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Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

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Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#201

Post by veidr »

bpicolo wrote: post #84
zghst wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Laundry bot would make no money, I think. People are happy to do this task on their own or via a maid.

Laundry bot would definitely make money, tons of it. Robo maid is like numero uno on things people have historically wished robots would do in the future

Yep, I paid around $2000 for a nice Hitachi drum-type washer-dryer machine last year.

I would certainly, without any hesitation whatsoever, have been willing to pay $5000 or even a bit more for one that, instead of just washing and drying all our clothes, took a pile of dirty clothes as input and output a few stacks of washed, dried, folded, and sorted clothes.

Anybody with children would want this; those who also have sufficient money would buy it.

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#202

Post by kamaal »

fooker wrote: post #175
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.

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.

>>I had to plead and negotiate with N vegetable vendors with makeshift stores on the road.

This is a very practical test case for a car on a road. Not just in India but anywhere in the world.

Instead of N vegetable vendors you could have N traffic cops. How do you manage the human interaction part in the self driving car?

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#203

Post by owenversteeg »

fooker wrote: post #175
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.

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.

Yep, I have a feeling that for driving in India/Iran/Pakistan/Bangladesh you're going to need a strong AI to negotiate with the street vendors. In Iran I even had a particularly... enthusiastic flower seller actually maneuver himself to make it even harder to drive away.

Not to take away from anyone's work in this area, but I have no idea how long it'll take to go from "works in America" to "works in India". In many countries the safest option (to evade disaster) can occasionally be "floor it and break the speed limit" to get away from x dangerous thing. I'm not sure if that's something that Google is willing to write into an AI.

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#204

Post by jacquesm »

Matthias247 wrote: post #170
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…

> Prediction: 2020 will be the year the big players have self-driving. I think that depends on what you mean with self-driving. My prediction is that in 2020 we will have slightly better driver assistance systems. Maybe a lane assist system which won't kill me if I don't babysit it on a road with construction ongoing and multiple lane markings or if corners get too tight. Maybe some limited self-driving, e.g. only av…

> Maybe a lane assist system which won't kill me if I don't babysit it on a road with construction ongoing and multiple lane markings or if corners get too tight.

Or if someone else makes a mistake.

That's another scenario that can have very unpredictable and immediate consequences ranging from 'nothing' to 'two car accident with fatalities'. Even in relatively placid (when it comes to driving) NL I see this kind of situation at least once per year.

Then there are blow-outs and other instant changes of the situation. I do believe that especially in those cases it should not take long before computers are better than humans because of their superior reaction speed.

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#205

Post by jacquesm »

cm2187 wrote: post #199
loa_in_ wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't really drive in the dark, can you? What if it gets dark for 1 second on a cliffside turn?

Actually in the dark you often drive as a leap of faith in the state of the road. I.e. with very little visibility on what can come from the side of the road (no light) or after a turn. We shouldn't. But we do.

Yes, but it will cause you to slow down. Or at least, it should. As soon as you have less than your stopping distance of space in front of the car you are going too fast.

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#206

Post by jacquesm »

saagarjha wrote: post #132
shas3 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dunno if this is his real account, but it is supposedly not working out https://twitter.com/clattner_llvm/status/877341760812232704

Huh, that's stange. He's been at Tesla what? 6 months? Interesting to see that he's moved on already.

We'll see how long Karpathy lasts.

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#207

Post by jacquesm »

pscsbs wrote: post #25
ccorda wrote: post #14

Seems to be taking Chris Lattner's place: https://twitter.com/clattner_llvm/status/877341760812232704

Wow! Tesla's official statement: "Chris just wasn’t the right fit for Tesla, and we’ve decided to make a change. We wish him the best." [0] Chris's response: "Turns out that Tesla isn't a good fit for me after all. I'm interested to hear about interesting roles for a seasoned engineering leader!" I don't think I've ever seen a tech company throw an employee under the bus so publicly. I wonder what Lattner did to warr…

> I wonder what Lattner did to warrant such a public separation?

Or what Tesla did. Why are you assuming it's Lattner's fault?

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#208

Post by jfoster »

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.

I imagine a self driving car will drive there similarly to a human; slowly, because of the extreme risk. Potentially humans tend to take more risks than they should, so a self driving car in India might seem to drive differently than a human would. But the algorithm stays the same; drive at a speed matching the obstacle risk, and avoid hitting things. Perhaps the parking aspect would be the most different.

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#209

Post by TeMPOraL »

freyir wrote: post #139
_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…

They may have painted themselves into a corner by saying the current hardware is sufficient for "full self-driving capabilities." The worst case is they're putting half-baked solutions on the road.

Yeah. Theoretically the claim is true (at least wrt. the sensors, not sure about computing power onboard). Tesla's hardware is already better than human hardware for this task.

The trick is, they'd have to advance the state of the art in software quite far, to derive "full self-driving capabilities" from this hardware.

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#210

Post by make3 »

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…

They really only hired a well known guy cool guy at a post with a lot of exposure. Your comment feels like pretty intense overanalysis to me.
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