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Tesla killers have been promoted by media since Model S in 2012. But I can see how this time it is different. VW seems to be boldly all in and that's a very goo

Tesla killers have been promoted by media since Model S in 2012. But I can see how this time it is different. VW seems to be boldly all in and that's a very good thing. Although around 2025 to 2028 we may start to see full scale deployment of self driving technology. VW will not be ahead unless they go all in on that too.

gambiting 6y ago
>>Although around 2025 to 2028 we may start to see full scale deployment of self driving technology I honestly don't understand how anyone can actually believe that. Actual self-driving(not just a fancy cruise control) seems about 50 years away if not more. There will be "self driving" systems which work on nice american streets and motorways, but a general use self driving system that can be sold worldwide? Not a chance in the next few decades.
- mam2 6y ago
  "critics are like eunuchs, they know all about how to do it, but they can't do it" Could you provide some data at least when you give any sort of predition on the future ? Otherwise it's meaningless. anyone can have a "feeling" or an "opinion"
  - gambiting 6y ago
    What sort of data would you deem acceptable? I have driven latest Model 3 with their self-driving package enabled, I have driven the latest Mercedes S class with the latest and greatest from Deimler and same from Audi - all of these systems feel like absolute magic when they work, but when they don't it all falls apart really quickly. Like, don't get me wrong. It's a great system. But it's just a very clever cruise control. It's nowhere near Level 5, not even Level 4 and I'd argue it's not even level 3 at the moment. And yet the OP says we'll see "massive self driving deployment by 2025-2028"??? Like...how? With what technology?
    - mam2 6y ago
      Well at least this comment has like 10x more substance. At least you tried the system.
      - gambiting 6y ago
        And yet, both of your comments have contributed exactly nothing to the discussion other than ridiculing me - what is your end goal here exactly?
        mam2 6y ago
        improving the level of discussion in the future. I actually liked your second comment. the first one was downright annoying: which are you speaking from ? from what data ? knowing you've tried in reality the system makes your comment have wayyy more weigth. i know i'm an ass but i don't think my criticism was unjustified.
  - davewritescode 6y ago
    You don't need data to know that the last 5% of most difficult engineering problems is going to be the bulk of the work. Just look at the state of Tesla's full self driving product. Yes, it's impressive in many situations yet it fails at things that are generally. What's the point of automation if I have to babysit it?
  - ceejayoz 6y ago
    > "critics are like eunuchs, they know all about how to do it, but they can't do it" So? I can't BASE jump, but you should still heed my criticism if I tell you doing it from 30 feet up won't work. Someone who can't cook can still identify bad food. Someone who can't code can point out that Facebook's UX is confusing. A non-driver can identify bad driving. A non-singer can identify someone being off-pitch. Dismissing criticism in this nature is a mistake.
    - mam2 6y ago
      > So? I can't BASE jump, but you should still heed my criticism if I tell you doing it from 30 feet up won't work. No its just a meaningless opinion that is polluting the feed. Its just noise. In general in technology debates, especially here on hacker news, we prefer actual "insights" or "diffs" if you go read the site guidelines.
      - ceejayoz 6y ago
        "You will probably die or be injured if you BASE jump from 30 feet up" isn't noise, isn't a matter of opinion, and requires no direct personal experience in BASE jumping.
        mam2 6y ago
        Everyone knows it, its a meaningless info, so its noise. Ot like having adults speak and the some child come and says "hey look the sky is blue"
  - Bancakes 6y ago
    When someone proves constructively P=NP, so self-driving is a deterministic mathematical solution, and not AI wishful thinking.
- Isinlor 6y ago
  Waymo is doing actual for customer self driving right now.They need to scale it up a lot, but 5-10 years is a lot of time in AI research. Deep Learning did not exist 10 years ago. Tesla is trying hard too, but it goes with a big dose of bullshiting from Musk. They are a lot more dependent on AI break troughs in DL due to their vision only philosophy. OpenAI research around scaling laws in DL suggest that naive 1000 increase in training compute over CLIP should get us to state of the art vision in zero shot settings i.e. without task specific training data. But they probably can cover 1/3 of that with algorithms improvements. Beyond that machines should really be above human vision across the board besides adversarial settings. Quote https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.00020 https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.00020 : > While scaling has so far steadily improved performance and suggests a route for continued improvement, we estimate around a 1000x increase in compute is required for zero-shot CLIP to reach overall state-of-the-art performance. There is also the question of robust car control, but there should be good progress on it too due to RL research.
  - gizmo 6y ago
    Waymo has cars outfitted with 100k in sensors, HD maps, and their cars are geofenced to a few neighborhoods with excellent visibility. What Waymo is doing is way easier than solving the general problem of self-driving, where cars have to figure out safe solutions to not-seen-before problems. I think it will take years before Tesla FSD can drive from A to B without making catastrophic errors, but at least they're trying to solve the correct problem. And I think it's important to remember that it's OK if self-driving cars behave stupidly in ways that don't kill people, because the status quo has people dying every day because they're drunk/tired/texting, and self-driving only has to outperform the worst drivers in order to be a big leap forward.
