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Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

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Re: Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

#241

Post by pfarnsworth »

cmroanirgo wrote: post #154
perl4ever wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"And within a few minutes we got freaked out with what seem to us as unpredictable action and we turned it off." On the one hand, I'm affected by the FUD and will not buy a Tesla, and perhaps also will have schadenfreude to the extent their CEO has misfortunes. On the other hand, to be fair, other driver assistance features are creating problems too. I think it was Subaru I was just reading about having serious probl…

I remember an engineering class at uni in the early 90's discussing how cruise control worked, and was borderline horrified at the childish simplicity of the design. In all this time, I've probably used it 1/2 dozen times, because my trust level is very low. Just the other day I was a passenger in a Peugot and it was raining very heavily. Cruise control automatically disabled when one of the tyres suddenly bogged dow…

Sorry but using cruise control in heavy rain is just simply a bad idea. It's supposed to be used when conditions are ideal, not when they as bad as can be. That is human error, in my opinion.

Re: Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

#242

Post by Rebelgecko »

ip26 wrote: post #38
harrisonjackson wrote: post #6

Tesla says autopilot works but that driver should be ready to intervene. This is terrifying - like having a kid riding shotgun that might just reach out and turn the wheel while you are on the highway. Anyone who has driven with autopilot, how quickly might it react to a perceived obstacle? Would it take a hard turn into a median faster than a person could reasonably react if it thought there was something in the roa…

I can't help but think "ready to intervene" would require an even higher level of alertness than just driving the car yourself, as you have to always be prepared for it to do something completely unexpected on a dime- and to notice without the feedback you normally get through the wheel, pedals, etc... Even worse, if you are taking an action the autopilot should have taken but didn't, you are axiomatically already la…

It reminds me of an article I read about Air France flight 447 (I think it was this: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2014/10/air-france-...). The crux of the article is that when you can automate away a problem 99% of the time, you're much more likely to have trouble when the now-rare problem actually crops up.

Re: Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

#243

Post by fxtentacle »

ghgr wrote: post #226
fxtentacle wrote: post #187

I avoid new technology, exactly because I'm an engineer. I wonder if that is just me, but when new technology is introduced and hyped, I usually take a quick look at implementations, research, and talks just to get an idea of what the state of the art really is like. As a result, I have become the late adopter among my group of friends because the first iteration of any new technology usually just isn't worth the iss…

I mostly agree with you that there are many false positives in the research papers. Still, you shouldn't outright dismiss the possibility of you not implementing their models correctly.

I was reviewing the authors' own source codes.

Re: Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

#244

Post by stiglitz »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #234
stiglitz wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teslas are more expensive than the average car (hence might be driven more carefully), and autopilot is more likely to be enabled in predictable driving environments like highways.

hence might be driven more carefully I don't know where you get that idea from, when I'm out cycling it's generally the people in expensive cars that don't pay much attention.

You’re more likely to notice expensive cars, and also more likely to notice cars with unsafe drivers.

Re: Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

#245

Post by fsh »

riffraff wrote: post #216
fxtentacle wrote: post #187

I avoid new technology, exactly because I'm an engineer. I wonder if that is just me, but when new technology is introduced and hyped, I usually take a quick look at implementations, research, and talks just to get an idea of what the state of the art really is like. As a result, I have become the late adopter among my group of friends because the first iteration of any new technology usually just isn't worth the iss…

This resonates with me, and of course the classic xkcd on electronic voting https://xkcd.com/2030/

The difference is that electronic voting is a bad idea in principle, regardless of the implementation. Fully self-driving cars might actually be possible, but probably not with current software and hardware.

Re: Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

#246

Post by adrr »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #166

There are going to be Autopilot crashes and people should disable it if they uncomfortable with putting their lives in the hands of Tesla's software. I would be. But I see no reason to not believe to not believe what they have on https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport It shows Teslas have much fewer accidents than the average car, and that Teslas with autopilot enabled are substantially safe per mile than with aut…

Accidents happen more frequently in terms of miles driven on city streets where Autopilot isn't being used. Tesla is playing with numbers to make themselves look good. This false sense security is part of the problem. Autopilot needs to be closely monitored and isn't a substitute for a human a driver. I use autopilot everyday and there are cases where if i wasn't monitoring it, it would ran me into a stalled car or merged me into a concrete barrier.

Re: Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

#247

Post by Thorrez »

voodooranger wrote: post #15

breaking news from 2018? there’s nothing new here, including the deceased driver’s alleged complaints.

Yeah, and this article from 2018 has even more information, because it says Walter complained to the dealer, not just to his family as this new article says.

>Walter Huang's family tells Dan Noyes he took his Tesla to the dealer, complaining that -- on multiple occasions -- the Autopilot veered toward that same barrier -- the one his Model X hit on Friday when he died.

https://abc7news.com/3275600/

I guess maybe there's a small chance that the old article was wrong, and he didn't in fact complain to the dealer. But that in itself would be newsworthy in my view.

Re: Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

#248

Post by ThePhysicist »

skolsuper wrote: post #202
benzor wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your claim relies entirely on the veracity of Tesla's safety report. Unfortunately I am inclined to mistrust any such vehicle safety claims directly from Tesla's own website. There is a conflict of interest in that they are incentivized to publish the most favorable numbers. We should be rightly cynical and rely only on numbers from an independent third party, as we would normally do for other companies with a less f…

If they truly believe that the autopilot driving is safer than unassisted, they might reasonably consider it an immoral act not to ship it. Given the number of lives lost in auto accidents every day, the issue is not as clear-cut as you're suggesting. It's a real-world trolley problem.

No. If they know that it’s safer in some respects but unsafe in others they should make sure it’s only used as an assistance system and make sure the driver is still watching the road when it’s turned on.

What’s immoral is that they allow people to turn this thing on and then play Candy Crush on their phone while the car does the driving, fully aware that this might lead to fatal accidents in some cases. Their marketing is misleading because they suggest that the system is safe and they don’t inform customers about the freak accidents that can happen when the system glitches (bad for sales). That’s not very ethical if you ask me.

Re: Apple engineer killed in Tesla crash had previously complained about autopilot

#249

Post by fxtentacle »

JauntyHatAngle wrote: post #239
thdrdt wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Current self-driving might be safer than the avarage driver, but what most people forget is how unsafe it is when it fails. It fails harder than most avarage drivers and even bad drivers. In my eyes self-driving should still be called driving-assistance.

Can you cite any sources that AI fails harder? I'm not exactly sure what you are referring to.

The dead Uber pedestrian where the AI dismissed the data as faulty and did not slow down at all.

I think every human would slow down if they see things that they cannot explain. An AI will not.

It's basically the same problem as when an image recognition AI is 99% sure that the photo of your cat shows guacamole.

Current AIs do not have a concept of absolute confidence, they only produce an estimate relative to the other possibilities that were available during training. That's why fully novel situations produce completely random results.

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