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I think the FSD beta rollout is completely irresponsible from Tesla. Rolling out a clearly half-baked safety critical technology to its customers (yes, I know i

• justapassenger 6y ago
  FSD rollout is purely driven by Elon’s ego. He’s addicted to fame and power, and that comes from image he created of himself being an Iron Man. I’m pretty sure he got to a point where he believes in it, and thinks he’s invincible and can solve any problem, because he’s so much smarter than everyone. Stock bubble making wealthiest man only helped to solidify that.
  • dilap 6y ago
    I don't know, I don't get that feeling. What makes you think that? I don't know much about Elon, but I listened to one of his interviews with Rogan, and he struck me as extremely optimistic, but also grounded and not arrogant. (I do agree partial-self-driving just seems like a terrible idea. I guess crash stats can reveal if this is true or not, but are perhaps not available.)
    • Barrin92 6y ago
      his covid comments last year were beyond the pale. The low point for me was when Shannon Woodward, who played a scientist on TV and to my knowledge isn't one, had to explain to him that tests are indeed not a big pharma conspiracy https://twitter.com/shannonwoodward/status/1327517694099275778?s=20 https://twitter.com/shannonwoodward/status/13275176940992757...
      • jiofih 6y ago
        I don’t see any explaining going on in that thread?
      • cbozeman 6y ago
        LOL, I love it... an actress with no higher education has to explain antigen tests to the world's richest man. We really are in the best possible timeline for general lulz and nonsense.
        • NeutronStar 6y ago
          Who would've thought that an engineer isn't isn't an epidemiologist!
      • danielscrubs 6y ago
        There is a lesson in sales and trust hidden in there. No matter how good your device is, an inexperienced (and worse when famous) person can sow distrust in it instantly. Wouldn’t surprise me if next machine is just 4 machines glued together to make it Elon Musk proof.
      • smaryjerry 6y ago
        “Had to” and she just replied on Twitter with some odd assumptions are very different. I think anyone would agree that a test that is wrong half the time is not a good test.
    • snoshy 6y ago
      Autopilot and FSD beta are not the same. The latter is currently available to maybe a couple dozen testers that are clearly very well informed about the capabilities of the system, as well as the changes in each update. If you really don't believe it, watch their hours and hours of (frankly boring) videos of analyzing the behavior of the system in complex situations while still staying on top of safety. It does remain to be seen how well Tesla will trust the general public with this level of improved autonomy. As you get closer and closer to the uncanny valley where things just appear to work, you get into the more tricky situations that truly befuddle humans and machines alike. NHTSA scrutinizes crashes that involve anything close to Autopilot and FSD quite heavily. Aside from one or two incidents they've had complaints about, none of them have risen to the point where they had to put their foot down. Admittedly, Tesla were a big bunch of jerks about how they handled the situation, but still, these were isolated incidents with clear misuse from the driver's part. I agree with you, in that Musk is overly optimistic (no shit, he's been saying this would be ready in 2018, and it's unclear if it will be in 2021). But he's also quite well informed of the facts on the ground, and is clearly aiming for the moonshot-winner-take-all prize by skipping Lidar and high-precision mapping. That might be a gamble, but need not be an inherently dangerous one, depending on how Tesla handles the super-grey areas around the uncanny valley, where the system appears to work, but really isn't worth risking your life upon. To some, it's already there, as you can see from idiots sleeping in their Teslas while on Autopilot. But again, outside of a couple of incidents over years and millions and miles, the rate of catastrophic failure (accidents) has been surprisingly low.
      • Pyramus 6y ago
        > clearly very well informed I completely underestimated the role of professional safety drivers for autonomous vehicles. I thought it's "just a guy" sitting in the car for good measure, but it turns out that the majority of drivers is not fit for the job even after lengthy training, see e.g. [1] (a gread podcast in general). Also all autonomous driving companies employ safety drivers - except one. > NHTSA scrutinizes crashes that involve anything close to Autopilot and FSD quite heavily. I wouldn't put too much hope into the NHTSA regulating Autopilot. It took a two year legal battle to get the data driving their analysis of the Autopilot in 2017, turns out it was completely provided by Tesla, but worse, when confounders where removed, it still showed a higher crash rate for Autopilot. If you take a non-American view of Autopilot, Europeans agencies did scrutinize the crashes more closely and as a result have restricted the use of Autopilot. If you are interested in the topic of autonomous driving I recommend the Autonocast podcast. [1] http://www.autonocast.com/blog/2020/10/29/205-why-teslas-full-self-driving-beta-is-dangerous http://www.autonocast.com/blog/2020/10/29/205-why-teslas-ful... [2] https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/02/in-2017-the-feds-said-tesla-autopilot-cut-crashes-40-that-was-bogus/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/02/in-2017-the-feds-said-t...
