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He's currently throwing a temper tantrum on Twitter, and all because the NHTSA wanted to ask him a few questions about the product (you can see it here: https:/

He's currently throwing a temper tantrum on Twitter, and all because the NHTSA wanted to ask him a few questions about the product (you can see it here: https://www.scribd.com/document/329218929/2016-10-27-Special-Order-Directed-to-Comma-ai https://www.scribd.com/document/329218929/2016-10-27-Special...). Like, how dare the government try to have basic standards for multi-ton hunks of metal hurtling down the highway without human input. I've been trying to convince people lately that Silicon Valley isn't all delusional technolibertarian assholes, but guys like this sure aren't making my case easy.

j2bax 10y ago
Come on... Hotz doesn't really represent anyone but George Hotz. He is a very unique individual that was blessed with a very mathematical mind but very little social grace.
- gaze 10y ago
  He's a good hacker but he's not particularly mathematical...
- Analemma_ 10y ago
  Sure, but every individual is part of a pattern, and our outgroup is becoming more convinced that there's one pattern in particular at play here. Take a look at the front page of Hacker News right now: in addition to this story, there's "Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick" and "Uber drivers win employee rights case" (presumably over Uber's fierce opposition). With 30 items on the front page, that means we've got 10% of the news in our field which could plausibly be parsed by outsiders as "technolibertarian assholes". I've been watching public opinion of the Bay Area startup scene gradually eroding in the last half-decade or so, and this is a big part of the reason; it's a real problem that we need to start thinking about.
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    I don't think this can be fixed. Silicon Valley thinks its the solution, when its more the problem. You can't drastically disrupt major pieces of the economy, expect to keep large swaths of the pie for yourself, and having no safety net, those who used to have jobs end up disenfranchised and permanently economically disadvantaged.
    - jacquesm 10y ago
      It's the exact same thing as the banking crisis, only with a bit of a techno sauce. See, if it works then they'll make bank, if it doesn't society will pick up the cost. It's a bet without much of a downside.
      - toomuchtodo 10y ago
        Privatize the profits, socialize the failures.
  - idlewords 10y ago
    It's not just outsiders who take this view.
    - Analemma_ 10y ago
      I was hoping you'd show up in this thread ;) It's definitely not just outsiders as you (and I) can attest; I went with that line of argument to try and convey some sense of urgency about the problem. It's easy to dismiss internal dissent about SV libertarian groupthink as not important, but "outsiders" have the potential to bring the party to an end if they collectively get really grumpy about what we're doing. I thought that might be more motivation.
      - jacquesm 10y ago
        Unfortunately for all of us, this will likely continue until people get killed in large enough numbers for some common sense to prevail.
      - oldmanjay 10y ago
        Here's something I always wonder about humans; Why is it only groupthink when you disagree with it?
    - x0x0 10y ago
      And we've now, at the behest of these companies, redefined statists down to: - thinks it's OK for neighbors and local government to have a say in whether people run a hotel next door, possibly sharing a roof or even a wall - thinks it's OK to require pretty reasonable background checks ala Austin for taxi drivers - thinks it's OK to have some safety regulations around self driving cars sharing our roads beyond hey, it worked in my car on this specific stretch of road so, you know, yolo
      - stale2002 10y ago
        Congratulations, by waiting a year to implement self driving cars, through overly burdening government regulations, you just killed ten thousand people. What about those people? The people who WILL die in car accidents next year unless we do something about it. Screw them, right?
  - asimpletune 10y ago
    How about just not caring on "correcting" people's impressions of our culture? It seems like it's a challenge any way, probably because it's a fool's errand. Yeah a lot of people who are brilliant don't give af, why get suckered into believing this is a bad thing? In fact, you don't have to have an opinion about it.
  - webkike 10y ago
    It has definitely been a noticeable problem much earlier than that, my guess probably a half-decade after the dot com bubble burst. I was in school at Palo Alto Senior High School and I gradually began to notice really offensive trends in the way "silicon valley people" acted. When I left school the damage was already done. I remember one of the last examples I saw before college was in a Facebook group called "humans of Palo Alto" (which I objected to from the start), there was a picture of two men in nice clothing holding cardboard signs that said "need venture capital money". Their quote was "you know the Drake song 'started from the bottom now we're here'? Well, that's about us"
  - icebraining 10y ago
    The Uber lawsuit doesn't fit in that pattern. Cab companies are also being used over the same issue[1], since drivers were always considered contractors. Uber followed the established model there, it's not an example of SV arrogance. [1] http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-03-26/news/chi-suit-taxi-drivers-should-be-considered-employees-20140326_1_taxi-drivers-yellow-cab-taxi-industry http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-03-26/news/chi-suit-...
- golergka 10y ago
