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Andrej Karpathy leaves Tesla
- rafaelero 4y agoIt's fun to see everybody succumbing to scaling laws. We will only have FSD when we can run realtime inference with a huge model. No amount of creativity seems to overcome the fact that bigger is better. So, let's wait Moore's law do its job.
- password321 4y agoWell look at this guy. Maybe you should take charge as the new director of AI seen as you figured it out.
- rafaelero 4y agoThanks, such an honor.
- learndeeply 4y agoUnless you've demonstrated that FSD follows scaling laws, this comment is pretty meaningless.
- rafaelero 4y agoI am not aware of any autoregressive transformer model that doesn't follow scaling laws. Tesla only needs to tokenize actions and images and voi la, self-driving capabilities. The problem, of course, is how you deploy such a big model so every car can run it locally.
- ShamelessC 4y agoScaling parameter count requires a similar increase in the amount of (accurate, labeled) data. This can be mitigated by “bootstrapping” techniques that make labeling new data easier, but is still likely the bottleneck for training such a model effectively (assuming they can probably spin up a supercomputer to scale their models otherwise).
- rafaelero 4y agoYou are correct. A Masked Language Model architecture would work very well here. Train it on labeled data and then bidirectionally infer missed spots. That's fun. We should join their AI team.
- ShamelessC 4y agoI don’t think I would do very well under Elon’s management style ha - the whole butts-in- seats from 8-6 thing is basically a dead end for me (personally). I’m not sure what architecture they use, but they do indeed already have a pre trained “auto-labeler” that their annotators use. My understanding is that due to hallucinations from the model and the risks involved with driving, they still need to be vetted manually before being added to the dataset.
- rafaelero 4y agoMakes sense. Fortunately, scale is less of a problem for the autolabeler, so they can put a lot of processing power on this step. But yeah, they will need human labelers for the edge cases where the model is unsure. I wish Tesla would publish their results so we could understand what they are doing and how much it is improving.
- melling 4y agoThat was the prediction when he took a “sabbatical” back in March. Why do people leave companies in this manner?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- spicymaki 4y agoA couple of theories: 1) It sometimes can be hard to leave a company when you are "in the thick of it." A sabbatical can give you personal time to reflect on whether you want to stay or not. 2) Sometimes people use sabbaticals to prep/perform job interviews or plan career transitions. 3) Sabbaticals can allow you to quit early while waiting for vesting restricted stock units, employee stock plan sales, retirement contributions (matches), etc. There are certainly many more timed bonuses available for senior leaders.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- WatchDog 4y agoEmployee: I quit. Employer: Are you sure? Why don’t you take some time off and think about it?
- simonswords82 4y agoTotally this. If you’ve got somebody who is critical to the success of the business you do anything you can to keep them
- SilverBirch 4y agoIt also buys them time to figure out if you really were critical and see who steps up to replace you. If at the end of the sabbatical you really were irreplaceable, they can fight a lot harder to keep you.
- d23 4y ago
- codechicago277 4y agoTesla has bet the company on robotaxis, but their vision only tech stack doesn’t seem capable of solving it, which is a problem because Tesla has repeatedly promised FSD is right around the corner, or less than a year away. It’s hard to believe Karpathy would step down if he felt they were close to solving the problem anytime soon. This announcement comes after a 4 month sabbatical where Karpathy said he wanted to take some time off to “sharpen my technical edge,” which makes it sound like this is the result of frustration with the technical approach instead of burnout.
- impulser_ 4y agoYeah, but Google's vision + lidar tech also doesn't seem any better at solving it either. They have been working on this problem the longest and they aren't even confident enough to produce a product with it. Google is probably the leader in AI and AI research. They are also the leader in data and mapping. They have billions of cash to play with. Yet it seem like they haven't gotten any closer at solving this problem as well. They are just going about it better but not trying to selling it. Any reason why everyone seems to be stuck on this problem?
- Barrin92 4y ago>Any reason why everyone seems to be stuck on this problem? ML maximalism focused on the narrow problem of 'solving driving' while not recognizing that any task as complex as driving requires probably something closer to general intelligence, and theoretically the field has been impoverished in favor of "throw more graphics cards at everything".
