HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

> I think he's counting on 'exponential improvement'.

Here he is, on record, stating that he believes Tesla has essentially solved the problem ('game, set, and match'):

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEv99vxKjVI&t=1778

Watch Lex Fridman's interview with Musk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEv99vxKjVI), where they discuss exactly this topic.

Basically, Musk's point is that if self-driving cars are statistically safer than humans, then allowing humans to drive will make cars less safe again.

Furthermore (regarding some other children here), the study that Lex and his team has done show that drivers are not less engaged while Autopilot is on (as many critics say).

⬐ rohit2412

> if self-driving cars are statistically safer than humans, then allowing humans to drive will make cars less safe again.

You mean "if driverless cars are statistically safer than humans". It shouldn't be a surprise that driver assistance decrease accidents. But Autopilot isn't a driverless system, and neither is there satisfactory proof that it is safer than a human.

While you're waiting for the main event to start, here are some recent interviews with Elon about self-driving cars. He's very confident.

"To me right now, this seems 'game, set, and match,'" Musk said. "I could be wrong, but it appears to be the case that Tesla is vastly ahead of everyone."

I am eager to see what they unveil today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEv99vxKjVI

https://ark-invest.com/research/podcast/elon-musk-podcast

⬐ cflewis

My guess is he means "on the highway". The scary bits of self-driving is person detection, crossing detection, roadwork detection, cyclist detection (e.g. coming up on the right when you are trying to make a right turn).

The Waymo end-game that I heard was "able to go through a drive-thru". I highly doubt Tesla is anywhere near that point.

⬐ jacquesm

> through a drive-thru

The kind of drive-thru that Tesla is currently associated with involves semis rather than fast food and it would be really nice to hear that they've at least licked that particular bug (and for good, this time).

⬐ dwighttk

what does "for good, this time" even mean with their regression issue?

⬐ jacquesm

That was exactly the point, the fact that such a thing could happen, be fixed and then happens again in something mission critical is very scary.

⬐ cr0sh

> The scary bits of self-driving is person detection, crossing detection, roadwork detection...

Your point it very astute.

Among a few other ML/AI MOOCs, I completed Udacity's "Self-Driving Car Engineer" nanodegree - so when I'm out driving, I often come upon situations where I wonder "how would a self-driving car navigate this?"

Today, driving in to work (note: USA), I noticed one intersection I've been through many times before, and that question came to mind. The intersection is interesting, because on approaching it, the road curves to the right, and you can actually see one of the traffic lights on the left before you even see the intersection. By the time you see the intersection, you're already on top of it.

So as you round the curve, you see the lone traffic signal (red/yellow/green); if it is red, do you start to brake, or do you wait until you can "see" more traffic signals? If you wait - will you have time to slow down and/or stop? ...and so forth.

This and others are all kind of "edge cases" that will need to be trained on, and/or perhaps other cues for self-driving vehicles installed or set up so the vehicles can navigate such areas successfully. I know when I first went through the intersection it was a bit of a surprise; it's not a very safe intersection (going home in the opposite direction is not any better; in that direction, you're headed downhill, have to cross the intersection, and immediately start turning to the left after going through - the curve is really abrupt, and you have protected/unprotected left-hand turns both directions, etc).

⬐ Xylakant

There have been news reports about the model 3 autopilot getting its speed limits from maps, lacking any sort of sign recognition or manual override to adjust to local conditions. The maps seem to be outdated for germany (1). That’s an essential feature even on the autobahn. Given that test result I’d even be skeptical about any claims of being ahead of the game on the highway.

(1) https://m.heise.de/autos/artikel/Test-Tesla-Model-3-4400919....

⬐ semi-extrinsic

This is very strange though, is there any confirmation of this?

Basically, most other manufacturers like Opel, Audi, Mercedes, Hyundai, VW, Volvo, Ford, etc. has had for several years the feature to detect speed limit from computer vision recognizing the road signs. And it works reliably, as is pointed out in your link.

How can Tesla be a leader in using computer vision for cars, but not be able to read the road signs?

⬐ eaurouge

Well they’re vastly ahead in one area: data collection. No other company is even close. You could argue about the quality of data but the platform is there and ever growing, and they can upgrade their hardware in the future and augment existing data.