  But when startup and engineer community praises him and puts him on a pedestal, doesn't it say something about them (us) as well?
- hartator 10y ago
  I don't think we should be proud of a country that scares genius away.
Phil_Latio 10y ago
Why does he have to answer that. It's just research for now?
- tptacek 10y ago
  Wasn't he just soliciting beta testers on Twitter? That doesn't sound like "research".
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    Beta testers on the road with self driving cars amongst unsuspecting regular drivers, what could possibly go wrong?
- fisherjeff 10y ago
  My read on this tweet[0], retweeted by Comma.ai, is that they will be shipping an actual product by the end of the year, so I could see why the NHTSA would want answers before then. [0] https://twitter.com/anakkurt/status/785677337819947008 https://twitter.com/anakkurt/status/785677337819947008
Firebrand 10y ago
It's the government that's stifling innovation by burying it with so called regulations to the benefit of the monolithic automotive industry. His follow up tweets imply he's moving on to China, since they're less likely to be a major hamper of innovation. And we wonder why the United States' influence is in decline...
- jacquesm 10y ago
  For once this really isn't that. I've watched the whole 'comma' saga with some amazement that he'd actually take out his barely ready for closed road testing pile of cobbled together stuff out on a public road. Really, this sort of thing should be done in a much more controlled environment before pulling the trigger on releasing it on the unsuspecting public. Read the bloomberg article and be amazed.
- michael_h 10y ago
  > China [...] less likely to be a major hamper of innovation Another way to look at it: western foreigner looks to beta test a product with the lives of Chinese citizens. I'm not sure how well that's going to go over.
jacquesm 10y ago
I tweeted a joke yesterday that the Engineering Society had changed it's slogan to 'Move fast and kill people', I'm pretty happy that NHTSA has its feet solidly planted on terra firma and requires a bit of process around releasing something as important as self driving vehicles. The more software becomes mission critical the more we will need level headedness and quality rather than tantrums.
- patcheudor 10y ago
  Not mission critical, rather life critical. I've worked on several life critical systems as a security researcher, helping to develop controls in tightly controlled environments to keep people safe. Work on software controlled switches in industrial machines mostly. As I've followed these developments and those of Google and Tesla I've been wondering at times if I live in some alternate universe. The level of diligence and care that must go into systems which have the potential to maim an kill are nothing to laugh at. They require serious engineering which takes time. You can find the best and smartest humans on the planet and they'll still fail at building reasonable controls for life critical systems in controlled environments. When you are building these controls for life critical systems which will operate in the diversity of our roadways, honestly the task gets very hard. I'm not against progress and I do think that self-driving cars are the future. However, it may be wise for those trying to march towards that future at breakneck speeds to take a step back and consider that these systems should first be implemented as backups to humans. Develop the solutions through preemptive braking and accident avoidance where humans are still very much engaged in the driving activities or focus on building expertise in controlled environments. On that note, kudos to Google for doing just that. Their first phase has focused on low speed situations and have been restricted very much to lab work whereby they have paid employee's serving as observers and backup.
  - semi-extrinsic 10y ago
    This. There is a huge amount of safety evaluations, precautions, training and failsafes we have to go through just for using a Class 4 laser at work in a controlled environment, where the worst possible outcome is permanently blinding someone working with it. For a machine with the potential to easily maim and kill, to be completely autonomously operated in a chaotic environment where it interacts not just with other computer controlled machines but also with humans, even children, I honestly hope that the amount of safety precautions required will grow very quickly.
pdog 10y ago
I can't believe the nerve of some of these Silicon Valley randroids. If they're so great, why do they think a little bit of regulation is going to kill them?
- jacquesm 10y ago
  At a guess the list of questions showed Hotz just how far away he really was from having a shippable product and since the 'fun' bit was over it caused him to throw in the towel. Prototyping stuff and proof of concepts are fun, productizing much less so. Moving to China will not really change that.
  - karlshea 10y ago
    And, the list of requests in the special order are not ridiculous at all. They are a bunch of basic questions that I would hope someone making driver-assist hardware would be able to answer.
    - throwaway2016a 10y ago
      I second that. Having worked with blockchain companies, I have seen much scarier letters than this and if the blockchain messes up no one dies.[1] [1] At least not as a direct cause/effect relationship.
    - khuey 10y ago
      The first three roughly boil down to "please send us a copy of the manual".
      - TeMPOraL 10y ago
        Which is something he should have in a pretty much finished form if he's about to release a product.
- wyager 10y ago
