Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy • Hacker News Board

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#171

Post by sobani » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 8:48 AM UTC

taneq wrote: post #156

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.

Can you explain the 'back' part of expect them to be back in front of the pack ?

As far as I know they've never been in the front of the pack.

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#172

Post by tintor » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 8:57 AM UTC

denzil_correa wrote: post #161

nnq wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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: "…

> but if people ain't dying it means research is not moving fast enough Could you help me understand this further? It feels quite insensitive to me.

If companies wait for the tech to be perfectly safe, it will never be released.

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#173

Post by RealityVoid » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 8:57 AM UTC

pinouchon wrote: post #154

_ph_ wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I wonder if I want to put my money betting on this how should I proceed?

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#174

Post by taneq » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 8:59 AM UTC

sobani wrote: post #171

taneq wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Can you explain the 'back' part of expect them to be back in front of the pack ? As far as I know they've never been in the front of the pack.

With AP1 they were the only company that had anything approaching level 2/3 in a publicly available production vehicle. Google might have been ahead of them but it's hard to tell since all we ever saw were carefully staged demos.

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#175

Post by fooker » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 9:10 AM UTC

kamaal wrote: post #167

pkulak wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I kinda tuned out when you mentioned lidar like it's some requirement for autonomous driving. Lidar is AMAZING for giving press demos on sunny days. For the real world with rain, snow, leaves, plastic bags, etc? Useless. The future is radar + cameras + a LOT of software blood, sweat and tears.

I will take your self driving car seriously if you can drive it in all conditions in India. Until then its just an attempt to make something that breaks at the next unanticipated exception.

Human beings can not drive in all conditions in India.

Just to get our car out of the garage, I had to plead and negotiate with N vegetable vendors with makeshift stores on the road.

Also: bicycles, motorbikes, rickshaws(in human pulled, CNG and electric varieties!)and pedestrians mixed in traffic everywhere.

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#176

Post by bjpirt » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 9:13 AM UTC

kamaal wrote: post #167

pkulak wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I kinda tuned out when you mentioned lidar like it's some requirement for autonomous driving. Lidar is AMAZING for giving press demos on sunny days. For the real world with rain, snow, leaves, plastic bags, etc? Useless. The future is radar + cameras + a LOT of software blood, sweat and tears.

I will take your self driving car seriously if you can drive it in all conditions in India. Until then its just an attempt to make something that breaks at the next unanticipated exception.

Made me laugh but it's a very true statement. When I was driving whilst holidaying in India I realised that the main rule of the road was "largest vehicle wins"! This actually made for quite an easy to understand system with few questions of whose right of way it was.

bike which makes sense because if you're the one who's going to come off worse in an impact then you really want to give way - especially if you have a massive painted tipper truck hurtling towards you!

It will be very interesting to see how self driving systems can cope with these local unwritten bylaws.

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#177

Post by danielbln » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 9:17 AM UTC

bjpirt wrote: post #176

kamaal wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will take your self driving car seriously if you can drive it in all conditions in India. Until then its just an attempt to make something that breaks at the next unanticipated exception.

Made me laugh but it's a very true statement. When I was driving whilst holidaying in India I realised that the main rule of the road was "largest vehicle wins"! This actually made for quite an easy to understand system with few questions of whose right of way it was. bike which makes sense because if you're the one who's going to come off worse in an impact then you really want to give way - especially if you have a…

It will most definitely be interesting, but it's silly to say that self-driving cars can't be taken seriously, if they don't master these conditions (yet). Hell, I couldn't master those conditions myself, nor do I need to, because I live in the the inner city of a Western-European metropolis, so what I need my self-driving car to do varies massively from what people in other regions of the globe may need it to do, but that doesn't make it any less useful for me.

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#178

Post by randomdata » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 9:21 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #105

kornish wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of interest, what makes you think it was ever not this way? I recently reread the Isaacson Ben Franklin biography and one thing which struck me was how much time he put into crafting his public persona. The comment up this thread holds true: human attention is not evenly distributed. That doesn't mean, however, that there's an imperative to "network" or build a "personal brand" – plenty of people gain a deep sati…

Maybe I'm seeing the past through rose-colored glasses, but it seems there was once a time in Silicon Valley when you could make it big as a pure technologist and not have to always be marketing and selling yourself. Maybe I'm just fooling myself.

What you are seeing is the result of the big push to get everyone into tech several years ago. You didn't have to market yourself in the past because there were more jobs than people. Having ability was enough to have wanting employers find you. Now, skilled professionals are everywhere. Employers don't need to make the effort anymore.

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#179

Post by fragmede » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 9:21 AM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #105

kornish wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of interest, what makes you think it was ever not this way? I recently reread the Isaacson Ben Franklin biography and one thing which struck me was how much time he put into crafting his public persona. The comment up this thread holds true: human attention is not evenly distributed. That doesn't mean, however, that there's an imperative to "network" or build a "personal brand" – plenty of people gain a deep sati…

Maybe I'm seeing the past through rose-colored glasses, but it seems there was once a time in Silicon Valley when you could make it big as a pure technologist and not have to always be marketing and selling yourself. Maybe I'm just fooling myself.

As a pure technologist you'll never be Steve Jobs, at best, if you're exceedingly lucky, you might manage to be Steve Wozniak. However, Steve Wozniak's fortune and minor celebrity status owes a great deal to Steve Jobs, whos success in marketing and selling himself was so great that it earned the name Reality Distortion Field.

If "make it big" just means a giant pile of money, there are plenty of millionaire pure technologists at Silicon Valley companies whos names are never told; the thousand or so that were created when Google IPO'd are basically unknown. Forbes had a recent article advertising Craigslist competitors, but reading between the lines, Craigslist has minted some of them, but they're entirely nameless among the wider population. If thats your definition of "making it big", then it's possible, but if you want broader recognition, I don't know that it's possible.

Maybe I'm being unimaginative, but outside of Steve Wozniak I can't think of any pure-technologists with household name recognition. The closest that comes to mind is Elon Musk, but unfortunately for you, there's plenty of marketing going on. I'd bet a large number of readers even here won't even recognize the name Vint Cerf.

Maybe you feel marketing is about lying, maybe selling yourself feels icky. However they're skills like any other; refusing to learn and use them would be like refusing to learn or use multiplication.

Read Sam Altman's praise of Greg (gdb) (http://blog.samaltman.com/greg) who is quite the gifted technologist, but the praise is for his dedication, on both technical and non-technical talent.

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#180

Post by nsturis » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 9:51 AM UTC

unityByFreedom wrote: post #16

komaromy wrote: post #2

Interesting, to move from an Elon-Musk-chaired non-profit to an Elon-Musk-owned for-profit.

Open AI was always a pipeline for Musk. Use other people's donations to attract and identify the talent, then move them under his payroll. I guess that's a win win for the employees and for Musk. Not sure how many other supporters Open AI has, though I doubt that's what they had in mind when they donated to support that effort.

It's not like Musk doesn't donate to OpenAI himself..