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It might be even worse than that. They likely think that they are on the path, because they are running a massive data-collection campaign on the sensor suite

It might be even worse than that. They likely think that they are on the path, because they are running a massive data-collection campaign on the sensor suite installed on the fleet. But the reality might be different. Running a data collection campaign is easy. Engineering products with machine learning is hard. Most of the teams don't even know what they need to know, to do it right. And so they engage into classical cargo cult of "carving wooden headphones". Regretfully, this is unlikely to change soon. It takes a decade to hone skills of building products with any technology. And the majority of people in the field are yet to join it.

smogcutter 8y ago
I mean, I'm also pessimistic about self driving cars, but I think it's reasonable to assume that Tesla engineers are aware that machine learning is hard.
- jacobush 8y ago
  Depends on how many are fired by angry managers. If you are unlucky, only the wood carving ones are left.
  - Animats 8y ago
    Tesla's "autopilot" project has had at least 3 of the project leaders quit.[1] [1] https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/04/tesla-autopilot-crisis-deepens-with-loss-of-third-autopilot-boss-in-18-months/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/04/tesla-autopilot-crisis-...
    - jacobush 8y ago
      I could also imagine being a reluctant woodcarver ... "Yes master. If we keep carving this piece of wooden golem, it will come alive!"
- dchichkov 8y ago
  I'm actually moderately optimistic about self driving cars. I think, we will see large fleets operating with no drivers in good conditions (and low speeds :) in a relatively short time frame. There are companies in which people had been honing skills of building products with machine learning for decades. BTW, a bit of a plug. I'm running a nonprofit/public dataset project aimed at increasing safety of autonomous vehicles. If anyone here wants to contribute (with suggestions / pull requests / following it on twitter / etc) - you'd be most welcome. Its: https://www.safe-av.org/ https://www.safe-av.org/ . I'm just starting it/trying it out - simple feedback or following the twitter handle would already be helpful.
- baybal2 8y ago
  That's strange. As one of most popular "crash management" systems on the market, one installed on Volvos is quite good at this, to the extend they put it's test video into their commercials. A sponsored article?
  - mcguire 8y ago
    https://support.volvocars.com/hk/cars/Pages/owners-manual.aspx?mc=v526hbat&my=2016&sw=15w46&category=bfe09b83a7da95c6c0a801e800441a78&article=3f6a5e488975bef4c0a8015160bb1f21 https://support.volvocars.com/hk/cars/Pages/owners-manual.as... "WARNING "When the adaptive cruise control is following another vehicle at speeds in excess ofca 30 km/h (20 mph) and the target is changed from a moving vehicle to a stationary vehicle, the adaptive cruise control will ignore the stationary vehicle and instead select the stored speed. "The driver must then intervene him/herself and brake."
    - rspeer 8y ago
      Wow, that is some really unclear and weaselly wording. Do I understand correctly that it means "This system might decide to 'follow' a stopped car and crash into it, and then we'll say it's your fault"?
      - mcguire 8y ago
        Yes.
    - RaceWon 8y ago
      As an open wheel formula car racer, I have to say that my best guess is most people who would purchase a "self-driving" car do not like to drive (if I could disable the anti-lock on my cars I would, and I ALWAYS drive with the skid control turned off. Although I have track tested some of the VW models circa 2010 on short autocross tracks with the stability program on and did not find it a hindrance to driving the cars sideways through the corners. I did not time test it to see which way was quicker, but again I felt in control and not that the car was fighting me; having said that I still drove my GTI with the stability program switched off even in the snow and especially in the rain) and I believe this is a major factor in these crashes. One of the most difficult things to do in a race, is to go fast/drive at your best the moment the flag goes green; and here it appears to me that we have people who don't like to drive, so therefore they likely aren't very good at it, and suddenly they are faced with a life and death crisis in which they NOW have to save their life by starting to drive the car when they are not even warmed up and they have very little room for error... I mean do the math.
- stephengillie 8y ago
  Yandex Taxi has Youtube videos of their self-driving car. This video of a car navigating a snowy Moscow street is especially impressive [0]. They don't seem to come up in self-driving car discussions on HN. [0] https://youtu.be/Bx08yRsR9ow https://youtu.be/Bx08yRsR9ow
  - amelius 8y ago
    A system which uses a LiDAR can be conceptually a lot simpler than one without. It tells you where all the obstacles are (stationary or not), so it naturally circumvents the main problem of Autopilot.
lovemenot 8y ago
>> Running a data collection campaign is easy. Not sure why you think so. If this is correct, there should be many other equivalent or better campaigns currently running at the same scale, right? On the contrary, I imagine that data is a very significant limiting factor in this field. Both data and computation are hard problems. AFAIK Tesla should still be leading in the former category by virtue of the number of its data collection devices. Crucially, they are collecting training data (real world human input) with which they will be able to train and test models. Note, I am not saying that Tesla's current models are good, or that they will easily improve them. Only that you are too dismissive of the potential advantage that Tesla's data affords them.
- dchichkov 8y ago
  Do you know, if the data collection campaign that they are running is not a cargo cult? I don't. I hope it is a good and well designed campaign, because it utilizes useful society resources. edit yes, personally I'm very impressed by the size of the campaign. It is just that again, there is a spectrum of difficulty between running a campaign even of this size and running it right, in a way that is actually useful to building a product. And still, in my opinion, building an autonomous vehicle is much harder in comparison, to running a campaign of that size in a right way.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- dogma1138 8y ago
  MobilEye uses all of their ADAS cameras and enables OEM participation in their crowdsourced mapping project https://www.mobileye.com/our-technology/rem/ https://www.mobileye.com/our-technology/rem/ I’m pretty sure those outnumber Tesla.
- focal-point 8y ago
  why don't they'd partner with Waymo? They can build the cars and collect the data, while Waymo can provide the ML expertise. I'm sure Tesla+Waymo would be a hit among a certain type of crowd.
zwkrt 8y ago
Can you elaborate on the phrase "carving wooden headphones"? I haven't heard of that term before.
- Declanomous 8y ago
  The island natives in the pacific got a lot of fantastic things from the servicemen who visited their islands during WWII. In an effort to bring them back, they emulated everything they saw the servicemen doing. In effect, they were just going through the motions without purpose. They built runways and carved wooden headphones like they saw the aviators wearing. Here's a summary from Wikipedia: With the end of the war, the military abandoned the airbases and stopped dropping cargo. In response, charismatic individuals developed cults among remote Melanesian populations that promised to bestow on their followers deliveries of food, arms, Jeeps, etc. The cult leaders explained that the cargo would be gifts from their own ancestors, or other sources, as had occurred with the outsider armies. In attempts to get cargo to fall by parachute or land in planes or ships again, islanders imitated the same practices they had seen the soldiers, sailors, and airmen use. Cult behaviors usually involved mimicking the day-to-day activities and dress styles of US soldiers, such as performing parade ground drills with wooden or salvaged rifles.[14] The islanders carved headphones from wood and wore them while sitting in fabricated control towers. They waved the landing signals while standing on the runways. They lit signal fires and torches to light up runways and lighthouses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult
  - baxtr 8y ago
    Fascinating. Search for “cargo cult” on google images for visual impressions

