doubt he actually cancels it and changes his mind next week, this was more spur of the moment and his investors calmed him down?, way too much attention being brought to it
George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’
481–490 of 498 posts
Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’
#482Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Your scenario would save lives, but we have no way of knowing if we are in that scenario.
If you know that after ten thousand deaths, the technology will be good enough to start saving more lives every year, then your utilitarian argument works. The problem is that you can't possibly ever know that in advance. It's equally plausible that the last 0.001% will take decades to solve, or even remain out of reach indefinitely. Then you just threw away ten thousand lives for nothing.
This is why the burden of proof needs to be on the new system, and why the precautionary principle applies.
Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’
#483Earlier quoted context omitted.
> He gets two weeks to provide an enormous amount of detailed information about the product Which either he should have readily available, since he's the creator, or he should have known, since he should be able to demonstrate the safety of the device. > I assume under threat of legal consequences if any of it contains an error Usually you hand over what you have, then you negotiate with the regulator for a time fram…
> > they can and will close down his business if they feel like it > That's the textbook definition of 'regulation'. Right, and it's one of the big problems I have with this form of regulation. I think it violates the idea of "Rule of Law", as opposed to "Rule of Man", which was one of the major factors behind the rise of modern free society.
How do you think regulations get enforced?
Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’
#484Earlier quoted context omitted.
If that was true, then they could have left off the "or else, pay $21k/day for noncompliance". I've seen plenty of big-companies use forced compliance to kill smaller and more agile upstarts. I remember the tactics used to kill most butcheries and local meat shops. Same games, with onerous and idiotic requirements of "compliance" that the big guys can do. Of course, the big companies got legislation to enforce their…
When he kills a bunch of people in China, you're going to feel silly about having made this comment.
Guy can't navigate the regulatory environment in the US, goes to China ... this is the setup for a joke.
Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’
#485a little more detail from techcrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/28/comma-ai-cancels-the-comma... It seems that Hotz said, “dealing with regulators and lawyers… isn’t worth it.” Which seems very unfortunate/shortsighted due to how useful this tech could be. Why not hire someone to deal with them for you?
> Why not hire someone to deal with them for you? It's either taking a long time in order to be in compliance / certified or very costly or both. Hotz mentioned a 2016 end of year shipping date, it's impossible to do that if they have to "dealing with regulators and lawyers".
Then it's impossible to do legally, and anyone who doesn't realize this isn't going to succeed in a highly regulated industry.
Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’
#486When is the open source project to create self driving systems going to start? I feel very uncomfortable with private corporate AI driving me around and making decisions with my family's life in the balance. For me, I need to be able to see the code, change the code, change the weightings and priorities. I've been thinking about FOSS solutions to car computers a lot and it seems like it is really the only way to go i…
Probably about ten years after it's commercially available.
Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’
#487Earlier quoted context omitted.
They could have asked for George's middle name and the cost of compliance would be burdensome. It is not the rap but the ride that you can't beat.
> It is not the rap but the ride that you can't beat. I think that's the reason he's bailing - he doesn't have the lawyer crew, he doesn't want to play the law game - he just wants to create things.
These particular questions aren't a law game. They are straightforward outputs of good engineering practice.
There is some gap between just wanting to create things and to create things that impact personal body integrity. It is of some concern that in today's software engineering environment that this is even a question.
Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’
#488Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Hondas response to 34 questions was 22 pages long, plus presumably supporting documents. https://www.nhtsa.gov/staticfiles/communications/pdf/Honda-r...
Good grief, that's nothing. I've seen security review questionnaires for enterprise SaaS contracts that were longer than that. If George Hotz or one of his employees really couldn't produce a response like the one Honda gave, there's no way anyone should trust his product. I'm glad he canceled. I don't want his crap on the road anywhere near me.
If I were one of his investors I'd be pissed right now.
Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’
#489Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am not from the US, but they surely have some legislation that makes building and selling killing machines, without at least some government controlled safety checks, illegal.
>killing machines You mean like guns?
In my slightly sarcastic definition "killing machines" are every machine that causes people to die.
Re: George Hotz cancels his Tesla Autopilot-like ‘comma one’
#490He'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…
Exactly. The NHTSA memo seems extremely reasonable to me. If you're going to put to market a product where the smallest malfunction could easily kill many people (both those using your product and those around them), answering a couple regulation questions seems like a small hurdle to pass. Nothing here is saying "we want to shut you down", it's saying "we want to make sure you pass the most basic safety standards".…
You think a threat of $21k fines per day is reasonable. This pretty much guarantees that small businesses can't compete in this market. The financial risk is too high.