5 ms·

Sure, let's torture language for Tesla's benefit! Why not? I mean, we shouldn't let a silly thing like people's lives get in the way. Since you know about hi

Sure, let's torture language for Tesla's benefit! Why not? I mean, we shouldn't let a silly thing like people's lives get in the way. Since you know about historical autopilots I suspect this will be redundant, but here it is anyhow: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopilot#Modern_autopilots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopilot#Modern_autopilots "Modern" autopilots have been around for a while, something like 40-50 years. Sure if you go back 80 years you can find autopilots that aren't as advanced. If you want to move the goalposts like that, relative to what a reasonable person might expect, knock yourself out.

mikeash 10y ago
What part of that article do you think is a point against what I'm saying, exactly? Autoland and taxiing? That requires a Category III airport which many airports, even those served by airliners, aren't. It also requires pilot supervision and pilot intervention in the event of emergency. Hardly autonomous! And there are plenty of systems below that. For example: http://sarasotaavionics.com/category/autopilots/certified-autopilots http://sarasotaavionics.com/category/autopilots/certified-au... Note: single axis and 2-axis. Just like what I said it can be. But yes, the people insisting that "autopilot" does not imply autonomy, simply because no autonomous autopilot exists on any commercial aircraft, are torturing the language. Sure.
- msandford 10y ago
  Find ~10 normal people and ask them what an autopilot does on an airplane. They're all going to say something along the lines of "it flies the airplane" and their intuition lines up with reality for about 90%+ of flights that are done with autopilots. Ask those same ~10 people what an autopilot does for a car. They'll say something like "it drives the car". Given what the Tesla Autopilot (tm) is capable of doing, their understanding of what the name means and what the software can actually do only has maybe a 20% overlap. So yes I would call that torturing language. It's an autopilot that can drive the car under a very limited set of circumstances AND it requires that Jesus (you, the driver) is always 100% alert and ready to snatch the wheel the second the car starts to do an unsafe thing. It's a totally different control problem in cars than it is in airplanes, and it's impressive that they're doing well enough to where people will trust the system enough to get into this kind of trouble. But right now it seems like Tesla's in the uncanny valley of self-driving. Good enough to make people say "huh, it works" but not so good that it works 100% of the time, always, forever, no matter the conditions, other crazy drivers and all the freak occurrences that are literally 1 in a million, but given that there are 1.1 billion car trips per day in the US will happen 1100 times a day. Even at 1 in a billion it'll still happen once per day.
  - mikeash 10y ago
    I'm dubious about the idea that normal people will think of airplane autopilots as autonomous. There's even a common English idiom, "on autopilot," meaning to act brainlessly. But let's say it's true. Why would people think that, when that's not how they actually work? That's an honest question I asked above when I said, "Where did everybody get the idea that 'autopilot' implies full autonomy?" Do we at least agree that actual factual airplane autopilots are fairly analogous to Tesla's? If so, how is it "torturing the language" to use the term that way? Overestimating the intelligence of the public when creating a term is a long way from "torture."
    - msandford 10y ago
      > Do we at least agree that actual factual airplane autopilots are fairly analogous to Tesla's? Nope! That's the whole point of contention, actually. Autopilots are very advanced and can do almost the whole flight. Because the control problems for airplanes and cars are very, very different. If something goes wrong with the autopilot in an airplane you've got minutes (at least) to figure it out and not die. ~30,000 feet of altitude and huge glide ratios and nearly empty skies do wonders. In a car your average car-to-car separation in rush-hour traffic is a few seconds along the line of motion, and perhaps less sideways. If you're not on the freeway you might be a jerk of the wheel and half a second from a head-on collision. Now you might say that the technical capabilities of both systems are the same, but nobody really cares about that. They care that it can meet some criteria that they already have in their head and they aren't going to go to school for 5 years to understand that it's not the autopilot's fault that their kid enabled in bad circumstances and died, they're going to sue Tesla to hell and back. And judges and juries will quite likely be sympathetic.
      - mikeash 10y ago
        Some airplane autopilots are very advanced. Others are extremely simple. Tesla's system is analogous to something near the simpler end. I keep talking about the simple end of what "autopilot" covers and you keep countering me by pointing out the advanced ones. I'm not denying the advanced ones exist, I'm just pointing out that the simple ones exist too, so using the word "autopilot" for simple systems is entirely appropriate. I'm not terribly interested in the legal aspects of it, I'm just curious where everyone got this idea that "autopilot" implies autonomy (if in fact everyone does have that idea, which I'm not sure about), and I strongly disagree with your assertion that using "autopilot" to describe Tesla's system is "torturing language," given that using "autopilot" to describe a simple wing-leveling system is perfectly acceptable.

