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I'd like to thank Tesla for making this happen. They mislabeled their own self driving product and pushed it to market too early. Now everyone is afraid of some

I'd like to thank Tesla for making this happen. They mislabeled their own self driving product and pushed it to market too early. Now everyone is afraid of something that should be safer than the status quo.

jjoonathan 4y ago
What's your criteria for "good enough"? I would like to point out that the criteria of "I don't want to see a single story in the news about self-driving accidents" is equivalent to an infinitely high standard that would immediately disqualify all humans from driving if applied evenly.
- babypuncher 4y ago
  My issue here is the labeling. Tesla sold their product under the name "Full Self Driving", which I think implies level 5 self driving. But what customers actually got is level 2 self driving.
- nolok 4y ago
  Unrelated to what he said. Tesla is at fault not because their system as flaws, they will always have, but because their marketing strongly implies it's something different than what it is, people believe the marketing (like in any market), and so for people it turns out the system does not work, since they compare it to expectations.
  - dwighttk 4y ago
    I’ve talked to some people this year who thought Musk in 2017 was talking about current capabilities when he was talking about summoning his car to LA from NYC.
  - jjoonathan 4y ago
    It's unrelated to what he said now -- I should have quoted the post. In any case, yeah, the marketing is exaggerated, but it nags you if you stop paying attention. From a safety perspective, how does that not keep expectations in check?
    - nolok 4y ago
      Because it's not about MY expectations, it's about the expectations of the guy behind the wheel of the car crossing my path. Therefore I don't need it to be good enough to convince ME, I need to go be good enough to convince HIM not to abuse it, and given the large variety of him out there the system needs to have a very high safety bar.
      - jjoonathan 4y ago
        The guy behind the wheel gets beeped at if he stops paying attention and shut down if he keeps it up. Are you really arguing that this is insufficient to set the expectation that he should be paying attention? What, in your view, would be sufficient?
        nolok 4y ago
        I understand what you're getting at, and I'm not even sure I have a question for you. Mercedes's system, ensuring that the cars does not disconnect for a minute (instead of seconds) feels safer to me, for exemple.
        jjoonathan 4y ago
        "I think one minute isn't safe enough. They should lockout for two minutes!" "I think two minutes isn't safe enough. They should lockout for three minutes!" "I think three minutes isn't safe enough. They should lockout for four minutes!" ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJxwvZ5SE_c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJxwvZ5SE_c This is a silly game without data. I'm open to the idea of escalating consequences to effect deterrence, but we need data, not "+1 forever" to figure out the correct threshold. In any case, that's a completely separate argument. My claim is that the current system seems more than sufficient to reset any mistaken expectations due to marketing. You don't seem to disagree, so I rest my case.
        nolok 4y ago
        > My claim is that the current system seems more than sufficient to reset any mistaken expectations due to marketing. You don't seem to disagree, so I rest my case. I do disagree, I just don't know the solution, this not being my job nor my field. As for the first part of your message, if you cannot see a gigantic differences between a matter of minutes, and just a few seconds, when talking about emergencies and the need to figure out what's happening to react in one or two seconds, then this is not a productive conversation.
- altairprime 4y ago
  No criteria will ever be “good enough”. Humans don’t evaluate their own mistake/crash/kill rate for strangers with the same reasoning and logic and emotion that they evaluate an outsider’s. Automated cars are an outsider, and so they’re held to an impossible standard: Zero kills, zero crashes, zero mistakes. Tesla absolutely hurt the chances for AI driving, but it’s not one hundred percent their fault that the US population is xeno-hostile to robots. They would have been better off adding a Clippy chatbot to their cars than self-driving, because then people would be excusing their car’s mistakes as they would another human’s.
giantg2 4y ago
"Now everyone is afraid of something that should be safer than the status quo." I agree when talking about it at a population level. But that still doesn't mean much. The status quo is extraordinarily low, mostly due to people's lack of knowledge or bad decision making. These autonomous systems can address part of this on the reactive side (object in the way, apply brakes). It's still lacking in the proactive side (someone is weaving, maybe I should leave some extra following distance; I'm about to be rear ended at a light, let me pull ahead if its safe). So yeah, the vehicles are better drivers than the worst people, probably better than average. But I'm not convinced they're safer than the best drivers, especially when looking at overall accident avoidance and not just accidents they're liable for.
- nyrikki 4y ago
  School bus drivers are safer than airline pilots per exposure hour, in fact they are safer than walking. The big problem with driver assistance products is the automation bias issue with human drivers. Mixed in with humans being really bad at maintaining attention while bored. We see this even with highly trained airline pilots with backup crashing due to automation bias. Despite the common myth, drunk drivers have higher fatality rates than those who are hit. Selling driver assistance as self driving or allowing it to be used without serious attention detection safeguards won't make distracted or impaired drivers safer. I'm fact for first responders, highway workers and pedestrians, any form of driver assistance that allows drivers to checkout of the driving task, they will be far less safe. The only way that these companies claim that there systems are safer today is the they disengage quick enough to claim they weren't at fault but without time for the distracted drivers to respond. By ignoring automation bias, which is a well known human flaw, they pad their numbers and make them seem safer, while not having enough data to even make statistical claims that they do. Outside of naive beliefs that autonomous cars are safe driving confirmation bias the common myth that self driving cars are safer is baseless. I get that is the goal, but assuming it is true without evidence is part of the reason the public is starting to doubt the claims.
valine 4y ago
It’s not Tesla’s fault that CBS runs a story every time someone crashes their Model Y. If you’re reading about a Tesla crash odds are it wasn’t on autopilot. The news is happy to run the story either way because it generates clicks.
- Analemma_ 4y ago
  It is Tesla's fault that they 1) apply the label "Full Self-Driving" to a system that is not even close to full self-driving, 2) push extremely-untested beta software out to millions of cars on the road where every other company proceeds with extreme caution and 3) try for camera-only sensing even though literally nobody in the industry except Elon Musk thinks this will be good enough. Anyone could have predicted these three things would eventually shatter public self-confidence in self-driving cars, which is exactly what has happened. Stop making excuses for them.
  - brandonagr2 4y ago
    It is full self driving, the car computer is controlling steering and acceleration. That doesn't mean it's autonomous, there must be a human driver monitoring and responsible for its operation at all times.
  - jjoonathan 4y ago
    They absolutely test releases ahead of time. They test on more data & better data than anyone else and they dogfood every version before wide release, which they still call a beta. They used to gate it behind a safety score until it started to get good and they still have not-paying-attention detection, nags, and lockouts. But yeah, if you don't consider any of their testing and precautions I guess they don't have any testing and precautions.
  - valine 4y ago
    If the software is so dangerous where are all the crashes? FSD beta is running on 400k+ vehicles. I’ve got it running on my car and my biggest complaint is that the software is too hesitant. You can complain about Tesla’s methodology all you want, but when the rubber hits the road they do an excellent job of maintaining driver attentiveness, which all but guarantees safety. If public confidence is shattered it has very little to do with the quality of Teslas software and everything to do with the currently fashionable narrative in media.

