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George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’

electrek.co

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Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’

#181

Post by danaliv »

BurningFrog wrote: post #131
Analemma_ wrote: post #16

He's currently throwing a temper tantrum on Twitter, and all because the NHTSA wanted to ask him a few questions about the product (you can see it here: https://www.scribd.com/document/329218929/2016-10-27-Special... ). Like, how dare the government try to have basic standards for multi-ton hunks of metal hurtling down the highway without human input. I've been trying to convince people lately that Silicon Valley isn…

If you read the letter, it's a lot more than "answering a few questions". He gets two weeks to provide an enormous amount of detailed information about the product, I assume under threat of legal consequences if any of it contains an error, interspersed with lots of reminders that they can and will close down his business if they feel like it.

If he doesn't already know the answers to these questions, he's got no business selling this product. Everything that they're asking for—essentially the owner's manual, product requirements, and test methodology—would be readily at hand for any serious operation.

You can't just wire up an Arduino to the CAN bus of a 4,000-pound missile and sell it on the open market willy-nilly.

Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’

#182

Post by forgottenpass »

logfromblammo wrote: post #62
tptacek wrote: post #29

Here's what the Special Order demanded: 1. Describe in detail how the comma one is installed in a vehicle and provide a copy of installation instructions for the comma one. 2. Describe in detail the advanced driver assistance features of the comma one, including how those features differ from the existing features of the vehicles in which the comma one is intended to be installed. 3. Describe in detail how a vehicle…

Wow. I guess the first thing I'd do is file a FOIA request to see any Special Orders they may have sent to Apple, Uber, Google, Tesla, GM, Ford, Mercedes Benz, Volkswagen, Audi, Nissan, Toyota, BMW, and Volvo, and for copies of any documentation received from those companies that would be responsive to the demands in their own order or the order to comma.ai . Then I'd also request an extension in the time to respond…

It would be so much easier to respond if you could just do exactly the same thing that the larger players did.

The FOIA route is appealing because it feeds into a sense of perceived indignation.

But the most important thing to copy from the large players is never going to be spelled out in their submissions.

I'll let everyone in this thread in on the secret: hire someone that specializes in quality management systems.

Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’

#183

Post by JumpCrisscross »

6stringmerc wrote: post #154
jacquesm wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the point entirely: knowing that somewhere down the line you will have to have answers to questions like these is an integral part of releasing a bunch of software and a device to transform a regular car into a self driving car if you are serious about the project in the first place. If this list surprises you then you probably shouldn't be in the self driving car business.

No, you are. I'm pointing out that documentation that is satisfactory to a large bureaucratic entity is not as simple as the majority of the chorus here seems to think. I think it's perfectly reasonable to expect a company selling a public product to undergo scrutiny, sure, and I can sense that his operation is - probably wisely - thinking they're not robust enough to satisfy the hurdles. That doesn't mean his produc…

Fulfilling regulatory obligations is a known up front critical-path task. It's not like he tried, was met with resistance, and then bowed out. He overpromised and then failed to deliver due to a completely predictable hurdle.

Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’

#184

Post by abduhl »

mikeash wrote: post #167
abduhl wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an ends justify the means argument. How many lives have been saved TO DATE with self driving cars? How many lives will be saved IN THE FUTURE with self driving cars? What is the acceptable casualty rate to get from where we are now to where you think we will be in the future. Is your family an acceptable casualty? If not, then why is mine?

"Is your family an acceptable casualty?" is a pointless question. It can be applied equally well to the opposite argument: what is the acceptable casualty rate for not advancing safety in this way? Is your family an acceptable casualty? Continuing on with the status quo is just as much of an action and a choice as pushing forward with automation. Both choices are going to get people killed. We can either evaluate the…

This argument is a red herring. We know the current casualty rate and have accepted it. Nobody gets into a car with the illusion that it's 100% safe.

Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’

#185

Post by mikeryan »

BurningFrog wrote: post #131
Analemma_ wrote: post #16

He's currently throwing a temper tantrum on Twitter, and all because the NHTSA wanted to ask him a few questions about the product (you can see it here: https://www.scribd.com/document/329218929/2016-10-27-Special... ). Like, how dare the government try to have basic standards for multi-ton hunks of metal hurtling down the highway without human input. I've been trying to convince people lately that Silicon Valley isn…

If you read the letter, it's a lot more than "answering a few questions". He gets two weeks to provide an enormous amount of detailed information about the product, I assume under threat of legal consequences if any of it contains an error, interspersed with lots of reminders that they can and will close down his business if they feel like it.

