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Tesla’s Push to Build a Self-Driving Car Sparks Dissent Among Its Engineers
- arcanus 9y agoGood for the engineers having more ethics than VW, and resigning when they are asked to go farther than the technology allows.
- pkulak 9y agoVW engineers broke laws to do what they were asked to do. Tesla engineers are just doing the best that they can and taking longer than marketing would like. If that's a moral equivalence, then I guess we're all VW engineers.
- dom0 9y ago* having more ethics than <insert car manufacturer here> As we now know, all of them are cheating. (Also, "having more ethics" sounds really strange in my ears. "... being more ethical than those at <XY>"?).
- jaytaylor 9y agoTypical wsj paywall. Web link no longer seems to get around it, either, unfortunately.
- timdorr 9y agoPaywall bypass: http://facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.wsj.com/articles/teslas-push-to-build-a-self-driving-car-sparks-dissent-among-its-engineers-1503593742 http://facebook.com/l.php?u=https://www.wsj.com/articles/tes...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- yeahdef 9y agoclever girl
- misterbowfinger 9y agohow'd you do that?
- timdorr 9y agoAdd http://facebook.com/l.php?u= http://facebook.com/l.php?u= to the front of the URL.
- localhost 9y agoFYI I've found a way around the WSJ paywall - copy and paste the title into Facebook and click on that link.
- abalone 9y ago> In May 2015, Eric Meadows, then a Tesla engineer, engaged Autopilot on a drive in a Model S from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Cruising along Highway 1, the car jerked left toward oncoming traffic. He yelped and steered back on course, according to his account and a video of the incident. Is this video online?
- CupOfJava 9y ago> Mr. Meadows said he was later dismissed for what he was told were “performance issues.” Tesla declined to comment on Mr. Meadows but noted that the incident happened months before the release of the technology, giving the company plenty of time to work out problems that had been discovered during test drives. We used to treat our test pilots with the highest regard. How low have we fallen?
- bitL 9y agoPublic video of a problem during testing is a big no-no. Here in Germany nobody shows issues Porsche test drivers have during >300km/h tests on public highways in the night, only if they cause a major accident.
- dkonofalski 9y agoThis is the third or 4th time I've heard that story repeated and the details change each time Meadows tells it, in my opinion. The date and viability of the system changes when I've read it and that leads me to believe that his motivation may not be altruistic but vengeful instead. He probably did get fired from Tesla for performance issues and so he feels the need to fire back at them by noting an incident that happened in the very early stages of the technology's development. We treated test pilots with the highest regard because they were separated from the technology/machinery itself. There was no personal stake in it for them other than making it out alive and exposing issues with the systems being tested. In the current cases, the "test pilots" have a vested interest in the system because they are the ones designing it and deploying it. That's why I have to stifle my gut reaction when I hear stories like Meadows'. Which is more likely, that Tesla would risk its entire reputation by releasing software that was dangerously inadequate or that he's a little butthurt about getting fired and threw a bit of a tantrum?
- manyoso 9y agohttp://www.cetusnews.com/tech/Tesla%E2%80%99s-Push-to-Build-a-Self-Driving-Car-Sparks-Dissent-Among-its-Engineers.B15UfxtwY3O-.html http://www.cetusnews.com/tech/Tesla%E2%80%99s-Push-to-Build-... around paywall
- empath75 9y agoThe level-2 driving that Tesla is pushing seems like a worst case scenario to me. Requiring the driver to be awake and alert while not requiring them to actually do anything for long stretches of time is a recipe for disaster. Neither the driver nor the car manufacturer will have clear responsibility when there is an accident. The driver will blame the system for failing and the manufacturer will blame the driver for not paying sufficient attention. It's lose-lose for everyone. The company, the drivers, the insurance companies, and other people on the road.
- smileysteve 9y agoUnless it works. better than a human. > 90-99% of the time. Mostly, the drivers, insurance, companies and other people on the road have fewer accidents.
