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

Re: Tesla Engineer Says Musk Overstated Tesla Autopilot Reality

#41

Post by Der_Einzige » Fri, May 07, 2021, 4:20 PM UTC

dundermuffl1n wrote: post #13

spamalot159 wrote: post #2

I've been acquainted with a number of engineers at various autonomous vehicle companies and they are some of the most reserved people when it comes to the reality of autonomous driving. Many of them going so far as to say they would never use one for themselves now or in the near future. I think when domain experts speak up like this we should listen. The autonomous vehicle technology seems like it has a long way to…

Work at Waymo. Know lots of folks at Cruise. This is not reflective of the general outlook that most engineers have.

I have engineer friends at Waymo that I went to school with who tell me that real self driving is 30 years out.

Re: Tesla Engineer Says Musk Overstated Tesla Autopilot Reality

#42

Post by samizdis » Fri, May 07, 2021, 4:21 PM UTC

mrtksn wrote: post #16

spamalot159 wrote: post #2

I've been acquainted with a number of engineers at various autonomous vehicle companies and they are some of the most reserved people when it comes to the reality of autonomous driving. Many of them going so far as to say they would never use one for themselves now or in the near future. I think when domain experts speak up like this we should listen. The autonomous vehicle technology seems like it has a long way to…

I don’t know, I used to ride an autonomous vehicle every day in London. DLR is autonomous, the catch is - it has its own lane and it’s on rails. Also, someone sits in the car during rush hours, just in case. Here’s how it looks to be in the front car of the train when there’s a supervisor: https://imgur.com/geFIidK Outside of the rush hour, that lid is closed and it feels like the Half-Life train at beginning of the…

A slight tangent, but the Victoria Line (London Underground system) was officially opened in 1969 to run trains automatically without the need for drivers. However, there is always a driver in the cab for emergencies etc.

On opening, the line was equipped with a fixed-block Automatic Train Operation system (ATO). The train operator closed the train doors and pressed a pair of "start" buttons and, if the way ahead was clear, the ATO drives the train at a safe speed to the next station. At any point, the driver could switch to manual control if the ATO failed.[27] The system, which operated until 2012, made the Victoria line the world's first full-scale automatic railway.

- from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_line#Service_and_roll...

Re: Tesla Engineer Says Musk Overstated Tesla Autopilot Reality

#43

Post by jeffreyrogers » Fri, May 07, 2021, 4:21 PM UTC

detaro wrote: post #21

gwbas1c wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the biases in Hacker News is that comments like yours tend to get downvoted. Some of my more reserved comments get downvoted, and then flooded with replies about 360 vision and cars never getting sleepy. IMO: Most of the autonomous driving tech will evolve to be driver assistance and safety tech in the upcoming decade. I still believe we'll get autonomous driving someday, but not until we have a few more AI br…

... he comments under the top comment. Skepticism of self-driving tech and "AI" in general is a very popular position here.

My most upvoted comments on HN[0] are the ones that pick on some hyped up technology. HN loves to be "contrarian" (in quotes because this contrarianism is actually the mainstream position).

[0]: I don't think this is good, it's just a statement of fact.

Re: Tesla Engineer Says Musk Overstated Tesla Autopilot Reality

#44

Post by lawn » Fri, May 07, 2021, 4:21 PM 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?

Better sensors, which has already been one of the reasons for some of Tesla's self-driving crashes.

Re: Tesla Engineer Says Musk Overstated Tesla Autopilot Reality

#45

Post by danans » Fri, May 07, 2021, 4:21 PM UTC

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #22

I think the big issue is that if you really want autonomous driving over any road, you will likely either need sensors beyond vision or some AGI level model of the world. For example, on the highway, truck infront of you drops some debris. What do you do? It can be dangerous to suddenly swerve or brake, but also dangerous to hit something. What you do In real life is quickly evaluate. You are looking at the object th…

> You are also doing object recognition.

Object recognition has been a part of autonomous driving systems for a very long time. The difference between a stroller and a piece of paper is pretty well understood by these systems.

> For example, on the highway, truck infront of you drops some debris. > What do you do?

