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Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors

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Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors

#301

Post by ethn »

iEchoic wrote: post #293
darkpuma wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Elon stretches the truth constantly." That's putting it gently. Putting aside his twitter spats, Tesla is still prominently advertising "Full Self-Driving Hardware on All Cars" [0] even though their cars do not contain LIDAR, which essentially every expert in the field unconnected to Tesla seems to agree is necessary to implement Level 5 self driving cars[1][2]. [0] https://www.tesla.com/autopilot [1] https://www.…

> every expert in the field unconnected to Tesla seems to agree [lidar] is necessary to implement Level 5 self driving cars As someone that doesn't know anything about self-driving cars, how can this be true? Humans can drive cars with only visual input. Why can't AI?

Human eyes don't work anything like cameras. The eye processes information that isn't just intensities of photons and their wave lengths—which is the only information collected by cameras. See Walter Pitt's "What the Frog Eyes Tell the Frog Brain" for an introduction: 'Fundamentally it shows that the eye speaks to the brain in a language already highly organized and interpreted, instead of transmitting some more or less accurate copy of the distribution of light on the receptors.'

Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors

#302

Post by wisecommentator »

gameswithgo wrote: post #278
wisecommentator wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Larry Ellison is a visionary. Seems like all visionaries have been called liars by some. Steve Jobs is said to have had a “reality distortion field”. Elon Musk is a visionary. Are they all “liars” or do “visions” seem like stretching of the truth to us? Are visions simply extensions of the “truth”?

What did Larry envision, exactly?

Where should I start? Ellison made the first commercial implementation of SQL. (Granted, Ellison didn't invent SQL, but he instantly recognized the importance of it and made it commercially successful, just like Steve Jobs didn't invent graphical interfaces, but instantly recognized its importance when he saw it Xerox Parc.)

Ellison has been talking about what he called "Network Computing" since the mid 1990s. He said "We need computers that do less not more". He was laughed at and ridiculed, but today Chromebooks are the implementation of his "Network Computer" vision. "Computers that do less" are now a reality.

What we know today as "cloud computing" was first envisioned by Ellison in the mid 1990s. He called it "network computing". He talked about why it is important to "centralize complexity" and keep the end-user devices simple. Meanwhile Steve Ballmer was touting the "power of the local hard drive". Ellison's vision seems like commonsense today, but it wasn't back then.

There are lots of other things. For example he was the first to move Enterprise applications to the Web when web-based applications weren't a thing yet. Oracle Parallel Server was his idea. He even wrote the first implementation himself.

Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors

#303

Post by darkpuma »

leesec wrote: post #282
darkpuma wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Required for what, the self driving cars that don't exist yet?" Required for Level 5 automation. Tesla claims to be selling the required hardware, waiting only on the software and legislation allowing it. All other players in this field are focusing on a combination of cameras, radar and LIDAR . Since LIDAR is expensive and the self-driving hype is real, Tesla have a strong short term financial incentive to forgo…

I work for an automotive tech company and have installed an L2 self driving system into my friends Camry, I don't think you've thought critically about this. LIDAR is currently a prohibitively expensive technology that provides a point map of the surrounding area. The LIDAR that Waymo uses is nearly as expensive as the car itself. This same point map can be done with computer vision/cameras, and good software. There…

The last time I looked into it (which was admittedly a few months ago) Comma.ai was by their own admission a Level 2 system, and a somewhat sketchy one at that. While it's obviously really cool, it's a long way off from Level 5.

LIDAR currently being very expensive (and a bit bulky) is obviously the reason Tesla hasn't put LIDAR in their cars. I don't really fault them for that, I fault them for their deceptive advertising. The LIDAR industry has not yet progressed to the point where it makes sense to bring a car to market with hardware ready for Level 5 automation, so Tesla should stop claiming they've done so.

Assuming the current Level 5 automation hype doesn't fizzle then smoulder for decades like the AI craze of the 60s, then it's success will coincide with rapid advances in size and price of LIDAR.

Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors

#304

Post by darkpuma »

iEchoic wrote: post #300
rohit2412 wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because current AI does not seem as good at generalizing as humans?

Since level 5 driving has not yet been achieved, aren't we talking about future AI, not current AI?

Tesla's marketing team wants people buying cars to believe their Tesla will support Level 5 automation sometime within the usable lifespan of that car. They're not bold enough to claim it's a near future inevitability, but they're leaving that implied possibility open to get consumers excited about it.

Google/Waymo has obviously been throwing a ton of resources at nailing computer vision, their recaptcha that's plainly training such a system is doubtlessly just the publicly visible tip of an iceberg. Yet they're still investing into LIDAR as well. If Google/Waymo is bearish on a pure CV solution, I don't see any justification for Tesla thinking they can do it. Not in any near future.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/01/googles-waymo-invests-i...

Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors

#305

Post by iamcreasy »

darkpuma wrote: post #239
golfer wrote: post #88

Bruce Scott, the co-founder of Oracle says, “I remember Larry very distinctly telling me one time: Bruce, we can’t be successful unless we lie to customers.” And adds: “All the things that you would read in books of somebody being a leader, he wasn’t. But he was tenacious; he would never give up on anything.” [0] Elon stretches the truth constantly. Should be a good fit. [0]: https://techcrunch.com/2010/12/01/larry-e…

> "Elon stretches the truth constantly." That's putting it gently. Putting aside his twitter spats, Tesla is still prominently advertising "Full Self-Driving Hardware on All Cars" [0] even though their cars do not contain LIDAR, which essentially every expert in the field unconnected to Tesla seems to agree is necessary to implement Level 5 self driving cars[1][2]. [0] https://www.tesla.com/autopilot [1] https://www.…

Elon said it before, LIDER only gives you locally optimal solution, and it's not enough to build a full self-driving vehicle.

Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors

#306

Post by darkpuma »

iamcreasy wrote: post #305
darkpuma wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Elon stretches the truth constantly." That's putting it gently. Putting aside his twitter spats, Tesla is still prominently advertising "Full Self-Driving Hardware on All Cars" [0] even though their cars do not contain LIDAR, which essentially every expert in the field unconnected to Tesla seems to agree is necessary to implement Level 5 self driving cars[1][2]. [0] https://www.tesla.com/autopilot [1] https://www.…

Elon said it before, LIDER only gives you locally optimal solution, and it's not enough to build a full self-driving vehicle.

LIDAR doesn't compute solutions, it's a sensor that gives you accurate information about the environment. Far more precise and accurate than any current computer vision system. What you do with that data is up to the rest of the system.

Elon has publicly trashed LIDAR plenty of times. I think you should treat his rants as defenses of his products' reputation, not earnest impartial engineering appraisals. If Elon were to admit that LIDAR will play a vital role in Level 5 automation, he'd be admitting that his company has been mistaken or lying for years. I think Elon's personality precludes him coming clean on something like this.

> "it's not enough to build a full self-driving vehicle."

As far as I know, nobody is trying to build a Level 5 system using only LIDAR. The serious teams who are working on this problem are all using LIDAR in addition to cameras and radars. LIDAR can't read a street sign; cameras and computer vision will obviously play an important role in Level 5 systems for that reason and more. But the teams that aren't trying to use automation hype to sell luxury cars don't share Elon's enthusiasm for CV/radar with no LIDAR.

Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors

#307

Post by darkpuma »

hermitdev wrote: post #292
darkpuma wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> every expert in the field unconnected to Tesla I'm saying that when you ask people not getting a paycheck from Tesla, they say that LIDAR is required. Very notably including Mobileye, who severed their connection with Tesla over this disagreement. Mobileye is particularly notable since they invested heavily into camera-only solutions; Mobileye has a strong financial incentive to dismiss LIDAR, yet they don't. It's…

I'm curious, because I honestly dont know, how does LIDAR perform in suboptimal environments such as heavy fog , a Midwest downpour or a blizzard? So far, everything I've read has these cars testing in sunny day (no pun intended) scenarios, with the worst environmental threat being night-time.

Every system known to man, including man, struggles in those sort of conditions.

But this is an important factor to consider when evaluating safety statistics. Humans operate cars in all sort of adverse conditions and human accident rates include accidents in those kind of conditions. Accident rates for autonomous systems that refuse to attempt operation under anything less than ideal conditions won't be directly comparable to human accident rates... but expect this to be glossed over by automotive marketing departments who will eagerly compare apples to oranges as soon as the opportunity presents itself.

Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors

#308

Post by pdxww »

ethn wrote: post #301
iEchoic wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> every expert in the field unconnected to Tesla seems to agree [lidar] is necessary to implement Level 5 self driving cars As someone that doesn't know anything about self-driving cars, how can this be true? Humans can drive cars with only visual input. Why can't AI?

Human eyes don't work anything like cameras. The eye processes information that isn't just intensities of photons and their wave lengths—which is the only information collected by cameras. See Walter Pitt's "What the Frog Eyes Tell the Frog Brain" for an introduction: 'Fundamentally it shows that the eye speaks to the brain in a language already highly organized and interpreted, instead of transmitting some more or l…

A simple abstraction here: we put two high-quality monitors before our eyes and get all the data from them. Can we continue driving this way? Absolutely. This means that no matter how our eyes actually work, an array of RGB pixels is enough. I'd go further and say that a 64 x 64 grayscale camera at 10 fps is enough to drive a car. The real magic happens in the brain that reconstructs the 3D model and predicts what happens next.

Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors

#309

Post by darkpuma »

pdxww wrote: post #308
ethn wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human eyes don't work anything like cameras. The eye processes information that isn't just intensities of photons and their wave lengths—which is the only information collected by cameras. See Walter Pitt's "What the Frog Eyes Tell the Frog Brain" for an introduction: 'Fundamentally it shows that the eye speaks to the brain in a language already highly organized and interpreted, instead of transmitting some more or l…

A simple abstraction here: we put two high-quality monitors before our eyes and get all the data from them. Can we continue driving this way? Absolutely. This means that no matter how our eyes actually work, an array of RGB pixels is enough. I'd go further and say that a 64 x 64 grayscale camera at 10 fps is enough to drive a car. The real magic happens in the brain that reconstructs the 3D model and predicts what ha…

> "64 x 64 grayscale camera at 10 fps is enough to drive a car."

If you had vision that bad, the State of California would not let you get a drivers license, they require at least one of your eyes to be 20/40. Anyway, the point of the GP is that the brain isn't the only piece of wetware doing image processing, but more to the point the current state of the art CV really is not up to the task.

And it really doesn't seem like it's going to be there anytime soon.

Re: Tesla Adds Larry Ellison and Kathleen Wilson-Thompson as Board Directors

#310

Post by tluyben2 »

illumin8 wrote: post #159
Avshalom wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully about $30-50 per share in "market confidence" in the midst of a bear market. Otherwise Tesla probably goes bankrupt in March.

Tesla just reached profitability last quarter, and is likely to turn a profit this quarter as well. They might not even need to raise more capital if they keep up with Model 3 demand coming from the US, Europe, and China next year. This is a far cry from bankrupt in March.

Probably depends on when the predicted crisis hits and how bad that will be.
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