- gambiting 9y agoI absolutely disagree. It can't be better than humans. It needs to be flawless. Any problems where people get killed will delay public acceptance of the technology by decades, even if "statistically it's safer than humans". People don't give a damn about statistics, they give a damn about tabloids shouting "self driving cars kill another innocent person!!!". We literally can't afford that.
- 794CD01 9y agoThen that's our own fault for being too stupid to have self-driving cars. Ideally, we should embrace them even if they are slightly more dangerous than human drivers, because we are getting the benefit of the time that would otherwise be spent driving.
- a13n 9y agoSo you're saying we should let more people die (via human driving) to avoid people getting upset over tabloids ignoring statistics?
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- jballanc 9y agoHonestly, I don't understand why the automobile industry doesn't learn from the airline industry. Airplanes have worked out how to balance autopilot capabilities with the need for pilots to remain engaged and attentive for years. Simply implement a Drive-By-Wire, similar to Airbus' Fly-By-Wire systems. A driver's inputs to the controls would still be required, but the autonomous systems could prevent or limit certain actions (such as accelerating into a stopped vehicle or swerving off the road).
- alexanderstears 9y agoThere's a norm of competence in airline pilots. We can't say the same for automobile drivers.
- pm90 9y agoCorrect. There's also the small detail that while autopilot systems might be a rounding error in the cost of an airplane, it would be a significant financial burden for average joe/jill driver.
- verytrivial 9y agoPlus the sky is, on average, empty.
- onewhonknocks 9y agoCan't we? (about the vast majority of automobile drivers)
- alexanderstears 9y agoDepending on where you set your standards, sure. But we have an expectation in the United States safety technology has to accommodate darn near everyone. We have a law that airbags have to accommodate unbelted passengers: http://www.iihs.org/iihs/sr/statusreport/article/35/6/1 http://www.iihs.org/iihs/sr/statusreport/article/35/6/1 Now sure, a passenger can be different than the driver but it's the same philosophy. The amount of illegal maneuvers I see every day on my commute is astonishing - not using blinkers, intruding on cross walks, not moving over for emergency vehicles, following too closely, etc. It doesn't help that the only traffic law enforcement is really around speeding / running red lights / DUIs. The problem with autonomous cars isn't the autonomous cars - it's accommodating non-autonomous actors. It only takes one google car hitting an old lady who's chasing a duck on the street to become CNN breaking news for the next 3 months a la that airliner that disappeared.
- manyoso 9y agoBiggest news buried at the end. It says that several engineers have quit since October 2016 (including the head of autopilot) when Tesla started selling "fully autonomous driving" hardware upgrade packages. Says the engineers don't agree the hardware is capable of supporting this and that it was ultimately a marketing decision.
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- RonanTheGrey 9y agoIf I were one of those engineers, and didn't believe in the claims being made, I'd personally be quite worried of being held personally liable if the company gets sued in the case of accidental death. Last thing I'd want is my bug being responsible for someone dying. E.g. I would quit too.
- Facemelters 9y agoGood thing it would be almost impossible to attach personal liability to an employee of a corporation unless they intentionally designed the system to be unsafe with malicious intent.
- castle-bravo 9y agoFrankly, I would be more worried about someone dying using a system that I had a hand in than whatever effect it might have on my career.
- jacquesm 9y ago> Last thing I'd want is my bug being responsible for someone dying. Is exactly what was written above.
- Dylan16807 9y agoIn the context of a lawsuit. Which is different from not wanting it for its own sake. But quitting doesn't retroactively remove your hand from the system if that's your main worry...
- tdees40 9y agoI just ordered a Model S with Autopilot, and as I've been reading the comments on the various Tesla forums, I'm not sure I'm ever going to use it. Some of the stories are honestly terrifying (sudden deceleration on the highway, swerving into other lanes, etc).
- ghostbrainalpha 9y agoWould you still be concerned in a situation where you were the only car on the road?
- tdees40 9y agoYes, there are lots of complaints about it handling curves poorly, misreading overpasses as solid objects, etc. etc.
