvious issues with failing to recognize large objects like trucks in unexpected orientations, left turns etc. Using millions of miles of live human driver data as a training set is great, except that the average driver is really bad, so it's entirely polluted with bad examples, ESPECIALLY around the edge cases that get people killed. There, examples from professionally trained drivers, who really understand the physics and limits of the car, adhesion, traffic dynamics, etc, are what you want to train on, but that isn't what they have. It is also possible that even if the set of training data would actually be sufficient, the big question will kill them - perhaps the solution requires orders of magnitude more compute power to approach human performance, and they just don't have the hardware to simulate human compute power. So, have they just hit the limits of what their compute power can do?
I think Tesla's approach is fundamentally the way to go, as it is a general solution, compared to everyone else's limited map/model approach.
But both may require either or both a more specifically programmed higher-level behaviors, and/or something much closer to AGI than exists, something that has actual understanding of the machine-learned objects and relationships, which does not yet exist (if one is known, pleas correct me - I'd love to know about it).
Tesla is taking a fundamentally more broad and deep approach - working with the fundamental fact that a pair of visual sensors and a compute engine (eyes & brain) can successfully figure out driving in strange areas in real time, ergo, it should be possible without a map/model or lidar. Once they get it solved, it will be solved once and for all. Bigger gamble, bigger payoff. Equipping the car with dozens of eyes is the easy part. The question is whether enough compute power can be brought to bear on solving the recognition problems, and the edge cases. They have obvious issues with failing to recognize large objects like trucks in unexpected orientations, left turns etc. Using millions of miles of live human driver data as a training set is great, except that the average driver is really bad, so it's entirely polluted with bad examples, ESPECIALLY around the edge cases that get people killed. There, examples from professionally trained drivers, who really understand the physics and limits of the car, adhesion, traffic dynamics, etc, are what you want to train on, but that isn't what they have. It is also possible that even if the set of training data would actually be sufficient, the big question will kill them - perhaps the solution requires orders of magnitude more compute power to approach human performance, and they just don't have the hardware to simulate human compute power. So, have they just hit the limits of what their compute power can do?
I think Tesla's approach is fundamentally the way to go, as it is a general solution, compared to everyone else's limited map/model approach.
But both may require either or both a more specifically programmed higher-level behaviors, and/or something much closer to AGI than exists, something that has actual understanding of the machine-learned objects and relationships, which does not yet exist (if one is known, pleas correct me - I'd love to know about it).
Uber bet the company on robotaxis and lost. Tesla is still building very good cars that happen to not be able to drive themselves. Just like every other car. If they could lose their obsession with self-driving and just focus on their incredible cars, they'd still make money.
They are very much "default alive" BUT I get the sense that a lot of the company's plans and valuation are based on the idea that Tesla will not "just" produce competitive electric cars. They could make money just doing that - but they would never meet the expectations around their company's' trajectory that way and so they would be a "bad" investment (in ROI terms). So I think that everyone who is still working on the "more than a car maker" goal is going to insist the company will be more than that until they really can't.
Their leadership also doesn’t know when to STFU. There was a time when Tesla was _the_ luxury electric vehicle. But Musk is polarizing. He’s isolating formerly loyal customers and more and more compelling alternatives are coming to market every day.
Tesla is so overvalued only because of their claims of self driving. Musk utters a lot of bs but he's right that without this Tesla is doomed.
They have a big head start, but other car companies are now investing much more in battery tech etc and will quickly catch up. Not to mention Tesla's have terrible build quality, they have a lot of shady business practices like overcounting sales, reusing sold parts etc which came out in the recent leak.
Thing like the 4860 battery which were so hyped turn out to be not that much better. FSD is years away. Stop selling vaporware.
What they need to focus on is things they innovated on like OTA updates, integrated systems, no dealerships etc.
They have a big head start, but other car companies are now investing much more in battery tech etc and will quickly catch up. Not to mention Tesla's have terrible build quality, they have a lot of shady business practices like overcounting sales, reusing sold parts etc which came out in the recent leak.
Thing like the 4860 battery which were so hyped turn out to be not that much better. FSD is years away. Stop selling vaporware.
What they need to focus on is things they innovated on like OTA updates, integrated systems, no dealerships etc.
> focus on their incredible cars
They have terrible manufacturing quality. The screens melt in Arizona heat. Maybe the ride is cool and feels good, but the car itself is not incredible.
They have terrible manufacturing quality. The screens melt in Arizona heat. Maybe the ride is cool and feels good, but the car itself is not incredible.
> The screens melt in Arizona heat.
That's a very old talking point about the original Model S screens from ~2012. Do you have any recent justification for this claim?
That's a very old talking point about the original Model S screens from ~2012. Do you have any recent justification for this claim?
How many other cars do you know that turn their A/C on while stationary for ‘cabin overheat protection’? My 2021 model 3 did that this week while sitting in the sun in northern Ontario and was helpful enough to send a push notification to let me know.
This is not to helpfully make sure the driver gets into a nice cool car when they finish their errand. It’s because the non-automotive grade screen isn’t rated or tested above 40C and were failing in heat. Rather than upgrade the part and do a recall Tesla opted to just use battery to keep the cabin below 40-45C.
I love EVs, but that’s some pretty dodgy behaviour.
This is not to helpfully make sure the driver gets into a nice cool car when they finish their errand. It’s because the non-automotive grade screen isn’t rated or tested above 40C and were failing in heat. Rather than upgrade the part and do a recall Tesla opted to just use battery to keep the cabin below 40-45C.
I love EVs, but that’s some pretty dodgy behaviour.
I take your point but to me this seems like a feature rather than a bug. Many of the plastic parts in most cars (not just Teslas) are degraded by oxidation in the greenhouse heat of the car being parked in the sun for a long time. Some of that oxidation is caused by UV, but to the extent that it's caused by heat, keeping the interior of the car somewhat cooler should prolong the life of its interior plastics.
This is not really an option in an ICE car because it would require running the engine. In an EV, it's easy.
This is not really an option in an ICE car because it would require running the engine. In an EV, it's easy.
vinyl and plastic degradation is a many years-long process before it has any real impact on the performance of the parts. Failure or yellowing of the non-automotive grade screen in a model 3 has been seen in just a few weeks or months.
I'm no fan of Tesla, but to be fair, the OP answers here that this it is 2013 model, so this is still an example of a defect from ~2012: https://www.reddit.com/r/RealTesla/comments/vt7w3d/my_teslas...
I've put a lot of miles on my ModelY in Phoenix in the summer. Phoenix in the summer is not my idea of fun, but the screen (and the rest of the car) worked fine.
I think the whole "terrible manufacturing quality" thing is a talking point people seized on. They had problems with manufacturing quality as they brought up their whole factory/assembly process -- was their manufacturing quality ever "terrible"? Meh, I think it was kind of "we have kinks to work out." Nowadays, they seem fine.
> If they could lose their obsession with self-driving and just focus on their incredible cars, they'd still make money.
They may want to think about that strategy soon. Model 3 is starting to seem dated (not to mention Model S, which is ten years old). There are very competitive alternatives on the market now that have strengths where Tesla is weak, and which are not especially weak in the areas Tesla is strong.
They may want to think about that strategy soon. Model 3 is starting to seem dated (not to mention Model S, which is ten years old). There are very competitive alternatives on the market now that have strengths where Tesla is weak, and which are not especially weak in the areas Tesla is strong.
Model 3 is still the best electric car for most people. Its just too expensive now but so are others. No one else has a battery thats as efficient, the charging network, convenience features like key card, integrated navigation (although CarPlay/Android Auto are good too), the handling is much sportier, they hold their resale value, and no dealerships.
For a sedan, it's pretty compelling. But I expect my wife's next daily driver to be a crossover size, and more likely than not (at this point) a Mach-E. The range is there, the interior is good, CarPlay, and $15K less than a Model Y.
There are certainly some questions that are hard to answer. Maybe the Tesla will continue to hold value. But given that I see them everywhere now, they're feeling more like a commodity every day. I'm not sure how it will play out, the market is dynamic and recent events have been very disruptive. All EVs are selling out months ahead of production at this point.
There are certainly some questions that are hard to answer. Maybe the Tesla will continue to hold value. But given that I see them everywhere now, they're feeling more like a commodity every day. I'm not sure how it will play out, the market is dynamic and recent events have been very disruptive. All EVs are selling out months ahead of production at this point.
In what sense is the Model 3 seeming dated? It's still one of the best electric cars on important measures like range and efficiency. It also has access to hands down the best charging network and is well loved by its owners, despite the well-documented problems.
Bjørn Nyland's review of the 2022 Model 3 Performance [1] confirms your view that the Model 3 is absolutely not dated. He tests scores of EVs and still considers the Model 3 the best balance of comfort, features, technology, performance, etc. If anybody here is seriously concerned that the Model 3 may be "dated," I suggest watching the video below.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdMwGJBFUd4
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdMwGJBFUd4
Hahaha. Yes, very honest to link to a massive fanboy as though he's an unbiased source.
Someone who's apparently been given 4 teslas by advertising his referral code during his video reviews.. good lord.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B8rn_Nyland_(YouTuber)#W...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B8rn_Nyland_(YouTuber)#W...
Eh, looks dated to me. But I had an early one for a while. They're everywhere (at this point I lump 3 & Y together since for all practical purposes they're the same design).
Range is okay, but Tesla overestimates. Mine lost about 1.2 miles of range for every mile driven, and as a practical matter it was more of a 200 mile car than a 300 mile car, unless you really wrung it out. There are a bunch of 300+ mile EVs either on the roads now or releasing in the next few months. The only Tesla that has a range worth bragging about is the 400 mile version of the Model S. I do look forward (hopefully!) to regular cars having that kind of range, instead of just the top end ones.
I personally think Tesla is playing with fire leaving the quality so low. Well over half of all Model 3s have to return for repair within the first month. That's terrible. Recall how long it's taken other domestic manufacturers to regain any kind of reputation for quality, and even then many people will never believe they make good cars. For what a Tesla costs, people have high expectations. They're enjoying fad status right now, and that's great, but there is no shortage of Tesla owners already who've sworn off ever buying another one.
Range is okay, but Tesla overestimates. Mine lost about 1.2 miles of range for every mile driven, and as a practical matter it was more of a 200 mile car than a 300 mile car, unless you really wrung it out. There are a bunch of 300+ mile EVs either on the roads now or releasing in the next few months. The only Tesla that has a range worth bragging about is the 400 mile version of the Model S. I do look forward (hopefully!) to regular cars having that kind of range, instead of just the top end ones.