- hn_throwaway_99 4y agoCouldn't agree more. Especially when it comes to city driving, which would obviously be necessary for robotaxis, when AI zealots promise "it'll be here in a year or two", I always wondered "Have these people ever driven in the city?" I mean, to drive in a city, you basically: 1. Need to understand all standard signage (seems possible with AI). 2. Need to understand all "unstandard" signage (not sure how possible). 3. Need to understand the cop with the thick NY accent yelling at you saying "Can't you see there's been an accident and the road is covered with glass you dufus? Turn the F around." I can certainly see AI solving the problem of driving in specially designed limited access highways (which could also support normal human drivers), and that alone would be a huge benefit, but I never saw how so many were willing to make the leap to "robotaxis that can drive you anywhere in the city."
- TheAlchemist 4y agoWell, Musk said recently that the value of Tesla is 0 without FSD. Does anybody seriously think Karpathy would step down if FSD was really close to be released ?? It really starts to feel like Tesla is a huge fraud which is about to be uncovered.
- akmittal 4y agoIrrespective of what he said, it won't be 0, Tesla would still be one of the best electric cars available.
- 01100011 4y agoFor how long though? It seems like traditional automakers have mostly figured out EVs now. I love my Chevy EV, and it's 4 years old now. Similarly, the Kia EV I recently drove was excellent(although the Bolt one pedal driving is better IMHO).
- jeffbee 4y agoIf I have to pick a side in the battle of who can produce the most cheap batteries, an insane Twitter addict or state-controlled industries of South Korea, I'm going with the Koreans.
- tooltalk 4y agoHyundai Motor Group is state-controlled? You mean like GM?
- mathverse 4y agoHe mixed that up with Chinese corporations. Korean chaebols are more like "state endorsed monopolies". Or state "you can get away with almost anything corporations because you make a large chunk of our GDP and employ a lot of people". That said...I would bet on koreans too.
- rvz 4y agoOh dear. So who is going to improve on making and shilling the 'Fools Self Driving' (FSD) beta demoware that not only it is 'allegedly' half-working, but is already under ridiculous amounts of scrutiny and investigation by the regulators, especially with deceptive advertising putting drivers on the road at risk? Once again, where are the robot-taxis as promised for release in 2020?
- viburnum 4y agoIt never made any sense but there was too much money to be made in pretending.
- klyrs 4y agoOh well, at least Musk has Twitter to fall back on.
- smrtinsert 4y agoActually it seems like he believes there are too many bots to care about freeze peach
- akmarinov 4y agoIt’s ok, before he agreed to buy it, he said he’ll get rid of all the bots once he buys it
- powerbroker 4y agoBut they are really good bots. So good that they might pass as FSD AI.
- pen2l 4y agoThis comes after yesterday's news of Tesla letting 229 people go who were working on Autopilot: https://techcrunch.com/2022/07/12/tesla-laying-off-229-autopilot-workers-shuttering-san-mateo-office-filing-confirms/ https://techcrunch.com/2022/07/12/tesla-laying-off-229-autop....
- mkl 4y agoThat's pretty much a totally different category of employee, though: "Tesla is laying off 229 data annotation employees who are part of the company’s larger Autopilot team [...] Most of the workers were in moderately low-skilled, low-wage jobs, such as Autopilot data labeling" Data annotation can be cheaply outsourced or scaled up and down without much affecting progress on self-driving. Karpathy leaving says more about that progress to me.
- xeromal 4y agoOn top of that, this might signal that Tesla is confident enough in their autolabeling that they no longer need as much human intervention. This job title theoretically should be temporary.
- cheeselip420 4y agolol - FSD is a scam, and the reckoning is here.
- xeromal 4y agoIdk, does the job for me. Bought it to make my commute easier and it reduces the mental load required to drive in LA traffic.
- pm90 4y agoautopilot != FSD I agree that autopilot by itself, currently is still pretty valuable. What I worry about (and seems to be confirmed) is that Musk misunderstands what’s possible with the current technology and will make outrageous demands from the team, they will fuck up trying to deliver, then the whole thing will become radioactive.
- bsaul 4y agoi wonder if tesla can afford to abandon autopilot. the strategy of always selling a futuristic vision of driving has always been core to the brand. if they happen to become just another boring electric car company, i'm not sure they can compete in the long run.