  Is this a joke? If not, you clearly didn't read the letter; it's more than "a little regulation", it's a huge set of requests on an unreasonably short timeline. With regard to the more general point of your post, even if it's nominally possible to eke out a profit under overburdening regulation, you're still allowed to take a principled stand against it.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
bdrool 10y ago
> He's currently throwing a temper tantrum on Twitter He said the NHTSA made "no attempt at a dialog". What does he call that letter? Ridiculous.
smpetrey 10y ago
completely agree man. I'm pretty positive his organization failed to reach out to the NHTSA for product approval and now he's upset that they recommend pulling the product before it is tested in their VRTC facility in Washington. [1] [1] http://www.nhtsa.gov/Research/Vehicle-Research-&-Testing-(VRTC) http://www.nhtsa.gov/Research/Vehicle-Research-&-Testing-(VR...
BurningFrog 10y ago
If you read the letter, it's a lot more than "answering a few questions". He gets two weeks to provide an enormous amount of detailed information about the product, I assume under threat of legal consequences if any of it contains an error, interspersed with lots of reminders that they can and will close down his business if they feel like it.
- 6stringmerc 10y ago
  Yeah it seems a lot of the community here thinks that if he just threw together a few bullet points in an email response the NHTSA would sit back, say "Okay, great have fun!" and not, you know, make a big deal out of it. I, uh, disagree.
  - DanBC 10y ago
    I more thinking "why the hell doesn't he have the answers already?"
    - vvanders 10y ago
      This, it's not a secret that NHSTA is interested in self-driving cars and would be asking the serious questions that he should already have responses for.
    - 6stringmerc 10y ago
      Having mentioned this elsewhere, I have first-hand experience going between SMEs and X/Y/Z bureaucratic entities for half a decade and there's a big difference between "having the answers you think are satisfactory" and "providing answers that they think are satisfactory." GI Joe pointed this out long ago in that "Knowing is half the battle" and putting it into a work product that accomplishes its task is the other half of the battle in this case (with no guarantees the responses provided will end the inquiry / threat of fines).
      - taco_emoji 10y ago
        That doesn't really answer the question. You don't need first-hand experience to know that government red tape is onerous. It was flatly predictable that the NHTSA -- the government agency concerned with roadway safety -- would make such inquiries. So why didn't Comma work with the NHTSA and get their blessing before announcing a release date? I mean yeah, it sucks that the government is so darn picky about things, but that's not an excuse to just skip the process. They should have hired someone like you from the start to ensure that their ducks were in a row when they were ready to release.
oldmanjay 10y ago
I've been trying to convince myself that it's possible that some day people won't be tribalistic assholes constantly playing us v. them in situations that don't need it at all, and posts like yours leave me sad and shaking my head knowing it's way, way in the future.
slg 10y ago
I wrote the below less than 12 hours ago for another post still currently on the front page and it is just as appropriate here with the simple change of a company name. The arrogance of our industry seems to be growing. >One of the biggest flaws of the tech industry is the belief that being a tech expert is enough to disrupt other industries in which they don't have any expertise. Sometimes they get lucky and it works despite something like Uber's or Airbnb's total ignorance of the law. Sometimes it fails like with numerous cryptocurrency companies relearning why the finance industry has so many dang regulations. Seems like comma.ai is falling in the latter camp.
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  There's still time for AirBnB and Uber to fall in the latter camp. Some have more runway than others.
- mlvljr 10y ago
  Soylent? I remember that comment, good one :)
gavman 10y ago
Exactly. The NHTSA memo seems extremely reasonable to me. If you're going to put to market a product where the smallest malfunction could easily kill many people (both those using your product and those around them), answering a couple regulation questions seems like a small hurdle to pass. Nothing here is saying "we want to shut you down", it's saying "we want to make sure you pass the most basic safety standards". That's an obvious part of a government's duty to keep it's citizens safe.
- hartator 10y ago
  I feel $21,000 fine per day sounds pretty like "we want to shut you down". He never presented comma.ai as an autopilot but as a very smart line assist and adaptive cruise control.
  - gavman 10y ago
    By "we want to shut you down" I meant the NHTSA isn't presenting him with so many regulations and requirements that meeting them is impossible, effectively ending the product. They are definitely using the fine to force him to comply with their request to meet the very minimum bar of answering their questions about his product. This, as mentioned, makes total sense to me in terms of what government should do to protect the safety of its citizens. Edit: grammar
    - xiphias 10y ago
      Actually even the $21k fine should be nothing if he got $3M in venture capital. What's questionable is whether somebody can build safely an almost-self-driving car without a good team and with many years of experience in the field.
      - robotresearcher 10y ago
        $21K per day. Four months to consume $3M entirely.
hartator 10y ago
Sure, but now he left from China. It's our lost not his.
phusion 10y ago
Did he delete all of his tweets? Just found his verified account and it's empty.
- zevyoura 10y ago
  https://twitter.com/comma_ai https://twitter.com/comma_ai