I personally think Tesla is playing with fire leaving the quality so low. Well over half of all Model 3s have to return for repair within the first month. That's terrible. Recall how long it's taken other domestic manufacturers to regain any kind of reputation for quality, and even then many people will never believe they make good cars. For what a Tesla costs, people have high expectations. They're enjoying fad status right now, and that's great, but there is no shortage of Tesla owners already who've sworn off ever buying another one.
what planet are you living on, the Model is was refreshed less than 1 year ago, and the new version is amazing.
[deleted]
> Tesla has bet the company on robotaxis,
How so? They're not selling robotaxis or building factories to build them
> Tesla has repeatedly promised FSD is right around the corner
Which means it's years away and/or "FSD" means "automatic cruise control and lane keep assist" or whatever standard feature from auto manufacturers they've renamed
How so? They're not selling robotaxis or building factories to build them
> Tesla has repeatedly promised FSD is right around the corner
Which means it's years away and/or "FSD" means "automatic cruise control and lane keep assist" or whatever standard feature from auto manufacturers they've renamed
> How so?
Because they chose to back themselves into that corner. Musk says that Tesla is worth nothing without full self-driving. Certainly it's the only thing left to justify the stock price:
https://electrek.co/2022/06/15/elon-musk-solving-self-drivin...
> Which means it's years away and/or "FSD" means "automatic cruise control and lane keep assist"
Well, more precisely it means Musk has been lying about it for nine years straight:
https://jalopnik.com/elon-musk-promises-full-self-driving-ne...
The lies have been profitable so far. People have bought into the false promises. Perhaps they'll start demanding refunds for the full self-driving they paid for that has still not been delivered.
Because they chose to back themselves into that corner. Musk says that Tesla is worth nothing without full self-driving. Certainly it's the only thing left to justify the stock price:
https://electrek.co/2022/06/15/elon-musk-solving-self-drivin...
> Which means it's years away and/or "FSD" means "automatic cruise control and lane keep assist"
Well, more precisely it means Musk has been lying about it for nine years straight:
https://jalopnik.com/elon-musk-promises-full-self-driving-ne...
The lies have been profitable so far. People have bought into the false promises. Perhaps they'll start demanding refunds for the full self-driving they paid for that has still not been delivered.
In the long run it’s all robotaxis and Elon sees that. Consumer purchases of cars will basically end.
Consumer and grid-scale battery storage
Solar
And I also think they could do some clever stuff with home HVAC, possibly using waste heat from crypto miners as the H.
Lastly, afaik they went camera-only in their cheap cars (3/Y) and still use fancy stuff in the S/X.
They gave fsd customers new computers once. What’s to stop them from going back to vision+lidar or whatever once the parts are available and retrofitting as needed?
The whole ‘vision-only is better’ gag seemed like an obvious ploy to keep being able to ship cars from the beginning of supply chain problems.
And yeah, Elon does not appear to be a good person.
Solar
And I also think they could do some clever stuff with home HVAC, possibly using waste heat from crypto miners as the H.
Lastly, afaik they went camera-only in their cheap cars (3/Y) and still use fancy stuff in the S/X.
They gave fsd customers new computers once. What’s to stop them from going back to vision+lidar or whatever once the parts are available and retrofitting as needed?
The whole ‘vision-only is better’ gag seemed like an obvious ploy to keep being able to ship cars from the beginning of supply chain problems.
And yeah, Elon does not appear to be a good person.
> And I also think they could do some clever stuff with home HVAC, possibly using waste heat from crypto miners as the H.
That doesn't sound... particularly clever. Crypto miners are essentially disposable, with a useful economic lifetime of a couple of years, typically. And they are 100% thermally efficient. Which sounds quite good, until you consider that an air source heat pump is typically around 300% thermally efficient, rising to up to 500% for ground source.
So, once your crypto miner is no longer really making anything (a couple of years), you're left with a really inefficient heating system.
That doesn't sound... particularly clever. Crypto miners are essentially disposable, with a useful economic lifetime of a couple of years, typically. And they are 100% thermally efficient. Which sounds quite good, until you consider that an air source heat pump is typically around 300% thermally efficient, rising to up to 500% for ground source.
So, once your crypto miner is no longer really making anything (a couple of years), you're left with a really inefficient heating system.
https://insideevs.com/news/570053/tesla-models-modelx-no-rad...
> Tesla has just confirmed that it has removed radar from the Model S and Model X as of mid-February 2022, moving its entire lineup to what it calls ‘Tesla Vision,’ which is an array of cameras that Tesla says negates the need for radar. The manufacturer did the same for the Model 3 and Model Y in May of last year and even though this prompted some questions from the IIHS, the institute is now fine with it after testing.
> Tesla has just confirmed that it has removed radar from the Model S and Model X as of mid-February 2022, moving its entire lineup to what it calls ‘Tesla Vision,’ which is an array of cameras that Tesla says negates the need for radar. The manufacturer did the same for the Model 3 and Model Y in May of last year and even though this prompted some questions from the IIHS, the institute is now fine with it after testing.
I don't think tesla is but a lot of 'investors' are
> This announcement comes after a 4 month sabbatical where Karpathy said he wanted to take some time off to “sharpen my technical edge,” which makes it sound like this is the result of frustration with the technical approach instead of burnout.
That's exactly what I would expect someone burning out to say. You feel the burnout so you need time to get over it and feel 100% (regain your technical edge). You're still burnt out after 4 months, so you don't come back.
Frustration with the technical approach can also cause burnout.
That's exactly what I would expect someone burning out to say. You feel the burnout so you need time to get over it and feel 100% (regain your technical edge). You're still burnt out after 4 months, so you don't come back.
Frustration with the technical approach can also cause burnout.
Yes, the vision only approach isn't something that you do in robotics.
There is usually a hierarchy of sensors, mainly for redundancy. Example: Bumper sensory at the wheel base, sonar / Lidar at the mid, and a camera at the top for advanced sensing.
For the sake of cost cutting Tesla has done away with their radar sensors at the front of the vehicle. It would be a substantial cost overhead, but have very real repercussions when it comes to safety, while also providing a "ground truth" to what at least the front facing cameras are seeing.
I don't think Lidar is a practical sensor for them to adopt, because it is quite bulky and has limited viewing angles, but I would expect them to have adopted some novel, lower cost radar solution.
Apart from the lower cost of the camera, I think Elon's rationale for having a camera only FSD is not valid, has made the problem needlessly complex and unsafe. He believes since we have eyes, and we can drive a car, then it should be sufficient to drive the car, but we only use eyes because these are the sensors we were born with, it is the best we have. In my mind, Elon's approach is like looking at a horse, and saying to yourself, that you want to build a car based on a horse, where instead of wheels, you have four mechanical legs, and those mechanical legs are limited is so many ways, but they should still at least "work", but there is no reason to limit locomotion in that way. The same with the vision system on a FSD, the whole spectrum of light is available, with any number of configurations, providing data at rates and with precision far beyond what a camera system can do.
There is usually a hierarchy of sensors, mainly for redundancy. Example: Bumper sensory at the wheel base, sonar / Lidar at the mid, and a camera at the top for advanced sensing.
For the sake of cost cutting Tesla has done away with their radar sensors at the front of the vehicle. It would be a substantial cost overhead, but have very real repercussions when it comes to safety, while also providing a "ground truth" to what at least the front facing cameras are seeing.
I don't think Lidar is a practical sensor for them to adopt, because it is quite bulky and has limited viewing angles, but I would expect them to have adopted some novel, lower cost radar solution.
Apart from the lower cost of the camera, I think Elon's rationale for having a camera only FSD is not valid, has made the problem needlessly complex and unsafe. He believes since we have eyes, and we can drive a car, then it should be sufficient to drive the car, but we only use eyes because these are the sensors we were born with, it is the best we have. In my mind, Elon's approach is like looking at a horse, and saying to yourself, that you want to build a car based on a horse, where instead of wheels, you have four mechanical legs, and those mechanical legs are limited is so many ways, but they should still at least "work", but there is no reason to limit locomotion in that way. The same with the vision system on a FSD, the whole spectrum of light is available, with any number of configurations, providing data at rates and with precision far beyond what a camera system can do.
IIRC there was a presentation from Karpathy talking about the challenges with sensor fusion, particular in resolving divergence between e.g. the vision and the radar stack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSDTZQdo6H8&t=1949s
My background is in physics, but I find myself having a growing appreciate for the vision-only stack. It's really challenging building a formal understanding of the world that is robust to outliers that are so numerous as navigating in an urban environment. With vision, you have multiple kinds of information that are highly correlated (colour, spatial distribution, depth, etc) that are self-consistent. Whereas, fusing radar with vision, where object responses to radar are highly geometry & material dependent, is a much harder task.
I'm really not an expert, so this reads more as an opinion than an experienced view, but I can see the merits in doubling down on vision.
My background is in physics, but I find myself having a growing appreciate for the vision-only stack. It's really challenging building a formal understanding of the world that is robust to outliers that are so numerous as navigating in an urban environment. With vision, you have multiple kinds of information that are highly correlated (colour, spatial distribution, depth, etc) that are self-consistent. Whereas, fusing radar with vision, where object responses to radar are highly geometry & material dependent, is a much harder task.
I'm really not an expert, so this reads more as an opinion than an experienced view, but I can see the merits in doubling down on vision.
Monocular vision only seems pretty clearly not capable of solving the problem. Stereo/multi view systems have a shot (humans are proof), but Tesla bet against that long ago. I wonder what could’ve been in a proper multi view setup.
Humans are perfectly capable of driving on racing simulators using a flat screen though, where binocular vision makes no difference.
And Tesla cars have more than one camera on them. The front-facing camera is actually an array of 3 cameras (the two farthest ones are at about human eyes distance), but they're also equipped with forward and rearward looking side cameras, and back cameras.
I think Tesla underestimated how hard vision-only FSD is, but having a single camera (they don't) is not the reason.
And Tesla cars have more than one camera on them. The front-facing camera is actually an array of 3 cameras (the two farthest ones are at about human eyes distance), but they're also equipped with forward and rearward looking side cameras, and back cameras.
I think Tesla underestimated how hard vision-only FSD is, but having a single camera (they don't) is not the reason.
Driving simulators are a bad example. It’s too easy to learn priors. A better analogy is humans with one eye that still drive - most are taught to induce parallax.
Also, I never said they have one camera. Multi camera != multi view.
Also, I never said they have one camera. Multi camera != multi view.
>which makes it sound like this is the result of frustration with the technical approach instead of burnout
LOL no, he was jumping ship already.
LOL no, he was jumping ship already.
He contributed some commits to his excellent https://github.com/karpathy/minGPT during that time.
