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Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

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Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#31

Post by JumpCrisscross »

empath75 wrote: post #8

The level-2 driving that Tesla is pushing seems like a worst case scenario to me. Requiring the driver to be awake and alert while not requiring them to actually do anything for long stretches of time is a recipe for disaster. Neither the driver nor the car manufacturer will have clear responsibility when there is an accident. The driver will blame the system for failing and the manufacturer will blame the driver for…

> The level-2 driving that Tesla is pushing seems like a worst case scenario to me

What are you measuring? The current autopilot already appears to be materially safer, in certain circumstances, than human drivers [1]. It seems probable Level 2 systems will be better still.

A refrain I hear, and used to believe, is that machine accidents will cause public uproar in a way human-mediated accidents don't. Yet Tesla's autopilot accidents have produced no such reaction. Perhaps assumptions around public perceptions of technology need revisiting.

> Neither the driver nor the car manufacturer will have clear responsibility when there is an accident

This is not how courts work. The specific circumstances will be considered. Given the novelty of the situation, courts and prosecutors will likely pay extra attention to every detail.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-19/tesla-s-a...

Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#32

Post by 794CD01 »

gambiting wrote: post #17
smileysteve wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless it works. better than a human. > 90-99% of the time. Mostly, the drivers, insurance, companies and other people on the road have fewer accidents.

I absolutely disagree. It can't be better than humans. It needs to be flawless. Any problems where people get killed will delay public acceptance of the technology by decades, even if "statistically it's safer than humans". People don't give a damn about statistics, they give a damn about tabloids shouting "self driving cars kill another innocent person!!!". We literally can't afford that.

Then that's our own fault for being too stupid to have self-driving cars.

Ideally, we should embrace them even if they are slightly more dangerous than human drivers, because we are getting the benefit of the time that would otherwise be spent driving.

Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#33

Post by dkonofalski »

CupOfJava wrote: post #9
abalone wrote: post #6

> In May 2015, Eric Meadows, then a Tesla engineer, engaged Autopilot on a drive in a Model S from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Cruising along Highway 1, the car jerked left toward oncoming traffic. He yelped and steered back on course, according to his account and a video of the incident. Is this video online?

> Mr. Meadows said he was later dismissed for what he was told were “performance issues.” Tesla declined to comment on Mr. Meadows but noted that the incident happened months before the release of the technology, giving the company plenty of time to work out problems that had been discovered during test drives. We used to treat our test pilots with the highest regard. How low have we fallen?

This is the third or 4th time I've heard that story repeated and the details change each time Meadows tells it, in my opinion. The date and viability of the system changes when I've read it and that leads me to believe that his motivation may not be altruistic but vengeful instead. He probably did get fired from Tesla for performance issues and so he feels the need to fire back at them by noting an incident that happened in the very early stages of the technology's development. We treated test pilots with the highest regard because they were separated from the technology/machinery itself. There was no personal stake in it for them other than making it out alive and exposing issues with the systems being tested. In the current cases, the "test pilots" have a vested interest in the system because they are the ones designing it and deploying it. That's why I have to stifle my gut reaction when I hear stories like Meadows'. Which is more likely, that Tesla would risk its entire reputation by releasing software that was dangerously inadequate or that he's a little butthurt about getting fired and threw a bit of a tantrum?

Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#34

Post by a13n »

gambiting wrote: post #17
smileysteve wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless it works. better than a human. > 90-99% of the time. Mostly, the drivers, insurance, companies and other people on the road have fewer accidents.

I absolutely disagree. It can't be better than humans. It needs to be flawless. Any problems where people get killed will delay public acceptance of the technology by decades, even if "statistically it's safer than humans". People don't give a damn about statistics, they give a damn about tabloids shouting "self driving cars kill another innocent person!!!". We literally can't afford that.

So you're saying we should let more people die (via human driving) to avoid people getting upset over tabloids ignoring statistics?

Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#35

Post by tmalsburg2 »

gambiting wrote: post #17
smileysteve wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless it works. better than a human. > 90-99% of the time. Mostly, the drivers, insurance, companies and other people on the road have fewer accidents.