⬐ nikofeyn

how can you claim that? more than waymo? that would be extremely doubtful. google has been driving around cars with sensors and cameras for over a decade.

⬐ DeonPenny

But they don't have the cars. Every car on the road that is a tesla sends back data.

⬐ danhak

They have a fleet of hundreds of thousands of cars driving real-world miles all over the developed world.

⬐ None

None

⬐ sangnoir

It's still impossible for an outsider to tell - Waymo logs every single vehicle-mile in their entire fleet, but Tesla samples from a larger pool.

⬐ stefan_

Don't kid yourself, the car has no bandwidth storage or performance to send back anything other than a few raw frames from disengage events or other rare triggers.

⬐ slg

It depends entirely on how they design the system. They don't necessarily need to send all the data from the cars back home when they can send test cases to cars, run the tests in a shadow mode to collect real world results, then send the test results back home.

⬐ grey-area

The presentation makes it clear your claim is entirely false, you should watch it.

⬐ stefan_

No, it's spot on. It's entirely what I said: the car can only deliver a few raw frames, and only in response to particular triggers.

Notice the cherry-picked examples in the presentation. There is a whole class of problems the field cars can never help with, since they lack the dead-reckoning sensor setup and precise odometry a development car would have.

⬐ SheinhardtWigCo

> There is a whole class of problems the field cars can never help with, since they lack the dead-reckoning sensor setup and precise odometry a development car would have.

Can you give an example? I'm curious what kind of triggers strictly require lab-calibrated hardware.

⬐ grey-area

They showed video in the presentation which was clearly not ‘a few frames’, unless by a few frames you mean seconds of video.

⬐ jvolkman

Which presentation did you watch? Karpathy said specifically "it's not a massive amount of data, it's just very well picked data" when talking about how the cars only send data when one of the configured triggers fires.

⬐ grey-area

There’s a large gap between ‘a few frames’ and a massive amount of data, and the amount sent lies somewhere in the middle. Clearly they can’t send all data (nor would they want to) but it seems it is sufficient for significant learning to take place and the examples shown were good quality over at least a few seconds, so hundreds of frames for each example.

⬐ toomuchtodo

Short video clips from all cameras are sent back to Tesla when associated with a disengagement event, queued for upload when the vehicle is on wifi.

⬐ saalweachter

I hope to god they are sending back short video clips randomly sampling all driving conditions, not just the disengagement events.

⬐ toomuchtodo

They are.

⬐ mirimir

I wonder if Tesla is getting subpoenaed for video clips.

Other than for accidents, the SEC investigation, etc.

⬐ toomuchtodo

My FOIA requests say no, but lots of blind spots. I'm not operating "at scale" due to the cost involved with non-electronic FOIA requests.

⬐ mirimir

Thanks.

I can imagine that police could mine this just like they're doing with Google geolocation data.

⬐ toomuchtodo

I hope Tesla has strong governance controls over customer data, and a fierce inside counsel for pushing back against unnecessary or overly broad LEO requests.

⬐ DeonPenny

Why would you say that? The car has LTE and connects to WIFI. It could easily send way more data than any care company at any time including over WIFI.

⬐ navigatesol

>It could easily send way more data than any care company at any time including over WIFI.

Except that it isn't, and even Karpathy said the quantity doesn't matter, it's the data quality.

⬐ DeonPenny

What they are sending way more data because from our knowledge GM and Ford are sending back 0 data and Waymo doesn't have half a million cars worth of data internally to pick from.

⬐ navigatesol

>from our knowledge GM and Ford are sending back 0 data

Yes, two of the autonomous vehicle leaders are not using any data whatsoever.

I thought this was the smartest forum on the internet?

⬐ 11thEarlOfMar

And we don't pay for the LTE bandwidth. Tesla covers the cost of uploading the data.

⬐ tigershark

Maybe too much confident if you ask me..

⬐ netinstructions

I agree. The interview with MIT researcher Lex Fridman was difficult to watch because it didn't seem like they were on the same page at all - Lex asking thoughtful and pointed questions and Elon dismissing them as if the questions themselves are moot because self driving is right around the corner.

