What it feels like to work in AI right now

> make this happen without a lot of back and forth

Perhaps this is the part you're missing. When I've watched people program with ChatGPT it _is_ a lot of back and forth because an enormous amount of context is able to be stored and back referenced. I.e. one wouldn't say "make me a Flappy Bird clone for iOS", they'd start with:

"Give me the code for a starter SpriteKit project". Then

"Now draw a sprite from bird.png and place it in the center of the screen".

"Now make it so the bird sprite will fall as if it's affected by gravity"

I won't bore anyone with how might one go from that all the way to a simple game, but I'm sure you see the idea. There are obviously _huge_ limitations to this approach and professionals will get hit them fast, but the proof is in the pudding: people who can barely code are producing real software through this approach. It's happening.

> Let’s go over the basics for Autopilot:

Go on Pornhub right now (if you're not at work) and search for sex in tesla. You'll find people driving Teslas on public roads while having sex in the driver's seat. The guy touches the steering wheel every so often to keep the car autopilot activated. The videos have been posted over a span of years. Another one was literally posted yesterday. Combined they have 10s of millions of views.

Is this what you mean when you speak of "passion" in Tesla owners? When will these Tesla owners be banned for life? Would you be okay with these people fucking in their Tesla as it drives around your town in broad daylight? Around you and your family?

> I find the hate towards autopilot to always stem from non user and by standers.

There are two other categories:

3: People who have been injured, maimed, or killed in Teslas, and the people who knew and loved them. This applies to me.

4: People who are passionate about robotics, and are disgusted at how Tesla in particular and Elon Musk especially are responsible for eroding public safety in the name of profits and market dominance. This also applies to me.

I appreciate that some people who own Teslas are very "passionate" about the expensive toys they have bought. Toddlers are also just as passionate about their material world. But I really don't care how much they love their cars, what I care about are people who I know are dead, and my field is a joke.

> And then we have bystanders like you with no understanding of what’s actually going on, who want to ban everybody from using Autopilot because you think drunk people are using Autopilot or something.

I have Ph.D. in computer engineering focused on robotics. My dissertation was on dynamic autonomous control. I've built many autonomous vehicles in my time, including cars, forklifts, boats, airplanes, and wheelchairs. I teach graduate students at a top international university. I've worked at and consulted on robotics at top corporations you've heard of. Sorry if you mistook me for a bystander with no understanding of what's going on.

What I want is my community to be safe. What I want is for professionals in my field to take safety seriously, and not release half baked admittedly beta quality software into the wild. That's the craziest part of all of this -- you and Elon and Tesla and all the passionate owners don't even contest that the software and hardware are not ready for the task. We had established protocols for testing autonomous vehicle in public areas in 2007 during the DARPA Urban challenge. Those protocols were designed to keep people safe, and they did. No one died. Tesla threw those protocols out the window, and guess what, people died. This is not saying that autopilot should be banned forever. It's saying you shouldn't move fast and break things, because sometimes those things are people, and sometimes those things are established safety protocols that are there for a reason.

> (Needless to say Tesla will never hit a mannequin or anything like it ever again as 100s of videos by our passionate users have shown. I’ve also seen it avoid a teddy bear on a roller chair that was in the middle of the road for some reason, something definitely not in our training set)

Is it needless to say? Because in 2016 a man was decapitated due to his AP system failing to sense an obstacle, and then it happened again to a second man in 2019 on a newer model, with the same failure mode:

ttps://cdllife.com/2019/feds-say-autopilot-was-engaged-in-fatal-tesla-vs-semi-crash/

Why didn't Tesla fix this beta-level bug in 3 years? Is it fixed today? If not, how long until Tesla AP kills another person? If you had tested your hardware and software in a lab more, would those two people still be alive? Would their families still be whole? Have you reflected on this at all?

Edit: I've responded to your original comment, but it seems you've heavily edited it after the fact. Although, your choice of words about "heads rolling" has incensed me to a degree that I cannot continue this discussion civilly, and have already gone too far. I'm not deleting this because I'd rather get it off my chest. I get that you're not responsible for those deaths, but Elon Musk is from my point of view, and also the general "move fast and break things" attitude is as well.

Fair, but not completely true. The Thailand examples gives a detailed reasoning. You can use those building blocks to check. If it says Thailand is a cold country and uses that in its argumentation, it's shaky. You don't have to be an expert climatologist to make this judgement.

It's not just one clean answer and we're done. In my experience it is helpful in breaking the problem down into stuff you can Google.

Really?

I'm too lazy to search for the Hacker News threads, but trust me, they did.

Though I agree, that was two months ago and we are so over that already.

Fine with me!