Animats 10y ago
Holtz's Twitter rant is at [1]. Cruise Automation was very lucky to be acquired by GM before they got a similar letter. Similarly, Otto being acquired by Uber. They were both proposing to sell similar add-on systems. Their valuations would have been much lower after receiving such letters. NHTSA has it right. "It is insufficient to assert, as you do, that 'your product does not remove any of the driver responsibilities from the task of driving'. As you are undoubtedly aware, there is a high likelihood that some drivers will use your product in a manner that exceeds its intended purpose." Did Tesla got a similar letter? They have exactly that problem and exactly the same excuse. Tesla claims “Autopilot is an assist feature. You need to maintain control and responsibility of your vehicle.” Here are three dashcam videos of Teslas crashing on autopilot. These are the three where there was a stopped vehicle partially blocking the left edge of the lane, and the Tesla plowed right into it. Tesla blames the driver. Looks like the NHTSA isn't buying that. [1] https://twitter.com/comma_ai https://twitter.com/comma_ai [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ7vqAUJdbE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ7vqAUJdbE [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoSNw_n1Xgk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoSNw_n1Xgk [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQkx-4pFjus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQkx-4pFjus
- maratd 10y ago
  > Did Tesla got a similar letter? Did Mercedes? Did Volvo? They have the same systems in place in production vehicles. Mercedes even advertised their vehicles as autonomous. http://blog.caranddriver.com/mercedes-benz-pulls-e-class-ad-over-autonomous-confusion/ http://blog.caranddriver.com/mercedes-benz-pulls-e-class-ad-... > Here are three dashcam videos of Teslas crashing on autopilot. Glad you had the opportunity to bash Tesla.
  - makmanalp 10y ago
    Yeah, they probably didn't - because large auto companies have time and resources devoted to safety and compliance.
    - dexterdog 10y ago
      And bribery
fiatpandas 10y ago
That letter was an easy out for him. When you boast about your tech and it doesn't deliver on the promise (and don't forget the Musk challenge), it looks much better if your exit is caused by government interference than if you were to quit on your own. It's kind of less of a failure. Granted, it's a huge stretch for him based on the language of the letter, but that's how I read the situation.
- throwaway4job 10y ago
  100%. If comma.ai truly worked, he wouldn't have this response.
- tedmiston 10y ago
  I think you've nailed it. In his demo video, Hotz said he aims to do 99% of driving. Musk said, "99% is easy, 99.9999% is hard."
- rsp1984 10y ago
  It may have been part of the strategy all along. I always found the schedule really aggressive. He announced it with big fanfare in late summer at TC Disrupt with availability end of 2016. I don't think he ever thought that was realistic.
throwaway4job 10y ago
My theory, based on his response, is that: 1) Comma.ai is materially flawed at present; and 2) George Hotz knows about these flaws; and 3) George Hotz is upset because even basic questions will expose the problems in his broken product; and 4) George Hotz is a sociopath who would happily kill people if it'd give him a shot of flipping his company and pocketing an 8 or 9 figure pay day. There is basically no chance that Comma works. If it did, they would've seen this coming, and handled it in literally _any_ other way. And the notion of China having less regulation is laughable. Depending on who dies when Comma kills somebody, and the outcry that results, he's likely to end up facing a firing squad.
a13n 10y ago
Wow, thank you for posting the document. That seems like an incredibly reasonable response compared to what I'd expect from a US gov organization. They're basically ensuring he's done due diligence that the product he's selling isn't going to kill/harm people... I found the whole thing extremely polite and reasonable. Since he hasn't done the due diligence he's throwing a fit. Sigh... Looks like self-driving isn't something that can be accomplished Today without a good amount of resources.
snickerbockers 10y ago
The problem is that they (Silicon Valley) think the reason their startups move so fast is that they are some sort of new meritocracy, and that other industries move slowly because they're held back by a "good old boys' club" mentality. The truth is that rapid advancements in software development happen because most software has a failure rate which would be considered appalling in any real engineering discipline.
andrewhillman 10y ago
I agree. I love how he thinks NHTSA should take a test drive. This is delusional thinking. It's going to be nearly impossible for an SV startup to create aftermarket parts for automobiles because the US dept of transportation is not interested in beta releases. Him being known as an "iphone hacker" probably doesn't help his cause. One accident induced bug could cripple the driver and startup. Sure, SV loves disruption, but the US dept isn't delusional.
debt 10y ago
Yeah because his tech probably can't do 1/5 of what hes claimed it can and the NHSTA would've found that out almost immediately. this all a pr move by andreeseen/horowitz to pump all their holdings in companies doing selfdriving tech. they prolly knew he'd never succeed. jus odd to throw in the towel after the gov comes knockin esp after a $3 mil investment like these investors are smart are we honestly supposed to believe they didn't know this was going to happen eh or maybe $3mil ain't nothing and they's jus threw it at him because jus maybe he could do it if not it's a win win probably both.

