Tesla calls self-driving technology 'failure,' not fraud • Hacker News Board

Re: Tesla calls self-driving technology 'failure,' not fraud

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Post by leobg » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 8:35 PM UTC

TomSwirly wrote: post #272

fnordpiglet wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact you’re not surprised that a car can drive itself is telling. And not in the positive way you want to make it seem. It’s magic man. You’re jaded, and have set the goal posts too far and likely increasingly far. WRT delivery timing, who amongst us had delivered a complex R&D heavy software project on time? I’m not an Elon fan boy but I respect he laid out a vision and worked to execute on it. That he didn’t hi…

> You’re jaded No, the question is whether Musk committed fraud by selling _in 2016_ self-driving car software which he is still unable to deliver in 2022, and the answer is YES whether or not you are "jaded".

You are a lawyer? Or is that just your opinion based on what you personally believe fraud should mean (or on how much or little you like Musk)? Thanks for clarifying.

Re: Tesla calls self-driving technology 'failure,' not fraud

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Post by kube-system » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 8:37 PM UTC

joering2 wrote: post #303

kube-system wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, McDonald’s execs don’t go to prison because they can actually deliver the product they advertise. Between the statements “Here’s a burger you can eat it” and “here’s a truck look at it go”, only one is a lie.

Only lie here is that their commercial said "here is a truck look at it go". Have you ever even watched it before commenting??

Those are scare quotes in my comment, not literal quotes.

I’ll rephrase it plainly: difference between the situations is a misrepresentation of material fact.

Re: Tesla calls self-driving technology 'failure,' not fraud

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Post by Dylan16807 » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 8:39 PM UTC

School-Cotton wrote: post #98

sidibe wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think 2016 it was already widely known by the industry it was going to be very difficult compared to what Tesla was saying, especially without the handicaps they imposed on themselves. No one with knowledge took Tesla's timeline seriously > Clearly even level 4 autonomy is far beyond what any near future technology is capable of I've always been pessimistic about FSD but I think it'd pretty hard to reconcile that q…

> actual L4 deployments In some of the cities with the easiest driving conditions in the world.

An easy city is still a city.

Only the low end of L4 is being reached right now, but that's massively better than "far beyond what any near future technology is capable of".

Re: Tesla calls self-driving technology 'failure,' not fraud

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Post by fbdab103 » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 8:41 PM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #305

rootusrootus wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has one of the most extensive rail networks in the world. What we do differently than Europe is use the rail network almost exclusively for freight. If we followed Europe's lead and did a lot more freight via long haul truck, we could free up a bunch of infrastructure for passengers, but would the end result be a net win? Or would we actually increase emissions by doing that?

There is absolutely no reason to make that tradeoff. If a rail line is hitting maximum capacity, then that means there's plenty of money going around to expand it. Adding more passenger trains does not require decreasing the amount of freight trains. That's not the reason we're bad at doing passenger rail.

Freight rail has significantly different requirements than passenger. People want to move quickly, with frequent daily trips (eg 24 trips per day, moving at 90mph). Freight does not care about train speed so long as it is reliable (eg 1 trip per day moving at 50mph). Logistics networks can plan around reliability.

Re: Tesla calls self-driving technology 'failure,' not fraud

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Post by Dylan16807 » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 8:44 PM UTC

epgui wrote: post #234

detaro wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're talking about this years later, looking at years of context, that's hardly "failing to assume good faith from the onset".

I’m not sure what you mean exactly. If you’re suggesting that repeated failure to meet ambitious target deadlines is more indicative of bad faith than a single failure to do so, well… I don’t think it works like that. The bar for abandoning the presumption of good faith, and the principle of charitable interpretation, is very high.

> I’m not sure what you mean exactly. If you’re suggesting that repeated failure to meet ambitious target deadlines is more indicative of bad faith than a single failure to do so, well… I don’t think it works like that.

Sure it does! Elon Musk isn't 5, right? He's capable of observing the rate of progress and adjusting his pronouncements.