- aerovistae 9y agoAbsolutely do not use it. I am one of the biggest Tesla fans out there. I fucking love the company. But Autopilot in its current form is nothing short of dangerous. I took a test drive in a Model S a couple months ago and enabled Autopilot at the Tesla rep's encouragement while on a straight stretch of route 90 near Boston. We were going 70mph, a safe speed. The car came to a point where the highway curved, and a slight deceleration is required to navigate the curve correctly. Little did I know, Autopilot stays at the speed you set and does not alter it as the environment requires, short of not hitting the car in front of you. So of course it tried to take the curve at 70mph and swung out of the lane almost instantly, prompting immediate corrective action from me to avoid a serious accident. I couldn't believe the Tesla rep hadn't made this clear. I was required to have my hands on the wheel, but the position of my hands doesn't ensure that I'm mentally ready for egregious errors on the car's part and prepared to correct them at a split second's notice at all times. Operational question mark aside, as an investor I was also astonished that the software was still in such a rudimentary state that it didn't know to slow down on curves. I found this troubling. It was scarcely more advanced than cruise control, to be honest. It's the one place where I think Elon is really gambling with people's lives as well as his company's credibility, the former being an infinitely worse transgression than the latter.
- frgtpsswrdlame 9y agoSince we're finally getting some refutations to Self-Driving Hype, let me drop some quotes here: “I tell adult audiences not to expect it in their lifetimes. And I say the same thing to students” "Merely dealing with lighting conditions, weather conditions, and traffic conditions is immensely complicated. The software requirements are extremely daunting. Nobody even has the ability to verify and validate the software. I estimate that the challenge of fully automated cars is 10 orders of magnitude more complicated than [fully automated] commercial aviation." - Steve Shladover, transportation researcher at the University of California, Berkeley http://www.automobilemag.com/news/the-hurdles-facing-autonomous-vehicles/ http://www.automobilemag.com/news/the-hurdles-facing-autonom... "With autonomous cars, you see these videos from Google and Uber showing a car driving around, but people have not taken it past 80 percent. It's one of those problems where it's easy to get to the first 80 percent, but it's incredibly difficult to solve the last 20 percent. If you have a good GPS, nicely marked roads like in California, and nice weather without snow or rain, it's actually not that hard. But guess what? To solve the real problem, for you or me to buy a car that can drive autonomously from point A to point B—it's not even close. There are fundamental problems that need to be solved." - Herman Herman, director of the Carnegie-Mellon University Robotics Institute https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/d7y49y/robotics-lab-uber-gutted-says-driving-cars-are-not-even-close-carnegie-mellon-nrec https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/d7y49y/robotics-l... "While I enthusiastically support the research, development, and testing of self-driving cars, as human limitations and the propensity for distraction are real threats on the road, I am decidedly less optimistic about what I perceive to be a rush to field systems that are absolutely not ready for widespread deployment, and certainly not ready for humans to be completely taken out of the driver’s seat." - Mary Cummings, director of the Humans and Autonomy Laboratory at Duke https://www.commerce.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/c85cb4ef-8d7f-40fb-968c-c476c5220a3c/8BC0CC7E137483CEFD0C928ECB14E74E.cummings-senate-testimony-2016.pdf https://www.commerce.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/c85cb4ef... [pdf] All quotes pulled from this article (which is really quite good and you should read it in full): https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/10/self-driving-cars-how-badly-is-the-technology-hyped.html https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/10/self-driving-cars-ho...
- ghaff 9y agoThere's quite a bit of research on the Duke site around, among other things, issues with inattentiveness when supervising automated systems. https://hal.pratt.duke.edu/publications https://hal.pratt.duke.edu/publications I saw Cummings speak on a panel a couple years back. She talked about automation in aircraft (she's a former Navy fighter pilot) and she made the comment that humans don't handle boredom well.
