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Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

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Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#151

Post by nnq »

Animats wrote: post #117

What this really reflects is that Tesla has painted itself into a corner. They've shipped vehicles with a weak sensor suite that's claimed to be sufficient to support self-driving, leaving the software for later. Tesla, unlike everybody else who's serious, doesn't have a LIDAR. Now, it's "later", their software demos are about where Google was in 2010, and Tesla has a big problem. This is a really hard problem to do…

Yeah, Tesla may fail to ship a safe LIDAR-less car.

But the problem of making a self-driving car without LIDAR or something equivalent is awesomely challenging! An I bet Andrej Karpathy will really enjoy working on it.

And the tech resulting from this line of work will surely find its way in other things. (I guess the military has wet dreams about this stuff... I mean, even "unsafeness" can become a "feature" here: "uhm, look, that school we blew up by, uhm, mistake... was an AI-error... like... these stuff happens, you know, even Tesla's cars have an accident from time to time, that's life". Well, those dreams could also be nightmares: basically any "self driving thingie" is a potential guided missile, and dirt-cheap-because-lidar-less stuff has the potential of becoming ubiquitous, and unmaintained/unupdated/unsecured/hackable, leading to nightmarish urban warfare scenarios...)

And: "People will die because of this."... Uhm, yeah, they will, but if people ain't dying it means research is not moving fast enough, and competition will overtake you. I'd be more worried about when this stuff will be deployed on buses with tens of people, but hopefully public transport would stay a safe decade behind bleeding-edge stuff :)

And about and Tesla: however this plays out, Elon Musk made quite a lot of what would've been technically considered "bad business decisions" and things turned up OK so far... so I wouldn't feel sorry for them or short their stock ;)

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#152

Post by Animats »

pkulak wrote: post #131
gordon_freeman wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cost should not be an excuse at the expense of safety. Plain and simple.

What's unsafe about radar cruise plus lane keep? People act like Tesla is shipping cars that fling themselves into pedestrians at every opportunity. Somehow we all manage to absolve the auto maker when someone with cruise control set on their 1998 Mazda rear ends someone on the freeway. Let's judge Tesla for autonomous safety when they produce an autonomous car.

What's unsafe about radar cruise plus lane keep?

It takes longer for a driver to react to a problem in that mode than to react without it.[1][2] There have been full-motion car simulator and test track studies on this. Even with test subjects who are expecting an obstacle to appear, it takes about 3 seconds to react and start to take over vehicle control from lane keeping automation. Full recovery into manual, where control quality is comparable to normal driving, takes 15 to 40 seconds.

There are now many studies on this, but too many of them are paywalled.

[1] http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1369847814... [2] http://www.iea.cc/congress/2015/252.pdf

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#153

Post by RealityVoid »

_ph_ wrote: post #133
Animats wrote: post #117

What this really reflects is that Tesla has painted itself into a corner. They've shipped vehicles with a weak sensor suite that's claimed to be sufficient to support self-driving, leaving the software for later. Tesla, unlike everybody else who's serious, doesn't have a LIDAR. Now, it's "later", their software demos are about where Google was in 2010, and Tesla has a big problem. This is a really hard problem to do…

As far as I know, no car manufacturer ships cars equipped with LIDAR. Nor do they seem to have a camera setup as extensive as Tesla. So I fail to see how Tesla has painted itself into a corner. The worst case is, that they are not reaching full autonomy with the current hardware setup. It certainly would be a big marketing blunder if they don't, but if necessary they can add LIDAR to the production, if they choose to…

> As far as I know, no car manufacturer ships cars equipped with LIDAR.

I can confirm that, at least in a sense, this is false. There are plenty of series cars with LIDARS, but not he scaning things you are thinking about, but simpler kind of lidar tech[1]. I know that is not what you were talking about, but I thought it's worth pointing out other, existing, alternative approaches.

[1]http://www.conti-online.com/www/industrial_sensors_de_en/the...

