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Tesla is building its own AI chips for self-driving cars

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Re: Tesla is building its own AI chips for self-driving cars

#161

Post by ethbro »

rohit2412 wrote: post #132
ethbro wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet squishy meatbags manage to sensor fuse a stereoscopic image (plus nascient sound based imaging) into a reliably rendered picture of the world...

When your "existential crisis killer sentient ai" becomes as smart as this meatbag I'll listen to Elon musk. Till then he and you are out of touch with what computers are capable of

As someone who works in the field, I'd offer two points.

Our intuition about the future is linear. But the reality of information technology is exponential, and that makes a profound difference. If I take 30 steps linearly, I get to 30. If I take 30 steps exponentially, I get to a billion. - Ray Kurzweil

People once said the same thing about fire lances.

Re: Tesla is building its own AI chips for self-driving cars

#163

Post by throwaway648 »

tomp wrote: post #137
Fricken wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm only commenting on what little there is to glean about the compute, but there are so many other red flags about their autonomous development strategy. Crippling per-unit cost constraints, No Lidar, SLAM-lite, ANN heavy, insufficient redundancy and they've got a major data collection problem because they're relying on what they can get over the air. Plus Musk scared away most of their their top engineers.

Serious question- why is LIDAR so important? Obviously it’s possible to drive without it (humans do it), so it’s conceivable that eventually machines will be able to do it as well... So I’m guessing your point is, that won’t happen anytime soon and LIDAR is the fastest way to market; can you confirm/expand/clarify?

Estimating distances robustly is very important for navigation. LIDAR is accurate at relevant distances and most importantly very robust against environmental effects. Without LIDAR you can use stereoscopic vision (like human with two eyes) but that is very demanding, not that accurate, and very error prone. Sure, human can do it somewhat well, but eye and brain are extremely complex things to implement (and it still takes years to learn to understand what you see).

Personally, I’d refuse to implement self-driving vehicle without at least a ”backup LIDAR” to check vision system results. Otherwise you are forced to assume stuff like ”things at stand still are either above the road, beside it, or just shadows”, causing crashes when there is suddenly a stopped car in front of you. (If you didn’t do that assumption, you would be dodging shadows and other clutter..)

[source: I’ve been researching vision algorithms in a related field.]

Re: Tesla is building its own AI chips for self-driving cars

#164

Post by gamblor956 »

_louisr_ wrote: post #157
gamblor956 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What crazy hard problems have his companies solved? Spaceflight was solved decades before Elon was born. Reusable rockets weren't a hard problem--they were simply a problem the incumbents were unwilling to address because it would have massively cut into their revenues and profits. Electric cars actually predated ICE cars. The issue with EVs was always the charging infrastructure, which Tesla solved...by simply throw…

Reusable rockets weren't a hard problem Armchair engineer over here

I'm willing to back up my statements with my existing login, and I don't need to be an engineer to read the history of resuable launch systems. They've been around since the 1960s, and space-capable launch systems were a thing in the 1980s. They were killed the first time around by the collapse of the USSR, and then again when the Iridium went bankrupt, eliminating the demand.

Re: Tesla is building its own AI chips for self-driving cars

#165

Post by mrguyorama »

rohit2412 wrote: post #138
toomuchtodo wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t have to be 100% right to be profitable and have loyal customers (clearly).

They'll still sell cars sure. But Elon musk will fall off his narcissistic pedestal. Does that matter? I dunno

I'd sooner bet he find some pedantic way to wiggle out of it

Re: Tesla is building its own AI chips for self-driving cars

#166

Post by 3pt14159 »

27182818284 wrote: post #114
mhneu wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YES. Security compromise is the huge achilles heel of self-driving cars - and anything that is algorithmically controlled. When you have 100,000 self-driving cars on the road, and someone figures out how to hack them, and drive them simultaneously into crowds, that will be a BIG BIG problem. And this problem isn't just about self-driving cars. It is a fundamental issue with all algorithms. It's a lot harder to hack h…

Has a flight ever been brought down through a cyberattack? I've heard a lot of concern over that over the years, but (thank goodness) I don't recall any news of an actual flight being brought down.

There are multiple safeguards for planes that don't work for self-driving cars.

First, they're not physically inspectable by every Tom, Dick, and Harry. This means it's easier to obscure interfaces and other potential areas of attack. Not state-actor proof, but probably ISIS-proof. Second, they only get software updates while parked at an airport, so it makes MITM attacks harder (though not impossible). Third, they're in the air where death isn't a sudden movement away. Pilots can override the system and fly it manually. Fourth, they're heavily monitored with errant flightpaths reported to militaries around the world (to stop another 9/11).

We have none of these safeguards for self-driving cars and there are going to be hundreds of millions of them.

Re: Tesla is building its own AI chips for self-driving cars

#167

Post by gamblor956 »

xedeon wrote: post #139
gamblor956 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a number of routes one can take to get from LA to NY. Elon is stalling because he knows that "Autopilot" isn't capable of making the trip.

>Elon is stalling because he knows that "Autopilot" isn't capable of making the trip. I can only assume then that you have some kind of insider info to support your claim?

I'm not the one claiming that Autopilot is able to make a cross-country trip but delaying the test because it would be "too easy" to prove anything. If it were actually that easy, Tesla would have done it, because Musk has never passed up the chance for that sort of publicity.

Ergo, logically, if Tesla has not performed such a test, it is strong evidence that Autopilot is not currently capable of passing it.

Re: Tesla is building its own AI chips for self-driving cars

#168

Post by TeMPOraL »

ethbro wrote: post #154
TeMPOraL wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and they do that with dozens of years of accumulated knowledge. Do not have the impression that what you perceive with your eyes is the photons hitting your retina. All that input is heavily fused with decades of experience in dealing with people and the world.

Where I'm from, small humans typically locomote with around 6-10 months of life experience. And fairly reliably. YMMV

Would you be fine with letting a 10 months old walk around town unsupervised? Or drive a car?

Re: Tesla is building its own AI chips for self-driving cars

#169

Post by Retric »

drewg123 wrote: post #116
Retric wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what numbers are you basing this on I trust insurance companies to have good data, they think it improves safety when you compare rates.

Collision aside, our insurance costs for liability / injury are lower for our 2017 Tesla than our 2014 Toyota.

To clarify I meant the same Tesla Model with and without autopilot. But, fair point.

Re: Tesla is building its own AI chips for self-driving cars

#170

Post by opencl »

xedeon wrote: post #147
opencl wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon said the exact same thing in the Q4 2017 earnings call. And then said they would still do the demo in the next 3-6 months. It's been 6 months and this "easily doable" demo has still not been done. Tesla has shown zero evidence of their self driving program making any meaningful progress. http://www.autonews.com/article/20180208/MOBILITY/180209770/...

>Tesla has shown zero evidence of their self driving program making any meaningful progress. Google's autonomous efforts far precedes Tesla, yet they have not out in the market yet. I would say on the contrary, they made significant strides in a short amount of time even after a complete overhaul Mobileye (AP1) to an in-house solution (AP2/2.5) https://vimeo.com/192179727

Has Tesla demonstrated any progress whatsoever since that 3 minute demo video they posted over a year and a half ago? If they were really making amazing progress they would have shown it off. Tesla LOVES showing off their tech when it's actually working, and it is often very impressive.

Waymo has been operating a real actual passenger service for over a year now. They drive tens of thousands of miles a day. They're "not out in the market yet" only in the sense that they're not charging money for it yet, which they seem to plan on doing soon.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-07-31/inside-th...

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