smogcutter 8y ago

I mean, I'm also pessimistic about self driving cars, but I think it's reasonable to assume that Tesla engineers are aware that machine learning is hard.

jacobush 8y ago
Depends on how many are fired by angry managers. If you are unlucky, only the wood carving ones are left.
- Animats 8y ago
  Tesla's "autopilot" project has had at least 3 of the project leaders quit.[1] [1] https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/04/tesla-autopilot-crisis-deepens-with-loss-of-third-autopilot-boss-in-18-months/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/04/tesla-autopilot-crisis-...
  - jacobush 8y ago
    I could also imagine being a reluctant woodcarver ... "Yes master. If we keep carving this piece of wooden golem, it will come alive!"
dchichkov 8y ago
I'm actually moderately optimistic about self driving cars. I think, we will see large fleets operating with no drivers in good conditions (and low speeds :) in a relatively short time frame. There are companies in which people had been honing skills of building products with machine learning for decades. BTW, a bit of a plug. I'm running a nonprofit/public dataset project aimed at increasing safety of autonomous vehicles. If anyone here wants to contribute (with suggestions / pull requests / following it on twitter / etc) - you'd be most welcome. Its: https://www.safe-av.org/ https://www.safe-av.org/ . I'm just starting it/trying it out - simple feedback or following the twitter handle would already be helpful.
baybal2 8y ago
That's strange. As one of most popular "crash management" systems on the market, one installed on Volvos is quite good at this, to the extend they put it's test video into their commercials. A sponsored article?
- mcguire 8y ago
  https://support.volvocars.com/hk/cars/Pages/owners-manual.aspx?mc=v526hbat&my=2016&sw=15w46&category=bfe09b83a7da95c6c0a801e800441a78&article=3f6a5e488975bef4c0a8015160bb1f21 https://support.volvocars.com/hk/cars/Pages/owners-manual.as... "WARNING "When the adaptive cruise control is following another vehicle at speeds in excess ofca 30 km/h (20 mph) and the target is changed from a moving vehicle to a stationary vehicle, the adaptive cruise control will ignore the stationary vehicle and instead select the stored speed. "The driver must then intervene him/herself and brake."
  - rspeer 8y ago
    Wow, that is some really unclear and weaselly wording. Do I understand correctly that it means "This system might decide to 'follow' a stopped car and crash into it, and then we'll say it's your fault"?
    - mcguire 8y ago
      Yes.
  - RaceWon 8y ago
    As an open wheel formula car racer, I have to say that my best guess is most people who would purchase a "self-driving" car do not like to drive (if I could disable the anti-lock on my cars I would, and I ALWAYS drive with the skid control turned off. Although I have track tested some of the VW models circa 2010 on short autocross tracks with the stability program on and did not find it a hindrance to driving the cars sideways through the corners. I did not time test it to see which way was quicker, but again I felt in control and not that the car was fighting me; having said that I still drove my GTI with the stability program switched off even in the snow and especially in the rain) and I believe this is a major factor in these crashes. One of the most difficult things to do in a race, is to go fast/drive at your best the moment the flag goes green; and here it appears to me that we have people who don't like to drive, so therefore they likely aren't very good at it, and suddenly they are faced with a life and death crisis in which they NOW have to save their life by starting to drive the car when they are not even warmed up and they have very little room for error... I mean do the math.
stephengillie 8y ago
Yandex Taxi has Youtube videos of their self-driving car. This video of a car navigating a snowy Moscow street is especially impressive [0]. They don't seem to come up in self-driving car discussions on HN. [0] https://youtu.be/Bx08yRsR9ow https://youtu.be/Bx08yRsR9ow
- amelius 8y ago
  A system which uses a LiDAR can be conceptually a lot simpler than one without. It tells you where all the obstacles are (stationary or not), so it naturally circumvents the main problem of Autopilot.