BTW, Andrej, if you're reading this, it is not just excellent it is beyond excellent. I do a lot of tinkering with transformers and other models lately, and base them all on minGPT. My fork is now growing into a kind of monorepo for deep learning experimentation, though lately it started looking like a repo of Theseus, and the boat is not as simple anymore :)
BTW, Andrej, if you're reading this, it is not just excellent it is beyond excellent. I do a lot of tinkering with transformers and other models lately, and base them all on minGPT. My fork is now growing into a kind of monorepo for deep learning experimentation, though lately it started looking like a repo of Theseus, and the boat is not as simple anymore :)
> but their vision only tech stack doesn’t seem capable of solving it
Well, I'm not sure that anyone's tech stack is capable of solving it; the live examples of robotaxis are, well, not something you'd bet your company on (and generally their creators are _not_ betting their companies on them). There was, I think, a decade ago the idea that fully self-driving cars were a near-term inevitability. That's fading, now.
Well, I'm not sure that anyone's tech stack is capable of solving it; the live examples of robotaxis are, well, not something you'd bet your company on (and generally their creators are _not_ betting their companies on them). There was, I think, a decade ago the idea that fully self-driving cars were a near-term inevitability. That's fading, now.
I think a lot of that came from the Tesla hype machine creating a strong association between electric and self-driving as being the immediate future of cars in popular consciousness, so when people saw electric becoming a reality they assumed self-driving was right around the corner when in actuality their maturity levels aren't related much at all. Fallacious thinking that may doom a few companies between Lyft, Uber, and Tesla
This is a good point. I think the market has to adjust to a reality where electric cars are just cars that happen to be electric, rather than a hyped up techno-dream. Electric propulsion all by itself is pretty great, we don't need to tie it to FSD dreams.
the low point on the hype cycle, probably we underestimate the actual capability (because our expectations were based on years of overestimation)
"Tesla has bet the company on robotaxis, but their vision only tech stack doesn’t seem capable of solving it"
Both clauses seem wrong.
Both clauses seem wrong.
The only wait to solve it is to have smart roads. Basically, moving the problem domain from the car to the street.
I don't see how smart roads would solve the issues of "the unexpected".. weird pedestrian behavior, getting cut off, parked trucks, construction, etc. It seems to me that smart roads would only solve the issue of general routing, and that already seems to be dealt with as far as I can tell.
It wouldn't. A real "smart road" implementation would require us to literally fence off those roads so pedestrians, deer, children, bicyclists, etc. cannot use them. And they would likely fail in any kind of inclement weather -- fog, snow, rain, etc.
Essentially an admission of failure for the self-driving car industry.
Essentially an admission of failure for the self-driving car industry.
how is that any different from geofencing. The goal of an AV should be a car that can drive in any country/road. Not just fancy smart roads in western countries
I've long had this fantasy of a smart road pilot program wherein manufacturers would partner with governments (or toll road owners in some places?) to make self-driving-only smart lanes, where you have to surrender control but the car goes 120+mph. I imagine getting even a handful of popular longer routes enabled for that would be quite popular.
Makes sense. It's like having a train but you can take your Pullman off the "track" for "last mile" transport.
> if he felt they were close to solving the problem anytime soon
He felt? It's evident enough, that approach they used doesn't allow them to prepare FSD for real life and real streets. I think he just understood, that approach to be changed/improved significantly to reach the goal.
> doesn’t seem capable of solving it,
How so?
If humans can master driving with 2 eyes looking forward, why would a car with plenty of cameras in all directions not have sufficient sensory input to master it?
The problem is the software, not the sensors.
How so?
If humans can master driving with 2 eyes looking forward, why would a car with plenty of cameras in all directions not have sufficient sensory input to master it?
The problem is the software, not the sensors.
Same reason airplanes don't fly by just flapping their wings like birds. There's not always a biological equivalent for solving a problem, especially when you take into account human brain's evolution over millions of years. Sometimes computers need more help.
Large birds don't fly by flapping their wings when they have enough lift. Look at one in a thermal updraft sometime, it's quite a majestic sight.
If birds had engines on their wings, they would probably fly more like airplanes.
But cameras are a poor substitute for human vision, because they can't move or pivot or refocus much.
If birds had engines on their wings, they would probably fly more like airplanes.
But cameras are a poor substitute for human vision, because they can't move or pivot or refocus much.
It does seem reasonable, though, that if humans can solve safe driving with a brain mass (3 lbs) that computers wouldn't need that much more help. Put another way: every machine learning "expert" who has a kid is amazed to learn how simple unsupervised learning is and how few training examples are required.
You use far more input when you drive than just your eyes. Suggesting otherwise is just obtuse.
not much similar between eyes (incl the full sensory processing) and camera sensors
you're using elon's own argument btw, are you repeating that knowingly
you're using elon's own argument btw, are you repeating that knowingly
> This announcement comes after a 4 month sabbatical where Karpathy said he wanted to take some time off to “sharpen my technical edge,” which makes it sound like this is the result of frustration with the technical approach instead of burnout.
I think Karpathy realized (probably way back) that cheap sensors + no HD maps + their (reckless) public testing feedback loop doesn't advance towards L5 self driving and is bailing out. Karpathy has always backed Elon Musk whenever he talks about their technical approach, so it can't be frustration with the approach all of a sudden.
I think Karpathy realized (probably way back) that cheap sensors + no HD maps + their (reckless) public testing feedback loop doesn't advance towards L5 self driving and is bailing out. Karpathy has always backed Elon Musk whenever he talks about their technical approach, so it can't be frustration with the approach all of a sudden.
Maybe he was just updating himself on the latest DL trends like using transformers in vision and rethinking his original approach?
> but their vision only tech stack
Tesla filed with the FCC in May to get authorization for a new radar system.
Tesla filed with the FCC in May to get authorization for a new radar system.
Well, Musk said recently that the value of Tesla is 0 without FSD.
Does anybody seriously think Karpathy would step down if FSD was really close to be released ??
It really starts to feel like Tesla is a huge fraud which is about to be uncovered.
Does anybody seriously think Karpathy would step down if FSD was really close to be released ??
It really starts to feel like Tesla is a huge fraud which is about to be uncovered.
>Well, Musk said recently that the value of Tesla is 0 without FSD.
In fairness, this is just another in the long line of ridiculous things that he is prone to saying.
In fairness, this is just another in the long line of ridiculous things that he is prone to saying.
If Musk actually said this he's an even bigger idiot than I gave him credit for. He makes the best cars in the world (obviously IMHO) and that's worth a lot more than 0. I couldn't give less of a damn if they can't drive themselves.
I ended up selling mine because the build quality started getting on my nerves. Misaligned panels that are "within spec" or interior rattles that make the ride completely unpleasant (at only 10k miles).
The tech is all right, and I got to try auto pilot at a discount. Unfortunately the phantom braking made AP completely useless with passengers who would freak out and complain. However, when it worked it was quite nice but I ended up using it way less than I'd hoped. Glad I didn't pay 12k for it!
The best part of owning the car was the insane acceleration and supercharger network at the beginning. But, that got annoying as more people started getting Teslas. Going on longer trips meant a ton of anxiety especially since some superchargers in cities would be packed. Worse, some would be out of order or slow charging. After the gimmick wore off, wasting 45 minutes to go another 2-3 hours started becoming annoying. And before someone asks why 2-3 hours, its called hills. California is full of them, and especially where I live I lose so much efficiency climbing hills.
Anyway overall I'd rate the car 5/10. Fastest car I've ever owned. Beyond that it was pretty much exactly as they described - a beta product. I'll probably try a Tesla again in 5-10 years.
The tech is all right, and I got to try auto pilot at a discount. Unfortunately the phantom braking made AP completely useless with passengers who would freak out and complain. However, when it worked it was quite nice but I ended up using it way less than I'd hoped. Glad I didn't pay 12k for it!
The best part of owning the car was the insane acceleration and supercharger network at the beginning. But, that got annoying as more people started getting Teslas. Going on longer trips meant a ton of anxiety especially since some superchargers in cities would be packed. Worse, some would be out of order or slow charging. After the gimmick wore off, wasting 45 minutes to go another 2-3 hours started becoming annoying. And before someone asks why 2-3 hours, its called hills. California is full of them, and especially where I live I lose so much efficiency climbing hills.
Anyway overall I'd rate the car 5/10. Fastest car I've ever owned. Beyond that it was pretty much exactly as they described - a beta product. I'll probably try a Tesla again in 5-10 years.
This is mostly not my experience after 18 months but I appreciate your report. My car's build quality has been nearly perfect (which I didn't expect because of lots of contrary reports in 2020.) I tried FSD on the $200/month plan and I agree it's bad. The car stopped at green lights, kept going at red, turned right from the middle lane, etc. So I canceled it.
I live in the Rocky Mountains so I can relate about the hills, but haven't noticed a big range deficit from them. Probably because every uphill has a corresponding downhill and regen braking can recover some of the uphill energy loss. What I notice much more is wind. Driving fast into a headwind entails a huge energy loss (proportional to your airspeed cubed--yikes!) and it cannot be recovered. OTOH driving with a tailwind can add significant range.
I've also not noticed much of a problem finding open superchargers but that might be because I mostly drive in "flyover country." The supercharger network has also expanded significantly just in the 18 months I've had the car.
I live in the Rocky Mountains so I can relate about the hills, but haven't noticed a big range deficit from them. Probably because every uphill has a corresponding downhill and regen braking can recover some of the uphill energy loss. What I notice much more is wind. Driving fast into a headwind entails a huge energy loss (proportional to your airspeed cubed--yikes!) and it cannot be recovered. OTOH driving with a tailwind can add significant range.
I've also not noticed much of a problem finding open superchargers but that might be because I mostly drive in "flyover country." The supercharger network has also expanded significantly just in the 18 months I've had the car.
It's interesting to see that even customers get Autopilot and Full Self Driving mixed up.
Can you blame us? The messaging from the company is both inconsistent and insane. I just call the built-in autosteer wizard "the lane keeper" now because that bypasses the terminology confusion. BTW it works reasonably well on the highway in good conditions. It's perfect as a way of taking a short break and stretching all 4 of my limbs during a drive, but that's the only reason I use it.
They should just rename Autopilot to some generic thing (but not Autopilot haha) like every other companies adaptive cruise control. Then use Autopilot for FSD.
I think the confusion is a feature rather than a bug from Tesla's POV.
Now I'm curious, what did you replace it with and which model did you have?
Model 3 performance and replaced by a Honda
you're in the minority ...
I am just giving my anecdotal experience. I hope I can have a better one by the time I try a later Tesla model.
As an owner for 5+ years, the cars show well but pretty quickly become a pain in the ass.
They'll get eclipsed by other electric car manufacturers real quick.
Edit: more specifically, the parts break and they are difficult to replace. The battery degrades. They stopped providing maps to the vehicle unless I'm willing to spend several hundred dollars to replace the media console, they've told me I'm covered by a recall/warranty but have been unable to schedule the appointment.
