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I don't understand how its possibly legal for tesla, or anyone for that matter, to be able to push out beta life critical software to the general public. Say f

I don't understand how its possibly legal for tesla, or anyone for that matter, to be able to push out beta life critical software to the general public. Say for example a utility company pushed out an update that flipped the power contactor between you and the grid too many times that it caught fire, the company would be taken to court. I simply just don't understand how Tesla can get away with it.

manmal 3y ago
There’s likely huge political interest in keeping this R&D domestic.
qprofyeh 3y ago
I don’t get it either. While they’re at it, why not give DeepMind and OpenAI access to military resources to see whether their models can keep peace better than an army. At least that’s not on civilian territory.
NelsonMinar 3y ago
I don't understand how they keep marketing this as "Full Self Driving" or "Autopilot" and then wink and say "oh lol not really, you're supposed to be driving the whole time". The very name of the product is a lie. (And that's not even counting the "Elon Mode" we've since learned is hidden in the firmware.)
- wilg 3y ago
  The "beta" means you're supposed to be supervising it! The non-beta version would be the one that you don't have to pay attention to. The "Elon Mode" thing is an internal-only flag that nobody has been able to activate outside Tesla, and is not actually called that it's just what some guy on Twitter called it.
wilg 3y ago
I think you could argue that it isn't life-critical software because it requires active driver monitoring. What makes it different from lane-keeping assist in other vehicles? Or bog-standard cruise control? The fact that it attempts to do more things does not necessarily make it more dangerous. Your cruise control can drive you into a truck or off the road, but we accept that it is the driver's responsibility to not let that happen. FSD will actually attempt to stop for other vehicles, pedestrians, traffic lights, etc. What is the difference here other than the system is _less likely_ to kill you because it is smarter?
- jprete 3y ago
  The fact that it attempts to do more things can, in fact, make it more dangerous in the specific situations where a human interrupt is needed. Human attention works better the more it is needed, so if you need a human in the loop, you're best off with a system where their input is needed fairly often compared to a system where their input is needed once every long while. The other factor is that human attention may be needed in a situation where it is very hard to actively fix the situation if you're not already in the OODA loop. If you suddenly realize you need to override the car, and you're in the middle of a complex merge and the reason you need to override the car is because someone else screwed up, it may not be possible to solve the problem with the extra cost of your attention spinning up.
  - wilg 3y ago
    I understand what you're saying, but if you're not already in the OODA loop then you aren't actively monitoring the car. You could say, well, maybe the system lulls you into not being in that loop by taking most of the driving tasks away. I would say that having driven thousands of miles with it, it certainly doesn't feel like that to me. I'm still very, instinctively aware of how the car should be acting and even minor deviations from what I would do myself are very conspicuous and cause me to actively double-check its behavior. Also, in its current state, input is needed quite frequently. And the empirical data available (which could definitely be higher fidelity, granted) appears to suggest that the actual safety record is quite good. So we're left with a trade-off: there are some scenarios where a more featureful system could elevate risk, but there are other scenarios where it lowers them. It's not obvious on paper how to balance them, and the empirical (and, for me, experiential) data indicates the trade-off is a reasonable one. Perhaps a large amount of the concern around this comes from people not being aware of what it's like to operate a car in this mode. Maybe people think you really don't have to pay attention? It knows when you've got hands on the wheel, it knows when you're looking at your watch or your phone or the car's display, and it will pretty aggressively prevent you from getting complacent. Not only will it beep, it might lock you out from using it entirely. (Lockouts never happens to me, but I have seen tweets from it happening to others.) There was an old pre-Waymo Google talk about how partial driving assistance was dangerous for this reason, and I bought that argument but I no longer find it convincing having used such a system a lot.

manmal 3y ago

There’s likely huge political interest in keeping this R&D domestic.

qprofyeh 3y ago

I don’t get it either. While they’re at it, why not give DeepMind and OpenAI access to military resources to see whether their models can keep peace better than an army. At least that’s not on civilian territory.

NelsonMinar 3y ago

I don't understand how they keep marketing this as "Full Self Driving" or "Autopilot" and then wink and say "oh lol not really, you're supposed to be driving the whole time". The very name of the product is a lie. (And that's not even counting the "Elon Mode" we've since learned is hidden in the firmware.)

wilg 3y ago
The "beta" means you're supposed to be supervising it! The non-beta version would be the one that you don't have to pay attention to. The "Elon Mode" thing is an internal-only flag that nobody has been able to activate outside Tesla, and is not actually called that it's just what some guy on Twitter called it.

wilg 3y ago

I think you could argue that it isn't life-critical software because it requires active driver monitoring. What makes it different from lane-keeping assist in other vehicles? Or bog-standard cruise control? The fact that it attempts to do more things does not necessarily make it more dangerous. Your cruise control can drive you into a truck or off the road, but we accept that it is the driver's responsibility to not let that happen. FSD will actually attempt to stop for other vehicles, pedestrians, traffic lights, etc. What is the difference here other than the system is _less likely_ to kill you because it is smarter?

jprete 3y ago
The fact that it attempts to do more things can, in fact, make it more dangerous in the specific situations where a human interrupt is needed. Human attention works better the more it is needed, so if you need a human in the loop, you're best off with a system where their input is needed fairly often compared to a system where their input is needed once every long while. The other factor is that human attention may be needed in a situation where it is very hard to actively fix the situation if you're not already in the OODA loop. If you suddenly realize you need to override the car, and you're in the middle of a complex merge and the reason you need to override the car is because someone else screwed up, it may not be possible to solve the problem with the extra cost of your attention spinning up.
- wilg 3y ago
  I understand what you're saying, but if you're not already in the OODA loop then you aren't actively monitoring the car. You could say, well, maybe the system lulls you into not being in that loop by taking most of the driving tasks away. I would say that having driven thousands of miles with it, it certainly doesn't feel like that to me. I'm still very, instinctively aware of how the car should be acting and even minor deviations from what I would do myself are very conspicuous and cause me to actively double-check its behavior. Also, in its current state, input is needed quite frequently. And the empirical data available (which could definitely be higher fidelity, granted) appears to suggest that the actual safety record is quite good. So we're left with a trade-off: there are some scenarios where a more featureful system could elevate risk, but there are other scenarios where it lowers them. It's not obvious on paper how to balance them, and the empirical (and, for me, experiential) data indicates the trade-off is a reasonable one. Perhaps a large amount of the concern around this comes from people not being aware of what it's like to operate a car in this mode. Maybe people think you really don't have to pay attention? It knows when you've got hands on the wheel, it knows when you're looking at your watch or your phone or the car's display, and it will pretty aggressively prevent you from getting complacent. Not only will it beep, it might lock you out from using it entirely. (Lockouts never happens to me, but I have seen tweets from it happening to others.) There was an old pre-Waymo Google talk about how partial driving assistance was dangerous for this reason, and I bought that argument but I no longer find it convincing having used such a system a lot.