    - threeseed 6y ago
      Tesla is not solving the correct problem i.e. “how to build the best FSD car with the best technology” They are trying to solve the “how to build FSD that works on existing Tesla cars because Musk has tricked a whole bunch of buyers into handing over money” problem. Our heads constantly move around and have the worlds most advanced neural network trained over decades to understand objects and how they behave. So for us vision works. But because Tesla isn’t solving the right problem they insist on going down this road instead of LiDAR which is safe and works.
- tibbydudeza 6y ago
  They will get better and the edge cases will drop but they will never be able to cover all the eventualities where a human would be able to make a far better decision than an algorithm. It will only take a few fatalities for the govt to stop any autonomous vehicles on public roadways unless it is in a safe geo-fenced area with clear liability.
  - Isinlor 6y ago
    They don't need to cover all edge cases. They just need to be better than an average human and otherwise fail safely. The life threatening situations are rather simple and reactive. It's a car colliding with something at a high speed. No deep planing or human level negotiations necessary. Well designed LiDAR cars will almost never be at fault of killing someone. I was predicting [0] in Nov 2018 that a next self driving car fatality will occur with 50% chance before March 2020. 80% before March 2021. Well, self driving cars are safer than I expected back then. And Tesla should get there too sooner or later. Also, the govt approach is proving to be quite risk accepting. Tesla already killed and injured many people when on autopilot. [0] https://www.metaculus.com/questions/776/when-will-the-next-fully-autonomous-car-fatality-occur/ https://www.metaculus.com/questions/776/when-will-the-next-f...
    - arcanon 6y ago
      Autopilot has saved my life multiple times. Don’t take advice about this from people who’ve never been in a Tesla.
      - gambiting 6y ago
        Wait, but there's a significant difference between "automated system saved my life" and "automated system didn't kill me" Like, my own car has several features which I believe are enough to prevent 90% of accidents in urban settings. But I find it hard to interpret when someone says "autopilot saved my life" - like, you mean "autopilot didn't kill me"? Because if it merely stopped hitting something then I really don't understand how you can be certain that 1) you wouldn't have avoided the collision by yourself 2) you wouldn't have avoided the collision with exisitng systems without going full autopilot And I have been in a Tesla(few actually) and I personally think that they way Tesla does it is the worst possible implementation - it gives you so much confidence that you really stop paying attention(even though you absolutely should never ever do that) only to spontantiously decide QUICK! HUMAN, TAKE OVER! in the middle of a turn. Like, if I owned a Tesla I'm sure I'd love the autopilot, but I also think it's far too dangerous to be forming any kind of statements like "we'll have full self driving rollout by 2025-2028" based on it.
threeseed 6y ago
Sure we will see FSD. From companies like Cruise, Waymo etc who will be using them for very specific use cases e.g. deliveries or Airport pickups in well known, good weather cities. But definitely not from Tesla who can’t even navigate around car parks let alone the wide range of conditions that their cars experience today.
mattacular 6y ago
It's 2021 right now and we're probably further from full scale deployment of self driving technology than we were in 2010.
WORMS_EAT_WORMS 6y ago
Agree, but I will never drive a VW again: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal It is weird how certain things get forgotten.
- kuschku 6y ago
  It's especially weird how one-sided discussions are, especially when the original paper that proved the emissions scandal showed 6 carmakers cheating on their tests in the exact same way, including VW, Ford, GM, and a few other companies. And out of all of those, only VW actually admitted it, and only VW ended up in the media. That will be a lesson for PR people for years to come: If you don't admit it, people will reward you.
  - WORMS_EAT_WORMS 6y ago
    Not really true. They got caught by EPA in California, sued, and settled. If that is what you mean by “actually admit it”... Other manufacturers have also been found but not at the scale of WV. Either way, I find your post interesting and would like to read up on what you are specifically talking about more. I don’t think you’re trying to normalize the fraud.
    - kuschku 6y ago
      I don't have a car, I don't plan to get a car, and I've lived happily for years without a car. I use transit and cycling to get around, even though this takes a lot more time and effort. I even refuse to use a taxi. Just to clarify my PoV, and my view why most carmakers should be closed immediately (at least VW started building electric vehicles since... that's at least some improvement). The original study by the west virginia university, for the ICCT, names 6 carmakers all using defeat devices. (I read it back when Dieselgate happened) Bosch, manufacturer of the VW defeat device, in trial, said that they delivered these exact configurations to all their customers, just with slightly different parameters. Defeat devices based on temperature (instead of air pressure or humidity) are legal in the US, "to protect the engine". One of the results of the dieselgate scandal was that VW was forced to build a certain amount of electric vehicles. Why weren't the other carmakers forced to do so as well?