jjoonathan 4y ago

What's your criteria for "good enough"? I would like to point out that the criteria of "I don't want to see a single story in the news about self-driving accidents" is equivalent to an infinitely high standard that would immediately disqualify all humans from driving if applied evenly.

babypuncher 4y ago
My issue here is the labeling. Tesla sold their product under the name "Full Self Driving", which I think implies level 5 self driving. But what customers actually got is level 2 self driving.
nolok 4y ago
Unrelated to what he said. Tesla is at fault not because their system as flaws, they will always have, but because their marketing strongly implies it's something different than what it is, people believe the marketing (like in any market), and so for people it turns out the system does not work, since they compare it to expectations.
- dwighttk 4y ago
  I’ve talked to some people this year who thought Musk in 2017 was talking about current capabilities when he was talking about summoning his car to LA from NYC.
- jjoonathan 4y ago
  It's unrelated to what he said now -- I should have quoted the post. In any case, yeah, the marketing is exaggerated, but it nags you if you stop paying attention. From a safety perspective, how does that not keep expectations in check?
  - nolok 4y ago
    Because it's not about MY expectations, it's about the expectations of the guy behind the wheel of the car crossing my path. Therefore I don't need it to be good enough to convince ME, I need to go be good enough to convince HIM not to abuse it, and given the large variety of him out there the system needs to have a very high safety bar.
    - jjoonathan 4y ago
      The guy behind the wheel gets beeped at if he stops paying attention and shut down if he keeps it up. Are you really arguing that this is insufficient to set the expectation that he should be paying attention? What, in your view, would be sufficient?
      - nolok 4y ago
        I understand what you're getting at, and I'm not even sure I have a question for you. Mercedes's system, ensuring that the cars does not disconnect for a minute (instead of seconds) feels safer to me, for exemple.
        jjoonathan 4y ago
        "I think one minute isn't safe enough. They should lockout for two minutes!" "I think two minutes isn't safe enough. They should lockout for three minutes!" "I think three minutes isn't safe enough. They should lockout for four minutes!" ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJxwvZ5SE_c https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJxwvZ5SE_c This is a silly game without data. I'm open to the idea of escalating consequences to effect deterrence, but we need data, not "+1 forever" to figure out the correct threshold. In any case, that's a completely separate argument. My claim is that the current system seems more than sufficient to reset any mistaken expectations due to marketing. You don't seem to disagree, so I rest my case.
        nolok 4y ago
        > My claim is that the current system seems more than sufficient to reset any mistaken expectations due to marketing. You don't seem to disagree, so I rest my case. I do disagree, I just don't know the solution, this not being my job nor my field. As for the first part of your message, if you cannot see a gigantic differences between a matter of minutes, and just a few seconds, when talking about emergencies and the need to figure out what's happening to react in one or two seconds, then this is not a productive conversation.
altairprime 4y ago
No criteria will ever be “good enough”. Humans don’t evaluate their own mistake/crash/kill rate for strangers with the same reasoning and logic and emotion that they evaluate an outsider’s. Automated cars are an outsider, and so they’re held to an impossible standard: Zero kills, zero crashes, zero mistakes. Tesla absolutely hurt the chances for AI driving, but it’s not one hundred percent their fault that the US population is xeno-hostile to robots. They would have been better off adding a Clippy chatbot to their cars than self-driving, because then people would be excusing their car’s mistakes as they would another human’s.