It was mind boggling. I am hoping Tesla can provide some specifics today because it seems Elon is living in a fantasy world (albeit one I'd like to live in if we can actually get safe self-driving cars).

⬐ LoSboccacc

I'm gonna say Elon is being extremely bold selling a technology that's current leader in deaths behind the autonomous wheels.

also I can't reconcile how the new hardware is this huge leap ahead beyond raw computing power if, by Tesla own claims, previous hardware was perfectly capable of autonomous driving.

seems people were getting fooled either now or before.

⬐ Hamuko

I hope Elon has tested the autopilot in Finland during the winter then.

⬐ dforrestwilson

Hmmm so then why is Tesla ranked last for autonomous driving by third party researchers?

https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiR...

And Elon has a long history of making false claims about Tesla’s progress. For example in 2015 and 2016 he claimed that Teslas would be fully self-driving by 2018.

So why shouldn’t we be skeptical?

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/03/teslas-self-driving-str...

⬐ jerska

The first article you link to sources another article as its source, which itself calls bullshit on the ranking.

Your link:

> According to Electrek, Tesla trails behind other companies in terms of autonomous driving tech based on a list created by Navigant Research, an independent research firm.

Electrek’s article:

> Electrek’s Take

> I think Navigant’s autonomous leaderboard is ridiculous. There are way too many brands that keep most of their development under wraps, which makes it hard to evaluate them and therefore, it gives very little value to a leaderboard like this in my opinion.

⬐ dforrestwilson

What is your point?

Electrek is not exactly unbiased. It's literally called EV and Tesla news. Fanboi site's opinion should probably be taken with a grain of salt.

Here's the Navigant executive summary directly: https://www.navigantresearch.com/reports/navigant-research-l...

⬐ whamlastxmas

What other major manufacturer has anything close to Tesla's autopilot in a car I can buy today? As far as I know, no one.

⬐ leesec

Only really GM with Supercruise on one of their cars, the CT6. And it is not advanced as Autopilot.

⬐ ryanlol

Some big time source laundering going on in here, https://electrek.co/2019/04/19/tesla-falls-autonomous-drivin...

Your "third party research" is obviously bullshit, they go as far as including Apple in their ranking.

This right here is just typical worthless marketing press release spam from a management consultancy firm.

⬐ DeonPenny

But Navigant curriculum was very unscientific. There no actual quantitive reason Tesla is worse. Is was based mainly on business factors like go-to market strategy and vision.

⬐ navigatesol

As opposed to the "scientific", "quantitative" reasoning behind Tesla being the leaders in FSD?

⬐ DeonPenny

Yes absolutely saying Tesla who gets camera data from it's a half million car doesn't give it an advantage is crazy. That not even including the fact it's the only company who can do its strategy. Google would need to get constant data and GM and legacy automakers would need sensor suites on all it's cars yesterday.

No one knows if Tesla strategy will work because they don't have the data collection in place.

⬐ dforrestwilson

Neither does Tesla which makes it a moot point.

They have no way to store or transmit the massive data you are describing off the platform do they?

My understanding is that they have very limited storage and transmit onboard.

⬐ DeonPenny

Based on their talk today and Andrew previous talk where he shows explicitly tools that do just that download data constantly is exactly what they do. https://vimeo.com/274274744

I mean saying a phone can upload videos to youtube but a can can't to tesla is a weird ledge to stand on. Even their windshield wipers work based on sending video data to tesla to be learned on.

Watch the MIT researcher, Lex Fridman, interview with Elon Musk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEv99vxKjVI&feature=youtu.be

⬐ synaesthesisx

I'm skeptical of Musk's claim that Teslas are an "appreciating asset". That doesn't make sense in the automotive world, and it's claims like this that make him lose credibility.

⬐ whoisjuan

Well, it sounds pretty disingenuous, but you can still find some meaning out of that. An asset by definition is a useful/valuable thing or person. If Teslas become better just with OTA updates, then they become more useful and valuable for the person that owns them. Of course, financially speaking it doesn't make sense (they will depreciate like any other car that rack up miles), but I see some merit in that statement since no other vehicle in the market currently can get better just with the past of time (as you get new updates).