    • deleted 6y ago
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    • Judgmentality 6y ago
      Elon will get into some pretty bizarre bouts on twitter. I realize this is common for celebrities, but that whole "diver is a pedophile" thing was truly wtf. https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-pedo-guy-doesnt-mean-pedophile/ https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-pedo-guy-doesnt-mean-p...
      • pmorici 6y ago
        If you go read the court testimony it isn’t as strange as it seems on the face. The diver started the tiff and the insult Musk sent in return was said to be common vernacular in South Africa where he grew up.
        • detaro 6y ago
          Is it also tradition in South Africa to then e-mail press to insist that it investigate the target and pay "private investigators"?
          • frankzinger 6y ago
            Good point, but the whole thing is a made-up excuse. "Pedo" just means pedophile in South Africa.
      • mhh__ 6y ago
        The whole thing just screamed of a man with with an issue surrounded by yesmen.
      • nemrut 6y ago
        Westerners living in Thailand and elsewhere in SE/E Asia have gained well-known reputation for such questionable behavior among other things.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  • xirbeosbwo1234 6y ago
    He didn't create that image on his own. He had a lot of help. He had a cameo in Iron Man 2 where Iron Man treated him as a peer! (That scene, by the way, is a perfect example of why I hate superhero movies.)
    • repsilat 6y ago
      Kinda weird comment. Not that it matters, but in the scene Iron Man brushed Elon off -- He was "politely rude", and the scene (while serving as an ad for Elon) served the film by giving cred to Stark by having Elon fawn over him. More importantly though, treating someone "as a peer" is kinda a weird criticism? Superheros on TV these days don't seem terribly stuck-up. When other characters in the films seem honest the heroes usually treat them with respect and dignity. Anyway, thanks for the heads-up that you hate superhero movies, will keep it in mind next time I see one on a plane.
    • pb7 6y ago
      RDJ’s portrayal of Iron Man is partially based off Elon Musk, not the other way around. Edit: Since I’m being downvoted, here you go, today you learned: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/true-story-elon-musk-robert-downey-jr-tony-stark-ashlee-vance https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/true-story-elon-musk-robert-d...
      • ardit33 6y ago
        and Larry Ellison, Elon Musk was still too young on the scene in 2008, and not the celebrity he is today.
        • pb7 6y ago
          https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/true-story-elon-musk-robert-downey-jr-tony-stark-ashlee-vance https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/true-story-elon-musk-robert-d...
          • ardit33 6y ago
            Not sure about that tibit, but in general that book is said to be inaccurate/too rosy of musk. From what I have heard, it was both: Elon Musk, Larry Ellison Appear In Iron Man 2 https://www.forbes.com/sites/velocity/2010/04/29/elon-musk-larry-ellison-have-cameos-in-iron-man-2/?sh=19a14298d978 https://www.forbes.com/sites/velocity/2010/04/29/elon-musk-l...
  • threeseed 6y ago
    He also personally received an obscenely large windfall as a result of this strategy. Debatable how significant this impacts his decision making but it's pretty hard to argue that doesn't impact it at least a little.
  • scythe 6y ago
    I don't think FSD rollout is the central goal. The goal is to build hype and thus market cap that Tesla can use to build factories. Ten years ago, Tesla had no factories (at high capacity). They've had absolutely ridiculous velocity since then precisely because of their ridiculous valuation. Even if this FSD thing doesn't work out, it might have been necessary for Tesla to get this far. If Tesla's stock crashes, they still have the factories. All they need is to make sure nobody can prove Elon knows he's full of it (securities fraud). His Twitter persona suits this strategy to a T.
