A reference to Chris Lattner:
"In recent months, the team has lost at least 10 engineers and four top managers—including Mr. Anderson’s successor, who lasted less than six months before leaving in June."
Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers
51–60 of 399 posts
Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers
#52The 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…
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.
We don't usually switch to a new technology unless it's > 120% better than what exists today. The cool factor will not be enough for practical adoption.
Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers
#53What 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 re…
There's a big difference: commercial pilots are highly trained, even-tempered, and take their job seriously. Most drivers are lazy, distracted, and apt to do something stupid in an emergency. It's very hard to make something safer than a commercial pilot. It's much easier to make something safer than a typical driver.
Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers
#54The 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 au…
That's not what the concern is based on. It's rooted in what we've learned about autopilot on planes and dead men's switches in trains. Systems that do stuff automatically most of the time and only require human input occasionally are riskier than systems that require continuous human attention, even if the automated portion is better on average than a human would be. There's a cost to regaining situational awareness when retaking control that must be borne exactly when it can't be afforded, in an emergency.
Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers
#55What 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 re…
>or don't trust the instruments
Thankfully this isn't as big of an issue with driving on the ground. Airplanes don't have sensors that give them the same precision as a car's wheel rotation or proximity to nearby objects.
Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers
#56I just ordered a Model S with Autopilot, and as I've been reading the comments on the various Tesla forums, I'm not sure I'm ever going to use it. Some of the stories are honestly terrifying (sudden deceleration on the highway, swerving into other lanes, etc).
Absolutely do not use it.
I am one of the biggest Tesla fans out there. I fucking love the company. But Autopilot in its current form is nothing short of dangerous.
I took a test drive in a Model S a couple months ago and enabled Autopilot at the Tesla rep's encouragement while on a straight stretch of route 90 near Boston. We were going 70mph, a safe speed.
The car came to a point where the highway curved, and a slight deceleration is required to navigate the curve correctly.
Little did I know, Autopilot stays at the speed you set and does not alter it as the environment requires, short of not hitting the car in front of you. So of course it tried to take the curve at 70mph and swung out of the lane almost instantly, prompting immediate corrective action from me to avoid a serious accident.
I couldn't believe the Tesla rep hadn't made this clear. I was required to have my hands on the wheel, but the position of my hands doesn't ensure that I'm mentally ready for egregious errors on the car's part and prepared to correct them at a split second's notice at all times.
Operational question mark aside, as an investor I was also astonished that the software was still in such a rudimentary state that it didn't know to slow down on curves. I found this troubling. It was scarcely more advanced than cruise control, to be honest.
It's the one place where I think Elon is really gambling with people's lives as well as his company's credibility, the former being an infinitely worse transgression than the latter.
Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It was 140 million a year ago[1], and 222 million last October[2], so I guess a conservative estimate would be 600 million miles on autopilot (assuming that's about two months of change and usage remained steady).
[1]: https://www.wired.com/2016/08/how-tesla-autopilot-works/
Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers
#58Level 2 still does not drive smoothly as many have confirmed on their forums. They do require you to jiggle the wheel every few mins to ensure you're alert. There's also https://www.hbsslaw.com/cases/tesla-autopilot-2-ap2-defect
It's amazing to me that Tesla is able to sell a car in its price range that lacks basic features that come standard on a $17k Corolla like adaptive cruise or automatic emergency breaking, especially since they effectively reduced the capabilities of their cars by rolling out AP2. If any other company tried to pull that, they'd be laughed out of the room, but somehow, Tesla is cheered.
Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers
#59What 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 re…
This is a very important topic that I am surprised does not receive enough coverage. Thank you for bringing it up.
It will be particularly interesting if accident blame is placed on the 'dumb cars', and then insurance companies do a 180 and charge MORE for 'dumb cars' operated by humans. Once they put this information in their pricing models, I assume its 'stuck' in there until the next major NTSB report is published.
As complacency sets in over a couple months & years, the accident rates will likely swing from "dumb" human operated machines back to "Level 4 Highly Intelligent Teslas/UBERS/Argo AI", and that market might get a real shock when the pendulum comes back their way!
Re: Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 au…
That's not what the concern is based on. It's rooted in what we've learned about autopilot on planes and dead men's switches in trains. Systems that do stuff automatically most of the time and only require human input occasionally are riskier than systems that require continuous human attention, even if the automated portion is better on average than a human would be. There's a cost to regaining situational awareness…
> It's rooted in what we've learned about autopilot on planes and dead men's switches in trains
Pilots and conductors are trained professionals. The bar is lower for the drunk-driving, Facebooking and texting masses.
> Systems that do stuff automatically most of the time and only require human input occasionally are riskier than systems that require continuous human attention, even if the automated portion is better on average than a human would be
This does not appear to be bearing out in the data [1].
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-19/tesla-s-a...