lovemenot 8y ago

>> Running a data collection campaign is easy. Not sure why you think so. If this is correct, there should be many other equivalent or better campaigns currently running at the same scale, right? On the contrary, I imagine that data is a very significant limiting factor in this field. Both data and computation are hard problems. AFAIK Tesla should still be leading in the former category by virtue of the number of its data collection devices. Crucially, they are collecting training data (real world human input) with which they will be able to train and test models. Note, I am not saying that Tesla's current models are good, or that they will easily improve them. Only that you are too dismissive of the potential advantage that Tesla's data affords them.

dchichkov 8y ago
Do you know, if the data collection campaign that they are running is not a cargo cult? I don't. I hope it is a good and well designed campaign, because it utilizes useful society resources. edit yes, personally I'm very impressed by the size of the campaign. It is just that again, there is a spectrum of difficulty between running a campaign even of this size and running it right, in a way that is actually useful to building a product. And still, in my opinion, building an autonomous vehicle is much harder in comparison, to running a campaign of that size in a right way.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
dogma1138 8y ago
MobilEye uses all of their ADAS cameras and enables OEM participation in their crowdsourced mapping project https://www.mobileye.com/our-technology/rem/ https://www.mobileye.com/our-technology/rem/ I’m pretty sure those outnumber Tesla.
focal-point 8y ago
why don't they'd partner with Waymo? They can build the cars and collect the data, while Waymo can provide the ML expertise. I'm sure Tesla+Waymo would be a hit among a certain type of crowd.

zwkrt 8y ago

Can you elaborate on the phrase "carving wooden headphones"? I haven't heard of that term before.

Declanomous 8y ago
The island natives in the pacific got a lot of fantastic things from the servicemen who visited their islands during WWII. In an effort to bring them back, they emulated everything they saw the servicemen doing. In effect, they were just going through the motions without purpose. They built runways and carved wooden headphones like they saw the aviators wearing. Here's a summary from Wikipedia: With the end of the war, the military abandoned the airbases and stopped dropping cargo. In response, charismatic individuals developed cults among remote Melanesian populations that promised to bestow on their followers deliveries of food, arms, Jeeps, etc. The cult leaders explained that the cargo would be gifts from their own ancestors, or other sources, as had occurred with the outsider armies. In attempts to get cargo to fall by parachute or land in planes or ships again, islanders imitated the same practices they had seen the soldiers, sailors, and airmen use. Cult behaviors usually involved mimicking the day-to-day activities and dress styles of US soldiers, such as performing parade ground drills with wooden or salvaged rifles.[14] The islanders carved headphones from wood and wore them while sitting in fabricated control towers. They waved the landing signals while standing on the runways. They lit signal fires and torches to light up runways and lighthouses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult
- baxtr 8y ago
  Fascinating. Search for “cargo cult” on google images for visual impressions