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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

#121

Post by albertop »

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…

If you never driven Tesla you do not know what a joy is to use the auto pilot in stop and go traffic. I see 2-3 accidents daily caused by your "alert" drivers rear ending cars. Your statement may be true for long haul rides, but I pretty sure the numbers will come ahead for the auto steerer for the normal commute.

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

#122

Post by Facemelters »

RonanTheGrey wrote: post #82
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.

If I were one of those engineers, and didn't believe in the claims being made, I'd personally be quite worried of being held personally liable if the company gets sued in the case of accidental death. Last thing I'd want is my bug being responsible for someone dying. E.g. I would quit too.

Good thing it would be almost impossible to attach personal liability to an employee of a corporation unless they intentionally designed the system to be unsafe with malicious intent.

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

#123

Post by jedberg »

dkonofalski wrote: post #33
CupOfJava wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 happ…

> 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.

I think this is an extremely salient and important point, and I've never thought of it before!

Test pilots only care about a good product, not success or failure of the product. That's not the case anymore.

Maybe this would be a good time to propose a new "test pilot core" for cars, made up of perhaps some elite drivers who don't work for any car company.

Or heck, maybe the army wants to test self driving cars!

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

#124

Post by JumpCrisscross »

nostrademons wrote: post #111
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The concern is that as level 2 autopilot gets better and disengagements go down, the human's attentiveness will degrade, making the remaining disengagement scenarios more dangerous A Level 2 autopilot should be able to better predict when it will need human intervention. If the autopilot keeps itself in situations where it does better than humans most (not all) of the time, the system will outperform. My view isn't…

The problem is that in L2, the bar for the system as a whole is set by the low bar for humans, specifically their reactions in an emergency. If the computer safely drives itself 99% of the time but in that 1% when the human needs to take control, the human fucks up, the occupants of the vehicle are still dead. And what people are saying here is that L2 automation increases the risk that the human will fuck up in that…

> If the computer safely drives itself 99% of the time but in that 1% when the human needs to take control, the human fucks up, the occupants of the vehicle are still dead. And what people are saying here is that L2 automation increases the risk that the human will fuck up in that 1%, by decreasing their situational awareness in the remainder of time.

Humans regularly mess up in supposedly-safe scenarios. Consider a machine that kills everyone in those 1% edge cases (which are in reality less frequent than 1%) and drives perfectly 99% of the time. I hypothesise it would still outperform humans.

Of course, you won't have 100% death in the edge cases. Either way, making the majority of travel safe in exchange for making edge cases more deadly to untrained drivers has a simple solution: a higher bar for licensing human drivers.

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

#125

Post by Cshelton »

martin_bech wrote: post #94
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 have a Tesla with this and i LOVE it.. everyone I know on the teslaforums etc. loves it aswell. Please do yourself a favor, and try it out for a roadtrip duration or similar. Its a gamechanger.

Same. I love reading opinions about how dangerous or bad the Tesla "autopilot" is, or that it dosen't work, from people who have never owned or driven in a Tesla with autopilot.

I've probably gone about 8,000 miles on autopilot in mine (AP1) and it is truly amazing. After a road trip stint of ~200 miles, I feel much more energized and less fatigued in the Tesla with autopilot 99% of the way than I do in previous non-autopilot cars. It really is a game changer. You may think regular driving doesn't require much brain activity, or that the Tesla cruise control and auto steering don't do much, but you really don't realize how much your brain is working to handle those things until you can take a step back and let the care do most of the work. Then you can focus on other things while on the road that you didn't realize before. The behavior of other drivers for example. I can watch a car near me with greater focus and see what that person is doing.

Regardless, if you have not driven one, I highly encourage it. You really need to take it out on the highway and drive it for 30 miles+ to really understand how amazing it is. I've driven other cars with "autopilot", and just like car reviews say, they are nowhere close. (Mercedes, Cadillac, Volvo, others with just auto cruise control). It's just one more reason why current Tesla owners are so fanatic about their car, there is nothing else like it and most likely won't be until ~2020 (maybe).

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

#126

Post by georgemcbay »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #31
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 au…

> 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.

Have there been any Tesla autopilot fatalities with the right conditions to spark outrage? That's a sincere question as maybe I've missed some which would prove your point.

The only major incident I'm aware of is one in which only the driver of the car was killed. In an accident like that it is easy to handwave it away pretty much independent of any specifics (autopilot or no).

A real test of public reaction would involve fatalities to third parties, particularly if the "driver" of the automated vehicle survived the crash.

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

#127

Post by crocal »

network_ops wrote: post #113
crocal wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No personal opinion here. It's just facts from the only ones around who have done this before. Your argument is flawed. We have also been there. Here is the catch. You are willing to take the risk, but society as a whole will not. As soon as you release /total/ control to a machine, public authorities having authorized this become responsible for your life and those your car may threaten. Requirements for said author…

facts? Do you have sources?

The requirements for safety in railway are well defined in EN 50129, EN 50126 and EN 50128. You will be required to meet these standards for an ISA (independent safety authority) to give a positive report, and then for the applicable transportation authority to grant revenue service authorization. As you can imagine, the willingness of a given passenger to take a certain amount of risk is not part of the process described in these standards.

EDIT: theses standards are applied worldwide, despite the EN prefix.

EDIT: good reference site: http://en50126.blogspot.it/2008/07/velkommen.html?m=1

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

#128

Post by bluthru »

niftich wrote: post #67
bluthru wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

On the contrary, this is a much larger issue on the ground. A commercial airplane spends most of its flight time in clear air, in an airway assigned to it by 24/7 air traffic control, safely separated from large objects with which it can collide, and largely safe from disruptions which necessitate sudden control inputs to avoid an immediate crash. Cars don't operate in a comparable problem-space.

Proximity to other objects doesn't matter when your air speed indicator isn't accurate and you can't get lift.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447

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

#130

Post by modeless »

mph1 wrote: post #99
strange_quark wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You've clearly never driven a telsa if you think a $17k Corolla has more advanced adaptive cruise control. I've driven my model S over 15,000 miles, with probably over 50% of that on autopilot (mainly interstates), and NEVER had an issue with the adaptive cruise control. Its absolutely flawless. (autopilot has its quirks, although its still an extremely useful feature, and the primary reason I bought a tesla)

Do you have the Mobileye hardware?
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