I don't know if his statement was about the financial depreciation of a Tesla or not, but if in 6 months, my car is better than it is today, with no custom parts or additions, you can undoubtedly claim that its value (the perception of what the car is doing for me) increased. Though, not its financial value.

⬐ anbop

Musk doesn’t have any “oracle” credibility to squander though. He’s known for many absurd utterances from his SEC violations to his pedophile accusations. The words coming out of his mouth are not given high credence by the investor class.

⬐ rladd

What I understood him to mean by that is that, because the software of the vehicle will be updated with more capabilities, the value of the car, perhaps not in monetary terms but in terms of utility, would increase over time.

Of course the use of the term 'asset', since it is typically used for financial value, is confusing if that was his intended meaning.

⬐ gamegoblin

That is not what he said. He said "if you buy a Tesla today, I believe you are buying an appreciating asset" (emphasis mine).

His argument is predicated on the following ideas:

1. He believes a self-driving vehicle is 5-10x more valuable than a non-self-driving vehicle (he mentions this earlier in the interview). Presumably because it could earn you money as a robo taxi, you can be more productive while in transit, perhaps lower insurance/generally safer, etc.

2. He believes Tesla vehicle will be self-driving in the near future.

Thus, if you buy a Tesla for $50K today, and two years from now it can start earning $100/day as a robo taxi while you are at work, it will pay for itself in ~2 years and then become a net positive investment.

Feel free to be skeptical of his claim that it will be full self-driving in the 1-2 year timeframe, but if it does, his statement about Teslas bought today becoming more valuable in the future seems reasonable.

⬐ gambiting

>>That doesn't make sense in the automotive world

Well, there are plenty of cars which are appreciating from the moment you pick them up from the dealership. Rare limited editions of Lamborghinis, Ferraris and Porsches all come to mind. But those are rare exceptions from the rule, and Teslas are nowhere near that status.

⬐ zarkov99

Appreciating in the sense that they become more valuable, in utility, with time. Appreciating like software, not like a stock.

⬐ screye

It is pretty disingenuous on his part. The small set of cars whose selling price does appreciate satisfy a set of requirements which the Tesla doesn't.

1. Discontinued / Very few produced -> Tesla is ramping up production 2. Iconic design -> Teslas do not have stand out look and the same design language is being used for other Tesla vehicles too. 3. Movie / cult classic -> Tesla does not have its 'Back to the Future' or 'Fast and the Furious'. 4. Unique features not present in other cars-> Tesla doesn't necessarily have any

Lastly, tablet and screen based designs are ones that age the worst. So, Tesla is at a disadvantage there.

The car collector's market is completely at odds with what Tesla offers. Tesla lovers are high technology folk, who always want the latest and the greatest. They do not appreciate dated designs. Car collectors are the ones most averse to electric cars (as of now).

I think Teslas will hold their price better than other brands, but they certainly won't appreciate. (may be the original roadster, because they made so few of them)

⬐ MarkMarine

Autopilot drives far safer than I do, my mind wanders on a 1 hour commute. I know the gaps, on 101 where they just moved the lanes and used stickers for markers, autopilot doesn’t handle it well. But I feel WAY safer with it on. It’s pretty amazing, and it’s light-years better than other car manufacturers’ offerings. Try the Volvo self driving and then compare, that thing tried to kill me multiple times in a single weekend drive.

⬐ rightbyte

Volvo doesn't have self driving as a cunsumer offer. Or have I missed something?

⬐ MarkMarine

You missed the Volvo S90

⬐ senectus1

so here is something interesting for you.

I work for a mining company that has autonomous and human driven trucks on the site (open pit mining).

after running the stats on efficiencies and wear and tear on the trucks we found that:

In the mornings (or start of shift) humans are far more efficient and cause less wear and tear on the trucks, towards the end of the shift the autonomous trucks are more efficient and wear the trucks out less.

At the beginning of the swing ( 8 days on 6 days off ) the human driven trucks are far more efficient and cause less wear and tear. Towards the end of a swing the Autonomous trucks are more efficient and less wearing on the trucks.

In wet weather humans are far more efficient and less wearing on the trucks, on hot dry days autonomous trucks are more efficient and wear less on the trucks.