    • nickik 6y ago
      Conspiracy level nonsense here. Elon tried to take Tesla private. He himself didn't want raise money on higher evaluation. He himself multiple times said they don't deserve the high stock. He has been an optimist on this technology of a long time and has made that argument for a long time. The claim that the FSD testing is to boost the stock price is truly bizard, specially because there is very little evidence of any correlation between FSD and stock price. Go look at the Wallstreet models, most of them don't have large considerations income from FSD. If you look at FSD testers, their videos don't have millions of views.
  • naebother 6y ago
    My man has the Iron Man costume on display in a glass case at spacex. And the recruiters give you a spiel about it that feels very much like you're about to join a cult.
  • rendall 6y ago
    > FSD rollout is purely driven by Elon’s ego. He’s addicted to fame and power... Whoa. You have strong feelings. One of my Life Rules that has served me enduringly well is to avoid believing that I can confidently have real insight into what motives drive someone. That rule is not for their benefit, but for my own: to putatively "know" something is to invite an incorrect model of reality and thereby incorrect action. It doesn't actually matter what drives Musk or anyone else: ego, pure business interests, a desire to take humanity to the stars, boredom, pathology, space ghosts, whatever. What matters is behavior and its effects. If you criticize Musk's ego, ambition, pride, there's nothing actionable for anyone, neither Musk himself nor Tesla's potential customers. If you criticize the Tesla FSD rollout, now there's something people can do.
• meekrohprocess 6y ago
  I have one question for Tesla customers who trust the company to deliver full FSD. How do you reconcile that belief with the fact that Tesla's embedded developers did not understand the extremely simple concept of write endurance? The NHTSA opened an investigation into premature HUD failures because they prevented the backup cameras from working. But the fact of the matter is, the company used a small partition of internal Tegra Flash to store rapidly-refreshing log data. And you are trusting these devs with your life when you enable autopilot. You're also entrusting my life, and those of my family, to them. But we'll gloss over that, because it's expensive not to.
  • threeseed 6y ago
    > Tesla's embedded developers did not understand the extremely simple concept of write endurance Equally likely is that they do understand but just don't care. From all accounts, Tesla seems to have a culture of move fast and break things.
    • dheera 6y ago
      A lot of this also stems from a culture of quarterly earnings reports and idiotic "fiduciary" duty to some shareholders instead of the primary duty being to customers and humanity. The incentives are fundamentally defined in the wrong way, and the system has just optimized itself for the those incentives.
    • totalZero 6y ago
      That can be forgivable in some situations, but Move Fast And Break Customers? Not so much.
      • quicklime 6y ago
        It's even worse to move customers fast and break innocent bystanders.
        • crocodiletears 6y ago
• thereare5lights 6y ago
  > nothing but a tactic to generate hype Congratulations, you've figured out Elon Musk.
• sorenjan 6y ago
  I don't understand why it's legal. How can it be allowed to send out uncertified software to cars on public roads? Aren't there safety standards that need to be met? I thought that safety critical products where better regulated than this.
  • 3pt14159 6y ago
    Welcome to being me three or four years ago. I've literally met with MPs and ministers trying to get regulations and other things. They're coming. But they don't happen without civic engagement. Write to your elected representative and call for legislation. It works. It takes time, but it works.
  • chillfox 6y ago
    Well, software that controls a car is a new thing. So I would imagine that it hasn't really been regulated yet in most jurisdictions. For some reason we have a tendency to write laws so that they are specific to individual things rather than general and future prof laws.
    • camjohnson26 6y ago
      I don’t get why it’s not covered under existing laws, clearly every vehicle has to be operated by a driver with a valid license correct? You would think letting a vehicle drive without a licensed operator at the wheel would be negligence.
      • chillfox 6y ago
        I agree, but when it came to bullying the anti bullying laws apparently didn't cover online bullying which didn't really make sense to me. So I assume that this is a case of the person in the drivers seat must have a drivers license, but there is no law saying how much of the driving they must do.
      • URSpider94 6y ago
        Nobody is doing that. In the locales where truly autonomous vehicles are being tested, it’s happening under specific legislation and regulations put in place by the states. For Tesla, behind all their bluster, the terms and conditions you accept to use their “self-driving” features make it clear that the human driver is always responsible for safe operation of the car, and all of these features are just to assist the human driver.
• hartator 6y ago
  Waymo had one of their employees not properly monitoring their car and they killed someone. I dont believe anyone had been killed by the Tesla development team? Couple of customers did die but that was their fault for not monitoring the car? One was watching harry potter I remember.
