I don't get why people are so eager to defend Tesla autopilot. We've had Andrew Ng call it irresponsible[1] and Li Fei Fei say she wouldn't let it drive with her family in the car[2]. These aren't anti-tech luddites, but people with a very good understanding of the current state of the art.
I love Tesla, but they are SO weak at taking criticism or realising when they make a mistake.
> I don't get why people are so eager to defend Tesla autopilot.
I think there's a strong recognition that self-driving vehicles, when they can be made to happen generally, will be a significant social good. And that it's tricky to get there unless society is willing to put something out onto the streets.
It's taken fifty or more years of popular human-driven vehicles to get to the stage that most of our cars are pretty safe, and quite a lot of effort in improving road design too.
Eventually, though, I suspect it won't be solved until we redesign the roads. A significant part of rail safety is that the signalling system can sense whether there is a train on a stretch of line. (via the rather simple technique that the axles form an electrical connection between the two rails) Right now, it's as if we're trying to do autonomous traffic by an ant colony model -- independent agents that know nothing about each other except what they can sense. Which is always going to be harder than if the road can help them out too.
> I think there's a strong recognition that self-driving vehicles, when they can be made to happen generally, will be a significant social good. And that it's tricky to get there unless society is willing to put something out onto the streets.
I agree autonomous cars hold great potential. But that is precisely why Tesla should not ship a "beta" feature with lives at stake, as that risks squandering that potential. If this is the response to a single Autopilot user killing himself in an accident, imagine the potential backlash if more accidents crop up. Or worse, an Autopilot user kills someone else in an accident.
Critics of Tesla's Autopilot are not only concerned about the danger to Tesla drivers, but to the industry as a whole ("Jaguar engineer: A mishap with Tesla's Autopilot could set back self-driving cars by a decade"): http://mashable.com/2015/12/12/jaguar-semi-autonomy/#QMl5uUB...
Tesla argues that the data it collects from Autopilot users is worth the risk because it can help Tesla develop true self-driving cars faster, but other companies pursuing self-driving cars (including Google) have opted for more controlled testing instead of conducting a grand experiment with customers and the general public.
I agree with this in principle. But I'm not at all convinced the technology is ready, nor that the Teslas are an appropriate platform without additional sensors.
Rail safety and autonomy were designed without the use of advanced machine learning/computer vision that we have today. Also, redesigning highways seems like a rather expensive proposition: the US is already not investing enough in its existing infrastructure.
Tarmac / asphalt only has a service life of 26 years. (And resurfacing after 13 years.) So within the sort of timeframes governments are already used to for infrastructure construction (eg, HS2 is due for completion in 2033), almost all the road surfaces will already have been replaced anyway.
The trick is to do it economically. Do some of the major trucking routes first, as well as common city roads. ie, automate trucks and busses first. Especially as to begin with you'd probably want to exclude bicycles, horses, etc, so that means not doing every road.
I think people are more interested in defending Tesla as a whole because of its environmental friendliness, overall safety ratings, and being a market underdog.
Also, not wanting to use autopilot is different than thinking Tesla should be legally responsible for all accidents that occur when autopilot is on. If they get sued for it then they'll likely just remotely disable it on all of their cars with a software update and I'm not sure anybody wins in that scenario.
I love Tesla, but they are SO weak at taking criticism or realising when they make a mistake.
[1] http://electrek.co/2016/05/30/google-deep-learning-andrew-ng...
[2] http://a16z.com/2016/06/29/feifei-li-a16z-professor-in-resid... (you'll need to listen to the podcast though)