5 ms·

> That's simply untrue. All the hard stuff continues to be reliability and sensor gated. IR and thermal sensing are unnecessary if the bar is human level and n

> That's simply untrue. All the hard stuff continues to be reliability and sensor gated. IR and thermal sensing are unnecessary if the bar is human level and neither is the lidar. The point is overused, but humans rely on two eyes in the driver seat. I don't see any evidence to suggest the modern model that Tesla has developed for their vision system is their limiting factor in the slightest to reach L4/L5. Dogs jump into the road in front of cars all the time and get killed, and kids get endangered at school bus crossings. That's a reality of life that robotaxis do not need to solve.

kajecounterhack 2y ago
> I don't see any evidence to suggest the modern model that Tesla has developed for their vision system is their limiting factor in the slightest to reach L4/L5 For one, frame rate and processing rate on human eyes is way higher than cameras. Dynamic range is another. Also, Cruise and Waymo are some of the only companies that have hard internal data / ability to simulate how well their safety drivers do, and in the very same scenario what their software driver will do. Without LiDAR you can't build that simulation, and once you have that data if you continue to use HD Maps and LiDAR there's probably a good reason. > Dogs jump into the road in front of cars all the time and get killed, and kids get endangered at school bus crossings. That's a reality of life that robotaxis do not need to solve. Robotaxis need to avoid any accident that a human would be able to avoid. > IR and thermal sensing are unnecessary if the bar is human level See, you could say this if you had some data that showed that incidents per X miles (when the vehicle is driving at night) is sufficiently low, + if the software passes some contrived scenarios to gut-check its ability to see in the dark with the necessary reliability. But you don't have that data, do you? Someone has it though :) and I'd argue regulators should have it too.
- bangaladore 2y ago
  > For one, frame rate and processing rate on human eyes is way higher than cameras. I don't think it's exciting to say that you must have theoretical parity with something to use it for this use case. Tesla's solution monitors ~6? cameras at once with accurate depth in each. That's 6x more views than a human can see. I wish people would stop comparing apples to oranges. > Robotaxis need to avoid any accident that a human would be able to avoid. I never said anything to the contrary. Animals get hit all the time, not just because a human wasn't paying attention.
  - kajecounterhack 2y ago
    > Tesla's solution monitors ~6? cameras at once with accurate depth in each No, the depth is estimated. It's not accurate, at least not in the way you need for L4. > I never said anything to the contrary. Animals get hit all the time, not just because a human wasn't paying attention. I was just clarifying what the bar is. The bar is that avoidable accidents need to be avoided. Nobody will get mad if a plane crashes due to unavoidable circumstances (freak accident where two engines go out due to bird strikes or something). People will stop flying in the plane when it becomes clear that the airline is not doing everything it can to avoid fatalities.
RankingMember 2y ago
> if the bar is human level IMO the bar is well above human-level if you actually want to attain the level of trust necessary to remove the steering wheel from a car.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- rootusrootus 2y ago
  Agree 100%. And IMO it is worth remembering that a really significant share of collisions are caused by well known risk factors. For those of us who avoid being in those situations to begin with, the robotaxi would need to be a good bit safer than our average.
rootusrootus 2y ago
> humans rely on two eyes in the driver seat Eyes which are orders of magnitude capable than the best cameras, and Teslas come with mediocre cameras, not the best. Eyes which are connected to a brain, and ML is a looooong ways from rivaling that. > That's a reality of life that robotaxis do not need to solve. Robotaxis do not need to account for things jumping out unexpectedly in front of them?
- mike_hearn 2y ago
  Orders of magnitude more capable than the best cameras? I wish. I need corrective lenses for my eyes to even work at all. With that fixed they feed my brain an image that's upside down, black and white except in the centre, which is covered in blood vessels and which has a blind spot. They also take a long time to adjust to sudden changes in lighting conditions, don't do any true depth sensing, suffer frequent frame drops and can't run for more than about 20 hours at a time before they basically stop working. My brain tries to hides all this from me, and makes me think that I see the world in glorious 3D technicolor all the time, but that's a lie as revealed by the many amusing optical illusions that have been discovered over the years. Meanwhile, today I used ML that knows more than me, can think and type faster than me, which is a much better artist than me and which can read and react far faster than me to visual stimuli. Oh, it can also easily look in every direction simultaneously without pausing or ever getting distracted or bored. Somehow it doesn't feel like I have a big advantage over computers when it comes to driving.
  - mlyle 2y ago
    The cameras we are talking about have poor angular resolution, worse dynamic range than the human eye, and don’t do any direct depth sensing either.
    - mike_hearn 2y ago
      Are we talking about Tesla's cameras or the "best" cameras? There are smartphone cameras that do depth sensing and HDR, and cameras are cheaper than eyeballs so composing them to get more angular resolution seems OK.
rurp 2y ago
That vision-only argument is marketing spin from Tesla. The biggest thing it leaves out is that humans process their vision input with a human brain, which Tesla vehicles very much do not have. If and when we create true AGI they will have a good argument, but a world where that exists will be wildly different from our current one and who knows if Tesla's tech will even be relevent anymore.
- bangaladore 2y ago
  Why are you so confident that AGI, or a human brain, is necessary to be able to drive a car with only cameras? I get annoyed with statements like this because technology changes and advances so quickly, and Tesla has made substantial technical leaps in this field of machine learning. They have the state-of-the-art vision -> voxels/depth models and are only improving.
  - michaelt 2y ago
    Tesla, who use cameras only, have not demonstrated full self driving, despite trying for a decade. Elon Musk has stated "It is increasingly clear that all roads lead to AGI. Tesla is building an extremely compute-efficient mini AGI for FSD" [1] Waymo, who use additional sensors like lidar, have a driverless taxi service which needs no safety drivers. The evidence kinda speaks for itself, IMHO. [1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1740641473849352450?s=20 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1740641473849352450?s=20
    - diebeforei485 2y ago
      Waymo does have safety drivers, they're just driving the vehicle remotely when it's in certain areas instead of being in the vehicle. So it isn't "full" self driving either. > Tesla, who use cameras only, have not demonstrated full self driving There are entire youtube channels with hours of continuous video showing Teslas driving around SF, but also other parts of California, with no human intervention.
      - kajecounterhack 2y ago

