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Many people feel the same way listening to Elon Musk talking about AI and self driving... And yet every Tesla owner tells me that their car is just one update

Many people feel the same way listening to Elon Musk talking about AI and self driving... And yet every Tesla owner tells me that their car is just one update away from driving itself across the country.

marvin 6y ago
Musk states that his company's intention is to advance computer vision to the point where it can safely drive a car, and then offer this technology with the sensors deployed in their current vehicle fleet. Milton stated that using a very secure HTML5 supercomputer that's linked on the data network allows them to build their own chips. These statements are not equivalent in what they imply about the speaker. It's not subtle.
- gamblor956 6y ago
  Musk says a lot of silly things about areas of science and technology he knows nothing about. People who do know about those topics feel the same way about Musk as most of HN, a web-technologies focused forum, feels about Milton talking about HTML5.
  - jryle70 6y ago
    Do you have some examples of those silly things?
_jal 6y ago
> just one update away What's the over/under on cold fusion before self-driving? It used to be more fun before the search engines start pushing age over relevance, but searching for 'elon musk claims' is entertaining.
- apendleton 6y ago
  Self-driving first for sure, since cold fusion isn't thought to even be theoretically possible, and I think self-driving is likely to arrive sometime before "never," even if it's a long time from now. With the uptick in funding for vanilla/hot fusion, though, self-driving vs. hot fusion (Q>1) is actually a legitimately interesting question, I think. I'd probably still bet on self-driving, I guess? But I'd be less confident (and I don't think either is soon).
fossuser 6y ago
It's not the same: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hx7BXih7zx8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hx7BXih7zx8 You can watch that talk and see the approach they're taking. Maybe you're more skeptical than they are about the near term possibility, but you can see that the work and progress is real. The AGI risk is real too. What Milton said doesn't make semantic sense, it's not a question of timelines. https://intelligence.org/2017/10/13/fire-alarm/ https://intelligence.org/2017/10/13/fire-alarm/
- gamblor956 6y ago
  I don't understand why it's relevant to watch a video of someone who is not Musk as a comparison to Milton. I'm not claiming that the Head of AI Research at Tesla has said stupid things (I don't think he has), I'm saying that Musk has said stupid and nonsensical things that don't make semantic or scientific sense, and in comparison to Milton their hucksterism is just a difference of degrees.
  - fossuser 6y ago
    He's the head of AI and self-driving at Tesla because Elon hired him to do exactly that and understands the approach they're taking. It's not a matter of degree, but one of kind.
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  I firmly believe that some parts of the AI community have a vast overestimation of their capabilities. AGI is not 50 years away - it is unknowably far in the future. It may be a century, it may be a millenium. We just know far too little about the human mind to make any firm prediction - we're like people in Ancient Greece or 1800s England trying to predict how long it would take to develop technology to reach the moon. We are at the level where we can't understand how the nervous system of a worm works in terms of computation. Emulating a human-level mind is so far beyond our capabilities that it is absurd to even imagine we know how to do it, "we just need a little more time".
  - marvin 6y ago
DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
I got the HW3 hardware update in my MX a few weeks ago - and from what my car has demonstrated to me what it’s capable of - I sincerely believe Tesla will have driveway-to-driveway autonomy for simpler scenarios (e.g. suburbia and semi-rural areas, with clear road-markings) within two years. I appreciate that what I just said comes with a huge caveat - and that probably 80% of the work will be hammering-down everything else - but consider that Google’s Waymo is already well-past that already.
- gamblor956 6y ago
  If Tesla is planning to do self-driving entirely with vision systems, they are more than a decade away from a driveway-to-driveway autonomy unless you mean from your driveway to your next door neighbor's driveway, seeing as how they can't identify trucks on a highway, stalled objects on a roadway, or, per Consumer Reports, stop signs, traffic lights, or road markings on any road other than major highways and streets.
bryanlarsen 6y ago
> And yet every Tesla owner tells me that their car is just one update away from driving itself across the country. I just drove my Tesla half way across the country and back last week. And based on the performance of Autosteer and the neighboring car visualizations they're nowhere close to Level 5 self driving. Love the car and am a big Tesla/SpaceX fanboy. But I won't believe it'll achieve Level 5 until I see it.