I absolutely disagree. It can't be better than humans. It needs to be flawless. Any problems where people get killed will delay public acceptance of the technology by decades, even if "statistically it's safer than humans". People don't give a damn about statistics, they give a damn about tabloids shouting "self driving cars kill another innocent person!!!". We literally can't afford that.

If the aim is to have a technology that's 100% fail-safe, we can stop pursuing self-driving cars now. We can in fact stop pursuing any kind of technology because the economic cost of making anything completely fail-safe are usually prohibitive. Also, isn't history ripe with counter examples to your argument? Planes have crashed, people died, tabloid headlines were written about it, and people still fly, probably because it's awfully convenient.

Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#36

Post by Roodgorf »

slg wrote: post #14
empath75 wrote: post #8

The level-2 driving that Tesla is pushing seems like a worst case scenario to me. Requiring the driver to be awake and alert while not requiring them to actually do anything for long stretches of time is a recipe for disaster. Neither the driver nor the car manufacturer will have clear responsibility when there is an accident. The driver will blame the system for failing and the manufacturer will blame the driver for…

I agree that level 2 isn't an ideal position, but it has also proven to be better than human drivers in preventing fatalities. In all the miles that Tesla's level 2 cars have driven there has been what 1 fatality? In that instance there was the exact question of responsibility that you suggested, but that still seems preferable to the status quo if lives are saved.

Do you have the numbers on how many miles Tesla's level 2 cars have actually been driven while using the feature? I see this sort of argument a lot in regards to Google's self-driving tests, and while it seems convincing to me, it doesn't seem realistic to me that's there a big enough pool of data to make that claim definitively.

Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#37

Post by kejaed »

munin wrote: post #15
jballanc wrote: post #11

Honestly, I don't understand why the automobile industry doesn't learn from the airline industry. Airplanes have worked out how to balance autopilot capabilities with the need for pilots to remain engaged and attentive for years. Simply implement a Drive-By-Wire, similar to Airbus' Fly-By-Wire systems. A driver's inputs to the controls would still be required, but the autonomous systems could prevent or limit certain…

I talked to a pilot once who asserted that this is far from settled in aviation: he described the Boeing way, and the Airbus way, as two separate schools of thought. Boeing's systems keep the humans in the loop more at the expense of the autonomous systems, Airbus does the opposite. Empirically, it doesn't seem to make a difference with regards to safety outcomes.

Aerospace engineer here, this Airbus / Boeing divide rings true. There's a 99% Invisible episode that talks about some of these differences, more from an Airbus side of things:

http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/children-of-the-magent...

Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#38

Post by revelation »

abalone wrote: post #6

> In May 2015, Eric Meadows, then a Tesla engineer, engaged Autopilot on a drive in a Model S from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Cruising along Highway 1, the car jerked left toward oncoming traffic. He yelped and steered back on course, according to his account and a video of the incident. Is this video online?

This isn't exactly an isolated incident, YouTube has lots of videos of autopilot steering wildly off course. The biggest problem is that Tesla allows turning on autopilot on roads that are not a highway and feature significant turns and hills obscuring "perfect lane vision", and the system is not prepared to handle that at all:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBaolsFyD9I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOnuKrzCLYc

Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#39

Post by cletus »

What befuddles me is that in all these discussions about self-driving cars seemingly no one refers to the massive body of knowledge in this area that comes from the aviation world.

I've posted variants of this same comment several times and I'm starting to feel like a broken record.

Look at studies of efforts to make planes safer by removing the human element. While efforts like autopilot have made things safer it reaches the point where more automation can reduce safety as pilots are no longer alert and/or don't trust the instruments and/or can't fully manually override the automation.

Call it the uncanny valley of automation safety.

Bridging that last few percent for true automation (ie where vehicles aren't designed to have drivers or pilots at all) is going to be _incredibly_ difficult, to the point where I'm not convinced it won't require something resembling a general AI.

All of this is why I think driverless cars are going to take much longer than many expect.

Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers

#40

Post by [deleted] »

manyoso wrote: post #19

Biggest news buried at the end. It says that several engineers have quit since October 2016 (including the head of autopilot) when Tesla started selling "fully autonomous driving" hardware upgrade packages. Says the engineers don't agree the hardware is capable of supporting this and that it was ultimately a marketing decision.

[deleted]
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