- cletus 9y agoWhat befuddles me is that in all these discussions about self-driving cars seemingly no one refers to the massive body of knowledge in this area that comes from the aviation world. I've posted variants of this same comment several times and I'm starting to feel like a broken record. Look at studies of efforts to make planes safer by removing the human element. While efforts like autopilot have made things safer it reaches the point where more automation can reduce safety as pilots are no longer alert and/or don't trust the instruments and/or can't fully manually override the automation. Call it the uncanny valley of automation safety. Bridging that last few percent for true automation (ie where vehicles aren't designed to have drivers or pilots at all) is going to be _incredibly_ difficult, to the point where I'm not convinced it won't require something resembling a general AI. All of this is why I think driverless cars are going to take much longer than many expect.
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- tlb 9y agoThere's a big difference: commercial pilots are highly trained, even-tempered, and take their job seriously. Most drivers are lazy, distracted, and apt to do something stupid in an emergency. It's very hard to make something safer than a commercial pilot. It's much easier to make something safer than a typical driver.
- erobbins 9y agoYeah that validates his point. If the arguably most highly trained vehicle operators around lose situational awareness and fail to recover after automation fails, what do you think will happen with untrained drivers?
- bdamm 9y agoThat's actually a confirmation bias being missed. Aircraft systems fail and commercial pilots take over and land without mishap all the time. Components inside airplanes, at airports, and even inside air traffic control can and do fail. One example is the attack on the Chicago air traffic control system. Dozens and perhaps even over a hundred aircraft suddenly were flying around with no oversight. Every single pilot took local control, negotiated with the other pilots, and collectively were able to either land or divert without incident.
- jijojv 9y agoLevel 2 still does not drive smoothly as many have confirmed on their forums. They do require you to jiggle the wheel every few mins to ensure you're alert. There's also https://www.hbsslaw.com/cases/tesla-autopilot-2-ap2-defect https://www.hbsslaw.com/cases/tesla-autopilot-2-ap2-defect
- strange_quark 9y agoIt's amazing to me that Tesla is able to sell a car in its price range that lacks basic features that come standard on a $17k Corolla like adaptive cruise or automatic emergency breaking, especially since they effectively reduced the capabilities of their cars by rolling out AP2. If any other company tried to pull that, they'd be laughed out of the room, but somehow, Tesla is cheered.
- mph1 9y agoYou've clearly never driven a telsa if you think a $17k Corolla has more advanced adaptive cruise control. I've driven my model S over 15,000 miles, with probably over 50% of that on autopilot (mainly interstates), and NEVER had an issue with the adaptive cruise control. Its absolutely flawless. (autopilot has its quirks, although its still an extremely useful feature, and the primary reason I bought a tesla)
- modeless 9y agoDo you have the Mobileye hardware?
- twsted 9y agoA reference to Chris Lattner: "In recent months, the team has lost at least 10 engineers and four top managers—including Mr. Anderson’s successor, who lasted less than six months before leaving in June."
- true_tuna 9y agoPlease stop posting paywalled articles. Especially WSJ. This community represents the future of the internet. I don't know what the answer is for making sure content providers get paid, but the WSJ model isn't it. So let's vote with our attention (or lack there of) and kill this annoying practice before it makes the internet an even more walled and unpleasant place.
- Strom 9y agoYour post lacks information on the part of why the WSJ model isn't acceptable. Paying money for a newspaper isn't exactly unprecedented, and there are plenty of people who are fine with that model.
- devrandomguy 9y agoThey want us to commit to a subscription, using a credit card, in US currency. That is significantly different from the newspaper model, because it requires some trust on my part, and it is quite awkward; my CC sits in a firesafe when I am not traveling. Subscriptions also encourage FOMO behavior, something I am currently having a bit of trouble with, personally. I too would prefer that we do not allow subscription content here. If the story is significant, then it will be covered elsewhere.