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#154

Post by pinouchon »

_ph_ wrote: post #133
Animats wrote: post #117

What this really reflects is that Tesla has painted itself into a corner. They've shipped vehicles with a weak sensor suite that's claimed to be sufficient to support self-driving, leaving the software for later. Tesla, unlike everybody else who's serious, doesn't have a LIDAR. Now, it's "later", their software demos are about where Google was in 2010, and Tesla has a big problem. This is a really hard problem to do…

As far as I know, no car manufacturer ships cars equipped with LIDAR. Nor do they seem to have a camera setup as extensive as Tesla. So I fail to see how Tesla has painted itself into a corner. The worst case is, that they are not reaching full autonomy with the current hardware setup. It certainly would be a big marketing blunder if they don't, but if necessary they can add LIDAR to the production, if they choose to…

I think Nissan has bet that in a few years, LIDAR will be inexpensive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfRqNAhAe6c

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#155

Post by ralfd »

zghst wrote: post #53
pscsbs wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The equity packages tend to be in the tens of millions for a 4-year vest. Source: I am a manager who has given offers to top-tier ML experts.

If I fail at startup life, this is an obvious next step in my career.

Your obvious next career step is to be a top-tier ML expert?

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#156

Post by taneq »

Animats wrote: post #117

What this really reflects is that Tesla has painted itself into a corner. They've shipped vehicles with a weak sensor suite that's claimed to be sufficient to support self-driving, leaving the software for later. Tesla, unlike everybody else who's serious, doesn't have a LIDAR. Now, it's "later", their software demos are about where Google was in 2010, and Tesla has a big problem. This is a really hard problem to do…

I know it's popular to bash on Tesla's current challenges with their Autopilot software, but I think it's a bit unfair to expect them to be back in front of the pack just yet. They had their big breakup with MobilEye in, what, September last year? Nine months is pretty quick to go from total reliance on a vendor package to a reasonably functional fully in-house system.

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#157

Post by askafriend »

chronic7ul wrote: post #129
toephu2 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably real, yes only Bay Area, and no not the norm for ML. First of all only a few companies can pay that much (Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Netflix, etc) and these are outliers. The average ML engineer in the Bay Area does not make 500k/yr total comp.

ML engineer is a programmer usually with a BS in CS, sometimes​ a MS. They are, in the end, only an engineer. The AI scientists, those with work in computer vision, natural language, and audio, developing novel networks and training methods, make at least $500K/year. I've been a data scientist and the pay (and work content) was a joke. I switched to AI and damn, work makes you think and you get paid like a mid-range…

How did you make the switch from being a normal developer to doing AI specialist work?

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#158

Post by edvinasbartkus »

kayoone wrote: post #144
mandeepj wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no car manufacturer ships cars equipped with LIDAR For love of the god, please do not comment in the public if you do not understand the subject. Take a look at Chrysler + waymo minivans, Volvo + Uber suvs, Mercedes self-driving test cars. They all have lidars.

Sorry, but you did not get the point op was making. None of those you mentioned are production cars like the Tesla, they are test mules. The point of op is correct, he/she is not talking about modded research cars.

But no other company is selling the promise of an autopilot car. For example, Audi is expected to launch renewed Audi A8 this year with Level 3 autonomous driving but it's called "Traffic Jam Pilot". Level 2 was called "Traffic Jam Assist".

https://media.audiusa.com/models/piloted-driving

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#159

Post by hackpert »

deepnotderp wrote: post #40
komaromy wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine Pieter Abbeel and the rest of the gang will be able to carry on in his absence.

This. Abbeel is a highly underrated research powerhouse.

I'm curious why you think Abbeel is underrated. He is one of the few ML researchers to not succumb to the pull of the industry (at least completely) and his work is highly respected in the community, especially continuous control.

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#160

Post by mbaha »

askafriend wrote: post #157
chronic7ul wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ML engineer is a programmer usually with a BS in CS, sometimes​ a MS. They are, in the end, only an engineer. The AI scientists, those with work in computer vision, natural language, and audio, developing novel networks and training methods, make at least $500K/year. I've been a data scientist and the pay (and work content) was a joke. I switched to AI and damn, work makes you think and you get paid like a mid-range…

How did you make the switch from being a normal developer to doing AI specialist work?

Also interested, yes.
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