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I think what people are missing here is an understanding of how these systems are tested and deployed at scale. While I have no involvement with Tesla I do hav

• femto 10y ago
  Closely related to what you wrote, it will also be about verifying the hardware itself, independently of any software models. New hardware needs hours in the field, to verify failure rates and performance under real world conditions. Early deployment means Tesla's hardware will be ready for full service as soon as software is available. Autonomous driving then becomes "just a software problem", with hardware eliminated as a variable.
• agumonkey 10y ago
  Thinking Google was screaming for more opportunities to acquire and test data. Had to be satisfied with a few cars and a small area shared with other companies. Tesla is making its own jackpot here.
  • danmaz74 10y ago
    The big difference is that Google's car are actually self-driving themselves. Tesla's cars will collect a lot of data, but about human driving. The actual automated driving software will have to be tested separately.
    • rak00n 10y ago
      No, it can run itself in the background and check how it's acting differently on exceptional cases comparing to a human driver. Like a dry run.
      • CN7R 10y ago
        So.. like linear regression, and removing outliers to get a more correct fit?
        • sinxoveretothex 10y ago
          Kind of. There's a lot of different machine learning approaches, but at least with neural networks, you essentially have a black box (the network) that you feed inputs into and it spits out which category it gets classified into. When learning, you know what the right category should be, so you go through the network in reverse (backpropagation) and update the weights inside by an arbitrary amount multiplying the difference between what is wanted and what is spitted out. Eventually, (and with a lot of handwaving) the difference converges towards 0 and the network gives the right answer.
      • hueving 10y ago
        Yes, but it has to understand the difference between minor human errors (allowing more drift than autopilot) and actual important differences (braking ahead of a potential collision that the autopilot can't see).
• vadym909 10y ago
  Yup- there's the GM and Ford way which will take forever for all the bureaucratic reasons their lawyers will create- and then there's the Tesla way.
• lathiat 10y ago
  I have to admit, while on some ways it seems like "Cheating".. I feel like having this real world data is in reality much safer than training artificially. Will include all sorts of varying areas and stupidity of drivers.
  • patrickk 10y ago
    Why do you say cheating? Most (all? I'm not an expert) AIs are "seeded" on datasets which are generated by humans. For example, Google translate uses documents translated by experts to convert say, French into German. They use translated government documents, amongst other sources, to get this, instead of some impossible-to-program decision tree that contains every possible grammar rule.
  • eridius 10y ago
    Both real-world training and artificial data have their own benefits. For example, you can use artificial data to simulate conditions that are rare in the real world, or would be very hazardous to try and test (for example, how does the car react when it thinks another car is about to t-bone it).
• olivercreashe 10y ago
  How is this a "brilliant" shortcut if what they cut short is the testing that you say is required to make these things safe???? This move sounds like a terrible idea with respect to what you say! It's like aerospace companies deciding to forego testing and calling that a "brilliant move!"
  • gfunk911 10y ago
    Self-driving is not enabled currently. They are only deploying the underlying hardware in order to start collecting data.
• Dangeranger 10y ago
  Question: Does the fact that the collection of the required volume of kms driven is performed over a shorter period of time based on a higher number of test subjects collecting the data impact the diversity and quality of the data negatively? Said another way: Is there a downside to parallelizing the collection process across a broader horizontal population of collection vehicles over a shorter period versus the traditional 1-2 year collection period?
  • mjevans 10y ago
    The only obvious downside to an outside observer is that they will find it difficult to collect 'all weather' data in substantial volume in less than approximately a single year. From the positive side, they will collect and be able to evaluate a much /wider/ range of driving data from a far larger set. They are much more likely to run across 'better morons' both in operators of the Tesla and in operators of other cars.
    • rtkwe 10y ago
      Really a lot of weather patterns are analogous; for vision heavy rain isn't terribly different from a blizzard, etc. With a large enough span across the US you can get pretty much all weather conditions inside a 6 month window from mid summer to mid winter.
      • DasIch 10y ago
        That's only helpful if you have a fairly random distribution across the US. I very much doubt that's the case for Tesla. You'll probably have far more Teslas driving around in California, maybe even the Silicon Valley, than in say Alaska.
        • inimino 10y ago
          It doesn't need to be random as long as it's big enough. (Also, other countries exist besides the US...)
• Animats 10y ago
  Of course, Tesla acts like it owns that data. Their privacy policy permits them to monitor your vehicle unless you opt out. But there's no reason you can't download that data yourself, if you can figure out how to do so. Does anybody make an antenna-level middle box for GSM phones? Something you hook into the antenna cable as a firewall/monitor?
