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That "comparison YouTube video" is absurd and dangerous, because, at minimum... A Level 4-capable vehicle (a Waymo vehicle) is an incomparably different system

That "comparison YouTube video" is absurd and dangerous, because, at minimum... A Level 4-capable vehicle (a Waymo vehicle) is an incomparably different system than a Level 2-capable vehicle (a vehicle equipped with FSD Beta). The Waymo vehicle has a design intent such that there is no human driver fallback requirement within their vehicle's Operational Design Domain (ODD). The Tesla vehicle has a de facto design intent such that the human driver is the fallback at all times - which makes the control relationship between the human driver and the automated system exactly the same as if the Tesla vehicle was equipped with no automation at all. The risk profiles and failure mode analyses are Night and Day different and, therefore, the validation traits between these two vehicle are Night and Day different. But, more than that, there are no guarantees that: - The human driver of the FSD Beta-active vehicle shown in that video did not manipulate any of the vehicle controls out-of-view that clandestinely assisted the vehicle without deactivating the automated system (possible and inherent Human Factors safety issues with that aside); and - The creators of this comparison video did not select the most visually-performant run out of several attempts. Naturally, since we are dealing with safety-critical systems here, assumptions of "positive safety" are not compatible with any internal or external analysis. Lastly, I have yet to see a video involving FSD Beta where indirect and "unseen" systems safety issues were satisfied. Appearances can be deceiving and deadly with safety-critical systems.

valine 3y ago
That’s a lot of words, but at the end of the day the NHTSA allows FSD beta on the roads. Someday in the distant future Tesla will likely use the data they’ve collected to make statistical inferences to regulators about the safety of the system as a whole. Design intent doesn’t matter now, and won’t matter in the future when the system is retroactively validated for level 5.
- ClumsyPilot 3y ago
  Speculation. Lynching was also allowed at one point, and then it wasn't
  - valine 3y ago
    Did you really just compare Tesla’s driver assist to lynching?
    - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
      Doesn't matter - something that used to be common, used to kill people, and eventually society decided it shouldn't be allowed. Asbestos might be better comparison. Point is, you are assuming a certain legal outcome, and there is no reason to believe it won't go the opposite way
- froh 3y ago
  yah, I'm amazed how humongous piles of paper analyses are considered more safe than evidence that stuff works in the real world. I get statistics are hard. It took 30 years to bust p-value hacking and much longer to get Bayes inference widely accepted. some of us would.love to _understand_ how neural net based automation makes it's decisions. how do you deal with the observable fact that these robots indeed in the real world make the right decisions more often than humans? but we can't explain why, because we didn't construct the robots controls, at least not in the traditional way?
MangoCoffee 3y ago
>The human driver of the FSD Beta-active vehicle shown in that video did not manipulate any of the vehicle controls out-of-view that clandestinely assisted the vehicle without deactivating the automated system (possible and inherent Human Factors safety issues with that aside); and that's why i included Marques Brownlee's demo.
- adamjcook 3y ago
  Respectfully, no FSD Beta video can add anything of safety value in evaluating these systems - and the only thing that these videos do these days is add a sense of complacency in most or all FSD Beta users. Videos and personal experiences can only reveal safety issues, never positive progress. Marques (and every other FSD Beta user) is not read into a would-be systems safety lifecycle for this safety-critical systems that Tesla should be maintaining. Marques (and every other FSD Beta user) is entirely blind to that. It is a complete Black Box to them. Therefore, the assessments made are always subjective and are almost entirely based on emotions and appearances (and other hand-wavy, ill-defined aspects such as "interventions" or "disengagements") rather than a complete accounting of all relevant systems safety components. Systems safety is about exhaustively asking questions and then exhaustively seeking quantifiable answers to those questions against established failure modes and in the context of the system and every other system that interacts with it (including the human driver in the case of a FSD Beta-equipped vehicle as a Level 2-capable vehicle). That is the whole point of a company maintaining a robust systems safety lifecycle - to convert subjective opinions of system characteristics into quantifiable understanding. Tesla is not maintaining that. Throughout the video, there are several places were Marques states "he thinks" or "he believes" or "that looks good" and such comments are also prevalent in the YouTube comments attached to the video. These are safety-critical systems where an unhandled failure can readily result in an injury or death. Responsible systems developers need something far more quantifiable than blind opinions of run-of-the-mill consumers. That FSD Beta-active vehicles do not appear to "run into things as often" on the roadway is not a complete evaluation of the system. There are also very real indirect and "unseen" safety components that are inherently part of the public roadways that must also be accounted for. For what it is worth, I touched on some examples of this recently in a Mastodon thread: https://elk.zone/mastodon.social/@adamjcook/110162950844417313 https://elk.zone/mastodon.social/@adamjcook/1101629508444173...