At the end of the day, autonomous are more consistent but humans are always better but they wear out themselves or get board or get lazy and take shortcuts when its nearing end of swing or end of shift or when the conditions are hot and dusty.

I cant see why this wouldn't be replicated on open roads by every day humans and every day autonomous vehicles.

⬐ mannykannot

Point taken: the safety of such systems should be compared to how people actually drive, not as if everyone was driving with all due attention.

The most important concern is whether other people are safer when you are using autopilot than when you are not. Part of that calculation is how bad the accidents are when they happen.

There is also the question of whether safety overall would be better with a combination of lesser technologies, such as lane departure warning and automated emergency braking, than either full autopilot or unassisted manual driving.

Every manufacturer should be evaluated in the same way, and if Tesla is currently the best, then congratulations to them, but that does not mean autopilot is good enough yet, and what we need right now is more data objectively evaluated, not Musk's tendentious claims.

⬐ MarkMarine

Driving with autopilot every day, I bet we are 5-10 years off the full self driving panacea that Musk is selling, but I don’t care. The car is blazing fast, safer than I am on my daily commute, and I don’t feel the pang of regret from hitting a gas pump.

I don’t buy into Musk’s bluster blindly, but he does accomplish most of what he says he will... just not on the time scale he promised. Seems fine to me though, I like what he promised and honestly I don’t care if my car appreciates, the automatic braking videos sold me.

⬐ Animats

Softball interview.

Musk is still fixated on "What is a car" and "What is not a car". (At [28:12]). Teslas keep hitting things that are "not a car", yet clearly aren't driveable road. Musk doesn't have to evade that issue because the interviewer never brings it up.

Actual paper.[1] Which is actually an analysis of the data from [2].

[1] https://hcai.mit.edu/tesla-autopilot-human-side.pdf

[2] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1711.06976.pdf

⬐ AndrewBissell

Fridman has posted images of himself wielding a Boring Company flamethrower, and blocked an AI expert who asked him to submit his recent Autopilot study for peer review. If he's not actually being paid under the table by Musk/Tesla, it's clear he's at the very least a fanboy who hopes to burnish his image by association with Musk.

⬐ djanogo

Getting "paid under the table" might too much of an accusation, but Musk usually only accepts interviews from people who like him.

⬐ oska

You received a warning a month ago about your account being a single-issue one (anti-Tesla/Musk). [1] And yet the majority of your comments since then have continued to be under Tesla submissions and here you are again, making libelous statements against a respected AI researcher simply because he interviewed Elon Musk.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19381462

⬐ Animats

I'm more into self-driving, which I used to work on, than Tesla. I'm also critical of Uber, Cruise, and some of the minor players. Basically, all the guys who think you just tie machine learning to some cameras and train.

Self-driving is fundamentally unsafe unless you do a height profile of the road ahead. That's step one. Right now, LIDAR-based systems can do that reliably, while camera-based systems cannot.

If you have to recognize obstacles to avoid them, sometimes you'll miss one. Once you know where you physically can drive, you get to work on where you should drive. And what the other road users are doing. The proper role of machine learning here is to help classify other road users and predict their behavior.

"Big rise or drop in road ahead" plus "classifier has no idea what this is" has to mean "Stop".

⬐ sabareesh

I smell only fear here. I am not sure how many people have tried tesla autopilot, I have owned model 3 for a year and the rate of improvement, features on AP is crazy. I thought hackernews is a place where you can discuss about the technology but here it seems just blatant bias and no thought full conversation.

⬐ kadendogthing

Anyone who's done anything sufficiently advanced with computer vision, AI, and cars knows that Musk is full of shit. The things he is promising are at least a decade away. Not 1 year. To put it another way, we're in "staging." We haven't hit production yet. If there's ever enough Tesla's on the road, you're going to start seeing a lot of problems with Tesla's "autopilot." Honestly the cars are fantastic enough without people overstating what autopilot can do.

Furthermore he's been funny with his companies' finances. Between Tesla, Solar City (remember when Tesla bought Solar City, because I do), and the fact that SpaceX needed NASA to bail them out with the falcon heavy should tell you all you need to know about how solid his companies' finances are. Tesla as a company, the forefront of Musk's empire (arguably), is showing signs of business turbulence. Layoffs, benefit slashing, etc.