- akmarinov 4y agoBy autopilot do you mean Tesla Autopilot aka Traffic assisted cruise control or do you mean FSD? Because there’s 0 chance they let go of the first, since that’s integral to any new car these days.
- bowmessage 4y agoThey can pivot to selling an auto-autopilot; an AI-based process run totally within the car, which will autonomously work on the code for autopilot for the next 5 years. (/s).
- xeromal 4y agoThey're laying off people how label data. This isn't the devs that actually work on the software.
- lazyjones 4y agoWhy should it? It's geting really good. https://www.youtube.com/c/WholeMarsCatalog/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/WholeMarsCatalog/videos
- wnevets 4y agoDon't worry guys, FSD is right around the corner!
- lvl102 4y agoFSD? The guy promised a robot!
- selfportrait 4y agoLet’s admit the real innovation here. It’s not FSD. It’s the underground tunnels with traffic. Underground traffic for all to be autopiloted through with their Teslas so that we can all meet at the digital town square on our phones.
- wnevets 4y agoI can't wait to stand in queue for an hour to take a 30mph Tesla ride in a tube instead of walking for 15 minutes!
- Barrera 4y agoThe autopilot part of Tesla has never made much sense. Is Tesla the electric car company, or is it the luxury car company? Either way, why does the power train (EV or ICE) come into play at all? Not only that, but Tesla has played the Innovator's Dilemma game from the position of the upstart financially, but targeted the segment of the market that incumbents will defend to the death (luxury cars). Tesla could have gone a different way and played the game from the true upstart: targeting the low end of the car market. Attack from below. But it didn't do that. Incumbents always win at the sustaining innovation game. The electric power train is a sustaining innovation for the automobile industry. It doesn't break any incumbent's business model (financing the purchase of expensive cars), especially at this point. And we're now seeing this with all of the EV introductions and announcements from incumbents. Oddly, though, there are plenty of upstarts trying to do exactly what Tesla tried - attacking the blubber-rich end of the market with an immature technology.
- qaq 4y agoAnd yet Tesla is dominant player in luxury segments they have products in
- hedora 4y agoAnalysts suggest that, while they may still be the market leader in EVs, by 2025 they're looking at a decline from today's 70-75% market share to 11-20%: https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilwinton/2022/07/11/ev-makers-are-gaining-ground-on-tesla-as-china-threat-looms/?sh=1e3347be6ec0 https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilwinton/2022/07/11/ev-makers... This meshes pretty well with them not having anything in the compact, pickup truck, offroading/camping segments (luxury, or not). They also don't have any commercial vehicles like delivery vans. All of those segments are being filled in rapidly by competitors. Also, the first real non-Tesla luxury sedans have been on the market for what, under a year?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- giantrobot 4y ago
- simonswords82 4y agoCan anybody give insights in to how key this guy is to Tesla. Is it a big deal? What’s his USP?
- bhauer 4y agoHe was the director of AI at the company, an important position. Notably, however, the AI director position is distinct from the director of the Autopilot team. That position is held by Ashok Elluswamy.
- snek_case 4y agoOh. Well that puts a different spin on things then. Karpathy said he wanted to sharpen his technical skills. He might have left in part because he felt he was too far from the action, since he was at least 2, if not 3 levels removed from the actual research and implementation work.
- dqpb 4y agoI think this is one of those things that need to be evaluated retrospectively. How “key” is anyone when their project is yet to be successful?
- Tyndale 4y agoCars will never drive themselves.
- abriosi 4y agoI believe what I have read about people being driven by driverless taxis in some cities in America. Unless I have been reading lies, this statement is at least half false
- Infinitesimus 4y agoWhat's your definition? They certainly do a lot of driving related things pretty well and others quite poorly (much like humans but we have different failure modes). If you life in San Francisco, CA, you'll often see Cruise cars roaming the streets at night collecting data with no physical driver present.
- trixie_ 4y agoReally? Because autopilot works pretty well for me already. I have it on way more than I have it off. Long roads with lots of stop lights, and 6 hour drives no longer bother me.