j2bax 10y ago

Come on... Hotz doesn't really represent anyone but George Hotz. He is a very unique individual that was blessed with a very mathematical mind but very little social grace.

gaze 10y ago
He's a good hacker but he's not particularly mathematical...
Analemma_ 10y ago
Sure, but every individual is part of a pattern, and our outgroup is becoming more convinced that there's one pattern in particular at play here. Take a look at the front page of Hacker News right now: in addition to this story, there's "Soylent halts sales of its powder as customers keep getting sick" and "Uber drivers win employee rights case" (presumably over Uber's fierce opposition). With 30 items on the front page, that means we've got 10% of the news in our field which could plausibly be parsed by outsiders as "technolibertarian assholes". I've been watching public opinion of the Bay Area startup scene gradually eroding in the last half-decade or so, and this is a big part of the reason; it's a real problem that we need to start thinking about.
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  I don't think this can be fixed. Silicon Valley thinks its the solution, when its more the problem. You can't drastically disrupt major pieces of the economy, expect to keep large swaths of the pie for yourself, and having no safety net, those who used to have jobs end up disenfranchised and permanently economically disadvantaged.
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    It's the exact same thing as the banking crisis, only with a bit of a techno sauce. See, if it works then they'll make bank, if it doesn't society will pick up the cost. It's a bet without much of a downside.
    - toomuchtodo 10y ago
      Privatize the profits, socialize the failures.
- idlewords 10y ago
  It's not just outsiders who take this view.
  - Analemma_ 10y ago
    I was hoping you'd show up in this thread ;) It's definitely not just outsiders as you (and I) can attest; I went with that line of argument to try and convey some sense of urgency about the problem. It's easy to dismiss internal dissent about SV libertarian groupthink as not important, but "outsiders" have the potential to bring the party to an end if they collectively get really grumpy about what we're doing. I thought that might be more motivation.
    - jacquesm 10y ago
      Unfortunately for all of us, this will likely continue until people get killed in large enough numbers for some common sense to prevail.
    - oldmanjay 10y ago
      Here's something I always wonder about humans; Why is it only groupthink when you disagree with it?
  - x0x0 10y ago
    And we've now, at the behest of these companies, redefined statists down to: - thinks it's OK for neighbors and local government to have a say in whether people run a hotel next door, possibly sharing a roof or even a wall - thinks it's OK to require pretty reasonable background checks ala Austin for taxi drivers - thinks it's OK to have some safety regulations around self driving cars sharing our roads beyond hey, it worked in my car on this specific stretch of road so, you know, yolo
    - stale2002 10y ago
      Congratulations, by waiting a year to implement self driving cars, through overly burdening government regulations, you just killed ten thousand people. What about those people? The people who WILL die in car accidents next year unless we do something about it. Screw them, right?
- asimpletune 10y ago
  How about just not caring on "correcting" people's impressions of our culture? It seems like it's a challenge any way, probably because it's a fool's errand. Yeah a lot of people who are brilliant don't give af, why get suckered into believing this is a bad thing? In fact, you don't have to have an opinion about it.
- webkike 10y ago
  It has definitely been a noticeable problem much earlier than that, my guess probably a half-decade after the dot com bubble burst. I was in school at Palo Alto Senior High School and I gradually began to notice really offensive trends in the way "silicon valley people" acted. When I left school the damage was already done. I remember one of the last examples I saw before college was in a Facebook group called "humans of Palo Alto" (which I objected to from the start), there was a picture of two men in nice clothing holding cardboard signs that said "need venture capital money". Their quote was "you know the Drake song 'started from the bottom now we're here'? Well, that's about us"
- icebraining 10y ago
  The Uber lawsuit doesn't fit in that pattern. Cab companies are also being used over the same issue[1], since drivers were always considered contractors. Uber followed the established model there, it's not an example of SV arrogance. [1] http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-03-26/news/chi-suit-taxi-drivers-should-be-considered-employees-20140326_1_taxi-drivers-yellow-cab-taxi-industry http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-03-26/news/chi-suit-...
golergka 10y ago
But when startup and engineer community praises him and puts him on a pedestal, doesn't it say something about them (us) as well?
hartator 10y ago
I don't think we should be proud of a country that scares genius away.