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  • ranman 10y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KX_0c9R4Fng https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KX_0c9R4Fng My favorite part is that the VPN keys were called "carkeys.tar"
  • scandox 10y ago
    Does this mean that Tesla owners could band together and sell all this massively valuable data to Google?
    • simonh 10y ago
      It's data from a completely different sensor suite than Google uses so might not be as useful to them, but I don't see why not.
    • worldsayshi 10y ago
      At the very best it will only put Google on par with Tesla in terms of collected data. Given that it will require Google to reverse-engineer how Tesla process their data it seems like it would still require quite a large investment on their part.
    • boznz 10y ago
      He opened the patents for most of the car, maybe he will do the same for the data or even the self driving stuff once he's ready after all his goal is to get people into electric cars.
  • perbu 10y ago
• Thimothy 10y ago
  Why aren't other manufacturers following this model? I've seen 12-year Mercedes with internet connection, so the infrastructure has been there for a while.
  • DocTomoe 10y ago
    Noone wants to have the first headline of "Massive multideath accident involving kindergardeners caused by software glitch" attached to their brand. Particularily not German carmakers who both emphasize how pleaseant and exciting it is to manually drive their vehicles ("Fahrvergnügen", "Vorsprung durch Technik", "Freude am Fahren"), but also use passenger safety as a major selling point.
    • pluma 10y ago
      Also, privacy.
    • aembleton 10y ago
      Sure, but with the data connection in their cars, they could have attached sensors and started uploading. However, this would mean adding sensors and 12 years ago, these would have cost much more along with the data requirements.
      • DocTomoe 10y ago
        It would also have meant adding complexity - which directly translates to maintenance costs - to the cars with no obvious benefit to the customer.
    • JustSomeNobody 10y ago
      Not sure why you're getting down voted. Car makers have to be very careful here and the older car makers understand this. They know NBC is just chomping at the bit for bloody news to headline. Move fast and break things doesn't work for an industry that has had to prove how safe it is. Do _any_ of the down voters even know who Ralph Nader is?
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• yitchelle 10y ago
  I am going play devil's advocate here. In the future, would Telsa use these data for other purposes? ie after analysing the data, it finds that my driving behaviour risk and has a higher chance of accident. It could trigger high insurance premiums or restriction on which car I can purchase etc.
  • listentojohan 10y ago
    Will this really be an issue when the car is self-driving?
  • Ntrails 10y ago
    That's essentially something which already exists (telematics boxes) and I'm not sure how they'd be able to sell the un anonymised data to insurers - but if they could legally do so (confident it's not possible in the EU) then yes you could see the above. The realistic one for me on this is when they show aggregate data to insurers to get lower premiums for their cars (or indeed provide the insurance themselves at low rates and use the data to get excellent reinsurance rates). That seems a very tesla thing to do.
  • karyon 10y ago
    Let me play the devil's advocate here as well :) What exactly is the problem with punishing people for risky driving? Or rather, let them pay a corresponding premium to cover for the (statistically expected) higher damages they will cause? Keep in mind that driving behaviour is something the user has full control of, in contrast to e.g. disabilities, for which of course no insurance premium should be paid. I actually think this is a good idea, and would like to hear opposing opinions.
    • emdowling 10y ago
      I 100% agree that more dangerous drivers should pay a higher premium, but there needs to be a fair, equal, transparent way to determine what dangerous is. Between law enforcement agencies, speed cameras and red light cameras, we have established well-tested legal frameworks which determine whether a driver is dangerous or not. We we don't have are any legal or moral frameworks for passive, always-on methods of observation. Until we do, we shouldn't be letting private companies arbitrarily determine whether a driver is dangerous or not.
• flexie 10y ago
  "Data collection that would take years can happen in weeks" I think that we are talking days, not weeks, or probably that Teslas can have multiple teams testing various hardware and algorithms at the same time: Tesla plans on producing 500k cars per year from 2018. If all of them have this equipment, and they drive a conservative 10k miles per year in average, Tesla will gather data from 5 billion miles driven after a year. Next year they will have 15 billion miles. After 6 short years that will amount to more than 100 billion (B) miles accumulated. For comparison, Google's self driving cars have driven less than 2 million miles until now and unless they team up with a car manufacturer or launch their own car, their project is soon irrelevant. I imagine this would only be accentuated as tech talent would prefer to work where their algorithms can be tested in a couple of days rather than where such test would take years. EDIT: And just imagine how cool it is that since their cars drive all over the globe, in all traffic situations, under most traffic rules, in all conditions, and both winter and summer, day and night at the same time, a team can actually test changes to an algorithm on cars selected for certain conditions (500 cars in Minnesota's winter weather at the same time as 500 in Australia's summer, 500 during daylight in Asia at the same time as testing 500 driving at night in Europe, 1,000 cars in rainy weather, 1,000 cars in sun, 1000 cars in fog, 1,000 cars in snow, all within hours).