They'll get eclipsed by other electric car manufacturers real quick.
Edit: more specifically, the parts break and they are difficult to replace. The battery degrades. They stopped providing maps to the vehicle unless I'm willing to spend several hundred dollars to replace the media console, they've told me I'm covered by a recall/warranty but have been unable to schedule the appointment.
> As an owner for 5+ years, the cars show well but pretty quickly become a pain in the ass.
I agree. As a former owner. They are fun to show. But there are real annoyances. In the case of the Model 3 in particular, I quickly tired of the door handles. The psychotic windshield wipers. No CarPlay. The smartphone unlocking which worked most of the time until just that moment when your hands were full. It became a chore to live with. But dear god was it fast (I had the Performance trim). Not enough. I need my daily driver to not be a PITA.
I'm very interested in what the competition is doing. Ford one-upped the Model Y by putting that knob on the display and then adding another display in front of the driver. Most of the competitive EVs have real interiors, for that matter. All of them have CarPlay. Porsche made a legit sports car.
The future looks bright!
I agree. As a former owner. They are fun to show. But there are real annoyances. In the case of the Model 3 in particular, I quickly tired of the door handles. The psychotic windshield wipers. No CarPlay. The smartphone unlocking which worked most of the time until just that moment when your hands were full. It became a chore to live with. But dear god was it fast (I had the Performance trim). Not enough. I need my daily driver to not be a PITA.
I'm very interested in what the competition is doing. Ford one-upped the Model Y by putting that knob on the display and then adding another display in front of the driver. Most of the competitive EVs have real interiors, for that matter. All of them have CarPlay. Porsche made a legit sports car.
The future looks bright!
> The psychotic windshield wipers
Until the windshield wipers are solved, I would not expect the FSD. SotA deep learning models are not good enough to control that function yet.
Until the windshield wipers are solved, I would not expect the FSD. SotA deep learning models are not good enough to control that function yet.
Given your experiences, I'm curious about your and parent's feedback on the following:
* What are your current top alternative make / models?
* If you have some you're tracking, which make / models are you most anticipating?
* What are your current top alternative make / models?
* If you have some you're tracking, which make / models are you most anticipating?
Ford lighting is currently my next vehicle, but we have a need for a truck specifically (we have forest land we work on conserving).
I'm keeping an eye on Kia, VW, Hyundai right now. But I expect other manufacturers will catch up.
I'm keeping an eye on Kia, VW, Hyundai right now. But I expect other manufacturers will catch up.
Look at Polestar, VW, Kia, and Hyundai. Hyundai released their Ioniq 6 today.
Thanks for this. I checked out a YT video about Ioniq 6 and was interested enough to look for the official page. (that matte black one looks pretty cool) [1]
But oof, the web site is just terrible. I can't imagine the effort that went into that car and then have it be paired with what they've come up with there.
I hope that competition rises to the level of Tesla on the product presentation / ordering side as well.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGlmdcS8bZU
But oof, the web site is just terrible. I can't imagine the effort that went into that car and then have it be paired with what they've come up with there.
I hope that competition rises to the level of Tesla on the product presentation / ordering side as well.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGlmdcS8bZU
Ok? As a Model 3 owner for 3+ years the car shows well and has been rock solid this whole time.
> Parts break difficult to replace
I think I had a set of squeaky control arms that Tesla replaced under warranty in less than a week, free of charge. I don’t remember because it was such a nonissue.
Side swiped by another driver; dented my fender, bumper, smashed the headlight. Their insurance took fault, Tesla certified body shop gave estimate and fixed in less than a week (from the time dropped off).
> The battery degrades
Knew this going in. What battery doesn’t? Still comfortably road-tripping and camping with the family in my car.
> They stopped providing maps
Huh? I receive updates every time my car updates which is often. I’m guessing you’re talking the an older Model S.
> Recall/warranty and unable to schedule appointment
I’ve scheduled 5+ appointments with Tesla service center or mobile service through the app. Never been an issue.
On top of all that, my car is worth more now than it was when I bought it. Everyone in my family that drives the car loves it. The car turns heads and generates questions on the daily for 3+ years now. My young daughter’s friends still lose their mind when she gets picked up in the Model 3. It’s almost like owning a supercar without the price tag or the inconvenience.
So I guess different people have different experiences. But this is the first car I’ve ever wanted to drive until it dies.
Oh, and FSD certainly IS NOT worth it. And I doubt it will be anytime soon. :)
> Parts break difficult to replace
I think I had a set of squeaky control arms that Tesla replaced under warranty in less than a week, free of charge. I don’t remember because it was such a nonissue.
Side swiped by another driver; dented my fender, bumper, smashed the headlight. Their insurance took fault, Tesla certified body shop gave estimate and fixed in less than a week (from the time dropped off).
> The battery degrades
Knew this going in. What battery doesn’t? Still comfortably road-tripping and camping with the family in my car.
> They stopped providing maps
Huh? I receive updates every time my car updates which is often. I’m guessing you’re talking the an older Model S.
> Recall/warranty and unable to schedule appointment
I’ve scheduled 5+ appointments with Tesla service center or mobile service through the app. Never been an issue.
On top of all that, my car is worth more now than it was when I bought it. Everyone in my family that drives the car loves it. The car turns heads and generates questions on the daily for 3+ years now. My young daughter’s friends still lose their mind when she gets picked up in the Model 3. It’s almost like owning a supercar without the price tag or the inconvenience.
So I guess different people have different experiences. But this is the first car I’ve ever wanted to drive until it dies.
Oh, and FSD certainly IS NOT worth it. And I doubt it will be anytime soon. :)
Yeah, I have an older model S. It could be my model just doesn't get the care that newer ones do, and my experience reflects an "early mover" experience. But I've had to replace door handles, sensors, memory, windshield, and a bunch of other stuff due to defects. The car stutters on the road at 50-55 mph, but is fine above that.
It was awesome in 2015. It's a pain in the ass in 2022.
It was awesome in 2015. It's a pain in the ass in 2022.
True, 2015 Teslas are much different (read: worse in some ways) than 2018 Teslas. That’s why I waited for them to improve the technology haha. Been following them since the Roadster’s R&D. I remember having to convince everybody back then that electric cars were going to be viable soon - no one believed Tesla could do it back then. Crazy how things have gone since.
counterpoint: long drives have been improved significantly by Navigate on Autopilot, and the FSD Beta is nice.
example: I live in Houston and needed to go to Dallas for a work trip.
If my wife weren't using our Tesla that week (she drove it to Tennessee), I would have driven there (200-ish miles). I've done 1000+ mile trips with the Model 3 with zero issues, all because of "FSD."
Despite having another car that I really love, driving long distances manually is rough on me. So instead, I took an Uber Black both ways, flew, and rented a car in Dallas. (I expensed the UberX rate, so I paid the rest out of pocket. We are an hour from the airport.)
Convenient, but I still missed the Tesla.
example: I live in Houston and needed to go to Dallas for a work trip.
If my wife weren't using our Tesla that week (she drove it to Tennessee), I would have driven there (200-ish miles). I've done 1000+ mile trips with the Model 3 with zero issues, all because of "FSD."
Despite having another car that I really love, driving long distances manually is rough on me. So instead, I took an Uber Black both ways, flew, and rented a car in Dallas. (I expensed the UberX rate, so I paid the rest out of pocket. We are an hour from the airport.)
Convenient, but I still missed the Tesla.
I don’t disagree. What I mean to say is that FSD is not worth $12k or whatever insane price it is today and there’s no sign that it’ll ever be worth it in the near-term 2 years. And when I say FSD I mean the literal FSD that’s supposed to navigate everything (city, highway, weather, etc) from one address to another address cross country with zero interventions.
With that said, yes I agree, highway driving with Autopilot is worth somewhere on the order of $1-2k to me personally. It’s made long highway drives a lot more pleasant — just used it this past July 4th for 500+ miles of highway driving.
With that said, yes I agree, highway driving with Autopilot is worth somewhere on the order of $1-2k to me personally. It’s made long highway drives a lot more pleasant — just used it this past July 4th for 500+ miles of highway driving.
I was prepared to buy a Tesla, and even planned on doing the full acceptance process (https://github.com/polymorphic/tesla-model-y-checklist) at the factory (a short drive from my house) but after Musk announced the Model Y was losing the radar and reading a bit more about their problems with FSD Beta (which I was planning to spend $10K to get), I concluded their cars were not the best in the world. I went and got a toyota which could pretty much have the engine compartment welded shut for ten years (modulo oil changes) and run perfectly.
It's a real shame because in principle having a manufacturing facility making great electric cars in the bay area would be a real win. Musk's reality distortion field is cracking.
It's a real shame because in principle having a manufacturing facility making great electric cars in the bay area would be a real win. Musk's reality distortion field is cracking.
I’ll give you best in efficiency, quick electric cars
As for luxury, quality, ride comfort - they’re just ok
As for luxury, quality, ride comfort - they’re just ok
IMHO, the best cars in the world are still Toyotas - not the bleeding edge, mind you, just more reliability, overall "gets out of the way and does the job" in the most effective manner possible.
With the supply chains this wild, and increased costs everywhere else, I’m also happy to be a Toyota owner. A healthy aftermarket for parts too just in case. And we get CarPlay!
best cars in the world is a stretch
It is a stretch, but they are clearly also not the worst. The company clearly has value without FSD. Not the value that the market currently gives it, but value nonetheless.
In theory if Tesla just figures out how to make batteries at scale they could be quite successful even if their sales numbers plateau. But in practice it doesn't seem like auto part wholesalers have a whole hell of a lot of power to set prices. Some of the better known brands are subsidiaries, and a few seem to have started as such.
I think his point is that FSD is an inevitability and when it comes it will generally upend the way we think about cars. Manual driving may always be a thing but it would become more of a passion than a way to get to work in the morning. The vast majority of value would come from autonomous transportation and logistics.
It was exaggeration as a figure of speech to suggest that if self-driving is solved, it will make the EV business look incredibly small.
What's shocking is how many people interpreted it literally--that the value is literally zero without self-driving--as if the successful EV business is in fact unsuccessful.
What's shocking is how many people interpreted it literally--that the value is literally zero without self-driving--as if the successful EV business is in fact unsuccessful.
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How are they the best cars in the world? I saw you add IMHO, but unless you mean it like children saying t-rex being the best dino, it really doesn’t bode well with reality.
Like, at least give one metric on which they are measurably “the best”.
Like, at least give one metric on which they are measurably “the best”.
FSD may be a huge fraud but the whole company is not. The cars are real!