giantg2 4y ago

"Now everyone is afraid of something that should be safer than the status quo." I agree when talking about it at a population level. But that still doesn't mean much. The status quo is extraordinarily low, mostly due to people's lack of knowledge or bad decision making. These autonomous systems can address part of this on the reactive side (object in the way, apply brakes). It's still lacking in the proactive side (someone is weaving, maybe I should leave some extra following distance; I'm about to be rear ended at a light, let me pull ahead if its safe). So yeah, the vehicles are better drivers than the worst people, probably better than average. But I'm not convinced they're safer than the best drivers, especially when looking at overall accident avoidance and not just accidents they're liable for.

nyrikki 4y ago
School bus drivers are safer than airline pilots per exposure hour, in fact they are safer than walking. The big problem with driver assistance products is the automation bias issue with human drivers. Mixed in with humans being really bad at maintaining attention while bored. We see this even with highly trained airline pilots with backup crashing due to automation bias. Despite the common myth, drunk drivers have higher fatality rates than those who are hit. Selling driver assistance as self driving or allowing it to be used without serious attention detection safeguards won't make distracted or impaired drivers safer. I'm fact for first responders, highway workers and pedestrians, any form of driver assistance that allows drivers to checkout of the driving task, they will be far less safe. The only way that these companies claim that there systems are safer today is the they disengage quick enough to claim they weren't at fault but without time for the distracted drivers to respond. By ignoring automation bias, which is a well known human flaw, they pad their numbers and make them seem safer, while not having enough data to even make statistical claims that they do. Outside of naive beliefs that autonomous cars are safe driving confirmation bias the common myth that self driving cars are safer is baseless. I get that is the goal, but assuming it is true without evidence is part of the reason the public is starting to doubt the claims.

valine 4y ago

It’s not Tesla’s fault that CBS runs a story every time someone crashes their Model Y. If you’re reading about a Tesla crash odds are it wasn’t on autopilot. The news is happy to run the story either way because it generates clicks.

Analemma_ 4y ago
It is Tesla's fault that they 1) apply the label "Full Self-Driving" to a system that is not even close to full self-driving, 2) push extremely-untested beta software out to millions of cars on the road where every other company proceeds with extreme caution and 3) try for camera-only sensing even though literally nobody in the industry except Elon Musk thinks this will be good enough. Anyone could have predicted these three things would eventually shatter public self-confidence in self-driving cars, which is exactly what has happened. Stop making excuses for them.
- brandonagr2 4y ago
  It is full self driving, the car computer is controlling steering and acceleration. That doesn't mean it's autonomous, there must be a human driver monitoring and responsible for its operation at all times.
- jjoonathan 4y ago
  They absolutely test releases ahead of time. They test on more data & better data than anyone else and they dogfood every version before wide release, which they still call a beta. They used to gate it behind a safety score until it started to get good and they still have not-paying-attention detection, nags, and lockouts. But yeah, if you don't consider any of their testing and precautions I guess they don't have any testing and precautions.
- valine 4y ago
  If the software is so dangerous where are all the crashes? FSD beta is running on 400k+ vehicles. I’ve got it running on my car and my biggest complaint is that the software is too hesitant. You can complain about Tesla’s methodology all you want, but when the rubber hits the road they do an excellent job of maintaining driver attentiveness, which all but guarantees safety. If public confidence is shattered it has very little to do with the quality of Teslas software and everything to do with the currently fashionable narrative in media.