Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy • Hacker News Board

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#291

Post by justin66 » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 6:12 PM UTC

cr0sh wrote: post #274

oblio wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ummm... how many cheap cars have: adaptive cruise control or lane assist? Both technologies have been available for expensive cars for what now? 15 years? Really cheap cars don't even have automatic gearboxes (or they are bought without them 90% of the time, outside of the US). By "cheap car" I mean something cheaper than $20000 and "really cheap" would be below $12-15000.

Here in the US I don't even think you can buy a "really cheap" car; my current vehicle is a used Jeep TJ and it set me back $18k (great condition though - still, I overpaid a bit, but I consider it the price for getting the options I wanted on the vehicle). While I'm sure there are probably new (or relatively new) vehicle out there sub-$15k, they probably aren't much to write home about. Certainly nothing I want (tha…

I imagine that if you waited for the right manufacturer's incentives and so on, you could get a Toyota Yaris here for $13k, new, with financing. It's a very fine car for someone who can comfortably fit in it.

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#292

Post by babyrainbow » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 6:29 PM UTC

sixQuarks wrote: post #255

sametmax wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When musk said they were doing the first decent electrical sport car, everybody became an expert and said it won't work. Then he decided to do solar city and space x. And the crowd said again "naaaa". Now the guy is tackling another hard problem and everybody knows better.

My thoughts exactly. Elon Musk is not known for vaporware or BSing. If he says something is doable, there's a good reason for it. Musk has a combination of vision, an understanding of physics, and execution ability unmatched by any other person (in my opinion). To say that he has painted himself in a corner is highly misinformed.

>Elon Musk is not known for vaporware or BSing...

Hyperloop though..

I mean, I think bullshit can be sold to even 'techies' aka HN crowd, if it is wrapped just the right way...

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#293

Post by zghst » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 6:32 PM UTC

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

Before the invention of modern washing and drying machines, sure. But today many people in big cities don't even have an washer and dryer in their home or may not have one in the building, this problem spans many different use cases of how people consume the service. I'd consider asking things like:

* Is the barrier higher and value lower because they have laundry in their unit or does the value increase marginally because they have in the building, or is it more lucrative because they don't have laundry at all?

* And does a solution scale easily across these different use cases?

* The ability to provide continuity on even a pure software scale makes this a particularly pricey arena to enter because a person is required to fulfill this service. To find ways to make this economical, we'd have to consider co-opting existing behaviors or economic patterns. Are there _multiple_ existing patterns that we can enhance?

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#294

Post by chc » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 6:40 PM UTC

babyrainbow wrote: post #292

sixQuarks wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thoughts exactly. Elon Musk is not known for vaporware or BSing. If he says something is doable, there's a good reason for it. Musk has a combination of vision, an understanding of physics, and execution ability unmatched by any other person (in my opinion). To say that he has painted himself in a corner is highly misinformed.

>Elon Musk is not known for vaporware or BSing... Hyperloop though.. I mean, I think bullshit can be sold to even 'techies' aka HN crowd, if it is wrapped just the right way...

That is neither vaporware nor BSing because Musk never suggested he was going to build the Hyperloop. He explicitly said the opposite, that it was an idea he thought was neat and he hoped somebody else would work on it.

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#295

Post by Animats » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 6:46 PM UTC

awqrre wrote: post #20

nojvek wrote: post #18

I follow Karpathy on Twitter and really enjoy his blog. I do fear that his impact in Tesla could be less than his impact at openai. Openai had some fundamentally great research and ideas. I wish him that best though. Hopefully some of Tesla algorithms will be open source someday and those of us who can't afford a Tesla will be able to use it as well.

Tesla: "All Our Patent Are Belong To You"[0] 0: https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you

But not their "trade secrets". It's striking how little is publicly known about how each vendor's self-driving technology works. This is a technology that's grown up since the anti-patent "America Invents Act", and, as a result, there are few patents and much mystery. On rare occasions, someone gives a technical talk, but papers are seldom published.

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#296

Post by Diederich » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 7:29 PM UTC

cr0sh wrote: post #279

kamaal wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually you will need more than a camera input, may be even a sound input. In darkness it helps if you can hear the vehicles coming close.

> may be even a sound input Bingo. When we drive a vehicle, we use so much more than just our eyes to sense the environment, and hearing plays a very large part. I believe that it is something that warrants research for self-driving vehicle usage; I don't know if anyone has done such research, but I haven't seen any papers on it yet. If not, it seems like an underappreciated sensor aspect that could potentially great…

I think you're implying that deaf drivers are fundamentally less safe than hearing drivers.

Studies have been highly mixed: http://www.lifeprint.com/asl101/topics/deaf-drivers.htm

I would be comfortable saying that the advantages a deaf, many eyed, always alert self driving system would far outweigh the safety of a hearing, two eyed and sometimes alert human driver.

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#297

Post by Diederich » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 7:35 PM UTC

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…

> Tesla will try to ship a self-driving system before that while trying to avoid financial responsibility for crashes. People will die because of this.

This is a pretty strong statement. Would you sign up for a slightly more specific version of your claim?

"I believe the Tesla self-driving system that ships by the end of 2020 will be statistically less safe than unassisted human drivers."

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#298

Post by Robotbeat » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 8:03 PM UTC

babyrainbow wrote: post #292

sixQuarks wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thoughts exactly. Elon Musk is not known for vaporware or BSing. If he says something is doable, there's a good reason for it. Musk has a combination of vision, an understanding of physics, and execution ability unmatched by any other person (in my opinion). To say that he has painted himself in a corner is highly misinformed.

>Elon Musk is not known for vaporware or BSing... Hyperloop though.. I mean, I think bullshit can be sold to even 'techies' aka HN crowd, if it is wrapped just the right way...

Huh? Musk gave away the idea, never said he was himself going to do it.

But in spite of that, technically, Musk has already built a subscale Hyperloop nearly a mile long at the SpaceX campus in Hawthorne including an electric sled used for student competitions: (epilepsy warning) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moeI8DxQR5Q

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#299

Post by sqeaky » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 8:08 PM UTC

PKop wrote: post #189

Capt-RogerOver wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty obvious that a self-driving camera-based software would take advantage of headlights on a car, just like a human does? So it never has to drive in full darkness.

You missed the analogy: Darkness is to eyesight as inclement weather/obstacles is to LIDAR

Our eyes also come with our brains packed full of fancy algorithms to extract value from minimal information.

I am not sure what software does with noise from a lidar sensor but I have seen data from other noisy sensors and they are often useless.

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#300

Post by Robotbeat » Wed, Jun 21, 2017, 8:10 PM UTC

guelo wrote: post #34

ccorda wrote: post #14

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

It was always a weird fit having a compiler and programming language designer lead an AI team.

That's the best explanation I've yet seen of why he left.