Tesla Engineer Says Musk Overstated Tesla Autopilot Reality • Hacker News Board

Re: Tesla Engineer Says Musk Overstated Tesla Autopilot Reality

#111

Post by rsj_hn » Fri, May 07, 2021, 10:37 PM UTC

yumraj wrote: post #93

rsj_hn wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Musk is intentionally lying about autonomy, this is just his worldview. He truly believes that strong AI is just around the corner and it poses an existential threat to the human race, and by the same token, of course we'll have full self-driving cars as soon as just a few small kinks are ironed out. These beliefs stem from a very strong worldview, and are not attempts at stock price manipulation or som…

> I don't think Musk is intentionally lying about autonomy, this is just his worldview. I’ll say that’s a rather naive view. It sounds like saying Mark Zuckerberg is not lying about FB and privacy, it is just his worldview that nobody should have privacy, except of course him and his family .

No, it's not the same thing. Musk has been very vocal about thinking the world will end because of AI robots running amok. This is not some stock-boosting ploy, it is who he is. Unlike Zuckerberg, Musk is quite transparent about his aims and his values, and most people are able to recognize this.

Re: Tesla Engineer Says Musk Overstated Tesla Autopilot Reality

#112

Post by ac29 » Fri, May 07, 2021, 10:52 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #103

joshuamorton wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counting only published investment in companies like Cruise, Zoox, Argo, Nuro, Aurora, etc. gives investment of around 20B . But its likely that the money invested "privately" in Tesla's AV division, Uber ATC, lyft's AV division, Waymo, and Cruise post acquisition is much higher. I think a very conservative guess is that there's been $40B invested in this space. That would, for example, cover the south bay BART expan…

> That would, for example, cover the south bay BART expansion 4-5 times over. I've become more cynical about CA (and the US in general) lately. By reasonable costs it would, but I think the various corruption interests would find their way to increase the price tag until it is only half done, while they enjoy their $40 billion.

I'm pretty cynical myself, but the first phase of BART extension to the south bay is already completed and has been running for nearly a year, and cost $2.9B. The second phase is a bit more difficult because it requires substantially more underground work in downtown San Jose, but $40B would be quite a bit even by CA standards.

Re: Tesla Engineer Says Musk Overstated Tesla Autopilot Reality

#113

Post by paulcole » Sat, May 08, 2021, 1:29 AM UTC

kingsuper20 wrote: post #37

paulcole wrote: post #10

I still can’t get over how deceptive the marketing was on the Autopilot page on Tesla.com >Full Self-Driving Hardware on All Cars >All Tesla vehicles produced in our factory, including Model 3, have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver. How was it possible to know in advance what hardware will be required?

>How was it possible to know in advance what hardware will be required? I suspect that most of the hardware is the ability of a computer to drive the car. Steering/throttle/braking inputs for example. It could be that what you mean by 'hardware' is some combination of intelligence and sensor system.

Regardless of what I might mean by “hardware”, is there any way Tesla should be stating as fact that the cars coming off the line in 2019 (when I took that quote from) need no additional hardware to accomplish something that is years (if not decades) away from becoming reality?

Re: Tesla Engineer Says Musk Overstated Tesla Autopilot Reality

#114

Post by paulcole » Sat, May 08, 2021, 1:31 AM UTC

TylerLives wrote: post #14

paulcole wrote: post #10

I still can’t get over how deceptive the marketing was on the Autopilot page on Tesla.com >Full Self-Driving Hardware on All Cars >All Tesla vehicles produced in our factory, including Model 3, have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver. How was it possible to know in advance what hardware will be required?

What would they need the better hardware for?

I don’t know, but Tesla took that text off their Autopilot page in late 2019, so maybe something changed…

Re: Tesla Engineer Says Musk Overstated Tesla Autopilot Reality

#115

Post by chakhs » Sat, May 08, 2021, 9:08 AM UTC

rsj_hn wrote: post #111

yumraj wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think Musk is intentionally lying about autonomy, this is just his worldview. I’ll say that’s a rather naive view. It sounds like saying Mark Zuckerberg is not lying about FB and privacy, it is just his worldview that nobody should have privacy, except of course him and his family .

No, it's not the same thing. Musk has been very vocal about thinking the world will end because of AI robots running amok. This is not some stock-boosting ploy, it is who he is. Unlike Zuckerberg, Musk is quite transparent about his aims and his values, and most people are able to recognize this.

When you keep saying the same thing year after year "we will have L5 this year" and you see with your eyes that 100% of your predictions were wrong, but still do it again. I find it hard to believe that this is coming from his "worldview" and think it's more like lying to create hype so you can sell more products, get more investment and boost stocks (which all happened thanks to what he has done)

Re: Tesla Engineer Says Musk Overstated Tesla Autopilot Reality

#116

Post by rini17 » Sat, May 08, 2021, 9:19 AM UTC

ryathal wrote: post #107

dntrkv wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We could've vastly expanded a lot of train systems with the amount of money that's been burned trying to make cars drive themselves. I'd like to see the numbers on that. Given the cost for the CHSR is around $100B, I don't think that statement is true. The bigger issue here is the US's inability to build fast trains, affordably, and on a reasonable timeline.

