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Tesla Lays Off Hundreds of Autopilot Workers in Latest Staff Cut
- 1sembiyan 4y ago> Teams at the San Mateo office were tasked with evaluating customer vehicle data related to the Autopilot driver-assistance features and performing so-called data labeling. My sympathies with the folks laid off, but do American firms still do data labeling in-house? I assume most of it is out-sourced via Scale or other vendors to eventually India, Vietnam etc.
- gwern 4y agoIf I recall correctly, Karpathy during one of the Tesla AI talks addresses this and said that keeping data labeling in-house was an advantage because it could be integrated more tightly into their processes with better customization & turnaround etc. Firing most of their data-cleaning & labeling capacity isn't going to be good for their car efforts, but I suppose if things are that bad at Tesla now, it's better to fire to cut expenses to the bone, and rehire much later once the storm is past...
- MontyCarloHall 4y agoThe Tesla bull will say that Tesla’s ML has gotten so good that these top-shelf human curators are now unnecessary, and can be outsourced or dispensed with entirely. The Tesla bear will counter that this is merely to keep up appearances; it looks a hell of a lot better to fire data curators over machine learning engineers, even if the former are still just as (if not more!) necessary as the latter.
- MattRix 4y agoThey still have a lot of human curators (Elon said they have over 1500 in a recent interview). I imagine that these cuts are for some category of labeling that has become redundant.
- DoesntMatter22 4y agoThis is really the most realistic answer. As they get closer and closer to FSD (and it is quite close now), they will need fewer and fewer people.
- user_named 4y agoHow do you know its close?
- MattRix 4y agoYou can watch user videos of it in action on YouTube. It improves with (nearly) every patch and often requires minimal or no user interventions. It still sometimes makes very bad mistakes though so I don’t think it’s as close as the previous poster does. But I think in the next year or two it could be good enough for many cities during clear weather.
- misiti3780 4y agoAs someone using FSD Beta, I concur that it is getting significantly better with every new over the air update.
- andsoitis 4y ago> The Tesla bear will counter that this is merely to keep up appearances I would be very surprised if Tesla optimized for optics here.
- ddmma 4y agoNot to mention the release of Tesla bots due to September event.
- d136o 4y agoIt doesn’t have to be all-in or all-out. They may outsource the bulk of it and bring in house borderline, not clear cut, or critical data points.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- greatpostman 4y agoQuality data is one of the most important parts of building ml models. It’s probably a competitive advantage
- dashundchen 4y agoSo Tesla's $750 million dollar state funded factory in Buffalo, which was supposed to produce solar panels as Solar City, then solar roofs as Tesla, instead employs unskilled data labeling workers. Recently NY state sold off all the solar panel equipment, and Panasonic pulled out of the partnership. Tesla hired minimum wage data taggers to avoid fines under the job creation agreement. One of the worst public subsidy scams in state history if you ask me, alongside Scott Walker's Foxconn giveaway in Wisconsin. I wish state governments would collectively agree to stop falling for this. https://www.investigativepost.org/2021/12/28/tesla-reaches-its-jobs-target/ https://www.investigativepost.org/2021/12/28/tesla-reaches-i...
- panick21_ 4y agoTesla insourced all of this. They have their own labeling tools and they are labeling in 360% video.
- lumost 4y agoDoes anyone know why Tesla is laying off so agressively? While they are likely overvalued post-pandemic... their financial position appears solid even if the stock fell by 50x. I doubt any cuts could yield the type of profitability that wall street expects at the current valuation.
- MattRix 4y agoThese are not cuts because they are struggling, they are cuts for efficiency. From what I understand they will be hiring enough people over the next few months to make up for their recent cuts.
- ivraatiems 4y agoIt's because Elon Musk has a "super bad feeling": https://www.wpr.org/elon-musk-has-super-bad-feeling-about-economy-and-wants-tesla-cut-jobs https://www.wpr.org/elon-musk-has-super-bad-feeling-about-ec... That's the reason.
- UkrainianJew 4y agoTesla P/E is at 94, Ford is at 4, so they are overvalued by quite a lot. The interest rates will likely reach 3% by the end of the year, and may need to go all the way to 8% to have a meaningful effect on the inflation. Every measurable economic metric suggests we are rolling full speed into a recession. And driving your old car for another year or two instead of upgrading to that nice luxury EV is one of the first things many people would do. So, their sales will likely plummet. Taking on more debt will become quite expensive, and the share prices will very likely correct by a lot. They are doing everything well, if you ask me.
- DoesntMatter22 4y agoComparing Tesla to Ford is just comical. Tesla has a completely different technology they work on, and has a massive lead on Ford in EV's. You don't even know what you are saying about Tesla. Take on more debt? Why would they do that? They have 17 billion dollars in cash on hand, and paid off a lot of their pre existing debt. Even if they want to build a new gigafactory they don't need any more funding. They smartly sold more shares when the stock was insanely high and got a huge infusion.
- millerm 4y agoHave we all forgotten Dojo?
- elkos 4y agoCould you elaborate? I may have missed it.
- slimebot80 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- blitzar 4y ago"We will have full self driving next year" - Elon Musk (2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022)