The cars are real but they are... Mediocre. The first year of ownership is an amazing honeymoon period, assuming you got one with decent build quality. But the parts are cheap, and they break quickly. I've had one for 5+ years and it's gradually become something I prefer driving less and less.
Your personal experience is not something that can be so easily generalized. I've had my Model 3 for 4+ years, and the only real problems I've had are non-mechanical (nails embedded in tires, getting keyed in SF, etc.). See - we cancel out....
3.5 years here with a model 3. Zero problems. Still love it. What other EV would you pick and what would you use instead of the supercharger network? I don't want to own any more gasoline cars...
Currently have a reservation in for a Ford Lightning (but we use a truck for our forest). We have a plug in hybrid that has a 20 mile range on battery that basically never runs on gas as well.
I've heard good things about the Kia Niro, VW ID.4, and Hyundai Kona as well.
I've heard good things about the Kia Niro, VW ID.4, and Hyundai Kona as well.
they’re electric cars. And i’m pretty sure they’re the biggest electric car brand with the most chargers, which they lease to other automakers at a profit.
My family has a Tesla and they seem to be very happy with it. I’ve driven in it and it seems really nice, maybe not exceptional but not bad.
I do have to say though, the Lidar and self-driving is glitchy and kind of gimmicky. But the fact they’re electric makes them worth it regardless.
My family has a Tesla and they seem to be very happy with it. I’ve driven in it and it seems really nice, maybe not exceptional but not bad.
I do have to say though, the Lidar and self-driving is glitchy and kind of gimmicky. But the fact they’re electric makes them worth it regardless.
There are no LIDARs in Tesla cars. That's part of their problem.
But there are great electric cars from, eg, Kia, Hyundai, Ford, VW, etc. Etc. Tesla is no longer unique.
speak for yourself
i friggin love our model 3. two years and almost 60,000 miles in!
i want to get the model s refresh and be a two tesla household, but my pay needs to go up a little :)
i friggin love our model 3. two years and almost 60,000 miles in!
i want to get the model s refresh and be a two tesla household, but my pay needs to go up a little :)
That was me two years in. Check back in another four.
I've had nothing break after 5 years so far. Best car I've ever had (previously: VW Passat, BMW 525iX, BMW 530xd).
Sure !
But are the financials of the company also real ? The prospects of future products ? Robotaxis, FSD, Cybertruck, Semi ?
But are the financials of the company also real ? The prospects of future products ? Robotaxis, FSD, Cybertruck, Semi ?
Irrespective of what he said, it won't be 0, Tesla would still be one of the best electric cars available.
For how long though? It seems like traditional automakers have mostly figured out EVs now. I love my Chevy EV, and it's 4 years old now. Similarly, the Kia EV I recently drove was excellent(although the Bolt one pedal driving is better IMHO).
The situation outside the US is even worse for Tesla. There's a whole swathe of great EVs these days from VW (ID.3, ID.4), Renault (Megane, E-2008), Opel (Corsa-e), Volvo (C40, XC40), Ford (Mustang Mach-E), Jaguar (I-PACE), Polestar, BMW (i4, iX), Audi (e-Tron), Mercedes (EQS), Skoda (Enyaq), etc.
The range of models is also much wider in terms of affordability. In Europe, we've reached the point where an EV is just another car, and even the cheaper ones have tons of clever bells and whistles like 360 cameras.
The range of models is also much wider in terms of affordability. In Europe, we've reached the point where an EV is just another car, and even the cheaper ones have tons of clever bells and whistles like 360 cameras.
And still Teslas sell better both in EU & China than all those EVs you mentioned
Eh? Tesla is third behind VW Group and Stellantis in the EU (fourth if you count Renault-Nissan, but that's a marginal case), and third behind BYD and SAIC in China.
Now, it's true that they're the biggest single BEV _brand_ in Europe (and second-biggest in China), but that's... basically just a different marketing approach. VW Group has multiple constituent brands mostly selling largely the same thing (SEAT/SKODA/Scania/Cupra/VW/Audi); it's no skin off their nose if someone buys a VW id3 or a Cupra Born (these are the same thing).
Now, it's true that they're the biggest single BEV _brand_ in Europe (and second-biggest in China), but that's... basically just a different marketing approach. VW Group has multiple constituent brands mostly selling largely the same thing (SEAT/SKODA/Scania/Cupra/VW/Audi); it's no skin off their nose if someone buys a VW id3 or a Cupra Born (these are the same thing).
They sell better than any single car brand, sure, but much less as a fraction of the market. Their market share in Europe has been around 25% (compared to around 70% in the US). And it's falling. In March 2022, Tesla's market share was just 10.5%.
There is a large demand for EVs for multiple reasons (incl. the current energy crisis) and Tesla is not scaling fast enough. It's great that others also started producing EVs (consumer choice, price etc.).
But in absolute numbers it will not be easy to catch up, as batteries are a limiting factor.
Energy efficiency in modern EV brands also isn't very good, which requires putting more battery (and weight) into the car. (perhaps excluding Hyundai Ioniq-s)
Combined with fast scaling of the car production + high price of lithium batteries, this will limit how many cars can be produced or increase the car price for the consumer.
This may change if manufacturers will start improving efficiency or building battery factories for themselves. Which I think only VW is currently planning to do
But in absolute numbers it will not be easy to catch up, as batteries are a limiting factor.
Energy efficiency in modern EV brands also isn't very good, which requires putting more battery (and weight) into the car. (perhaps excluding Hyundai Ioniq-s)
Combined with fast scaling of the car production + high price of lithium batteries, this will limit how many cars can be produced or increase the car price for the consumer.
This may change if manufacturers will start improving efficiency or building battery factories for themselves. Which I think only VW is currently planning to do
Volkswagen sells the most EVs in Europe. Volkswagen's sales are split across many models and brands (VW, Skoda, SEAT, Cupra, Audi, Porsche, etc.):
https://eu-evs.com/marketShare/ALL/Groups/Line/All-time-by-Y...
So far in 2022 Tesla is fourth, just behind Hyundai (Hyundai's brands are Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis).
https://eu-evs.com/marketShare/ALL/Groups/Line/All-time-by-Y...
So far in 2022 Tesla is fourth, just behind Hyundai (Hyundai's brands are Hyundai, Kia, and Genesis).
For now, but they’ll get overtaken next year, perhaps even this year if the trends continue.
For the first 5 months of 2022 there were 500,000 BEVs sold in Europe with Tesla 3 and Y accounting for a little over 60,000. [1]
There is a tidal wave of competing offerings and Tesla will soon be on the sidelines.
[1]: https://insideevs.com/news/594688/europe-plugin-car-sales-ma...
For the first 5 months of 2022 there were 500,000 BEVs sold in Europe with Tesla 3 and Y accounting for a little over 60,000. [1]
There is a tidal wave of competing offerings and Tesla will soon be on the sidelines.
[1]: https://insideevs.com/news/594688/europe-plugin-car-sales-ma...
Care to link a source?
I'm now seeing a lot of VW ID.4s and Skoda Enyaqs (basically the same car, different styling) in Sweden.
If I have to pick a side in the battle of who can produce the most cheap batteries, an insane Twitter addict or state-controlled industries of South Korea, I'm going with the Koreans.
Hyundai Motor Group is state-controlled? You mean like GM?
He mixed that up with Chinese corporations. Korean chaebols are more like "state endorsed monopolies". Or state "you can get away with almost anything corporations because you make a large chunk of our GDP and employ a lot of people".
That said...I would bet on koreans too.
That said...I would bet on koreans too.
I'm not mixed up but I guess I should have said state-controlling instead of state-controlled. The chaebols are running the place, that's why they won the DRAM wars. Batteries, same thing. And I was referring to LG Chem, not Hyundai.
That's probably true !
But in itself, just making on of the best electric cars today would justify a valuation of 1/10 of what Tesla currently have.
I still admire Musk and Tesla for having started the electric revolution. But by 2025 (and maybe already are), they will just be one of many electric car manufacturers - somewhere in the middle of the pack.
But in itself, just making on of the best electric cars today would justify a valuation of 1/10 of what Tesla currently have.
I still admire Musk and Tesla for having started the electric revolution. But by 2025 (and maybe already are), they will just be one of many electric car manufacturers - somewhere in the middle of the pack.
He did not start it. He did a hostile takeover and revised the history of Tesla so he could be a cofounder.
I’m no expert on Tesla’s history, but I’m sure it was private back then, and hostile takeovers of private companies are not really a thing.
Correct, yeah. Tesla was founded in mid 2003, Elon became the largest shareholder in early 2004, became the CEO in 2008, and then the company IPOd in mid 2010.[0]
The comment you were replying to definitely seemed quite a bit incoherent with their personal take on what hostile takeovers actually mean.
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_Inc.
The comment you were replying to definitely seemed quite a bit incoherent with their personal take on what hostile takeovers actually mean.
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla,_Inc.
> Does anybody seriously think Karpathy would step down if FSD was really close to be released ??
Life is not only about work. I stepped down from the company I funded after 14 years, it never stopped growing after that. Some people just get bored after doing one thing for a long time and want to explore other areas, especially if they always had broad interests.
> It really starts to feel like Tesla is a huge fraud which is about to be uncovered.
I seriously doubt that my Model S will somehow stop working so well and turn out to be just a fake car after 5 years.
Life is not only about work. I stepped down from the company I funded after 14 years, it never stopped growing after that. Some people just get bored after doing one thing for a long time and want to explore other areas, especially if they always had broad interests.
> It really starts to feel like Tesla is a huge fraud which is about to be uncovered.
I seriously doubt that my Model S will somehow stop working so well and turn out to be just a fake car after 5 years.
This is what I say when people call Musk a showman and a fraud.
I say that I must be imagining that I’ve actually been driving an EV for the past four years.
I must’ve dreamt having to drive only 2 hours out of a 12 hour road trip.
Bugs? Yea. Some really dangerous ones we all have read about. Manufacturing defects? Yup! Missed Deadlines? Hell yeah.
But a fraud? Nope.
I say that I must be imagining that I’ve actually been driving an EV for the past four years.
I must’ve dreamt having to drive only 2 hours out of a 12 hour road trip.
Bugs? Yea. Some really dangerous ones we all have read about. Manufacturing defects? Yup! Missed Deadlines? Hell yeah.
But a fraud? Nope.
You have a point.
But did Theranos customers were thinking they were a fraud ? Nope - they were getting their blood test results done, although not in a way Theranos advertised.
Of course the Tesla cars are not a fraud - they are actually pretty good - and for a long time they were the only EV out there. But it's no longer a case, and they are just becoming one of the 50 EV car makers out there.
And Elon seems to know it - that's why he's insisting that the entire company insane valuation is tied to FSD, or whatever other futuristic product he can imagine.