  • ra7 6y ago
    You're probably thinking of Uber which killed someone in Arizona, not Waymo.
  • deleted 6y ago
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• KorematsuFred 6y ago
  > while naming the technology "Full Self Driving" and Elon Musk hyping it up every chance he gets on how it will be Level 5-ready by end of the year. I am an anti-goverment anti-regulation Libertarian and even I think the government has a very legitimate role to play here in regulating this fraud. This is a bit like Humpty Dumpty where the words do not mean what they mean.
• mewpmewp2 6y ago
  What I wonder is would countries like China be able to reach FSD faster since they would possibly be less ethically bound? And similarly with other tech which otherwise would be limited ethically?
  • sudosysgen 6y ago
    IIRC so far China doesn't seem to be doing anything like Tesla, most things I've seen were testing in a closed zone with an engineer, Waymo-style. They also don't have any self-driving deaths for now, unless I missed something. I thus don't think they will have this advantage. They might have the advantage of more chaotic traffic?
    • mewpmewp2 6y ago
      So this makes me wonder, why not. What's stopping them from advancing quicker in this particular field if they could cut more corners faster? And could they cut more?
  • ganafagol 6y ago
    Having an ethical framework that differs from yours is not the same as the absence of ethics.
    • mewpmewp2 6y ago
      I mean with a single authority you could get away with more. Not saying they have absence of ethics, just saying they could possibly be less bound to develop their tech faster without having to worry about short term trade-offs as much. They could in this way become stronger than other nations who are more bound. With FSD they could start testing earlier even if it's not guaranteed to be completely safe, and they could adopt it immediately full scale at the point when it's definitely safer or almost as safe as humans, while in western world it would have to be much more safer than humans driving. Maybe this could mean years of advantage and they can start immediately adopting and optimising their economy. Maybe ethics is not even the correct word. I'm talking about a trolley problem where they would be allowed to switch tracks while western world maybe not. In this case it might mean more deaths up-front, but fewer later with optimised economy.
• 01100011 6y ago
  Telsa will be very transparent when the first round of lawsuits begins and they're facing multi-billion dollar lawsuits. Toyota lost billions from simply not following accepted safety design practices. Does anyone really think Tesla's self-driving tech is ISO26262 or MISRA compliant?
  • froh 6y ago
    No it's is IEC61508 compliant. IEC61508-7 F is giving an example how to come from test hours to a quality and safety statement, in terms of failure in time rates. With how many, 700.000 morning and evening commutes, tesla is gathering evidence pretty quickly that their vehicles save more lives than they kill due to those rare FSD faults which lead to fatal failures. Air bags kill people. Always have, always will. Fully misra and 26262 compliant. And air bags save many more people. Tesla FSD will come, fully validated and fully standard compliant, so will Waymo (I doubt they go with misra).
    • froh 6y ago
      I need to apologize, it's iec61508-7 Annex D, not F > This annex provides initial guidelines on the use of a probabilistic approach to determining > software safety integrity for pre-developed software based on operational experience. This > approach is considered particularly appropriate as part of the qualification of operating > systems, library modules, compilers and other system software. Tesla, given the size of their fleet, can also follow such an approach for their "application" especially the neural nets and the rule sets.
• elisharobinson 6y ago
  WOW 1 paragraph of data > 48 page pdf of "look at me i did this first so i know what im doing" . Honestly this is quite dumb , waymo will NEVER i REPEAT NEVER make it to market let alone with any amount of volume ... And it has nothing to autonomy or tech ... just by virtue of having bulky expensive sensor's (which need to be serviced regularly) and power draw of the compute and tech .... other than having a very niche proof of concept like project loon i think waymo will also fold like all of its fellow google x brother-in.
• mgoetzke 6y ago
  That safety 'Report' from Waymo isn't a report at all though. It is a general overview on their approach how they say they will handle it and a direction. Basically a primer for regulators and customers that don't know anything yet about it. It is extremely light on numbers over time.
  • ra7 6y ago
    There are a couple more PDFs linked in the same page. What did you find lacking in the safety performance data whitepaper?
• dalbasal 6y ago
  Safety culture is an important topic too, but this article is about something else: technology paths.