
AI Podcast: Elon Musk on Tesla Autopilot [video] - espeed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEv99vxKjVI
======
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://twitter.com/shabudibudi/status/1116514629268705280)

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

[https://streamable.com/kpugc](https://streamable.com/kpugc)

[https://twitter.com/NetflixAndLamp/status/111452700974343782...](https://twitter.com/NetflixAndLamp/status/1114527009743437824)

~~~
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.

~~~
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...](https://medium.com/@MidwesternHedgi/teslas-driver-fatality-
rate-is-more-than-triple-that-of-luxury-cars-and-likely-even-
higher-433670ddde17)

~~~
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.

------
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.

~~~
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.

~~~
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](https://hcai.mit.edu/tesla-autopilot-human-side.pdf)

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

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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.

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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?

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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](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.)

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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.

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CPLX
The thing that Elon is doing is called _lying_.

[https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/19/13341100/tesla-self-
driv...](https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/19/13341100/tesla-self-driving-
autonomous-road-trip-la-nyc)

[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/823727035088416768?s=21](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/823727035088416768?s=21)

[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/888053175155949572?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

