Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tesla's FSD – A Useless Technology Demo

tomverbeure.github.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 378 posts

Re: Tesla's FSD – A Useless Technology Demo

#91

Post by ascorbic »

nomilk wrote: post #83

The article answers the wrong question of 'is FSD perfect?'. A better question is whether it's 'cost-benefit positive'. That's all that matters when users decide whether or not to use something. If FSD reduces fatigue and allows you to arrive to work fresher, it might be worth tolerating the odd wrong turn extending the drive time by 2 minutes.

But as the article points out, you won't arrive fresher if you have to still stay alert, but with the addition of needing to anticipate the car randomly doing something crazy. I find it more stressful than driving myself.

Re: Tesla's FSD – A Useless Technology Demo

#93

Post by Barrin92 »

deng wrote: post #54

And please keep in mind that this is pretty much in the optimal settings for FSD: great weather, huge streets, everything is as "car friendly" as it gets. I'd like to see FSD navigating an old Italian city, there's just no way. Even in car-friendly Germany you very often have streets with side-parking, which are too narrow to fit two cars, you need to communicate with oncoming cars, for instance by waving or flashing…

Yes the way humans negotiate with others in a split second just through eye contact or the way they break, or just one minor gesture of a hand is astonishing. People on the AI hype train should literally sit and write down how much complex problem solving through communication happens when two drivers engage non verbally.

Not only is self driving a mess on just a road level in a city like Deli or Rome, when they actually get to the numbers where communication with humans becomes vital because they're not just a blip in the traffic you're in for a whole other hell of problems to solve.

Re: Tesla's FSD – A Useless Technology Demo

#94

Post by matthewdgreen »

ENGNR wrote: post #70

How does Tesla FSD fair against the Waymo self driving taxis? I'm curious about whether self driving is still an impossible task right now, or if it's just a matter of quality between companies - in which case it's possibly a fair bet being made by Telsa execs that they'll bridge the gap given time and money.

The Waymo cars drive themselves without (in person) supervision. As best as I can tell from three rides, they do it perfectly. However the range is limited to city streets in a few cities, no interstates at all (they are adding this soon.) The Tesla FSD even at v12 can go about five minutes before I have to intervene. If you’re extremely tolerant and don’t care what other drivers think (eg weird slow behavior at stop signs, sudden rapid bursts of acceleration in inappropriate places, turn signal decisions that a human driver wouldn’t make) I bet you could push it up to 10 or 15 minutes without intervention. I don’t have enough courage to genuinely let FSD loose on city streets without intervening.

More generally, Waymo’s approach is to own the hardware and heavily supervise it with remote workers who can instruct it how to deal with complicated situations (eg lane blocked by emergency vehicle.) Tesla has none of that infrastructure yet. It’s sort of hard for me to see a business model where (1) the user owns the hardware, (2) there are necessary remote human beings monitoring and advising the car in sticky situations (that costs money), and (3) a third party company takes on the liability risk. The idea that you’re going to “rent out” your personal car during the day runs into the question of who pays when someone gets killed/hurt, and that immediately runs into the question of how a remote operator deals with the problem of malfunctioning hardware it doesn’t own (and why it needs to borrow other folks’ personal hardware at all.)

Re: Tesla's FSD – A Useless Technology Demo

#95

Post by tlonny »

rvnx wrote: post #85
ClassyJacket wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's... out right now. You can literally use it today.

And it sort of works in limited cases. FSD is like ChatGPT, it works in many cases, it does some mistakes, but it is certainly not “useless”. It won’t replace full time humans yet (the same way that ChatGPT does not replace a developer) but can still work in some scenarios. To the investor, ChatGPT is sold as “AGI is just round the corner”.

If ChatGPT emits a fragment of code that doesn’t compile, a developer can simply undo and try again.

No such luxury is granted to the driver using FSD who has just collided with another vehicle.

Re: Tesla's FSD – A Useless Technology Demo

#96

Post by imtringued »

nomilk wrote: post #83

The article answers the wrong question of 'is FSD perfect?'. A better question is whether it's 'cost-benefit positive'. That's all that matters when users decide whether or not to use something. If FSD reduces fatigue and allows you to arrive to work fresher, it might be worth tolerating the odd wrong turn extending the drive time by 2 minutes.

Why would it take a wrong turn if it knows your commute?

Re: Tesla's FSD – A Useless Technology Demo

#97

Post by NoblePublius »

FSD is worse than autopilot, and makes autopilot worse. When you enable FSD, it turns on the cabin camera and applies the same driver attention standard to autopilot. Autopilot is really good! But if FSD is on, it becomes next to useless. You actually have to look at the road all the time!

Re: Tesla's FSD – A Useless Technology Demo

#98

Post by joeldo »

rvnx wrote: post #85
ClassyJacket wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's... out right now. You can literally use it today.

And it sort of works in limited cases. FSD is like ChatGPT, it works in many cases, it does some mistakes, but it is certainly not “useless”. It won’t replace full time humans yet (the same way that ChatGPT does not replace a developer) but can still work in some scenarios. To the investor, ChatGPT is sold as “AGI is just round the corner”.

I guess the difference is ChatGPT is less likely to cause death if it makes a mistake.

Users generally have time to decide if the output ChatGPT provides is accurate and worth actioning.

Re: Tesla's FSD – A Useless Technology Demo

#99

Post by TheDong »

The thing I've been most amazed at about FSD is that there hasn't been any sort of lawsuit around FSD refunds.

There are people who paid thousands to tens-of-thousands of dollars for a promise that their car would eventually have "full self driving".

A not-insignificant portion of those people have lost any chance at actually getting FSD, whether by their car being totaled in an accident, or having sold it, or such, without ever seeing working FSD.

As far as I know there's no way to get a refund, and people very obviously didn't get "full self driving" as advertised by Elon, so it really does seem like some people paid for a promise that turned out to be nothing... which sounds like lawsuit material to me.

There have also been multiple public promises that FSD would be delivered in a matter of years (like in 2016, the promise that "by the end of next year, FSD will take you across the country safely while you sleep").

If anyone bought FSD due to believing those promised timelines, that also seems like it would be a pretty strong case for a refund to me.

Re: Tesla's FSD – A Useless Technology Demo

#100

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

nelsonic wrote: post #13

The author of this article doesn't understand how continuous improvement in software works ... Saying that it will "never" work is myopic. Never bet against Moores Law or Elon! As a Tesla M3 owner (in Europe where we don't have FSD yet) I cannot wait to have it for long road trips on highways where I want to relax and have a "copilot" do some of the "thinking" & driving for me. Yes, there are still some instances of…

> The author of this article doesn't understand how continuous improvement in software works

And I don't think that you understand it either. In the real world, all exponentials are just the early part of an s-curve. Everything has limits, reaches diminishing returns and tops out.

If a technique is already topping out, there won't be great leaps in performance without fundamental changes. An incremental "update" won't do it at that point in the curve.

You can pick examples from several hyped technologies today that are going to work properly and change the world "real soon now".

Post reply on HN