Now, I don't think he's really tried to scam to anyone, sincerely. He's a businessman who's bit off a bit more than he can chew in the science department in my opinion.

⬐ ec109685

> Anyone who's done anything sufficiently advanced with computer vision, AI, and cars knows that Musk is full of shit. The things he is promising are at least a decade away.

Citation needed.

⬐ Fricken

I would like to know the name of the secret genius working at autopilot who knows something the rest of the self-driving industry doesn't.

If Tesla does well with HW3 they'll be able to get Autopilot into 'flashy demo' territory in the not-too-distant-future and that will have the Tesla fans thumping their chests for years to come before it dawns on them that there is actually is a massive gap between going a few miles in traffic and pulling off a couple fancy maneuvers along the way, and a car that can navigate a city safely without a human driver. Nobody knows how wide that gap actually is.

Progress in free-range robotics is inverse exponential, and by that I mean that to drive the error rate down by an order of magnitude, you need to do way more work than was needed to achieve the previous order of magnitude.

We can come back to this in 7 years or so and re-examine just how far off Tesla may be from 'The Tesla Network'. Although I suppose the Tesla Network can just be renting somebody else's Tesla for an afternoon, FSD not necessary, and in that case, any day, right?

⬐ hellllllllooo

Exactly. He's a car salesman. I work in CV and automotive and the stuff he's saying will be around the corner isn't solved in research with a $100k set of sensors and progress has plateaued. These are "two ton death machines", a direct quote for Elon in the interview, and overstating what these systems can do to customers who don't understand the state of computer vision is morally bankrupt.

⬐ tim333

Musk sounding confident about their self driving as usual.

>I'll be shocked if it's not next year at the latest that having having a human intervene will decrease safety (22:32)

Like how we got rid of elevator operators because automatic is safer.

>with a full self-driving car computer the rate of improvement is exponential (24:26)

>Tesla is vastly ahead of everyone (30:11)

⬐ Animats

I'll be shocked if it's not next year at the latest that having having a human intervene will decrease safety (22:32)

For certain interpretations of "intervene", that's true now. See this video of a Tesla hitting a construction barrier.[1] This is a dashcam view from a car behind the Tesla. At 00:21, it's too early for the vehicle to start turning, and at 00:22, the vehicle has already hit the barrier. The driver has to detect the failure and then take over. Much of the driver's allowed reaction time is taken up by having to wait until it's almost too late. Control handoff inherently implies a slower reaction time than manual driving.

(Not noticing the lane change warning and orange construction 45MPH speed limit sign back at 00:05 didn't help, either.)

This is the problem with shared control, and why Waymo rejected it early on.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2ml6sjk_8c

⬐ throwaway149999

That looked bad. It kept inside the lane right up to the moment when it hit the barrier and the way it stayed perfectly in the center of the lane really makes it look like it was on autopilot.

(By the way, the driver with the dashcam is driving terribly.)

⬐ hellllllllooo

"The rate of improvement is exponential" - Elon Musk on the state of improvement in self driving during this conversation.

This is literally the opposite of what is true.

The rate of improvement has slowed down as the low hanging problems have been addressed. Everyone has pushed their timelines out.

It's pretty bad that a research scientist at MIT didn't call him out on this. What's the point in someone who works in the field conducting interviews if he doesn't question the interviewee.

⬐ CPLX

The thing that Elon is doing is called lying.

https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/19/13341100/tesla-self-driv...

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/823727035088416768?s=21

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/888053175155949572?s=21

And so on...

⬐ cyann

QOTD: "What's outside the simulation?"

⬐ HNLurker2

If Elon would be the lucky ones along with Yudkowsky, Ruy etc.. to stand near the AI in the box then I guess his question would be answered

⬐ Chris_Chambers

Elon should be executed before he kills more people with his stupidity. This would also set a good example for the other morons with the audacity to think they can force the rest of us to share the road with dysfunctional inhuman drivers that don’t fear death. If I ever see a Tesla on autopilot, I will not hesitate to run it off the road on principle.

⬐ AndrewBissell

The part in this interview where Elon Musk asserts that Teslas are "an appreciating asset, not a depreciating asset" is just hilarious, classic Musk. Even he, an accomplished liar, can't help staring up and to the left when he says it. https://twitter.com/whistlerian1834/status/11168617070982635...