- Animats 9y agoTesla's system doesn't have enough sensors. Musk forced his engineers to try to do this almost entirely with vision processing, and that was a terrible decision. Vision processing isn't that good yet. Everybody else uses LIDAR. I've been saying for years that the right approach was to take the technology from Advanced Scientific Concepts' flash LIDAR and get the cost down. I first saw that demonstrated in 2004 on an optical bench in Santa Monica. It became an expensive product, mostly sold to DoD. It's expensive because the units require exotic InGaAs custom silicon and aren't made in quantity. Space-X uses one of their LIDAR units to dock the Dragon spacecraft with the space station. Last year, Continental, the big century-old German auto parts maker, bought the technology from Advanced Scientific Concepts and started getting the cost down.[1] Volume production in 2020. Interim LIDAR products are already shipping in volume. Continental is quietly making all the parts needed for self-driving. LIDAR. Radar. Computers. Actuators. Cameras. Software for sensor integration into an "environment model". They design and make all the parts needed, and provide some of the system integration. Apple and Google were trying to avoid becoming mere low-margin Tier I auto parts suppliers. Continental, though, is quite successful as a Tier I auto parts supplier. Revenue of €40 billion in 2016. Earnings about €2.8 billion. Dividend of €850 million. They can make money on low-margin parts. Continental may end up quietly ruling automatic driving. [1] https://www.continental-automotive.com/en-gl/Passenger-Cars/Chassis-Safety/Advanced-Driver-Assistance-Systems/Lidars/High-Resolution-3D-Flash-Lidar https://www.continental-automotive.com/en-gl/Passenger-Cars/...
- tyrw 9y agoIt depends on what you're optimizing for. Others using LIDAR are optimizing for speed to market, while potentially sacrificing ability to solve the problem as fully. Musk's argument is that we know for certain that the entire road system can be navigated by visual cues, because that's how humans do it. We do not know for certain that this is possible with LIDAR.
- sbierwagen 9y agoMusk's argument is that we know for certain that the entire road system can be navigated by visual cues We know for certain that human brains can be assembled out of regular atoms, but raising funds for a company that manufactures brains would be getting rather ahead of our current level of technology. The same might be true of computer vision and autonomous vehicles.
- crocal 9y agoThe only industry to have produced truly driverless public transportation systems is the rail industry. Not aeronautics. Rail systems happens to be my business and what I read here makes me very worried. I don't think the majority understands what safety means in mass transportation. It's not about running miles and miles without accidents and basically saying "see"? It's about demonstrating /by design/ that the /complete/ system over its /complete/ lifetime will not kill anyone. In terms of probability of failure it translates in demonstrated hazard rates of less than 1E-9 /including the control systems/. This take very special techniques and if that could've been done using only vehicle sensors, it would have been adopted by us long ago. I am also sorry to report that doubling cameras and sensor fusion will not get you an acceptable safety level. We've tried that too, rookies. Is it "fair", to use Elon's argument? After all, isn't additional safety enough compared to existing situation. Ah but we have been there too! For driver assistance it is indeed better. Similar systems were deployed during the second half of 20th century (e.g. KVB, ASFA, etc). But the limit is clear. It only /improves/ driver's failure rate. It does not substitute for the driver. If you substitute, you have to do much much much better. Nobody will ride a driverless vehicle provided the explanation that it is, you know, "already an improvement when compared to a typical driver". Is it fair? Maybe not, but that's the whole point for entrusting lives to a machine.
- tyrw 9y agoIt seems like you're taking your own opinion as a universal truth. There are many people (myself included) who will happily ride in a well-tested autonomous vehicle, particularly if the alternative is a taxi, uber, or bus driver who is just going through the motions. 5x safer is still an improvement in my eyes, even if it's still short of the gold standard for aviation.
- crocal 9y agoNo personal opinion here. It's just facts from the only ones around who have done this before. Your argument is flawed. We have also been there. Here is the catch. You are willing to take the risk, but society as a whole will not. As soon as you release /total/ control to a machine, public authorities having authorized this become responsible for your life and those your car may threaten. Requirements for said authorities to accept such things will be staggering. In other words, it is you that is taking your own opinion for the universal truth. You reason in a model where the driver is the only responsible party for reckless driving.
- desireco42 9y agoPlease no paywall articles. Please.
- rsp1984 9y agoNon-paywalled version: https://twitter.com/newsycombinator/status/900780079906791424 https://twitter.com/newsycombinator/status/90078007990679142...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]