Re: Tesla calls self-driving technology 'failure,' not fraud

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Post by notyourwork » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 8:45 PM UTC

jcranmer wrote: post #149

mch82 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, “full self driving” has always meant the car has a built-in cab driver so I can work while the car drives to my parents for dinner 6 hours away, then sleep while the car drives me home. I’m not sure how the phrase “full self-driving” could mean anything other than that. Edit: When I pre-ordered a Model 3 Musk’s promise at that time was literally “press a button and your car will work as a taxi to earn money wh…

> I’m not sure how the phrase “full self-driving” could mean anything other than that. There is some room to argue about the conditions under which the car can drive itself. If the car couldn't handle a high-grade, winding mountain road with an inch of snow on the ground and yet more coming down, I don't think too many people would be fussed is a "full self-driving" car said "uh, no" (especially as a good fraction of…

There is not room to argue. Unless we call it “Full self-driving*”.

Full describes the set of use cases the car can drive in. All of them, not some with conditions and exceptions.

Re: Tesla calls self-driving technology 'failure,' not fraud

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Post by notyourwork » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 8:46 PM UTC

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #68

BoorishBears wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla FSD can barely handle a balmy 70 degree day, so I think you'd be disappointed. I might biased because I work on actual self-driving efforts, but nothing at all about Tesla has ever indicated they were serious about solving self driving in any capacity. The day that Elon proclaimed they already had the sensor suite decided was the day that they openly admitted this was fraud.

My opinion doesn’t matter, but your last point resonates with me because this struck me as totally bizarre too. I don’t work in sensing let alone using AI with sensing data, but I’m around it a lot and my second-hand knowledge kind of set off some red flags. In remote sensing for landscape architecture, hydrography, and other similar fields (making sense of static things where no one is at risk of dying immediately,…

+1 I’m not in the field and my eyebrows raised when I heard that.

Re: Tesla calls self-driving technology 'failure,' not fraud

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Post by leobg » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 8:56 PM UTC

holmesworcester wrote: post #157

lawn wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That you're surprised that it managed drive door to door is telling. And not in the positive way you want to make it seem.

OP is talking about being surprised by steady progress to a major human achievement, one that could save a million lives for starters, but also one that in its mature state (where robots can visually interpret and navigate 3d space) unlocks even more labor saving automation than cars, busses, and trains put together. It has the dark side of military uses, sure, but given how developed our tools for blind destruction…

Thank you for your thoughtful comment. It is quite sad to see how eager people are to throw stones. It’s always the darkest side of HN that comes out in these threads.

Re: Tesla calls self-driving technology 'failure,' not fraud

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Post by gumboza » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 8:57 PM UTC

NumberlessMan wrote: post #290

gumboza wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He does run a cult. My father finds Musk entirely reputable. I am currently subject to at least a 30 minute call a day from him, a retired model S owner, who has nothing left in his life other than the Tesla. The calls are 30 minutes of him reeling off Tesla PR bollocks. He chased everyone he knew away, speaks of nothing else and cannot see reason or error in this or any of Musk's things. He thinks the Twitter thing…

Please, be aware that if you call the mental health services on someone it can be extremely difficult to unwind. Once a giant bureaucracy tags you as a risk, sane decision making can go out the window. No-one will want to say you're not a risk even if you are sane, because their reputation suffers if they are wrong. Only a trained psychiatrist can make such a judgement legally and they may have an hour with you once…

Yeah 100% agree which is why I haven't actually done it yet. I would do it only if he put himself or someone else at grave risk.

Re: Tesla calls self-driving technology 'failure,' not fraud

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Post by redox99 » Sat, Dec 10, 2022, 9:00 PM UTC

jerrytsai wrote: post #204

fnordpiglet wrote: post #97

I’m been on the fsd beta for a long time now and I have to say it’s remarkably improved over the last year. If it continues to improve at this rate for another year it’s going to be pretty useful. I use it to drive around seattle (which is a difficult driving place with randomly followed infrastructure standards and randomly driving drivers and randomly parked cars) and it used to be a death defying gripping of the s…

It's unlikely that the rate of improvement, however you estimate it, will continue at the same rate. This is a Pareto effect, with marginal gains ever more difficult to obtain. And the edge cases FSD can handle will be impaired by the sensors they do (not) install. While they make a good point that sensor fusion can impair comprehension, the removal of radar makes it hard to avoid the edge cases most calamitous.

I actually expect a nice boost of progress as the occupancy network is improved and used more by other parts of the software stack.

And I expect a fairly significant improvement when they release the HW4 hardware upgrade. Better cameras, and more processing are such "free" (as in effort, not money of course lol) improvements to their error rates. I'm surprised they got this far with their current hardware. If you've ever done real time computer vision, you know how hard it is to maintain decent performance (fps and latency) even on fairly beefy GPUs.