Phil_Latio 10y ago

Why does he have to answer that. It's just research for now?

tptacek 10y ago
Wasn't he just soliciting beta testers on Twitter? That doesn't sound like "research".
- jacquesm 10y ago
  Beta testers on the road with self driving cars amongst unsuspecting regular drivers, what could possibly go wrong?
fisherjeff 10y ago
My read on this tweet[0], retweeted by Comma.ai, is that they will be shipping an actual product by the end of the year, so I could see why the NHTSA would want answers before then. [0] https://twitter.com/anakkurt/status/785677337819947008 https://twitter.com/anakkurt/status/785677337819947008

Firebrand 10y ago

It's the government that's stifling innovation by burying it with so called regulations to the benefit of the monolithic automotive industry. His follow up tweets imply he's moving on to China, since they're less likely to be a major hamper of innovation. And we wonder why the United States' influence is in decline...

jacquesm 10y ago
For once this really isn't that. I've watched the whole 'comma' saga with some amazement that he'd actually take out his barely ready for closed road testing pile of cobbled together stuff out on a public road. Really, this sort of thing should be done in a much more controlled environment before pulling the trigger on releasing it on the unsuspecting public. Read the bloomberg article and be amazed.
michael_h 10y ago
> China [...] less likely to be a major hamper of innovation Another way to look at it: western foreigner looks to beta test a product with the lives of Chinese citizens. I'm not sure how well that's going to go over.

jacquesm 10y ago

I tweeted a joke yesterday that the Engineering Society had changed it's slogan to 'Move fast and kill people', I'm pretty happy that NHTSA has its feet solidly planted on terra firma and requires a bit of process around releasing something as important as self driving vehicles. The more software becomes mission critical the more we will need level headedness and quality rather than tantrums.

patcheudor 10y ago
Not mission critical, rather life critical. I've worked on several life critical systems as a security researcher, helping to develop controls in tightly controlled environments to keep people safe. Work on software controlled switches in industrial machines mostly. As I've followed these developments and those of Google and Tesla I've been wondering at times if I live in some alternate universe. The level of diligence and care that must go into systems which have the potential to maim an kill are nothing to laugh at. They require serious engineering which takes time. You can find the best and smartest humans on the planet and they'll still fail at building reasonable controls for life critical systems in controlled environments. When you are building these controls for life critical systems which will operate in the diversity of our roadways, honestly the task gets very hard. I'm not against progress and I do think that self-driving cars are the future. However, it may be wise for those trying to march towards that future at breakneck speeds to take a step back and consider that these systems should first be implemented as backups to humans. Develop the solutions through preemptive braking and accident avoidance where humans are still very much engaged in the driving activities or focus on building expertise in controlled environments. On that note, kudos to Google for doing just that. Their first phase has focused on low speed situations and have been restricted very much to lab work whereby they have paid employee's serving as observers and backup.
- semi-extrinsic 10y ago
  This. There is a huge amount of safety evaluations, precautions, training and failsafes we have to go through just for using a Class 4 laser at work in a controlled environment, where the worst possible outcome is permanently blinding someone working with it. For a machine with the potential to easily maim and kill, to be completely autonomously operated in a chaotic environment where it interacts not just with other computer controlled machines but also with humans, even children, I honestly hope that the amount of safety precautions required will grow very quickly.

pdog 10y ago

I can't believe the nerve of some of these Silicon Valley randroids. If they're so great, why do they think a little bit of regulation is going to kill them?

jacquesm 10y ago
At a guess the list of questions showed Hotz just how far away he really was from having a shippable product and since the 'fun' bit was over it caused him to throw in the towel. Prototyping stuff and proof of concepts are fun, productizing much less so. Moving to China will not really change that.
- karlshea 10y ago
  And, the list of requests in the special order are not ridiculous at all. They are a bunch of basic questions that I would hope someone making driver-assist hardware would be able to answer.
  - throwaway2016a 10y ago
    I second that. Having worked with blockchain companies, I have seen much scarier letters than this and if the blockchain messes up no one dies.[1] [1] At least not as a direct cause/effect relationship.
  - khuey 10y ago
    The first three roughly boil down to "please send us a copy of the manual".
    - TeMPOraL 10y ago
      Which is something he should have in a pretty much finished form if he's about to release a product.
wyager 10y ago
Is this a joke? If not, you clearly didn't read the letter; it's more than "a little regulation", it's a huge set of requests on an unreasonably short timeline. With regard to the more general point of your post, even if it's nominally possible to eke out a profit under overburdening regulation, you're still allowed to take a principled stand against it.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

bdrool 10y ago

> He's currently throwing a temper tantrum on Twitter He said the NHTSA made "no attempt at a dialog". What does he call that letter? Ridiculous.

smpetrey 10y ago

completely agree man. I'm pretty positive his organization failed to reach out to the NHTSA for product approval and now he's upset that they recommend pulling the product before it is tested in their VRTC facility in Washington. [1] [1] http://www.nhtsa.gov/Research/Vehicle-Research-&-Testing-(VRTC) http://www.nhtsa.gov/Research/Vehicle-Research-&-Testing-(VR...