The answer is to always keep a large safety margin between you and the vehicle in front of you when traveling at high speeds, so you have time to react and take the safest course of action. Seconds make a huge difference in this scenario and it's easy to get them. No autonomous system is going to be hugging a truck bumper, but rather is going to always maintain a significantly greater safety distance than an aggressive human driver would.

> If it is an empty box, you may be ok hitting it,

You can never be sure that the box is empty, so I'd recommend always swerving to avoid.

Re: Tesla Engineer Says Musk Overstated Tesla Autopilot Reality

#46

Post by kingsuper20 » Fri, May 07, 2021, 4:22 PM UTC

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #22

I think the big issue is that if you really want autonomous driving over any road, you will likely either need sensors beyond vision or some AGI level model of the world. For example, on the highway, truck infront of you drops some debris. What do you do? It can be dangerous to suddenly swerve or brake, but also dangerous to hit something. What you do In real life is quickly evaluate. You are looking at the object th…

> I think the big issue is that if you really want autonomous driving over any road, you will likely either need sensors beyond vision or some AGI level model of the world.

Somehow people manage without this.

Without any real knowledge of the problems the engineers are hitting, my current take is that to produce a reasonably good autonomous driving system requires killing some people. Slowly adding features will send more information to the mothership and they'll have to push the envelope to learn enough.

Re: Tesla Engineer Says Musk Overstated Tesla Autopilot Reality

#47

Post by jeffreyrogers » Fri, May 07, 2021, 4:23 PM UTC

akshayB wrote: post #39

This is how marketing works, all companies do this Apple -- best iPhone ever so what happens to phone I purchased last year (reality - there a decent upgrades) IBM Watson -- commercials looks like you can layoff 20% of employees as this things can work like wonders (reality - its not that smart) Tesla -- Autopilot is not 100% auto pilot human supervision is needed at times. We are far away from 100% autonomous vehicl…

There is obviously a qualitative difference in the claims Tesla (and other Musk companies) have made and standard marketing claims of most companies.

Re: Tesla Engineer Says Musk Overstated Tesla Autopilot Reality

#48

Post by k33n » Fri, May 07, 2021, 4:23 PM UTC

I love reading the opinions that people who have done nothing and will do nothing for the world have on Elon. Imagine if you spent your energy doing something good or interesting instead of writing lengthy essays criticizing a guy who has achieved every single milestone his detractors claimed were impossible.

Re: Tesla Engineer Says Musk Overstated Tesla Autopilot Reality

#49

Post by ObserverNeutral » Fri, May 07, 2021, 4:24 PM UTC

It's not surprising actually.

People are looking for something to believe in, which will make them feel like the future will be brighter.

Musk has this ability . Unless he goes crazy and becomes overleveraged with debt he'll be fine.

He'll constantly move the goalposts and keep giving people hope, if Autopilot is proven not feasible, he'll just move onto the next big thing which will fill people with enthusiasm .

He's essentially a politician, a techno-utopian cult leader who is also a CEO and major owner of the stock.

His best intuition was understanding that telling people that the future will be brighter is itself a product which people are willing to buy. Much like people pay for insurance to have peace of mind, people gladly pay to be reassured that the world will be better.

His second best intuition is to never bankrupt the company trying to deliver, just move the goalposts. As long as you don't bankrupt the company you can always move the goalposts

Re: Tesla Engineer Says Musk Overstated Tesla Autopilot Reality

#50

Post by barbazoo » Fri, May 07, 2021, 4:24 PM UTC

spamalot159 wrote: post #2

I've been acquainted with a number of engineers at various autonomous vehicle companies and they are some of the most reserved people when it comes to the reality of autonomous driving. Many of them going so far as to say they would never use one for themselves now or in the near future. I think when domain experts speak up like this we should listen. The autonomous vehicle technology seems like it has a long way to…

> Many of them going so far as to say they would never use one for themselves now or in the near future.

I'm less worried about the autonomous vehicle I might be driving and more about the ones others are driving. Here's an idea, how about being able to geofence a neighborhood as "<= Level 3 autonomy only". I'm only somewhat joking. I know it smells of NIMBY but it might be useful around schools, daycares, etc.