valine 3y ago

That’s a lot of words, but at the end of the day the NHTSA allows FSD beta on the roads. Someday in the distant future Tesla will likely use the data they’ve collected to make statistical inferences to regulators about the safety of the system as a whole. Design intent doesn’t matter now, and won’t matter in the future when the system is retroactively validated for level 5.

ClumsyPilot 3y ago
Speculation. Lynching was also allowed at one point, and then it wasn't
- valine 3y ago
  Did you really just compare Tesla’s driver assist to lynching?
  - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
    Doesn't matter - something that used to be common, used to kill people, and eventually society decided it shouldn't be allowed. Asbestos might be better comparison. Point is, you are assuming a certain legal outcome, and there is no reason to believe it won't go the opposite way
froh 3y ago
yah, I'm amazed how humongous piles of paper analyses are considered more safe than evidence that stuff works in the real world. I get statistics are hard. It took 30 years to bust p-value hacking and much longer to get Bayes inference widely accepted. some of us would.love to _understand_ how neural net based automation makes it's decisions. how do you deal with the observable fact that these robots indeed in the real world make the right decisions more often than humans? but we can't explain why, because we didn't construct the robots controls, at least not in the traditional way?

MangoCoffee 3y ago

>The human driver of the FSD Beta-active vehicle shown in that video did not manipulate any of the vehicle controls out-of-view that clandestinely assisted the vehicle without deactivating the automated system (possible and inherent Human Factors safety issues with that aside); and that's why i included Marques Brownlee's demo.

adamjcook 3y ago
Respectfully, no FSD Beta video can add anything of safety value in evaluating these systems - and the only thing that these videos do these days is add a sense of complacency in most or all FSD Beta users. Videos and personal experiences can only reveal safety issues, never positive progress. Marques (and every other FSD Beta user) is not read into a would-be systems safety lifecycle for this safety-critical systems that Tesla should be maintaining. Marques (and every other FSD Beta user) is entirely blind to that. It is a complete Black Box to them. Therefore, the assessments made are always subjective and are almost entirely based on emotions and appearances (and other hand-wavy, ill-defined aspects such as "interventions" or "disengagements") rather than a complete accounting of all relevant systems safety components. Systems safety is about exhaustively asking questions and then exhaustively seeking quantifiable answers to those questions against established failure modes and in the context of the system and every other system that interacts with it (including the human driver in the case of a FSD Beta-equipped vehicle as a Level 2-capable vehicle). That is the whole point of a company maintaining a robust systems safety lifecycle - to convert subjective opinions of system characteristics into quantifiable understanding. Tesla is not maintaining that. Throughout the video, there are several places were Marques states "he thinks" or "he believes" or "that looks good" and such comments are also prevalent in the YouTube comments attached to the video. These are safety-critical systems where an unhandled failure can readily result in an injury or death. Responsible systems developers need something far more quantifiable than blind opinions of run-of-the-mill consumers. That FSD Beta-active vehicles do not appear to "run into things as often" on the roadway is not a complete evaluation of the system. There are also very real indirect and "unseen" safety components that are inherently part of the public roadways that must also be accounted for. For what it is worth, I touched on some examples of this recently in a Mastodon thread: https://elk.zone/mastodon.social/@adamjcook/110162950844417313 https://elk.zone/mastodon.social/@adamjcook/1101629508444173...