- naveen99 4y agohmm, I think the real time aspects of self driving are hard. There is lots of promise with masked language and image modeling, but plenty of work to be done, even for non real time applications.
- cinntaile 4y agoIt seems like the FSD dream will remain a dream in the forseeable future. I can't really say I'm surprised, but it's a bit disappointing.
- lvl102 4y agoLet’s be honest, they were never going to solve the autonomous problem with that anemic R&D spend. Tesla is really bordering on fraud.
- tzm 4y agoFully vested and widely respected. Great position to be in.
- dqpb 4y ago> widely respected Except he failed to achieve what he claimed he could.
- make3 4y agoI don't think he ever claimed he could do it. Like, really. He's a scientific, I only think he said he would do his best. Which is a fine thing to say, and keeps all the respect of the field, because everyone knows it's fucking hard / next to impossible.
- dham 4y agoI've really gotten into self driving the past couple years. Watched every video I can find on it. Got a Toyota Rav 4 bought a Comma 2 then later a Comma 3. Really enjoy Comma AI as a product on the highway and some in town. That being said, self driving in city streets is a problem that literally doesn't exist. On highway you can relax, mostly because the car is keeping a straight line and not much is happening. As soon as a car is negotiating stop signs, doing turns, etc it stops being fun and relaxing and starts becoming anxiety inducing. The only thing that needs to be solved fully is highway with auto lane change. That's literally it. And the system needs to do eye tracking like Comma Ai. If your adaptive cruise control makes you put your hand on the wheel it's useless.
- adam_arthur 4y agoYeah, it's kind of odd that so much effort is being put into city driving. Just perfect highway driving first. Trucking alone would massively change if goods could be transported to edge of urban areas autonomously. I'm sure it's being worked on too, but puzzling why that use case is not priority 1, 2 and 3
- adverbly 4y agoYou're mostly right about long distance commuting/travel... but FSD in cities is needed for trucking/delivery/taxis to be fully automated. If you need to pay for a driver to drive then a lot of value is going to be left on the table still.
- dham 4y agoIt's starting to look like we'll need general intelligence AI to solve self driving fully within cities. For trucking, let AI solve the long distance stuff, then have drivers drive the last few miles. I don't know if it would work but worth thinking about. That seems like a much closer thing than having AI negotiating an 18 wheeler through a city
- hwers 4y agoHe mentions open source and education which I’m really excited about. There’s been a big lack of accessible from-first-principles resources on this (plenty of abstracted libraries though). Now is a great time to build up excitement among amateurs to learn about this stuff imo. (Right near the super cool text-to-image breakthroughs.) It shouldn’t just be openai and google building these things.
- yalogin 4y agoWe haven’t seen Musk’s usual “full self driving is coming Xth of next month” tweet in a while now. I really hope it’s Andrej convince my him to stop, if so that is a great win in my book. After his leaving musk may feel the need to sell his company again to show everything is fine. I will not be surprised to see that tweet again in the next few months.
- ShamelessC 4y agoLast time he said it was on Lex Fridman about 6 months ago. https://youtu.be/DxREm3s1scA https://youtu.be/DxREm3s1scA
- streetcat1 4y agoFogezy, Fogazy.
- zhoujianfu 4y ago“Well, he wasn’t very good at making them self-drive.” -my daughter
- kentf 4y agoI shared a desk with Andrej when he was interning at our lab for the summer at the University of Toronto. One of the smartest people I ever connected with about all CS topics. Hopefully he finds what he is looking for and takes a well earned break.
- throwawayarnty 4y agoEven if FSD doesn’t work out Andrej still has an impressive achievement for 5 years. I’m not sure if many people 5 years out of their PhD can say they did anything close to what Andrej did.
- visarga 4y agoI wouldn't have dared to step into his role even if I had the chops. Takes real courage to do self driving where a mistake can cost human life. In my line of work a prediction mistake costs 1 minute of extra manual work.
- mikkelam 4y agoI feel like, most commenters are speculating too much around Tesla and their lack of FSD capabilities being the issue. Perhaps Karpathy just felt that the work was too draining and decided to he needed a break. I believe Karpathy has recently been on a lengthy sabbatical. My point is, people leave their jobs for many reasons other than how well the company is doing. At least I hope so.