marvin 6y ago

Musk states that his company's intention is to advance computer vision to the point where it can safely drive a car, and then offer this technology with the sensors deployed in their current vehicle fleet. Milton stated that using a very secure HTML5 supercomputer that's linked on the data network allows them to build their own chips. These statements are not equivalent in what they imply about the speaker. It's not subtle.

gamblor956 6y ago
Musk says a lot of silly things about areas of science and technology he knows nothing about. People who do know about those topics feel the same way about Musk as most of HN, a web-technologies focused forum, feels about Milton talking about HTML5.
- jryle70 6y ago
  Do you have some examples of those silly things?

_jal 6y ago

> just one update away What's the over/under on cold fusion before self-driving? It used to be more fun before the search engines start pushing age over relevance, but searching for 'elon musk claims' is entertaining.

apendleton 6y ago
Self-driving first for sure, since cold fusion isn't thought to even be theoretically possible, and I think self-driving is likely to arrive sometime before "never," even if it's a long time from now. With the uptick in funding for vanilla/hot fusion, though, self-driving vs. hot fusion (Q>1) is actually a legitimately interesting question, I think. I'd probably still bet on self-driving, I guess? But I'd be less confident (and I don't think either is soon).

fossuser 6y ago

It's not the same: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hx7BXih7zx8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hx7BXih7zx8 You can watch that talk and see the approach they're taking. Maybe you're more skeptical than they are about the near term possibility, but you can see that the work and progress is real. The AGI risk is real too. What Milton said doesn't make semantic sense, it's not a question of timelines. https://intelligence.org/2017/10/13/fire-alarm/ https://intelligence.org/2017/10/13/fire-alarm/

gamblor956 6y ago
I don't understand why it's relevant to watch a video of someone who is not Musk as a comparison to Milton. I'm not claiming that the Head of AI Research at Tesla has said stupid things (I don't think he has), I'm saying that Musk has said stupid and nonsensical things that don't make semantic or scientific sense, and in comparison to Milton their hucksterism is just a difference of degrees.
- fossuser 6y ago
  He's the head of AI and self-driving at Tesla because Elon hired him to do exactly that and understands the approach they're taking. It's not a matter of degree, but one of kind.
tsimionescu 6y ago
I firmly believe that some parts of the AI community have a vast overestimation of their capabilities. AGI is not 50 years away - it is unknowably far in the future. It may be a century, it may be a millenium. We just know far too little about the human mind to make any firm prediction - we're like people in Ancient Greece or 1800s England trying to predict how long it would take to develop technology to reach the moon. We are at the level where we can't understand how the nervous system of a worm works in terms of computation. Emulating a human-level mind is so far beyond our capabilities that it is absurd to even imagine we know how to do it, "we just need a little more time".
- marvin 6y ago

DaiPlusPlus 6y ago

I got the HW3 hardware update in my MX a few weeks ago - and from what my car has demonstrated to me what it’s capable of - I sincerely believe Tesla will have driveway-to-driveway autonomy for simpler scenarios (e.g. suburbia and semi-rural areas, with clear road-markings) within two years. I appreciate that what I just said comes with a huge caveat - and that probably 80% of the work will be hammering-down everything else - but consider that Google’s Waymo is already well-past that already.

gamblor956 6y ago
If Tesla is planning to do self-driving entirely with vision systems, they are more than a decade away from a driveway-to-driveway autonomy unless you mean from your driveway to your next door neighbor's driveway, seeing as how they can't identify trucks on a highway, stalled objects on a roadway, or, per Consumer Reports, stop signs, traffic lights, or road markings on any road other than major highways and streets.

bryanlarsen 6y ago

> And yet every Tesla owner tells me that their car is just one update away from driving itself across the country. I just drove my Tesla half way across the country and back last week. And based on the performance of Autosteer and the neighboring car visualizations they're nowhere close to Level 5 self driving. Love the car and am a big Tesla/SpaceX fanboy. But I won't believe it'll achieve Level 5 until I see it.