He gets two weeks to provide an enormous amount of detailed information about the product, I assume under threat of legal consequences if any of it contains an error, interspersed with lots of reminders that they can and will close down his business if they feel like it.

He has announced the release of the product, was taking orders for it and said it was going to be shipping by the end of the year [1]

The timeframe here is driven by Hotz who apparently has not had any communication with the relevant regulatory agencies. Any attorney he hires would tell him "Okay lets push back the release to mid next year while we work with the NHTSA on resolving their concerns" and the NHTSA would probably be perfectly fine with working with him.

"Move fast and break shit" doesn't count when you're putting lives at risk.

lots of reminders that they can and will close down his business if they feel like it - yes and they should.

[1] https://electrek.co/2016/09/14/comma-ai-claims-to-have-packa...

Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’

#186

Post by olegkikin »

luisivan wrote: post #162
izqui wrote: post #157

Today, I can only paraphrase George's harsh bulling destructive feedback he gave us on our startup: George, "that wouldn't work" :)

And days before that I was with him in a fundraising dinner and we were like besties. Sociopaths. (Edited to reflect the point more politely)

That's a very rude thing to say publicly.

Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’

#187

Post by TeMPOraL »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #180
abduhl wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"As you are undoubtedly aware, there is a high likelihood that some drivers will use your product in a manner that exceeds its intended purpose." The government appears well aware of this hand waving garbage that companies are trying with "it isn't really autopilot, keep your hands on the wheel wink ." This is exactly government's job and is a fabulous example of a government reacting to ongoing events that have prov…

Proof that so-called autopilot systems are a danger to the public would be evidence that they perform worse than the average driver. I haven't seen such evidence, what are you referencing?

It's the other way around - you need a proof that they perform comparable to an average driver during expected use, and they do not have absurdly stupid corner cases during actually expected use.

Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’

#188

Post by wyager »

smallnamespace wrote: post #174
wyager wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this a joke? If not, you clearly didn't read the letter; it's more than "a little regulation", it's a huge set of requests on an unreasonably short timeline. With regard to the more general point of your post, even if it's nominally possible to eke out a profit under overburdening regulation, you're still allowed to take a principled stand against it.

The timeline is not unreasonable at all. They were planning to ship by the end of the year -- obviously the regulator should get involved before it's in the hands of users. I've seen requests from regulators before. If you don't have or can't produce exactly what they asked, you call them up and tell them some parts will take longer. The point is to have a dialogue; the threat of sanctions is just to make sure you wo…

Two weeks is not reasonable for the demands made in the letter. That, plus a $21,000/day penalty, is a clear "fuck you".

Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’

#189

Post by WhitneyLand »

patcheudor wrote: post #89
jacquesm wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tweeted a joke yesterday that the Engineering Society had changed it's slogan to 'Move fast and kill people', I'm pretty happy that NHTSA has its feet solidly planted on terra firma and requires a bit of process around releasing something as important as self driving vehicles. The more software becomes mission critical the more we will need level headedness and quality rather than tantrums.

Not mission critical, rather life critical. I've worked on several life critical systems as a security researcher, helping to develop controls in tightly controlled environments to keep people safe. Work on software controlled switches in industrial machines mostly. As I've followed these developments and those of Google and Tesla I've been wondering at times if I live in some alternate universe. The level of diligen…

If 10,000 people were killed on the way to making driverless cars safe, and this wild west approach ended up getting them into mass market use a few years earlier, it would save the lives of thousands of people overall.

Is this a bad thing? Is it not justified by utilitarianism?

Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’

#190

Post by patio11 »

jacquesm wrote: post #72
tptacek wrote: post #29

Here's what the Special Order demanded: 1. Describe in detail how the comma one is installed in a vehicle and provide a copy of installation instructions for the comma one. 2. Describe in detail the advanced driver assistance features of the comma one, including how those features differ from the existing features of the vehicles in which the comma one is intended to be installed. 3. Describe in detail how a vehicle…

That's an incredibly reasonable list and something anybody active in the self driving car space should be more than happy to answer in the required detail.

What is your estimate of the required detail? Mine is 100,000 pages. Is your estimate, I don't know, only 100 pages or so? Look at their definition of the word "describe."

This letter is designed to kill the company. That is a result I support, but, the people saying "This letter is designed to kill the company" are entirely correct.

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