gambiting 6y ago

>>Although around 2025 to 2028 we may start to see full scale deployment of self driving technology I honestly don't understand how anyone can actually believe that. Actual self-driving(not just a fancy cruise control) seems about 50 years away if not more. There will be "self driving" systems which work on nice american streets and motorways, but a general use self driving system that can be sold worldwide? Not a chance in the next few decades.

mam2 6y ago
"critics are like eunuchs, they know all about how to do it, but they can't do it" Could you provide some data at least when you give any sort of predition on the future ? Otherwise it's meaningless. anyone can have a "feeling" or an "opinion"
- gambiting 6y ago
  What sort of data would you deem acceptable? I have driven latest Model 3 with their self-driving package enabled, I have driven the latest Mercedes S class with the latest and greatest from Deimler and same from Audi - all of these systems feel like absolute magic when they work, but when they don't it all falls apart really quickly. Like, don't get me wrong. It's a great system. But it's just a very clever cruise control. It's nowhere near Level 5, not even Level 4 and I'd argue it's not even level 3 at the moment. And yet the OP says we'll see "massive self driving deployment by 2025-2028"??? Like...how? With what technology?
  - mam2 6y ago
    Well at least this comment has like 10x more substance. At least you tried the system.
    - gambiting 6y ago
      And yet, both of your comments have contributed exactly nothing to the discussion other than ridiculing me - what is your end goal here exactly?
      - mam2 6y ago
        improving the level of discussion in the future. I actually liked your second comment. the first one was downright annoying: which are you speaking from ? from what data ? knowing you've tried in reality the system makes your comment have wayyy more weigth. i know i'm an ass but i don't think my criticism was unjustified.
- davewritescode 6y ago
  You don't need data to know that the last 5% of most difficult engineering problems is going to be the bulk of the work. Just look at the state of Tesla's full self driving product. Yes, it's impressive in many situations yet it fails at things that are generally. What's the point of automation if I have to babysit it?
- ceejayoz 6y ago
  > "critics are like eunuchs, they know all about how to do it, but they can't do it" So? I can't BASE jump, but you should still heed my criticism if I tell you doing it from 30 feet up won't work. Someone who can't cook can still identify bad food. Someone who can't code can point out that Facebook's UX is confusing. A non-driver can identify bad driving. A non-singer can identify someone being off-pitch. Dismissing criticism in this nature is a mistake.
  - mam2 6y ago
    > So? I can't BASE jump, but you should still heed my criticism if I tell you doing it from 30 feet up won't work. No its just a meaningless opinion that is polluting the feed. Its just noise. In general in technology debates, especially here on hacker news, we prefer actual "insights" or "diffs" if you go read the site guidelines.
    - ceejayoz 6y ago
      "You will probably die or be injured if you BASE jump from 30 feet up" isn't noise, isn't a matter of opinion, and requires no direct personal experience in BASE jumping.
      - mam2 6y ago
        Everyone knows it, its a meaningless info, so its noise. Ot like having adults speak and the some child come and says "hey look the sky is blue"
- Bancakes 6y ago
  When someone proves constructively P=NP, so self-driving is a deterministic mathematical solution, and not AI wishful thinking.
Isinlor 6y ago
Waymo is doing actual for customer self driving right now.They need to scale it up a lot, but 5-10 years is a lot of time in AI research. Deep Learning did not exist 10 years ago. Tesla is trying hard too, but it goes with a big dose of bullshiting from Musk. They are a lot more dependent on AI break troughs in DL due to their vision only philosophy. OpenAI research around scaling laws in DL suggest that naive 1000 increase in training compute over CLIP should get us to state of the art vision in zero shot settings i.e. without task specific training data. But they probably can cover 1/3 of that with algorithms improvements. Beyond that machines should really be above human vision across the board besides adversarial settings. Quote https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.00020 https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.00020 : > While scaling has so far steadily improved performance and suggests a route for continued improvement, we estimate around a 1000x increase in compute is required for zero-shot CLIP to reach overall state-of-the-art performance. There is also the question of robust car control, but there should be good progress on it too due to RL research.
- gizmo 6y ago
  Waymo has cars outfitted with 100k in sensors, HD maps, and their cars are geofenced to a few neighborhoods with excellent visibility. What Waymo is doing is way easier than solving the general problem of self-driving, where cars have to figure out safe solutions to not-seen-before problems. I think it will take years before Tesla FSD can drive from A to B without making catastrophic errors, but at least they're trying to solve the correct problem. And I think it's important to remember that it's OK if self-driving cars behave stupidly in ways that don't kill people, because the status quo has people dying every day because they're drunk/tired/texting, and self-driving only has to outperform the worst drivers in order to be a big leap forward.
  - threeseed 6y ago
    Tesla is not solving the correct problem i.e. “how to build the best FSD car with the best technology” They are trying to solve the “how to build FSD that works on existing Tesla cars because Musk has tricked a whole bunch of buyers into handing over money” problem. Our heads constantly move around and have the worlds most advanced neural network trained over decades to understand objects and how they behave. So for us vision works. But because Tesla isn’t solving the right problem they insist on going down this road instead of LiDAR which is safe and works.
tibbydudeza 6y ago
They will get better and the edge cases will drop but they will never be able to cover all the eventualities where a human would be able to make a far better decision than an algorithm. It will only take a few fatalities for the govt to stop any autonomous vehicles on public roadways unless it is in a safe geo-fenced area with clear liability.
- Isinlor 6y ago
  They don't need to cover all edge cases. They just need to be better than an average human and otherwise fail safely. The life threatening situations are rather simple and reactive. It's a car colliding with something at a high speed. No deep planing or human level negotiations necessary. Well designed LiDAR cars will almost never be at fault of killing someone. I was predicting [0] in Nov 2018 that a next self driving car fatality will occur with 50% chance before March 2020. 80% before March 2021. Well, self driving cars are safer than I expected back then. And Tesla should get there too sooner or later. Also, the govt approach is proving to be quite risk accepting. Tesla already killed and injured many people when on autopilot. [0] https://www.metaculus.com/questions/776/when-will-the-next-fully-autonomous-car-fatality-occur/ https://www.metaculus.com/questions/776/when-will-the-next-f...
  - arcanon 6y ago
    Autopilot has saved my life multiple times. Don’t take advice about this from people who’ve never been in a Tesla.
    - gambiting 6y ago
      Wait, but there's a significant difference between "automated system saved my life" and "automated system didn't kill me" Like, my own car has several features which I believe are enough to prevent 90% of accidents in urban settings. But I find it hard to interpret when someone says "autopilot saved my life" - like, you mean "autopilot didn't kill me"? Because if it merely stopped hitting something then I really don't understand how you can be certain that 1) you wouldn't have avoided the collision by yourself 2) you wouldn't have avoided the collision with exisitng systems without going full autopilot And I have been in a Tesla(few actually) and I personally think that they way Tesla does it is the worst possible implementation - it gives you so much confidence that you really stop paying attention(even though you absolutely should never ever do that) only to spontantiously decide QUICK! HUMAN, TAKE OVER! in the middle of a turn. Like, if I owned a Tesla I'm sure I'd love the autopilot, but I also think it's far too dangerous to be forming any kind of statements like "we'll have full self driving rollout by 2025-2028" based on it.

