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Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

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Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#131

Post by pkulak »

gordon_freeman wrote: post #127
ethanhunt_ wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference between Tesla and Google is that Tesla actually has to ship these cars to customers right now . Wouldn't LIDAR double the cost of a Tesla right now?

Cost should not be an excuse at the expense of safety. Plain and simple.

What's unsafe about radar cruise plus lane keep? People act like Tesla is shipping cars that fling themselves into pedestrians at every opportunity. Somehow we all manage to absolve the auto maker when someone with cruise control set on their 1998 Mazda rear ends someone on the freeway. Let's judge Tesla for autonomous safety when they produce an autonomous car.

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#132

Post by saagarjha »

shas3 wrote: post #38
doomlaser wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The person being replaced is Chris Lattner, inventor of LLVM and Swift, of whom it was big news of his leaving Apple to join Tesla fairly recently.

Dunno if this is his real account, but it is supposedly not working out https://twitter.com/clattner_llvm/status/877341760812232704

Huh, that's stange. He's been at Tesla what? 6 months? Interesting to see that he's moved on already.

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#133

Post by _ph_ »

Animats wrote: post #117

What this really reflects is that Tesla has painted itself into a corner. They've shipped vehicles with a weak sensor suite that's claimed to be sufficient to support self-driving, leaving the software for later. Tesla, unlike everybody else who's serious, doesn't have a LIDAR. Now, it's "later", their software demos are about where Google was in 2010, and Tesla has a big problem. This is a really hard problem to do…

As far as I know, no car manufacturer ships cars equipped with LIDAR. Nor do they seem to have a camera setup as extensive as Tesla. So I fail to see how Tesla has painted itself into a corner. The worst case is, that they are not reaching full autonomy with the current hardware setup. It certainly would be a big marketing blunder if they don't, but if necessary they can add LIDAR to the production, if they choose to.

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#135

Post by Animats »

ethanhunt_ wrote: post #125
Animats wrote: post #117

What this really reflects is that Tesla has painted itself into a corner. They've shipped vehicles with a weak sensor suite that's claimed to be sufficient to support self-driving, leaving the software for later. Tesla, unlike everybody else who's serious, doesn't have a LIDAR. Now, it's "later", their software demos are about where Google was in 2010, and Tesla has a big problem. This is a really hard problem to do…

The difference between Tesla and Google is that Tesla actually has to ship these cars to customers right now . Wouldn't LIDAR double the cost of a Tesla right now?

Tesla didn't have to ship a car with unusable self-driving hardware. They'll probably have to eat the cost of a retrofit package on some vehicles to make that work. Like the Roadster transmission problem, where they had to replace all the early drivetrains with the two-speed transmission.

Nobody has built automotive LIDAR units in volume yet. That's why they're so expensive. It's not an inherently expensive technology once someone is ready to order a million units. It does take custom silicon. Tesla, at 25K units per quarter, may not be big enough to start that market.

Continental, which is a very large auto parts maker in Germany, has demo units of their flash LIDAR. They plan to ship in quantity in 2020. Custom ASICs have to be designed and fabbed to get the price down.[1]

[1] http://www.jobs.net/jobs/continental-corporation-careers/en-...

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#136

Post by walshemj »

MBCook wrote: post #43
pscsbs wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow! Tesla's official statement: "Chris just wasn’t the right fit for Tesla, and we’ve decided to make a change. We wish him the best." [0] Chris's response: "Turns out that Tesla isn't a good fit for me after all. I'm interested to hear about interesting roles for a seasoned engineering leader!" I don't think I've ever seen a tech company throw an employee under the bus so publicly. I wonder what Lattner did to warr…

Are we sure it wasn't the other way around? Maybe Chris really didn't like the engineering culture or something else and decided to leave, but given how big a story it was when he joined they needed to both put out a statement.

The company saying we have decided to make a change makes it brutally obvious he was pushed - Chris should have gone for a compromise agreement.

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#137

Post by walshemj »

pvg wrote: post #113
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't take it this way at all. Why can't "he's not the right fit" mean exactly that? People can be brilliant but just not right fit the operating processes and culture at a company. I didn't really read anything negative into it from either side.

Sure, you didn't but as you can see in this thread, it's trivially interpretable in lots of other ways. Which is exactly why it is usually not put that way. This doesn't seem like a complicated thing at all.

it also helps avoid expensive lawsuits especially for high profile roles who have the money to sue

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#138

Post by fooker »

adamnemecek wrote: post #90
fooker wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point, not really. The compiler is slow and buggy. (And to make the type system faster would take some interesting theoretical breakthroughs.)

The compiler is being worked on pretty heavily. The compiler is slow compared with what? Go? C? Generics are computationally expensive no matter what so the question boils down to generics vs not. Le_no_generics.maymay.jpig

It is not just about generics though, it is about using a constraint solver for type checking programs of a type system which is needlessly expressive.

Also, it is slow compared to almost everything, even C++. It has got better over the last 3 years, but most of that is pumping heuristics into the system.

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#139

Post by freyir »

_ph_ wrote: post #133
Animats wrote: post #117

What this really reflects is that Tesla has painted itself into a corner. They've shipped vehicles with a weak sensor suite that's claimed to be sufficient to support self-driving, leaving the software for later. Tesla, unlike everybody else who's serious, doesn't have a LIDAR. Now, it's "later", their software demos are about where Google was in 2010, and Tesla has a big problem. This is a really hard problem to do…

As far as I know, no car manufacturer ships cars equipped with LIDAR. Nor do they seem to have a camera setup as extensive as Tesla. So I fail to see how Tesla has painted itself into a corner. The worst case is, that they are not reaching full autonomy with the current hardware setup. It certainly would be a big marketing blunder if they don't, but if necessary they can add LIDAR to the production, if they choose to…

They may have painted themselves into a corner by saying the current hardware is sufficient for "full self-driving capabilities." The worst case is they're putting half-baked solutions on the road.

Re: Tesla hires Andrej Karpathy

#140

Post by ckastner »

pkulak wrote: post #128
Animats wrote: post #117

What this really reflects is that Tesla has painted itself into a corner. They've shipped vehicles with a weak sensor suite that's claimed to be sufficient to support self-driving, leaving the software for later. Tesla, unlike everybody else who's serious, doesn't have a LIDAR. Now, it's "later", their software demos are about where Google was in 2010, and Tesla has a big problem. This is a really hard problem to do…

Sorry, I kinda tuned out when you mentioned lidar like it's some requirement for autonomous driving. Lidar is AMAZING for giving press demos on sunny days. For the real world with rain, snow, leaves, plastic bags, etc? Useless. The future is radar + cameras + a LOT of software blood, sweat and tears.

> The future is radar + cameras + a LOT of software

... all of which Waymo's solution also has, in addition to LIDAR.

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