Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Waymo CEO dismisses Tesla self-driving plan: “This is not how it works”

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 581 posts

Re: Waymo CEO dismisses Tesla self-driving plan: “This is not how it works”

#51

Post by Animats »

"I watched a few hours of early unedited footage posted by Tesla owners who received the new software. The software made a number of mistakes, including two incidents where a Tesla seemed to be on the verge of colliding with another vehicle before the driver intervened."

What, Tesla still can't detect big, obvious obstacles reliably? That's pathetic. A half-dozen cases of running into stationary obstacles at full speed should have taught them something.

Running into obstacles at full speed, with no braking, is quite rare for human drivers. Usually, there's braking, but too late. Mercedes once did a study showing that over half of accidents would not have occurred if braking started about 100ms earlier.

Tesla's approach means the driver has nothing to do until something goes wrong. Then they have to react in under a second. That just doesn't work. That's been known for decades.

Great video on cockpit automation: "Children of the Magenta" (1997).[1] It's an American Airlines chief pilot talking to his pilots about automation-induced accidents. The aviation industry started dealing with over-reliance on imperfect automation a long time ago.

[1] https://vimeo.com/159496346

Re: Waymo CEO dismisses Tesla self-driving plan: “This is not how it works”

#52

Post by paul7986 »

Im anti-robot car ... so many ppl will die for progress with this.

I'm even more after my friend's Jeep Compass's AI system decided to lock up her brakes and steering wheel as she was turning into the bathroom area after the Golden Gate Bridge. The AI said nope im taking over your going to crash and thus you cant maneuver your way out of hitting the highway wall which she did and total that piece of junk; all bruised up too!

I will avoid getting any AI features in any new cars I buy or just buy older ones. Unfortunately, those around me will be driving these cars where their brakes and steering wheel just might lock up too and boom they and or we are in accident. An accident that the driver who could had control didnt because algorithms can never guess the millions of different driving scenarios & execute the right one!

Re: Waymo CEO dismisses Tesla self-driving plan: “This is not how it works”

#53

Post by codebolt »

majewsky wrote: post #17
jcfrei wrote: post #12

I have a feeling that AGI is a requirement for FSD. There are enough tail events while driving where you can only make "the right decision" if you actually understand what's going on.

> There are enough tail events while driving where you can only make "the right decision" if you actually understand what's going on. I have the feeling this bar disqualifies most human drivers, too.

Human drivers fail reliably, in ways that are understandable. Non-AGI artificial intelligence based on a mix of heuristics and dumb statistics (aka 'deep learning') will fail in highly unpredictable and to a human eye completely foolish ways. The day these cars are let on the road in my area is the day I start taking the train.

Re: Waymo CEO dismisses Tesla self-driving plan: “This is not how it works”

#54

Post by mxschumacher »

rcxdude wrote: post #46
screye wrote: post #35

I worked with a self-driving product team a couple of years ago. Tesla's approach was looked upon with suspicion and often openly mocked. Tesla's entire self-driving strategy is led by Karpathy, who while brilliant, is an under-experienced researcher with a narrow expertise in large scale 2D CNNs. Tesla (and Comma.ai ?) seem to be the only groups that find Lidar unnecessary for L5 self-driving. I completely agree wit…

This matches my experience of how Tesla is viewed in the autonomous car industry. No-one thinks they are a serious contender when it comes to a driverless vehicle (and their business model basically doesn't match with the technology either: every other company is basically going to operate a taxi service because there's far more value to be captured and it can help pay for the hardware making driverless possible)

it's interesting how optimistic long term visions conflict - if you really think autonomous cabs will become widespread then by implication you are also saying that car sales will be drastically lower. Tough to be serious betting on both.

The math of "you'll pay more for the car but the car will go out and make money for you as a robotic Uber" sounds like a pyramid scheme to me; if too many people do it, it can no longer work.

Re: Waymo CEO dismisses Tesla self-driving plan: “This is not how it works”

#55

Post by saetaes »

speedgoose wrote: post #18

Tesla is quite far from full self driving. They have too much phantom breaking on the simple adaptive cruise control in good conditions.

As a Model X owner who rarely engages Autopilot for this exact reason, I concur. The number of times the car has suddenly started braking for no good reason (clear weather and good road conditions, few cars around) is way too high.

Re: Waymo CEO dismisses Tesla self-driving plan: “This is not how it works”

#56

Post by paulryanrogers »

petters wrote: post #49
brianwawok wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean people have already died sleeping with it on. But it’s also likely saved lives based on their deaths per mile number.

Are you aware how low the deaths per mile is for humans? I don't think we know if Waymo has a lower rate than a human yet. Tesla I don't know, but wouldn't be surprised if it is higher.

IIRC for humans it's like 1 death per million miles driven. I believe Waymo is closing in on that. Not sure if Waymo handles the variety of conditions though. Musk and Tesla seem very flippant in their marketing.

Re: Waymo CEO dismisses Tesla self-driving plan: “This is not how it works”

#57

Post by onion2k »

screye wrote: post #35

I worked with a self-driving product team a couple of years ago. Tesla's approach was looked upon with suspicion and often openly mocked. Tesla's entire self-driving strategy is led by Karpathy, who while brilliant, is an under-experienced researcher with a narrow expertise in large scale 2D CNNs. Tesla (and Comma.ai ?) seem to be the only groups that find Lidar unnecessary for L5 self-driving. I completely agree wit…

Tesla (and Comma.ai ?) seem to be the only groups that find Lidar unnecessary for L5 self-driving.

There is another group who find Lidar unnecessary for driving: humans.

Re: Waymo CEO dismisses Tesla self-driving plan: “This is not how it works”

#58

Post by paulryanrogers »

ameen wrote: post #40
brianwawok wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean people have already died sleeping with it on. But it’s also likely saved lives based on their deaths per mile number.

I’m not sure if I feel easy about this “statistic” - deaths per mile?? These are humans, and more importantly to the business - paying customers. If my product has the possibility of killing my customer, I’d probably not be comfortable with making it market ready (without massively improving its safety features).

Agreed. Where to draw that line is the debate. For kitchen knives there is a similar problem. As cold as it is the data is the best measure.

Re: Waymo CEO dismisses Tesla self-driving plan: “This is not how it works”

#59

Post by dehrmann »

granzymes wrote: post #3

drivers came to trust it way too quickly. Drivers who were supposed to be closely monitoring the system instead spent their time looking at their phones, putting on makeup, and other distractions. Really hope no one dies because of Tesla's autopilot. This is a real risk. Quoting from below: if the car does it right 99% of the time it's just human nature to stop paying attention. The article makes a great point that s…

> This is a real risk

It's even a risk to Waymo because, despite being responsible about it, Tesla made people either scared of autonomous cars or forced out legislation restricting it.

Re: Waymo CEO dismisses Tesla self-driving plan: “This is not how it works”

#60

Post by justapassenger »

ra7 wrote: post #26

I think the FSD beta rollout is completely irresponsible from Tesla. Rolling out a clearly half-baked safety critical technology to its customers (yes, I know it's only a few beta testers) who are untrained is nothing but a tactic to generate hype and get more customers to buy that $10k FSD package. This is on top of Tesla being the least transparent company out there in reporting safety data or their testing methodo…

FSD rollout is purely driven by Elon’s ego. He’s addicted to fame and power, and that comes from image he created of himself being an Iron Man. I’m pretty sure he got to a point where he believes in it, and thinks he’s invincible and can solve any problem, because he’s so much smarter than everyone. Stock bubble making wealthiest man only helped to solidify that.
Post reply on HN