⬐ johnsimer

According to the below link there is not a correlation between eye movements and lying

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.livescience.com/34068-eye-m...

⬐ djanogo

I don't blame him, he needs to increase the value of inventory at hand for next quarter results, making Autopilot standard for extra $2k makes results look better.

⬐ ericb

Interesting comment history made up 95% of Tesla fud and an admission you are short Tesla. Could you find elsewhere to post propaganda for your short position?

⬐ jellicle

It continues to be amazing that he isn't in jail for securities fraud.

⬐ camjohnson26

Full self driving by next year and yet accidents caused by autopilot are still common. Tesla says that you should keep your hands on the wheel at all times and stay vigilant, but Musk appears on TV demoing autopilot with his hands off the wheel and retweets videos of others doing the same. Three people have died using autopilot, 2 when their cars drove underneath a truck that the radar failed to pickup, and the Apple engineer who drove his car into a guardrail while under the influence of autopilot.

Telsa is going to continue pumping their technology until the investor day coming up on April 19 because they desperately need a capital raise. They announced closing stores, layoffs, price cuts, and the short-lived 35,000 model 3 because cash is tight and demand was way down in Q1. Q2 is looking like more of the same.

The worst part of this whole thing to me is Musk's blatant disregard for human life to protect the value of his company. 3 people have died because of autopilot and pumping this unfinished technology will lead to more deaths.

https://twitter.com/shabudibudi/status/1116514629268705280

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWTMnnECBSo&feature=youtu.be

https://streamable.com/kpugc

https://twitter.com/NetflixAndLamp/status/111452700974343782...

⬐ PhantomGremlin

The worst part of this whole thing to me is Musk's blatant disregard for human life to protect the value of his company. 3 people have died

It's all relative. Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg hears that and says: "hold my beer".

Boeing timeline:

   Oct 29, 2018 Lion Air crash, 189 dead

   Nov 10, 2018 pilots already talking about Boeing
   emergency airworthiness directive related to MCAS[1]

   Mar 10, 2019 Ethiopian Airlines crash kills 157

   Mar 11, 2019 Boeing CEO "confident in 737 MAX safety"[2]

Then the Boeing CEO drops his mic and says "Your move, Elan!"

Sorry to be so cynical, but the Boeing stuff really bothers me. Boeing management behavior was worse than Tesla's.

[1] https://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/614857-indonesian-aircra... [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/ethiopia-airplane-boeing-ceo...

⬐ HNLurker2

3 people ain't that much. If I was Musk a good PR would be to visit their funeral. Since kills by autopilot are smaller than by human factor.

⬐ tim333

>Musk's blatant disregard for human life to protect the value of his company

He could also be developing autopilot to save human lives. There are a lot of road deaths each year which is not going to be fixed by doing nothing.

⬐ mannykannot

When he is working on making safe automated driving, then yes. When he is exaggerating the capabilities of what has been achieved so far, and thereby encouraging a dangerous over-reliance on the equipment, then definitely no.

⬐ throwaway149999

I'd accept the claim that autopilot is dangerous if it had brought a car into a state that an alert/situational-aware and normally skilled driver could not recover from. That's not what happened. These people have died because they thought they had got better things to do than monitoring the traffic.

⬐ mensetmanusman

Tesla’s autopilot has saved many lives already according to known statistics. Also, because Tesla’s have the highest safety rating, they have also saved lives in accidents.

⬐ cma

Tesla compared itself to crash/fatality data that included motorcycles in order to look better than they are.

⬐ ben_w

In 2017, the USA had 37,133 motor vehicle fatalities, at a rate of 11.6 per billion vehicle miles driven.

I’m having difficulty finding a recent figure for how many miles Tesla autopilot has driven, but they reached over 1.2 billion by July last year.

3 deaths is 3 too many, of course, but it’s also 10.9 less than one should expect for 1.2 billion miles driven.

⬐ hellllllllooo

This is not an apples to apples comparison. Tesla autopilot only drives the easiest subset of what a human driver can do and has a human supervising it while it does it to catch mistakes. This paints a picture that is disingenuous.