mikeash 10y ago

What part of that article do you think is a point against what I'm saying, exactly? Autoland and taxiing? That requires a Category III airport which many airports, even those served by airliners, aren't. It also requires pilot supervision and pilot intervention in the event of emergency. Hardly autonomous! And there are plenty of systems below that. For example: http://sarasotaavionics.com/category/autopilots/certified-autopilots http://sarasotaavionics.com/category/autopilots/certified-au... Note: single axis and 2-axis. Just like what I said it can be. But yes, the people insisting that "autopilot" does not imply autonomy, simply because no autonomous autopilot exists on any commercial aircraft, are torturing the language. Sure.

msandford 10y ago
Find ~10 normal people and ask them what an autopilot does on an airplane. They're all going to say something along the lines of "it flies the airplane" and their intuition lines up with reality for about 90%+ of flights that are done with autopilots. Ask those same ~10 people what an autopilot does for a car. They'll say something like "it drives the car". Given what the Tesla Autopilot (tm) is capable of doing, their understanding of what the name means and what the software can actually do only has maybe a 20% overlap. So yes I would call that torturing language. It's an autopilot that can drive the car under a very limited set of circumstances AND it requires that Jesus (you, the driver) is always 100% alert and ready to snatch the wheel the second the car starts to do an unsafe thing. It's a totally different control problem in cars than it is in airplanes, and it's impressive that they're doing well enough to where people will trust the system enough to get into this kind of trouble. But right now it seems like Tesla's in the uncanny valley of self-driving. Good enough to make people say "huh, it works" but not so good that it works 100% of the time, always, forever, no matter the conditions, other crazy drivers and all the freak occurrences that are literally 1 in a million, but given that there are 1.1 billion car trips per day in the US will happen 1100 times a day. Even at 1 in a billion it'll still happen once per day.
- mikeash 10y ago
  I'm dubious about the idea that normal people will think of airplane autopilots as autonomous. There's even a common English idiom, "on autopilot," meaning to act brainlessly. But let's say it's true. Why would people think that, when that's not how they actually work? That's an honest question I asked above when I said, "Where did everybody get the idea that 'autopilot' implies full autonomy?" Do we at least agree that actual factual airplane autopilots are fairly analogous to Tesla's? If so, how is it "torturing the language" to use the term that way? Overestimating the intelligence of the public when creating a term is a long way from "torture."
  - msandford 10y ago
    > Do we at least agree that actual factual airplane autopilots are fairly analogous to Tesla's? Nope! That's the whole point of contention, actually. Autopilots are very advanced and can do almost the whole flight. Because the control problems for airplanes and cars are very, very different. If something goes wrong with the autopilot in an airplane you've got minutes (at least) to figure it out and not die. ~30,000 feet of altitude and huge glide ratios and nearly empty skies do wonders. In a car your average car-to-car separation in rush-hour traffic is a few seconds along the line of motion, and perhaps less sideways. If you're not on the freeway you might be a jerk of the wheel and half a second from a head-on collision. Now you might say that the technical capabilities of both systems are the same, but nobody really cares about that. They care that it can meet some criteria that they already have in their head and they aren't going to go to school for 5 years to understand that it's not the autopilot's fault that their kid enabled in bad circumstances and died, they're going to sue Tesla to hell and back. And judges and juries will quite likely be sympathetic.
    - mikeash 10y ago
      Some airplane autopilots are very advanced. Others are extremely simple. Tesla's system is analogous to something near the simpler end. I keep talking about the simple end of what "autopilot" covers and you keep countering me by pointing out the advanced ones. I'm not denying the advanced ones exist, I'm just pointing out that the simple ones exist too, so using the word "autopilot" for simple systems is entirely appropriate. I'm not terribly interested in the legal aspects of it, I'm just curious where everyone got this idea that "autopilot" implies autonomy (if in fact everyone does have that idea, which I'm not sure about), and I strongly disagree with your assertion that using "autopilot" to describe Tesla's system is "torturing language," given that using "autopilot" to describe a simple wing-leveling system is perfectly acceptable.