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Obviously I have no idea what's in their heads, but a plausible train of thought goes like: Legal : If you sell it as a drive assist and not a driver replaceme

Obviously I have no idea what's in their heads, but a plausible train of thought goes like: Legal : If you sell it as a drive assist and not a driver replacement, you're off the hook, with a high probability. It's on the drivers if they get complacent. There may even be precedents with similar products for trucks. Moral: pushing this now will very likely kill some people that would otherwise be alive (drivers or pedestrians). But it's very unlikely to be a carnage - I'd dare say even impossible. On the other hand, moving the technology forward and directly into widespread commercial use will save people, and likely even... what's the equivalent word for a "carnage" but where people are saved? Miracle. Branding: well, there you have a real risk. Public opinion is fickle, and a particularly gruesome accident might do some real damage, both to Tesla and to self driving technologies in general. But then, they do have a high risk high reward mentality, and the chance is good that the first bad accident (statistically inevitable) will come after the advantages are proven and well established.

foepys 6y ago
> Legal : If you sell it as a drive assist and not a driver replacement, you're off the hook, with a high probability In Germany they lost a case about their Autopilot advertisement. So not even legally they are in the clear.
- radu_floricica 6y ago
  What was the case about? If it was in the opposite direction (that they branded a drive assist system as an autopilot) then it might actually help them now. "Look, we even have a court decision saying it's not an autopilot".
ethbr0 6y ago
> On the other hand, moving the technology forward and directly into widespread commercial use will save people This is the only rationale I can come up with for Tesla's approach. The tenets go like this: 1) The ultimate realization of self driving will be successful, and will have profoundly positive impacts on society (e.g. safety, urban planning, ease and availability of transportation, economic) 2) The path to that ultimate realization contains many local optima traps 3) The only way to push past those local optima is by acquiring large amount of real world automated driving data, using systems in production From a technical standpoint, I'm disinclined to disagree with them on the necessity of large amounts of real world system behavior data as a key ingredient. Personally, I also think we (humans) have become way too culturally risk adverse. Or, to put the calculus another way: if I have a credible belief that I can save some number of future humans, what is the acceptable moral number of current humans to place at risk and/or kill? Imho, that's a grave, serious decision, but not one to which the morally absolute is "zero, always." From a purely ethical standpoint (leaving legal aside), the crux would seem to be informed users. Not all Tesla drivers are likely capable of understanding the current SotA, and I'd hope (and expect) that Tesla's phased rollout of the beta is informed by previous user interaction with assisted driving.
- Someone 6y ago
  “The only way to push past those local optima is by acquiring large amount of real world automated driving data, using systems in production” That, I don’t see ever being true. What would you get from that that you couldn’t get from “large amount of real world human driving data, using systems in production”?
  - optimiz3 6y ago
    Try any system ever that has had a v2. Engineering is not omnipotent.
  - ethbr0 6y ago
    If I understand your point (why not backseat systems?) then I'd say it fails to capture the complexity of feedback from the automated systems. Or to put it another way, every time the driver's inputs diverge from the automated system's inputs, the test run is invalidated. You're no longer getting results of what the automated system did.
- Negitivefrags 6y ago
  > Personally, I also think we (humans) have become way too culturally risk adverse. This is what it really comes down to. Imagine if we invented the car today in our current cultural climate. I don’t think it would be possible for humanity to reap it’s advantages. Back when it was invented people actually had to drive the things around on public roads that had a bunch of pedestrians walking haphazardly accross them continuously. I was an autopilot skeptic, and it’s entirely for this reason. I didn’t think it would be possible for anyone to actually do what needed to be done to get this technology across the line. That is to say, give it to customers before it is safe. If Tesla is actually able to keep doing this without it getting killed politically, then I think it actually will happen, and that gives me some hope for humanity more generally.
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
    The car didn't replace walking, it replaced carriages, which were easily as heavy and could probably go much faster than the first cars. Sure, the horses would generally try to avoid obstacles, but horses pulling a heavy carriage at speed are not infinitely maneuverable. So, I doubt that cars would have ever seemed like a huge risk initially simply because it wasn't significantly different from what came immediately before it.
zalkota 6y ago
It also saves people who would otherwise be dead.

foepys 6y ago

> Legal : If you sell it as a drive assist and not a driver replacement, you're off the hook, with a high probability In Germany they lost a case about their Autopilot advertisement. So not even legally they are in the clear.

radu_floricica 6y ago
What was the case about? If it was in the opposite direction (that they branded a drive assist system as an autopilot) then it might actually help them now. "Look, we even have a court decision saying it's not an autopilot".

ethbr0 6y ago

> On the other hand, moving the technology forward and directly into widespread commercial use will save people This is the only rationale I can come up with for Tesla's approach. The tenets go like this: 1) The ultimate realization of self driving will be successful, and will have profoundly positive impacts on society (e.g. safety, urban planning, ease and availability of transportation, economic) 2) The path to that ultimate realization contains many local optima traps 3) The only way to push past those local optima is by acquiring large amount of real world automated driving data, using systems in production From a technical standpoint, I'm disinclined to disagree with them on the necessity of large amounts of real world system behavior data as a key ingredient. Personally, I also think we (humans) have become way too culturally risk adverse. Or, to put the calculus another way: if I have a credible belief that I can save some number of future humans, what is the acceptable moral number of current humans to place at risk and/or kill? Imho, that's a grave, serious decision, but not one to which the morally absolute is "zero, always." From a purely ethical standpoint (leaving legal aside), the crux would seem to be informed users. Not all Tesla drivers are likely capable of understanding the current SotA, and I'd hope (and expect) that Tesla's phased rollout of the beta is informed by previous user interaction with assisted driving.

Someone 6y ago
“The only way to push past those local optima is by acquiring large amount of real world automated driving data, using systems in production” That, I don’t see ever being true. What would you get from that that you couldn’t get from “large amount of real world human driving data, using systems in production”?
- optimiz3 6y ago
  Try any system ever that has had a v2. Engineering is not omnipotent.
- ethbr0 6y ago
  If I understand your point (why not backseat systems?) then I'd say it fails to capture the complexity of feedback from the automated systems. Or to put it another way, every time the driver's inputs diverge from the automated system's inputs, the test run is invalidated. You're no longer getting results of what the automated system did.
Negitivefrags 6y ago
> Personally, I also think we (humans) have become way too culturally risk adverse. This is what it really comes down to. Imagine if we invented the car today in our current cultural climate. I don’t think it would be possible for humanity to reap it’s advantages. Back when it was invented people actually had to drive the things around on public roads that had a bunch of pedestrians walking haphazardly accross them continuously. I was an autopilot skeptic, and it’s entirely for this reason. I didn’t think it would be possible for anyone to actually do what needed to be done to get this technology across the line. That is to say, give it to customers before it is safe. If Tesla is actually able to keep doing this without it getting killed politically, then I think it actually will happen, and that gives me some hope for humanity more generally.
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  The car didn't replace walking, it replaced carriages, which were easily as heavy and could probably go much faster than the first cars. Sure, the horses would generally try to avoid obstacles, but horses pulling a heavy carriage at speed are not infinitely maneuverable. So, I doubt that cars would have ever seemed like a huge risk initially simply because it wasn't significantly different from what came immediately before it.

zalkota 6y ago

It also saves people who would otherwise be dead.