It's like having a doctor that only accepts completely healthy 20 year old patients quoting their stats compared to the general population.

These cars are no where near being fully autonomous and the story that Elon is paining about this happening in a few years with the sensors in a Tesla and the current state of research is a fantasy. End of the day he's a car salesman so take it with a pinch of salt.

⬐ mcguire

What is the general vehicular fatality rate on roads and under conditions where Autopilot is usable?

"For instance, in 2007 0.54 people were killed for every 100 million vehicle miles driven on urban interstates, compared with 0.92 for every 100 million vehicle miles driven on other urban highways and arterials, and 1.32 killed on local urban streets."

http://freakonomics.com/2010/01/29/the-irony-of-road-fear/

⬐ None

None

⬐ bob33212

Musk references OP's attitude in the interview. Tesla gets about 100x attention on it is other car companies. How many people gave died in a Lexus in the past 5 years? And how many of those deaths could have been been prevented by Lexus making safety a higher priority?

A better question though is what is the regulator's responsibility to approve a new technology like auto pilot when we know the general public will ignore the statistics and focus on the tangible deaths?

⬐ Animats

The number of Tesla-related deaths is much higher than Tesla reports.[1] At least 4 in California, at least 11 worldwide. That article points out how low the death rate for large luxury cars is, too. Tesla is at about 4x the death rate for the luxury car industry.

[1] https://medium.com/@MidwesternHedgi/teslas-driver-fatality-r...

⬐ jayd16

Teslas are arguably sports cars more than luxury cars. You should really be looking at the driver statistics shouldn't you?

⬐ Animats

"Sports car" is just a marketing label now, says Road and Track.[1] Once a "sports car" was a little 2-seater with a roll bar and a 5-point harness. Not a 5-seater with a deluxe interior. Now, it's just a PR term.

[1] https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a28225/sports-car-d...

⬐ jayd16

Perhaps, but they're marketing to different people and have clearly different driver populations and accident statistics even though the cars themselves are probably not much different.

⬐ thesunny

This is a biased article.

I do like that the article does some analysis to deduce that the NHTSA-FARS data is incorrect for Tesla and they make several well reasoned arguments why. Then using other data sources, they try to extrapolate what the correct data might be.

The problem is that the Tesla data in the NHTSA-FARS database is lower than expected. Yet they are comparing the "fixed" Tesla data with the rest of the data in the database that they take at face value.

It goes to reason if the NHTSA-FARS data for Tesla is easily proven to be underestimated (i.e. there are actually more fatal accidents than shown) that the data for other car manufacturers and models are also underestimated.

⬐ javagram

Their argument is the Tesla data is underestimated because, as a new and relatively unknown car manufacturer, Tesla is often miscoded.

It seems like these concerns are much less applicable to a BMW or other manufacturer of large luxury cars.

⬐ tim333

That article is fairly damning.

⬐ cle

I’m not convinced yet (and neither am I convinced of Tesla’s claims). You can’t make strong causal claims from observational studies. Run a real experiment and I’ll take these claims more seriously.

(For example, there are a ton of potential confounding variables that could be causing the difference other than the safety of the car, like demographic differences.)

The burden of proof is on the claimant, whether it’s Tesla claiming their vehicles are safe or skeptics claiming they’re not. Until then, neither adds much to the discourse.

⬐ hellllllllooo

Until the onus is on Tesla to prove their claims, rather than cherry picking statistics for marketing, it's better to be sceptical of what they say about safety of an unproven emerging technology that they are emphasizing to sell more cars. Basically, Tesla needs to prove that this reasonable analysis is wrong because they are the people making the claims about safety.

They really shouldn't get the benefit of the doubt. The burden of proof is on the company selling a system to control a two ton vehicle travelling over 70mph.

⬐ illumin8

The author of the article admits that his fund is short TSLA. I don't know why I would believe his data.

⬐ btrask

Elon Musk is long TSLA so we shouldn't believe him either.

⬐ emit_time

I would argue someone in a short position has more incentive to produce negative news than someone in a long position does to produce positive news.

Here’s a new interview with Musk on self-driving:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dEv99vxKjVI

The podcast if you prefer:

https://lexfridman.com/elon-musk/