BurningFrog 10y ago

If you read the letter, it's a lot more than "answering a few questions". He gets two weeks to provide an enormous amount of detailed information about the product, I assume under threat of legal consequences if any of it contains an error, interspersed with lots of reminders that they can and will close down his business if they feel like it.

6stringmerc 10y ago
Yeah it seems a lot of the community here thinks that if he just threw together a few bullet points in an email response the NHTSA would sit back, say "Okay, great have fun!" and not, you know, make a big deal out of it. I, uh, disagree.
- DanBC 10y ago
  I more thinking "why the hell doesn't he have the answers already?"
  - vvanders 10y ago
    This, it's not a secret that NHSTA is interested in self-driving cars and would be asking the serious questions that he should already have responses for.
  - 6stringmerc 10y ago
    Having mentioned this elsewhere, I have first-hand experience going between SMEs and X/Y/Z bureaucratic entities for half a decade and there's a big difference between "having the answers you think are satisfactory" and "providing answers that they think are satisfactory." GI Joe pointed this out long ago in that "Knowing is half the battle" and putting it into a work product that accomplishes its task is the other half of the battle in this case (with no guarantees the responses provided will end the inquiry / threat of fines).
    - taco_emoji 10y ago
      That doesn't really answer the question. You don't need first-hand experience to know that government red tape is onerous. It was flatly predictable that the NHTSA -- the government agency concerned with roadway safety -- would make such inquiries. So why didn't Comma work with the NHTSA and get their blessing before announcing a release date? I mean yeah, it sucks that the government is so darn picky about things, but that's not an excuse to just skip the process. They should have hired someone like you from the start to ensure that their ducks were in a row when they were ready to release.

oldmanjay 10y ago

I've been trying to convince myself that it's possible that some day people won't be tribalistic assholes constantly playing us v. them in situations that don't need it at all, and posts like yours leave me sad and shaking my head knowing it's way, way in the future.

slg 10y ago

I wrote the below less than 12 hours ago for another post still currently on the front page and it is just as appropriate here with the simple change of a company name. The arrogance of our industry seems to be growing. >One of the biggest flaws of the tech industry is the belief that being a tech expert is enough to disrupt other industries in which they don't have any expertise. Sometimes they get lucky and it works despite something like Uber's or Airbnb's total ignorance of the law. Sometimes it fails like with numerous cryptocurrency companies relearning why the finance industry has so many dang regulations. Seems like comma.ai is falling in the latter camp.

toomuchtodo 10y ago
There's still time for AirBnB and Uber to fall in the latter camp. Some have more runway than others.
mlvljr 10y ago
Soylent? I remember that comment, good one :)

gavman 10y ago

Exactly. The NHTSA memo seems extremely reasonable to me. If you're going to put to market a product where the smallest malfunction could easily kill many people (both those using your product and those around them), answering a couple regulation questions seems like a small hurdle to pass. Nothing here is saying "we want to shut you down", it's saying "we want to make sure you pass the most basic safety standards". That's an obvious part of a government's duty to keep it's citizens safe.

hartator 10y ago
I feel $21,000 fine per day sounds pretty like "we want to shut you down". He never presented comma.ai as an autopilot but as a very smart line assist and adaptive cruise control.
- gavman 10y ago
  By "we want to shut you down" I meant the NHTSA isn't presenting him with so many regulations and requirements that meeting them is impossible, effectively ending the product. They are definitely using the fine to force him to comply with their request to meet the very minimum bar of answering their questions about his product. This, as mentioned, makes total sense to me in terms of what government should do to protect the safety of its citizens. Edit: grammar
  - xiphias 10y ago
    Actually even the $21k fine should be nothing if he got $3M in venture capital. What's questionable is whether somebody can build safely an almost-self-driving car without a good team and with many years of experience in the field.
    - robotresearcher 10y ago
      $21K per day. Four months to consume $3M entirely.

hartator 10y ago

Sure, but now he left from China. It's our lost not his.

phusion 10y ago

Did he delete all of his tweets? Just found his verified account and it's empty.

