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Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

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Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

his educational background also didn't include rocket science but yet spaceX has succeeded. If you'd like to put money where your mouth is, I'd happily do a wager with you. Tesla will be the first to have a fully autonomous vehicle - care to bet against that?

> Tesla will be the first to have a fully autonomous vehicle - care to bet against that? Yes, I would. Google is way ahead in the tech. Nevermind that they don't have a product. If we're talking strictly about the tech, Tesla is and always has been far behind

$1,000 wager?

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You set you destination for: gym

Are you sure? Your calendar says that Bobby needs to be picked up from practice.

Why don't I go ahead and set the destination for you?

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tesla will be the first to have a fully autonomous vehicle - care to bet against that? Yes, I would. Google is way ahead in the tech. Nevermind that they don't have a product. If we're talking strictly about the tech, Tesla is and always has been far behind

$1,000 wager?

Eh, if I knew you in person I would, but this is a loosely defined term and will likely occur iteratively over the years. Also I'd only take the bet while Musk is still in charge and while he is anti-lidar.

Feel free to message me if your side of the bet comes true. But, I really doubt it will. If Waymo forms a partnership with any major manufacturer they'll pretty much have it.

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#314
post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also interested, yes.

I went back for a PhD. I know a lot of people can't do this, but this is the reason why there are few AI specialists. You just can't become an expert by reading blogs and even research papers online. You need the full specialist environment, from discussions outside the bathroom to the drawings on the whiteboard.

And here I am dreaming of achieving it by doing MOOC courses :)...So, not possible at all this way?

Theoretically, one would feel, that by just reading blogs, watching videos along side taking MOOC courses, and spawning GPUs on the cloud, should do it.

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#315
post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What's the point of that analogy? Darkness can be fixed with lights on the vehicle itself. Inclement weather is entirely outside the control of the vehicle.

LIDAR doesn't work in inclement weather, that's the point.

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And people from NASA and the CNES said space x was moot. Can we just let the man try without being annoying the whole way ? Or do something that helps ? Or do something at all to understand that it's hard enough and that you really don't need a thousand voices enumerating all the reasons you might fail ?

I think it helps to give constructive criticism. Musk is adamant that lidar isn't necessary. Many disagree and are voicing their opinions on that. I also think his view that strong ai is around the corner is detrimental to the industry. He is overhyping things and potentially creating an expectation whose investments reality won't support. So, when I spend time pointing out he is not an expert in the ai space, it is…

This is not formulated as constructive criticism. This is formulated as prophecies. "It will fail because...". "It can't work because...". Or formulated in the form of "I know better".

A constructive criticism would weight pros and cons, explain POV without condamnation and not make grandiose pronostics.

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#317
post #128

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…

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.

An autonomous driving feature that you can use on most days but not all of them is still very useful and would have a good market.

It's not going to rain or snow today, and if it would, then I can take the wheel myself.

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it helps to give constructive criticism. Musk is adamant that lidar isn't necessary. Many disagree and are voicing their opinions on that. I also think his view that strong ai is around the corner is detrimental to the industry. He is overhyping things and potentially creating an expectation whose investments reality won't support. So, when I spend time pointing out he is not an expert in the ai space, it is…

This is not formulated as constructive criticism. This is formulated as prophecies. "It will fail because...". "It can't work because...". Or formulated in the form of "I know better". A constructive criticism would weight pros and cons, explain POV without condamnation and not make grandiose pronostics.

Odd that you would put quotes around things you made up and neither I nor the first comment in this comment-chain said.

Animats gave plenty of detailed constructive criticism, as did I. Neither comment could be simplified as you allege without leaving out important context.

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#319
post #42
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Don't people like it here when a company does not indulge in pc bullshit. I think Tesla statement is to the point.

More specifics from Lattner's online resume

"In the end, Elon and I agreed that he and I did not work well together and that I should leave, so I did."

This part was removed after one day

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#320
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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? Failed to make AP2 work well with cameras alone would be my guess. Tesla is hitting the glass ceiling with its sensor hardware and the future isn't going to be pretty. Expect more changes in engineering leadership until Musk realizes he needs better data (sensors) for his neural nets.

From his online resume

"Tesla

VP Autopilot Software January 30 - June 20, 2017 When I joined Tesla, it was in the midst of a hardware transition from "Hardware 1" Autopilot (based primarily on MobileEye for vision processing) to "Hardware 2", which uses an in-house designed TeslaVision stack. The team was facing many tough challenges given the nature of the transition. My primary contributions over these fast five months were:

We evolved Autopilot for HW2 from its first early release (which had few features and was limited to 45mph on highways) to effectively parity with HW1, and surpassing it in some ways (e.g. silky smooth control). This required building and shipping numerous features for HW2, including: support for local roads, Parallel Autopark, High Speed Autosteer, Summon, Lane Departure Warning, Automatic Lane Change, Low Speed AEB, Full Speed Autosteer, Pedal Misapplication Mitigation, Auto High Beams, Side Collision Avoidance, Full Speed AEB, Perpendicular Parking, and 'silky smooth' performance. This was done by shipping a total of 7 major feature releases, as well as numerous minor releases to support factory, service, and other narrow markets. One of Tesla's huge advantages in the autonomous driving space is that it has tens of thousands of cars already on the road. We built infrastructure to take advantage of this, allowing the collection of image and video data from this fleet, as well as building big data infrastructure in the cloud to process and use it. I defined and drove the feature roadmap, drove the technical architecture for future features, and managed the implementation for the next exciting features to come. I advocated for and drove a major rewrite of the deep net architecture in the vision stack, leading to significantly better precision, recall, and inference performance. I ended up growing the Autopilot Software team by over 50%. I personally interviewed most of the accepted candidates. I made massive improvements to internal infrastructure and processes that I cannot go into detail about. I was closely involved with others in the broader Autopilot program, including future hardware support, legal, homologation, regulatory, marketing, etc. Overall I learned a lot, worked my butt off, met a lot of great people, and had a lot of fun. I'm still a firm believer in Tesla, its mission, and the exceptional Autopilot team: I wish them well."

The first draft ended "In the end, Elon and I agreed that he and I did not work well together and that I should leave, so I did."

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