  • teebot 10y ago
    I don't know if any amount of data collection and model refinement will allow self driving in ALL situations. We always see self driving demos in California on very large roads, I'd like to see one in a small crowded street of Napoli or on a crossroad in Ho-Chi Minh.
    • funkdobiest 10y ago
      Yes, small cobblestone streets in Philly? I wonder how it handles other bad/rude drivers? In the video I saw it merging on to the freeway, but sometime you have to go over the speed limit to get in front of the car that is in the merge lane, will it be courteous to allow others to merge properly?
    • doikor 10y ago
• _abak_ 10y ago
  All miles are not created equals though. Sure Tesla will gather a lot of data quickly but most of this data will be from people who use their car for their daily commute, everyday at roughly the same hour. This doesn't have the same value as data from different areas/road conditions/time of day
  • VeejayRampay 10y ago
    The USA is a big country with a lot of variety though. Different timezones, climates, terrain. It does provide some coverage I would think.
    • flexie 10y ago
      And they do drive Teslas outside the US as well. And should there be places, terrains, urban conditions etc. that Tesla doesn't cover, they will see it and can hire a number of chauffeurs to drive around there. Even if they hired 1,000 drivers to gather data in certain geographical areas at certain hours or weather conditions that they lacked input from it would be a drop in the ocean compared with the cost other car manufacturers face to keep up with Tesla now. You can't just install autonomous driving systems in any combustion engine car without changing lots of systems. Tesla is electric fist. Everything is already wired, ready to be measured and in feedback loops.
      • 2T1Qka0rEiPr 10y ago
        There was a good Freakonomics podcast (http://bit.ly/2dQNPBh http://bit.ly/2dQNPBh) a couple of years ago which looked at why Norway has so many Teslas. Road conditions would be pretty different to California.
    • _abak_ 10y ago
      Sure. I am mostly wondering about the demographics of Tesla owners. My guess would be that people who own Tesla cars tend to live in similar areas, with comparable lifestyle. There is also the case of driving style. I doubt there are people that tend to drive like my grandmother, and I would assume that a variety of driving style is important as well. All I'm saying is that the claim of N million miles should be taken with a grain of salt as long as you do not know the entropy that these miles contain.
• svantana 10y ago
  The only problem is, Tesla's sensor suite is too weak to ever get to full autonomy. So once they upgrade the sensors, what good is the data from the old sensors? Perhaps it's possible to extrapolate the data somehow, to have a database of "situations" rather than actual sensor data?
  • dabeeeenster 10y ago
    Your sensor suite is two cameras below the level of the rear view mirror and two microphones.
    • MertsA 10y ago
      And look at how many accidents that causes. We also have a highly refined system to process that input and from the looks of it, this is a very hard problem to solve with a computer. I don't think stereoscopic vision and a few microphones can ever beat a human driver on average for all types edge cases without creating a good artificial general intelligence first. I think a combination of LIDAR and cameras is probably going to be required for a truly autonomous car, at least for the first decade or two.
  • davedx 10y ago
    What do you make of this, then? https://www.tesla.com/nl_NL/videos/full-self-driving-hardware-all-teslas?redirect=no https://www.tesla.com/nl_NL/videos/full-self-driving-hardwar...
    • svantana 10y ago
      That I would call: driving autonomously with a human driver ready to take over if something unexpected were to happen. I believe that to get to superhuman performance (which is probably what will be needed to make it legal) you will need 360 degree ranging (i.e. LIDAR). Also, it is inevitable that these sensors will become so cheap that it's a no-brainer to include them.
      • davedx 10y ago
• deleted 10y ago
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• gist 10y ago
  > One part of that will include contractual requirements for the system to have clocked n-kilometers on the highway in full (or partial) operation. I wonder what safeguards the manufacturers have in place to determine that those tests are not gamed and are honest as presented. I am thinking of VW emissions scandal. Given the stakes it would be interesting to know what level of trust is involved vs. verify.