There is basically no good place to build high speed rail in the U.S. Cross country routes aren't remotely competitive with air travel. Regional routes only make sense on the coast where they have unfavorable terrain like mountains, and some of the most populated/valuable land in the country. HSR really starts losing in time cost to flights in the 800-1000 mile range, and needs about 200 miles to make it better than…

800 miles is quite far from the coast.

Also there are considerations other than time, it's much more convenient that driving or flying. I know in USA there's last mile problem going out of railway station but that can be solved by car trains.

Re: Tesla Engineer Says Musk Overstated Tesla Autopilot Reality

#117

Post by bluGill » Sat, May 08, 2021, 11:36 AM UTC

ac29 wrote: post #112

bluGill wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That would, for example, cover the south bay BART expansion 4-5 times over. I've become more cynical about CA (and the US in general) lately. By reasonable costs it would, but I think the various corruption interests would find their way to increase the price tag until it is only half done, while they enjoy their $40 billion.

I'm pretty cynical myself, but the first phase of BART extension to the south bay is already completed and has been running for nearly a year, and cost $2.9B. The second phase is a bit more difficult because it requires substantially more underground work in downtown San Jose, but $40B would be quite a bit even by CA standards.

Madrid does all underground lines lines like your phase 2 for about 1 billion. Someone needs to learn about cost control. Think of how much more they could get with Madrid prices.

Re: Tesla Engineer Says Musk Overstated Tesla Autopilot Reality

#118

Post by joshuamorton » Sat, May 08, 2021, 7:58 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #117

ac29 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty cynical myself, but the first phase of BART extension to the south bay is already completed and has been running for nearly a year, and cost $2.9B. The second phase is a bit more difficult because it requires substantially more underground work in downtown San Jose, but $40B would be quite a bit even by CA standards.

Madrid does all underground lines lines like your phase 2 for about 1 billion. Someone needs to learn about cost control. Think of how much more they could get with Madrid prices.

Not saying that CA prices aren't inflated, but there are also geological differences that probably matter. Madrid isn't near active fault lines (not to mention generic soil differences that can matter, but IDK if they do in this case).

Re: Tesla Engineer Says Musk Overstated Tesla Autopilot Reality

#119

Post by DreamScatter » Sun, May 09, 2021, 6:53 AM UTC

xyzzy21 wrote: post #87

Yes. We already knew this. Elon is a marvelous marketer and salesman. He's frequently MISIDENTIFIED as the new Edison or Tesla. He's NOT that - both of those men were insanely technical and enough so the jump into technical problems and add value to work being done by their employees. Musk is not that. He's had very little to do with any technical aspects of any of his companies. But there's been plenty of PR spin to…

Unfortunately, musk wants to present himself as if he is some kind of Tony Stark character like in the iron man movie. He also says the he doesn't care about college degrees, but I bet that all the people at SpaceX have the necessary degrees and are not drop outs, so that's probably also not really true about him either. The Tesla car company was also not founded by him but by someone else who actually engineered a car. I will give him some credit for SpaceX though, I think the company is doing well, but I doubt he is directly involved in engineering.

Re: Tesla Engineer Says Musk Overstated Tesla Autopilot Reality

#120

Post by fitzie » Sun, May 09, 2021, 12:44 PM UTC

hodder wrote: post #32

Fake it til you make it is fine with startups, however with publicly traded securities it is fraud. Elon Musk gets away with a lot of things that most capital markets participants would be imprisoned for. I'd certainly be in jail if I did half the BS he does on an almost daily basis. Yet, this fake it til you make model has enabled reflexivity in the growth and stock price allowing Tesla and other Musk ventures to gr…

this is how a narrative replaces unbiased journalism. the underlying email chain shows this conversation is regarding the full self driving "beta" that Tesla is slowly releasing. while it is clear that the regulators are concerned about customer confusion, they are more concerned that Tesla is releasing capabilities beyond what was explained to regulators (I.e. level 2). the reporter is able to twist this into a whistleblower like headline and use language that completely distorts the nature of the underlying conversation. readers can then opine on how they like or dislike Tesla/elon and ignore relevant facts.

Tesla has shown that it is taking increasing steps to ensure people are using fsd responsibly. while autopilot used used simplistic sensors to gauge operator attentiveness, fsd uses cameras to watch to driver. as elon has said, with autopilot, the company has data that proves that it reduces the risk of accident. he has said there is a moral argument that it is immoral to wait until it is "complete" before making it widely available. this evidence is regularly ignored by people talking about the dangers of Tesla/elon automation claims.