What I mean is that it's a fraud because it's an (maybe a bit above) average EV car making company, but it's CEO and the company itself insists it has extremely advance technology and products - which for now, doesn't exist. As a result, it's $ valuation is higher than most other car makers combined.
But did Theranos customers were thinking they were a fraud ? Nope - they were getting their blood test results done, although not in a way Theranos advertised.
Of course the Tesla cars are not a fraud - they are actually pretty good - and for a long time they were the only EV out there. But it's no longer a case, and they are just becoming one of the 50 EV car makers out there.
And Elon seems to know it - that's why he's insisting that the entire company insane valuation is tied to FSD, or whatever other futuristic product he can imagine.
What I mean is that it's a fraud because it's an (maybe a bit above) average EV car making company, but it's CEO and the company itself insists it has extremely advance technology and products - which for now, doesn't exist. As a result, it's $ valuation is higher than most other car makers combined.
While I wouldn’t just naively say Musk is 100% innocent, most of these examples are cases of really bad estimation.
Nobody would care about the slipped FSD timelines if they hadn’t paid for it. Tesla’s mistake was charging for it.
I chose not to pay for it since I knew his estimates were rubbish. But most don’t. Doesn’t mean It’s fraud. They have been working on it. And you can see it in people’s cars.
Nobody would care about the slipped FSD timelines if they hadn’t paid for it. Tesla’s mistake was charging for it.
I chose not to pay for it since I knew his estimates were rubbish. But most don’t. Doesn’t mean It’s fraud. They have been working on it. And you can see it in people’s cars.
> Nobody would care about the slipped FSD timelines if they hadn’t paid for it. Tesla’s mistake was charging for it.
I paid for it (€2500 or 3000 I don't remember) and I'm not stressed. I have the world's best "autopilot" (EAP) already in my 5 years old car and it's getting better and better.
Other vendors would have sold me a parking heater at that price (or higher).
I paid for it (€2500 or 3000 I don't remember) and I'm not stressed. I have the world's best "autopilot" (EAP) already in my 5 years old car and it's getting better and better.
Other vendors would have sold me a parking heater at that price (or higher).
> and they are just becoming one of the 50 EV car makers out there.
The Model Y was recently the best-selling car regardless of technology (i.e. overall best-selling passenger car) in several countries. Most notably, last month in China.
The Model Y was recently the best-selling car regardless of technology (i.e. overall best-selling passenger car) in several countries. Most notably, last month in China.
Devil's Advocate- Maybe Karpathy thinks all the fun parts of FSD are done and it's just drudge work from this point.
He's done the first 90%, the last 90% is now all just drudgery.
Tesla has been over promising for sure. But it’s not a fraud. Had it been it would have met the same fate as Nikola. I am for heavy fines on Tesla for their lofty claims, but I don’t know why people want to see Tesla destroyed. They do have a profitable electric car business with no fraud.
Karpathy would step down if his vesting schedule is over and he failed to negotiate another stock option. TSLA is public, it's value was inflated at least an order of magnitude last year, so any rational person would cache hugely on that.
> It really starts to feel like Tesla is a huge fraud which is about to be uncovered.
It was always the case.
It was always the case.
What about the people who died beta testing it.
I've really gotten into self driving the past couple years. Watched every video I can find on it. Got a Toyota Rav 4 bought a Comma 2 then later a Comma 3. Really enjoy Comma AI as a product on the highway and some in town. That being said, self driving in city streets is a problem that literally doesn't exist. On highway you can relax, mostly because the car is keeping a straight line and not much is happening. As soon as a car is negotiating stop signs, doing turns, etc it stops being fun and relaxing and starts becoming anxiety inducing.
The only thing that needs to be solved fully is highway with auto lane change. That's literally it. And the system needs to do eye tracking like Comma Ai. If your adaptive cruise control makes you put your hand on the wheel it's useless.
The only thing that needs to be solved fully is highway with auto lane change. That's literally it. And the system needs to do eye tracking like Comma Ai. If your adaptive cruise control makes you put your hand on the wheel it's useless.
Yeah, it's kind of odd that so much effort is being put into city driving.
Just perfect highway driving first. Trucking alone would massively change if goods could be transported to edge of urban areas autonomously.
I'm sure it's being worked on too, but puzzling why that use case is not priority 1, 2 and 3
Just perfect highway driving first. Trucking alone would massively change if goods could be transported to edge of urban areas autonomously.
I'm sure it's being worked on too, but puzzling why that use case is not priority 1, 2 and 3
You're mostly right about long distance commuting/travel... but FSD in cities is needed for trucking/delivery/taxis to be fully automated. If you need to pay for a driver to drive then a lot of value is going to be left on the table still.
It's starting to look like we'll need general intelligence AI to solve self driving fully within cities. For trucking, let AI solve the long distance stuff, then have drivers drive the last few miles. I don't know if it would work but worth thinking about. That seems like a much closer thing than having AI negotiating an 18 wheeler through a city
This comes after yesterday's news of Tesla letting 229 people go who were working on Autopilot: https://techcrunch.com/2022/07/12/tesla-laying-off-229-autop....
That's pretty much a totally different category of employee, though:
"Tesla is laying off 229 data annotation employees who are part of the company’s larger Autopilot team [...] Most of the workers were in moderately low-skilled, low-wage jobs, such as Autopilot data labeling"
Data annotation can be cheaply outsourced or scaled up and down without much affecting progress on self-driving. Karpathy leaving says more about that progress to me.
Data annotation can be cheaply outsourced or scaled up and down without much affecting progress on self-driving. Karpathy leaving says more about that progress to me.
On top of that, this might signal that Tesla is confident enough in their autolabeling that they no longer need as much human intervention. This job title theoretically should be temporary.
lol - FSD is a scam, and the reckoning is here.
I don't think it's a scam, it's just a really hard problem that will take years or decades longer than originally promised.
Idk, does the job for me. Bought it to make my commute easier and it reduces the mental load required to drive in LA traffic.
autopilot != FSD
I agree that autopilot by itself, currently is still pretty valuable. What I worry about (and seems to be confirmed) is that Musk misunderstands what’s possible with the current technology and will make outrageous demands from the team, they will fuck up trying to deliver, then the whole thing will become radioactive.
I agree that autopilot by itself, currently is still pretty valuable. What I worry about (and seems to be confirmed) is that Musk misunderstands what’s possible with the current technology and will make outrageous demands from the team, they will fuck up trying to deliver, then the whole thing will become radioactive.
I could totally see that happening. We've definitely had updates that cause more problems than help.
> Data annotation can be cheaply outsourced or scaled up
Only if you don't care about quality. In my experience using annotation companies leads to a conflict of interest - annotate more to earn more, or annotate better.
Only if you don't care about quality. In my experience using annotation companies leads to a conflict of interest - annotate more to earn more, or annotate better.
Let’s be honest, they were never going to solve the autonomous problem with that anemic R&D spend. Tesla is really bordering on fraud.
I shared a desk with Andrej when he was interning at our lab for the summer at the University of Toronto. One of the smartest people I ever connected with about all CS topics. Hopefully he finds what he is looking for and takes a well earned break.
Oh well, at least Musk has Twitter to fall back on.
Actually it seems like he believes there are too many bots to care about freeze peach
It’s ok, before he agreed to buy it, he said he’ll get rid of all the bots once he buys it
But they are really good bots. So good that they might pass as FSD AI.
That was the prediction when he took a “sabbatical” back in March.
Why do people leave companies in this manner?
Why do people leave companies in this manner?
A couple of theories:
1) It sometimes can be hard to leave a company when you are "in the thick of it." A sabbatical can give you personal time to reflect on whether you want to stay or not.
2) Sometimes people use sabbaticals to prep/perform job interviews or plan career transitions.
3) Sabbaticals can allow you to quit early while waiting for vesting restricted stock units, employee stock plan sales, retirement contributions (matches), etc. There are certainly many more timed bonuses available for senior leaders.
1) It sometimes can be hard to leave a company when you are "in the thick of it." A sabbatical can give you personal time to reflect on whether you want to stay or not.
2) Sometimes people use sabbaticals to prep/perform job interviews or plan career transitions.
3) Sabbaticals can allow you to quit early while waiting for vesting restricted stock units, employee stock plan sales, retirement contributions (matches), etc. There are certainly many more timed bonuses available for senior leaders.
Employee: I quit.
Employer: Are you sure? Why don’t you take some time off and think about it?
Employer: Are you sure? Why don’t you take some time off and think about it?
Totally this. If you’ve got somebody who is critical to the success of the business you do anything you can to keep them
It also buys them time to figure out if you really were critical and see who steps up to replace you. If at the end of the sabbatical you really were irreplaceable, they can fight a lot harder to keep you.
This happened to me. I ended up coming back and deciding I still needed to quit, and the CEO was understanding.
At some companies sabbaticals are an explicit part of the benefits package. Every X years, you'll get a paid sabbatical of Y months. If you're close to X, why not wait and get the Y before you leave?
[deleted]
When a key person leaves, a lot of things can go haywire. If they take a break first, they can be semi-available to help resolve the most urgent issues. Kind of like turning off the circuit at the breaker to find out what is plugged into it.
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We haven’t seen Musk’s usual “full self driving is coming Xth of next month” tweet in a while now. I really hope it’s Andrej convince my him to stop, if so that is a great win in my book. After his leaving musk may feel the need to sell his company again to show everything is fine. I will not be surprised to see that tweet again in the next few months.
Last time he said it was on Lex Fridman about 6 months ago.
https://youtu.be/DxREm3s1scA
https://youtu.be/DxREm3s1scA
Fully vested and widely respected. Great position to be in.
> widely respected
Except he failed to achieve what he claimed he could.
Except he failed to achieve what he claimed he could.
I don't think he ever claimed he could do it. Like, really. He's a scientific, I only think he said he would do his best. Which is a fine thing to say, and keeps all the respect of the field, because everyone knows it's fucking hard / next to impossible.
He mentions open source and education which I’m really excited about. There’s been a big lack of accessible from-first-principles resources on this (plenty of abstracted libraries though). Now is a great time to build up excitement among amateurs to learn about this stuff imo. (Right near the super cool text-to-image breakthroughs.) It shouldn’t just be openai and google building these things.
The autopilot part of Tesla has never made much sense. Is Tesla the electric car company, or is it the luxury car company? Either way, why does the power train (EV or ICE) come into play at all?
Not only that, but Tesla has played the Innovator's Dilemma game from the position of the upstart financially, but targeted the segment of the market that incumbents will defend to the death (luxury cars).
Tesla could have gone a different way and played the game from the true upstart: targeting the low end of the car market. Attack from below. But it didn't do that.