threeseed 6y ago

Sure we will see FSD. From companies like Cruise, Waymo etc who will be using them for very specific use cases e.g. deliveries or Airport pickups in well known, good weather cities. But definitely not from Tesla who can’t even navigate around car parks let alone the wide range of conditions that their cars experience today.

mattacular 6y ago

It's 2021 right now and we're probably further from full scale deployment of self driving technology than we were in 2010.

WORMS_EAT_WORMS 6y ago

Agree, but I will never drive a VW again: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_emissions_scandal It is weird how certain things get forgotten.

kuschku 6y ago
It's especially weird how one-sided discussions are, especially when the original paper that proved the emissions scandal showed 6 carmakers cheating on their tests in the exact same way, including VW, Ford, GM, and a few other companies. And out of all of those, only VW actually admitted it, and only VW ended up in the media. That will be a lesson for PR people for years to come: If you don't admit it, people will reward you.
- WORMS_EAT_WORMS 6y ago
  Not really true. They got caught by EPA in California, sued, and settled. If that is what you mean by “actually admit it”... Other manufacturers have also been found but not at the scale of WV. Either way, I find your post interesting and would like to read up on what you are specifically talking about more. I don’t think you’re trying to normalize the fraud.
  - kuschku 6y ago
    I don't have a car, I don't plan to get a car, and I've lived happily for years without a car. I use transit and cycling to get around, even though this takes a lot more time and effort. I even refuse to use a taxi. Just to clarify my PoV, and my view why most carmakers should be closed immediately (at least VW started building electric vehicles since... that's at least some improvement). The original study by the west virginia university, for the ICCT, names 6 carmakers all using defeat devices. (I read it back when Dieselgate happened) Bosch, manufacturer of the VW defeat device, in trial, said that they delivered these exact configurations to all their customers, just with slightly different parameters. Defeat devices based on temperature (instead of air pressure or humidity) are legal in the US, "to protect the engine". One of the results of the dieselgate scandal was that VW was forced to build a certain amount of electric vehicles. Why weren't the other carmakers forced to do so as well?