zevyoura 10y ago
https://twitter.com/comma_ai https://twitter.com/comma_ai

Animats 10y ago

Holtz's Twitter rant is at [1]. Cruise Automation was very lucky to be acquired by GM before they got a similar letter. Similarly, Otto being acquired by Uber. They were both proposing to sell similar add-on systems. Their valuations would have been much lower after receiving such letters. NHTSA has it right. "It is insufficient to assert, as you do, that 'your product does not remove any of the driver responsibilities from the task of driving'. As you are undoubtedly aware, there is a high likelihood that some drivers will use your product in a manner that exceeds its intended purpose." Did Tesla got a similar letter? They have exactly that problem and exactly the same excuse. Tesla claims “Autopilot is an assist feature. You need to maintain control and responsibility of your vehicle.” Here are three dashcam videos of Teslas crashing on autopilot. These are the three where there was a stopped vehicle partially blocking the left edge of the lane, and the Tesla plowed right into it. Tesla blames the driver. Looks like the NHTSA isn't buying that. [1] https://twitter.com/comma_ai https://twitter.com/comma_ai [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ7vqAUJdbE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ7vqAUJdbE [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoSNw_n1Xgk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoSNw_n1Xgk [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQkx-4pFjus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQkx-4pFjus

maratd 10y ago
> Did Tesla got a similar letter? Did Mercedes? Did Volvo? They have the same systems in place in production vehicles. Mercedes even advertised their vehicles as autonomous. http://blog.caranddriver.com/mercedes-benz-pulls-e-class-ad-over-autonomous-confusion/ http://blog.caranddriver.com/mercedes-benz-pulls-e-class-ad-... > Here are three dashcam videos of Teslas crashing on autopilot. Glad you had the opportunity to bash Tesla.
- makmanalp 10y ago
  Yeah, they probably didn't - because large auto companies have time and resources devoted to safety and compliance.
  - dexterdog 10y ago
    And bribery

fiatpandas 10y ago

That letter was an easy out for him. When you boast about your tech and it doesn't deliver on the promise (and don't forget the Musk challenge), it looks much better if your exit is caused by government interference than if you were to quit on your own. It's kind of less of a failure. Granted, it's a huge stretch for him based on the language of the letter, but that's how I read the situation.

throwaway4job 10y ago
100%. If comma.ai truly worked, he wouldn't have this response.
tedmiston 10y ago
I think you've nailed it. In his demo video, Hotz said he aims to do 99% of driving. Musk said, "99% is easy, 99.9999% is hard."
rsp1984 10y ago
It may have been part of the strategy all along. I always found the schedule really aggressive. He announced it with big fanfare in late summer at TC Disrupt with availability end of 2016. I don't think he ever thought that was realistic.

throwaway4job 10y ago

My theory, based on his response, is that: 1) Comma.ai is materially flawed at present; and 2) George Hotz knows about these flaws; and 3) George Hotz is upset because even basic questions will expose the problems in his broken product; and 4) George Hotz is a sociopath who would happily kill people if it'd give him a shot of flipping his company and pocketing an 8 or 9 figure pay day. There is basically no chance that Comma works. If it did, they would've seen this coming, and handled it in literally _any_ other way. And the notion of China having less regulation is laughable. Depending on who dies when Comma kills somebody, and the outcry that results, he's likely to end up facing a firing squad.

a13n 10y ago

Wow, thank you for posting the document. That seems like an incredibly reasonable response compared to what I'd expect from a US gov organization. They're basically ensuring he's done due diligence that the product he's selling isn't going to kill/harm people... I found the whole thing extremely polite and reasonable. Since he hasn't done the due diligence he's throwing a fit. Sigh... Looks like self-driving isn't something that can be accomplished Today without a good amount of resources.

snickerbockers 10y ago

The problem is that they (Silicon Valley) think the reason their startups move so fast is that they are some sort of new meritocracy, and that other industries move slowly because they're held back by a "good old boys' club" mentality. The truth is that rapid advancements in software development happen because most software has a failure rate which would be considered appalling in any real engineering discipline.

andrewhillman 10y ago

I agree. I love how he thinks NHTSA should take a test drive. This is delusional thinking. It's going to be nearly impossible for an SV startup to create aftermarket parts for automobiles because the US dept of transportation is not interested in beta releases. Him being known as an "iphone hacker" probably doesn't help his cause. One accident induced bug could cripple the driver and startup. Sure, SV loves disruption, but the US dept isn't delusional.

debt 10y ago

Yeah because his tech probably can't do 1/5 of what hes claimed it can and the NHSTA would've found that out almost immediately. this all a pr move by andreeseen/horowitz to pump all their holdings in companies doing selfdriving tech. they prolly knew he'd never succeed. jus odd to throw in the towel after the gov comes knockin esp after a $3 mil investment like these investors are smart are we honestly supposed to believe they didn't know this was going to happen eh or maybe $3mil ain't nothing and they's jus threw it at him because jus maybe he could do it if not it's a win win probably both.