Tesla Lays Off Hundreds of Autopilot Workers in Latest Staff Cut
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Re: Tesla Lays Off Hundreds of Autopilot Workers in Latest Staff Cut
#2> Teams at the San Mateo office were tasked with evaluating customer vehicle data related to the Autopilot driver-assistance features and performing so-called data labeling.
My sympathies with the folks laid off, but do American firms still do data labeling in-house? I assume most of it is out-sourced via Scale or other vendors to eventually India, Vietnam etc.
Re: Tesla Lays Off Hundreds of Autopilot Workers in Latest Staff Cut
#3> Teams at the San Mateo office were tasked with evaluating customer vehicle data related to the Autopilot driver-assistance features and performing so-called data labeling. My sympathies with the folks laid off, but do American firms still do data labeling in-house? I assume most of it is out-sourced via Scale or other vendors to eventually India, Vietnam etc.
If I recall correctly, Karpathy during one of the Tesla AI talks addresses this and said that keeping data labeling in-house was an advantage because it could be integrated more tightly into their processes with better customization & turnaround etc.
Firing most of their data-cleaning & labeling capacity isn't going to be good for their car efforts, but I suppose if things are that bad at Tesla now, it's better to fire to cut expenses to the bone, and rehire much later once the storm is past...
Re: Tesla Lays Off Hundreds of Autopilot Workers in Latest Staff Cut
#4> Teams at the San Mateo office were tasked with evaluating customer vehicle data related to the Autopilot driver-assistance features and performing so-called data labeling. My sympathies with the folks laid off, but do American firms still do data labeling in-house? I assume most of it is out-sourced via Scale or other vendors to eventually India, Vietnam etc.
It doesn’t have to be all-in or all-out. They may outsource the bulk of it and bring in house borderline, not clear cut, or critical data points.
Re: Tesla Lays Off Hundreds of Autopilot Workers in Latest Staff Cut
#5Does anyone know why Tesla is laying off so agressively? While they are likely overvalued post-pandemic... their financial position appears solid even if the stock fell by 50x.
I doubt any cuts could yield the type of profitability that wall street expects at the current valuation.
Re: Tesla Lays Off Hundreds of Autopilot Workers in Latest Staff Cut
#6Have we all forgotten Dojo?
Re: Tesla Lays Off Hundreds of Autopilot Workers in Latest Staff Cut
#7> Teams at the San Mateo office were tasked with evaluating customer vehicle data related to the Autopilot driver-assistance features and performing so-called data labeling. My sympathies with the folks laid off, but do American firms still do data labeling in-house? I assume most of it is out-sourced via Scale or other vendors to eventually India, Vietnam etc.
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Re: Tesla Lays Off Hundreds of Autopilot Workers in Latest Staff Cut
#8> Teams at the San Mateo office were tasked with evaluating customer vehicle data related to the Autopilot driver-assistance features and performing so-called data labeling. My sympathies with the folks laid off, but do American firms still do data labeling in-house? I assume most of it is out-sourced via Scale or other vendors to eventually India, Vietnam etc.
If I recall correctly, Karpathy during one of the Tesla AI talks addresses this and said that keeping data labeling in-house was an advantage because it could be integrated more tightly into their processes with better customization & turnaround etc. Firing most of their data-cleaning & labeling capacity isn't going to be good for their car efforts, but I suppose if things are that bad at Tesla now, it's better to fi…
The Tesla bull will say that Tesla’s ML has gotten so good that these top-shelf human curators are now unnecessary, and can be outsourced or dispensed with entirely. The Tesla bear will counter that this is merely to keep up appearances; it looks a hell of a lot better to fire data curators over machine learning engineers, even if the former are still just as (if not more!) necessary as the latter.
Re: Tesla Lays Off Hundreds of Autopilot Workers in Latest Staff Cut
#9Does anyone know why Tesla is laying off so agressively? While they are likely overvalued post-pandemic... their financial position appears solid even if the stock fell by 50x. I doubt any cuts could yield the type of profitability that wall street expects at the current valuation.
These are not cuts because they are struggling, they are cuts for efficiency. From what I understand they will be hiring enough people over the next few months to make up for their recent cuts.
Re: Tesla Lays Off Hundreds of Autopilot Workers in Latest Staff Cut
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I recall correctly, Karpathy during one of the Tesla AI talks addresses this and said that keeping data labeling in-house was an advantage because it could be integrated more tightly into their processes with better customization & turnaround etc. Firing most of their data-cleaning & labeling capacity isn't going to be good for their car efforts, but I suppose if things are that bad at Tesla now, it's better to fi…
The Tesla bull will say that Tesla’s ML has gotten so good that these top-shelf human curators are now unnecessary, and can be outsourced or dispensed with entirely. The Tesla bear will counter that this is merely to keep up appearances; it looks a hell of a lot better to fire data curators over machine learning engineers, even if the former are still just as (if not more!) necessary as the latter.
They still have a lot of human curators (Elon said they have over 1500 in a recent interview). I imagine that these cuts are for some category of labeling that has become redundant.