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Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

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Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#301

Post by CardenB »

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.

Tesla had been working on a mobileye replacement for some time before they parted ways.

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#302

Post by sqeaky »

jgalt212 wrote: post #247
evaneykelen wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human drivers are also not equipped with a LIDAR. We rely on stereo-vision combined with a couple of low-tech instruments (rearview mirror, left and right side mirrors and looking-over-shoulder to achieve approx 250-300 degrees view of field) to navigate the road in a vehicle. If you extrapolate the current state of AI and treat 10-20 in-car cameras + radar as the equivalent of what a human brings to the table then I…

true, but bird wings flap and airplane wings don't flap.

Do submarines swim?

Doesn't matter, only the results matter. Planes work and work well, they crush birds in every performance metric and sometimes literally. Can a self driving car be made safe without lidar? I suspect so, but I am not certain, but I am no expert.

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#303

Post by sqeaky »

fmihaila wrote: post #234
kamaal wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The human brain is a hard AI entity that can think through problems in any generic situation. In self driving AI you are programming the car to do a specific thing. Sooner or later you will run into a situation in which algorithm will panic and can't do much.

Humans cannot and do not "think through problems in any generic situation", and specifically when it comes to driving, they fail with fatal consequences about 100 times every single day in the U.S. alone. Applying such unreasonably high standards (i.e., algorithms that never fail) before we allow self-driving technology to be deployed actually kills people.

I am not convinced Kamaal was arguing against self driving cars. He might have been arguing that they could be simpler and more achievable. It could be just fine as long as when the software panics it does something sane like slow to a controlled stop and turn on the hazard lights.

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#304

Post by mschuster91 »

loa_in_ wrote: post #165
freyir wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like saying our eyes are useless because we can't see in the dark.

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

There's always the option to enable the headlights in such a case. LEDs switch on way faster than incandescent bulbs. And if they're needed at all - a camera has way more flexibility in brightness input range than a human eye.

A car like a Tesla has also highest-quality maps and GPS sensors - these alone are way better than what you get in your smartphone and are enough to keep the car from going over the cliff.

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#305

Post by Animats »

daveguy wrote: post #250
notheguyouthink wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, these are the reasons I'm not interested in those "hands-free but still assisted" autodriving deals. I'd love cruise control assist and lane assist in my car, but that's about all I want until I can be 100% sure cars can handle the situations by themselves.

I believe driver assist technology will get more and more advanced to the point where the car is essentially driving and you are giving suggested feedback. In other words -- the bad situations will be handled themselves. Following distance might be enforced and come with a warning, unless you really want to get dangerously close -- the car will "help". Your viewpoint is how self-driving cars will come to be accepted…

Either the human or the computer has to drive. Throwing control back to the human on an automation failure and expecting a correct response from the human takes too long. This has been well-studied. It takes at least 3 seconds for the driver to take control at all, and 15-40 seconds before human control has stabilized. I linked to some studies in an earlier post.

The aviation people hit this problem in the 1990s, as autopilots got more comprehensive. Watch "Children of the magenta", a talk by American Airlines' chief pilot on this.[1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN41LvuSz10

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#306

Post by Animats »

oblio wrote: post #215
kamaal wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>I think that depends on what you mean with self-driving. It means a car that doesn't have a steering wheel, brake and accelerator. That kind of a car is quite far.

That's at least 4-5 automotive cycles away, IMO (so 25-30 year away). And that's for the high end. The low end cars are probably 50-60 years away, IMO.

I expect to see little 25MPH self-driving cars running around senior communities quite soon. At 25MPH and below, sensor range required is low, data quality is good, and most problems can be dealt with by slamming on the brakes. That seemed to be the target market for Google's little bubble car. The problem there is price, not capability.

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#307

Post by daveguy »

Animats wrote: post #305
daveguy wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe driver assist technology will get more and more advanced to the point where the car is essentially driving and you are giving suggested feedback. In other words -- the bad situations will be handled themselves. Following distance might be enforced and come with a warning, unless you really want to get dangerously close -- the car will "help". Your viewpoint is how self-driving cars will come to be accepted…

Either the human or the computer has to drive. Throwing control back to the human on an automation failure and expecting a correct response from the human takes too long. This has been well-studied. It takes at least 3 seconds for the driver to take control at all, and 15-40 seconds before human control has stabilized. I linked to some studies in an earlier post. The aviation people hit this problem in the 1990s, as…

Right. The driver would be in control in the scenario I'm describing, just like they are with lane assist, cruise control, or closest to stealth self-driving, auto braking and swerve. I guess it would be better described as the driver would always have the illusion of control.

The automated parts would kick in when necessary and they would be increasingly intrusive in their warnings and modification of driving until the human is only needed for identifying source and destination.

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#308

Post by alexashka »

psadri wrote: post #260
alexashka wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reputation is for B players. Chris Lattner can go work for any company in the world that can afford him. A players don't look at company's reputation, they look at things that actually matter.

You are contradicting yourself. Being an A player is your reputation. No one is going to hire your into a senior level role without you first having a good reputation.

A players don't worry about getting hired into senior level roles.

They don't worry about their reputation either.

If you worry about any of that, you're not an A player :)

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#310

Post by Animats »

slurple wrote: post #271
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…

Have there been advances in using LIDAR in rain/fog/snow? For all the autonomous car demos this seems like too large of a use case to gloss over...

Yes, but they haven't made it down to the automotive level yet.

Most automotive LIDARs just report the time of the first return, but it's possible to do more processing. Airborne LIDAR surveys often record "first and last"; the first return is the canopy of trees or plants; the last is from ground level.

It's also possible to use range gating in fog, smoke, and dust conditions.[1][2] Returns from outside the range gate are ignored. You can move through depth ranges in slices until something interesting shows up. This seems to be in use for military purposes, but hasn't reached the civilian market yet.

Range gated LIDAR imagers have been around for at least 15 years. By now, it should be possible to obtain a full list of returns for each pixel for several frames in succession, crunch on that, and automatically filter out noise such as rain, snow, and dust. It's a lot of data per frame, but not more than GPUs already handle. Some recent work in China seems to be working to make range-gated imaging more automatic in bad conditions.[3]

[1] http://www.sensorsinc.com/applications/military/laser-range-... [2] http://www.obzerv.com/en/videos [3] http://proceedings.spiedigitallibrary.org/proceeding.aspx?ar...

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