Incumbents always win at the sustaining innovation game. The electric power train is a sustaining innovation for the automobile industry. It doesn't break any incumbent's business model (financing the purchase of expensive cars), especially at this point. And we're now seeing this with all of the EV introductions and announcements from incumbents. Oddly, though, there are plenty of upstarts trying to do exactly what Tesla tried - attacking the blubber-rich end of the market with an immature technology.
Not only that, but Tesla has played the Innovator's Dilemma game from the position of the upstart financially, but targeted the segment of the market that incumbents will defend to the death (luxury cars).
Tesla could have gone a different way and played the game from the true upstart: targeting the low end of the car market. Attack from below. But it didn't do that.
Incumbents always win at the sustaining innovation game. The electric power train is a sustaining innovation for the automobile industry. It doesn't break any incumbent's business model (financing the purchase of expensive cars), especially at this point. And we're now seeing this with all of the EV introductions and announcements from incumbents. Oddly, though, there are plenty of upstarts trying to do exactly what Tesla tried - attacking the blubber-rich end of the market with an immature technology.
The incumbents will defend that market segment to their death indeed. Tesla is pulling a 30% gross margin on their EV's, while legacy auto looses money on their EV's. I don't see legacy auto being capable of refactoring their cars, manufacturing processes and business models fast enough to survive.
The fall can cascade quickly, as the incumbents are stuffed with debt. When sales of ICE fall due to the growing EV segment they will have a hard time seeking the funding necessary to transition. IMO it's all a bit late. But good luck to them. From my observation only Ford and VW really appreciate the situation they are in, and they are trying hard to navigate out. Hopefully they survive. GM is screwed.
The fall can cascade quickly, as the incumbents are stuffed with debt. When sales of ICE fall due to the growing EV segment they will have a hard time seeking the funding necessary to transition. IMO it's all a bit late. But good luck to them. From my observation only Ford and VW really appreciate the situation they are in, and they are trying hard to navigate out. Hopefully they survive. GM is screwed.
> I don't see legacy auto being capable of refactoring their cars, manufacturing processes and business models fast enough to survive.
That doesn't make any sense. "Legacy auto" knows how to make cars. To their final assembly factories there's not a huge difference between a BEV, PHEV, or an ICE drive train. So long as they feed in components they get cars out. They definitely know how to get components made to feed into their factories.
That's a place where they have an advantage over Tesla. They can make BEVs that break even or lose money because they have a whole line of ICE cars making a profit. Tesla only has their up market BEVs to make their money.
Tesla doesn't have a moat around BEVs. Now that "legacy auto" is making them Tesla is just another BEV manufacturer. As their market share erodes they're going to have a harder time maintaining their price premiums. They also don't have the deep bench of fleet sales that "legacy auto" has. The places they're trying to diversify (Power Wall, solar, etc) aren't markets that support the premium prices they currently enjoy with their cars.
That doesn't make any sense. "Legacy auto" knows how to make cars. To their final assembly factories there's not a huge difference between a BEV, PHEV, or an ICE drive train. So long as they feed in components they get cars out. They definitely know how to get components made to feed into their factories.
That's a place where they have an advantage over Tesla. They can make BEVs that break even or lose money because they have a whole line of ICE cars making a profit. Tesla only has their up market BEVs to make their money.
Tesla doesn't have a moat around BEVs. Now that "legacy auto" is making them Tesla is just another BEV manufacturer. As their market share erodes they're going to have a harder time maintaining their price premiums. They also don't have the deep bench of fleet sales that "legacy auto" has. The places they're trying to diversify (Power Wall, solar, etc) aren't markets that support the premium prices they currently enjoy with their cars.
> That doesn't make any sense. "Legacy auto" knows how to make cars. To their final assembly factories there's not a huge difference between a BEV, PHEV, or an ICE drive train. So long as they feed in components they get cars out. They definitely know how to get components made to feed into their factories.
That's the problem. When they do it that way, they don't make a profit on BEV's. "Legacy auto" got good at building the supply chain network for parts. Then they pick and choose and assemble into a car. But everyone is taking a slice, and it's hard to optimize designs for efficiency between so many suppliers. Then they have their dealers to contend with.
What i'm saying is that "legacy auto" can certainly build and sell a BEV like they do with ICE. And it's not too hard for them to make that change, baring battery supply challenges. But they don't have the 30% gross margin that Tesla does. That margin will continue to grow and then turn into a weapon when Tesla needs to be competitive.
That's the problem. When they do it that way, they don't make a profit on BEV's. "Legacy auto" got good at building the supply chain network for parts. Then they pick and choose and assemble into a car. But everyone is taking a slice, and it's hard to optimize designs for efficiency between so many suppliers. Then they have their dealers to contend with.
What i'm saying is that "legacy auto" can certainly build and sell a BEV like they do with ICE. And it's not too hard for them to make that change, baring battery supply challenges. But they don't have the 30% gross margin that Tesla does. That margin will continue to grow and then turn into a weapon when Tesla needs to be competitive.
> That margin will continue to grow and then turn into a weapon when Tesla needs to be competitive.
This does not follow at all. Tesla sells their barely up market cars at luxury car prices and makes a significant amount of money off selling emission credits and raking in other government subsidies.
As "legacy auto" manufacturers ramp up their EV production they won't need to buy emission credits from Tesla. They'll also themselves be eligible for the bottom line boosting government subsidies.
I also don't see Tesla being able to compete on luxury as they have significant problems with fit and finish. Now that traditional luxury brands have solid EV offerings it seems unlikely Tesla will be able to keep their margins and increase their sales volume.
This does not follow at all. Tesla sells their barely up market cars at luxury car prices and makes a significant amount of money off selling emission credits and raking in other government subsidies.
As "legacy auto" manufacturers ramp up their EV production they won't need to buy emission credits from Tesla. They'll also themselves be eligible for the bottom line boosting government subsidies.
I also don't see Tesla being able to compete on luxury as they have significant problems with fit and finish. Now that traditional luxury brands have solid EV offerings it seems unlikely Tesla will be able to keep their margins and increase their sales volume.
> This does not follow at all. Tesla sells their barely up market cars at luxury car prices and makes a significant amount of money off selling emission credits and raking in other government subsidies.
Emission credits were 3.6%[1] of revenue last quarter (Q1 2022). I don't know what "subsidies" you are referring too but you may be thinking of the EV tax credit, which was exhausted by Tesla in late 2019[2]. So in that regard other EV automakers have an advantage over Tesla.
> I also don't see Tesla being able to compete on luxury as they have significant problems with fit and finish. Now that traditional luxury brands have solid EV offerings it seems unlikely Tesla will be able to keep their margins and increase their sales volume.
Tesla has certainly had fit and finish issues but they are solving this. Their new Model Y produced in TX uses their "giga castings" which removes the opportunity to screw up alignment by removing ~150 welds for the body. Look it up if you want to know more.
I think error in your thinking is that Tesla will remain static while others catchup. That's not going to happen. Tesla is innovating (increasing margin) and scaling at a faster rate than "legacy auto".
[1] Q1 2022 Financials https://tesla-cdn.thron.com/static/IOSHZZ_TSLA_Q1_2022_Updat... [2] https://fueleconomy.gov/feg/taxevb.shtml
Emission credits were 3.6%[1] of revenue last quarter (Q1 2022). I don't know what "subsidies" you are referring too but you may be thinking of the EV tax credit, which was exhausted by Tesla in late 2019[2]. So in that regard other EV automakers have an advantage over Tesla.
> I also don't see Tesla being able to compete on luxury as they have significant problems with fit and finish. Now that traditional luxury brands have solid EV offerings it seems unlikely Tesla will be able to keep their margins and increase their sales volume.
Tesla has certainly had fit and finish issues but they are solving this. Their new Model Y produced in TX uses their "giga castings" which removes the opportunity to screw up alignment by removing ~150 welds for the body. Look it up if you want to know more.
I think error in your thinking is that Tesla will remain static while others catchup. That's not going to happen. Tesla is innovating (increasing margin) and scaling at a faster rate than "legacy auto".
[1] Q1 2022 Financials https://tesla-cdn.thron.com/static/IOSHZZ_TSLA_Q1_2022_Updat... [2] https://fueleconomy.gov/feg/taxevb.shtml
> But they don't have the 30% gross margin that Tesla does.
Sure, but they'll make it up on volume. Tesla also will have much lower than 30% gross margins in 10 years -but can it catch up with "legacy auto" on volume?
Sure, but they'll make it up on volume. Tesla also will have much lower than 30% gross margins in 10 years -but can it catch up with "legacy auto" on volume?
> I don't see legacy auto being capable of refactoring their cars, manufacturing processes and business models fast enough to survive.
My take is the opposite. Incumbents already have like 90% of what Tesla had or chose to build from scratch. EV's are not complicated at all compared to ICE, and incumbents have been refining their manufacturing process for decades in a brutally competitive industry.
Unless Tesla can somehow get an effective monopoly on battery tech or FSD, which they are not, they're going to be just another car company. Nothing they can deliver can't be done by others.
Personally I think it's way more likely Waymo or Apple deliver FSD first, with broad industry partnerships wiping out Tesla's advantage.
My take is the opposite. Incumbents already have like 90% of what Tesla had or chose to build from scratch. EV's are not complicated at all compared to ICE, and incumbents have been refining their manufacturing process for decades in a brutally competitive industry.
Unless Tesla can somehow get an effective monopoly on battery tech or FSD, which they are not, they're going to be just another car company. Nothing they can deliver can't be done by others.
Personally I think it's way more likely Waymo or Apple deliver FSD first, with broad industry partnerships wiping out Tesla's advantage.
I agree that the EV tech stack is easy. EV retro fits illustrate how simple EV's are. But that's not the part that matters. What matters is if you can make an outsized profit building and selling EV's. Legacy auto can't, Tesla can. Tesla is very vertically integrated so they can eek out extra margin that others can't. They also aren't inhibited by the existing dealer / service / financing model. So what I'm saying is if legacy auto wants to compete with Tesla, they have to refactor their entire business. And i don't see that happening. It will be interesting to see who is right in 5-10 years.
I was with you in my 4 years of Tesla ownership but having researched & sampled the competition I just can't agree anymore.
Tesla has gone down a cul-de-sac with FSD to the point that there's plenty of equally competent highway "self driving", which is all 99% of people actually need/want.
Further Tesla is extremely focussed on SKU minimization .. very few models with very few options. Tesla only has 4 cars which are kind of like 3.5 given how similar 3/Y are. People want a variety of sizes/shapes/luxury levels, and to have some options within a model.
At the Model 3&Y end of price curve, they face serious competition from Ford, Hyundai, Kia and VW.
At the S&X end, they are actually in worse shape because the Germans will sell you a wide range of cars, which actually feel luxurious inside for the ~$100K price you are paying... with lots of fun colors and options packages. The interior of a $50K Model 3 and $130K Model S are more similar than dissimilar.
You can get also get worse EVs for cheaper than the lowest Tesla starting price... not every car can start at $50K.
I mean it's kind of crazy the Tesla Model Y has crept up to $68k starting price. There are a lot of crossover/hatchback EVs in the $40-60k range especially with tax credits included...
Tesla has gone down a cul-de-sac with FSD to the point that there's plenty of equally competent highway "self driving", which is all 99% of people actually need/want.
Further Tesla is extremely focussed on SKU minimization .. very few models with very few options. Tesla only has 4 cars which are kind of like 3.5 given how similar 3/Y are. People want a variety of sizes/shapes/luxury levels, and to have some options within a model.
At the Model 3&Y end of price curve, they face serious competition from Ford, Hyundai, Kia and VW.
At the S&X end, they are actually in worse shape because the Germans will sell you a wide range of cars, which actually feel luxurious inside for the ~$100K price you are paying... with lots of fun colors and options packages. The interior of a $50K Model 3 and $130K Model S are more similar than dissimilar.
You can get also get worse EVs for cheaper than the lowest Tesla starting price... not every car can start at $50K.
I mean it's kind of crazy the Tesla Model Y has crept up to $68k starting price. There are a lot of crossover/hatchback EVs in the $40-60k range especially with tax credits included...
Tesla is focused on unit production, SKU minimization is a side effect. They are supply contained. Why make additional models of cars if you can sell more of the ones you already make instead? There's more than enough demand to support their limited SKU's, high price points and current production; for the moment. When Tesla manages to cap out on their demand, they can lower prices and introduce more models. But when that happens they will be at a scale where their economies of scale and vertical integration allows them to still make a large profit while their competition breaks even or worse.
Maybe? But cars are like fashion. Demand can change more rapidly than Tesla can design, announce, and scale production of new models to fill all the gaps in their model line.
Once competitors can ship in higher volumes at the Model 3/Y price points then they can readjust pricing quickly of course.
Look at the Model S right now, if you want a Plaid you can essentially have it RIGHT NOW, there's even a few inventory cars popping up periodically. For the Model 3/Y, if you go with performance model, again you can have it in weeks like in normal times. To me this looks like demand at the high end is cooling off for Tesla.
Once competitors can ship in higher volumes at the Model 3/Y price points then they can readjust pricing quickly of course.
Look at the Model S right now, if you want a Plaid you can essentially have it RIGHT NOW, there's even a few inventory cars popping up periodically. For the Model 3/Y, if you go with performance model, again you can have it in weeks like in normal times. To me this looks like demand at the high end is cooling off for Tesla.
Hyundai belongs in that group as well.
And yet Tesla is dominant player in luxury segments they have products in
Analysts suggest that, while they may still be the market leader in EVs, by 2025 they're looking at a decline from today's 70-75% market share to 11-20%:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilwinton/2022/07/11/ev-makers...
This meshes pretty well with them not having anything in the compact, pickup truck, offroading/camping segments (luxury, or not). They also don't have any commercial vehicles like delivery vans.
All of those segments are being filled in rapidly by competitors. Also, the first real non-Tesla luxury sedans have been on the market for what, under a year?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilwinton/2022/07/11/ev-makers...
This meshes pretty well with them not having anything in the compact, pickup truck, offroading/camping segments (luxury, or not). They also don't have any commercial vehicles like delivery vans.
All of those segments are being filled in rapidly by competitors. Also, the first real non-Tesla luxury sedans have been on the market for what, under a year?
Fleet sales is a place I see demand seriously ticking up for BEVs. Even modulo today's price gouging on gas, gas prices are only going to increase over time and many countries/states are increasing emission regulations.
In California at least there's a significant percentage of fleet vehicles that are HEVs or low emission ICEs like CNG. Fleet edition BEVs will sell like gangbusters here (if they're not already).
I don't see Tesla really able to target the fleet vehicle market. They're currently geared entirely for consumer sales and then only up market consumer sales. Fleet sales aren't flashy or exciting but they're reliable income generators for car companies.
In California at least there's a significant percentage of fleet vehicles that are HEVs or low emission ICEs like CNG. Fleet edition BEVs will sell like gangbusters here (if they're not already).
I don't see Tesla really able to target the fleet vehicle market. They're currently geared entirely for consumer sales and then only up market consumer sales. Fleet sales aren't flashy or exciting but they're reliable income generators for car companies.
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Because analysts have always been so accurate forecasting Tesla...
I feel like this was a pretty popular position to take in 2017-2018, but it sure has aged like milk.
I feel like, most commenters are speculating too much around Tesla and their lack of FSD capabilities being the issue. Perhaps Karpathy just felt that the work was too draining and decided to he needed a break. I believe Karpathy has recently been on a lengthy sabbatical.
My point is, people leave their jobs for many reasons other than how well the company is doing. At least I hope so.
My point is, people leave their jobs for many reasons other than how well the company is doing. At least I hope so.
Can anybody give insights in to how key this guy is to Tesla. Is it a big deal? What’s his USP?
He was the director of AI at the company, an important position. Notably, however, the AI director position is distinct from the director of the Autopilot team. That position is held by Ashok Elluswamy.
Oh. Well that puts a different spin on things then. Karpathy said he wanted to sharpen his technical skills. He might have left in part because he felt he was too far from the action, since he was at least 2, if not 3 levels removed from the actual research and implementation work.
I think this is one of those things that need to be evaluated retrospectively. How “key” is anyone when their project is yet to be successful?
Don't worry guys, FSD is right around the corner!
Let’s admit the real innovation here. It’s not FSD. It’s the underground tunnels with traffic. Underground traffic for all to be autopiloted through with their Teslas so that we can all meet at the digital town square on our phones.
I can't wait to stand in queue for an hour to take a 30mph Tesla ride in a tube instead of walking for 15 minutes!
FSD? The guy promised a robot!
i wonder if tesla can afford to abandon autopilot. the strategy of always selling a futuristic vision of driving has always been core to the brand. if they happen to become just another boring electric car company, i'm not sure they can compete in the long run.
They can pivot to selling an auto-autopilot; an AI-based process run totally within the car, which will autonomously work on the code for autopilot for the next 5 years. (/s).
Why should it? It's geting really good.
https://www.youtube.com/c/WholeMarsCatalog/videos
https://www.youtube.com/c/WholeMarsCatalog/videos
By autopilot do you mean Tesla Autopilot aka Traffic assisted cruise control or do you mean FSD?
Because there’s 0 chance they let go of the first, since that’s integral to any new car these days.
Because there’s 0 chance they let go of the first, since that’s integral to any new car these days.
They're laying off people how label data. This isn't the devs that actually work on the software.
It's fun to see everybody succumbing to scaling laws. We will only have FSD when we can run realtime inference with a huge model. No amount of creativity seems to overcome the fact that bigger is better. So, let's wait Moore's law do its job.
Unless you've demonstrated that FSD follows scaling laws, this comment is pretty meaningless.
I am not aware of any autoregressive transformer model that doesn't follow scaling laws. Tesla only needs to tokenize actions and images and voi la, self-driving capabilities. The problem, of course, is how you deploy such a big model so every car can run it locally.
Scaling parameter count requires a similar increase in the amount of (accurate, labeled) data. This can be mitigated by “bootstrapping” techniques that make labeling new data easier, but is still likely the bottleneck for training such a model effectively (assuming they can probably spin up a supercomputer to scale their models otherwise).
You are correct. A Masked Language Model architecture would work very well here. Train it on labeled data and then bidirectionally infer missed spots.
That's fun. We should join their AI team.
That's fun. We should join their AI team.
I don’t think I would do very well under Elon’s management style ha - the whole butts-in- seats from 8-6 thing is basically a dead end for me (personally).
I’m not sure what architecture they use, but they do indeed already have a pre trained “auto-labeler” that their annotators use. My understanding is that due to hallucinations from the model and the risks involved with driving, they still need to be vetted manually before being added to the dataset.
I’m not sure what architecture they use, but they do indeed already have a pre trained “auto-labeler” that their annotators use. My understanding is that due to hallucinations from the model and the risks involved with driving, they still need to be vetted manually before being added to the dataset.
Makes sense. Fortunately, scale is less of a problem for the autolabeler, so they can put a lot of processing power on this step. But yeah, they will need human labelers for the edge cases where the model is unsure. I wish Tesla would publish their results so we could understand what they are doing and how much it is improving.
Well look at this guy. Maybe you should take charge as the new director of AI seen as you figured it out.
Thanks, such an honor.
Even if FSD doesn’t work out Andrej still has an impressive achievement for 5 years.
I’m not sure if many people 5 years out of their PhD can say they did anything close to what Andrej did.
I’m not sure if many people 5 years out of their PhD can say they did anything close to what Andrej did.
I wouldn't have dared to step into his role even if I had the chops. Takes real courage to do self driving where a mistake can cost human life. In my line of work a prediction mistake costs 1 minute of extra manual work.
It seems like the FSD dream will remain a dream in the forseeable future. I can't really say I'm surprised, but it's a bit disappointing.
“Well, he wasn’t very good at making them self-drive.” -my daughter
hmm, I think the real time aspects of self driving are hard. There is lots of promise with masked language and image modeling, but plenty of work to be done, even for non real time applications.
Fogezy, Fogazy.
Cars will never drive themselves.
I believe what I have read about people being driven by driverless taxis in some cities in America.
Unless I have been reading lies, this statement is at least half false
Unless I have been reading lies, this statement is at least half false
What's your definition? They certainly do a lot of driving related things pretty well and others quite poorly (much like humans but we have different failure modes).
If you life in San Francisco, CA, you'll often see Cruise cars roaming the streets at night collecting data with no physical driver present.
If you life in San Francisco, CA, you'll often see Cruise cars roaming the streets at night collecting data with no physical driver present.
Really? Because autopilot works pretty well for me already. I have it on way more than I have it off. Long roads with lots of stop lights, and 6 hour drives no longer bother me.
Oh dear. So who is going to improve on making and shilling the 'Fools Self Driving' (FSD) beta demoware that not only it is 'allegedly' half-working, but is already under ridiculous amounts of scrutiny and investigation by the regulators, especially with deceptive advertising putting drivers on the road at risk?
Once again, where are the robot-taxis as promised for release in 2020?
Once again, where are the robot-taxis as promised for release in 2020?
It never made any sense but there was too much money to be made in pretending.
This announcement comes after a 4 month sabbatical where Karpathy said he wanted to take some time off to “sharpen my technical edge,” which makes it sound like this is the result of frustration with the technical approach instead of burnout.