kajecounterhack 2y ago

> I don't see any evidence to suggest the modern model that Tesla has developed for their vision system is their limiting factor in the slightest to reach L4/L5 For one, frame rate and processing rate on human eyes is way higher than cameras. Dynamic range is another. Also, Cruise and Waymo are some of the only companies that have hard internal data / ability to simulate how well their safety drivers do, and in the very same scenario what their software driver will do. Without LiDAR you can't build that simulation, and once you have that data if you continue to use HD Maps and LiDAR there's probably a good reason. > Dogs jump into the road in front of cars all the time and get killed, and kids get endangered at school bus crossings. That's a reality of life that robotaxis do not need to solve. Robotaxis need to avoid any accident that a human would be able to avoid. > IR and thermal sensing are unnecessary if the bar is human level See, you could say this if you had some data that showed that incidents per X miles (when the vehicle is driving at night) is sufficiently low, + if the software passes some contrived scenarios to gut-check its ability to see in the dark with the necessary reliability. But you don't have that data, do you? Someone has it though :) and I'd argue regulators should have it too.

bangaladore 2y ago
> For one, frame rate and processing rate on human eyes is way higher than cameras. I don't think it's exciting to say that you must have theoretical parity with something to use it for this use case. Tesla's solution monitors ~6? cameras at once with accurate depth in each. That's 6x more views than a human can see. I wish people would stop comparing apples to oranges. > Robotaxis need to avoid any accident that a human would be able to avoid. I never said anything to the contrary. Animals get hit all the time, not just because a human wasn't paying attention.
- kajecounterhack 2y ago
  > Tesla's solution monitors ~6? cameras at once with accurate depth in each No, the depth is estimated. It's not accurate, at least not in the way you need for L4. > I never said anything to the contrary. Animals get hit all the time, not just because a human wasn't paying attention. I was just clarifying what the bar is. The bar is that avoidable accidents need to be avoided. Nobody will get mad if a plane crashes due to unavoidable circumstances (freak accident where two engines go out due to bird strikes or something). People will stop flying in the plane when it becomes clear that the airline is not doing everything it can to avoid fatalities.

RankingMember 2y ago

> if the bar is human level IMO the bar is well above human-level if you actually want to attain the level of trust necessary to remove the steering wheel from a car.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
rootusrootus 2y ago
Agree 100%. And IMO it is worth remembering that a really significant share of collisions are caused by well known risk factors. For those of us who avoid being in those situations to begin with, the robotaxi would need to be a good bit safer than our average.

rootusrootus 2y ago

> humans rely on two eyes in the driver seat Eyes which are orders of magnitude capable than the best cameras, and Teslas come with mediocre cameras, not the best. Eyes which are connected to a brain, and ML is a looooong ways from rivaling that. > That's a reality of life that robotaxis do not need to solve. Robotaxis do not need to account for things jumping out unexpectedly in front of them?

mike_hearn 2y ago
Orders of magnitude more capable than the best cameras? I wish. I need corrective lenses for my eyes to even work at all. With that fixed they feed my brain an image that's upside down, black and white except in the centre, which is covered in blood vessels and which has a blind spot. They also take a long time to adjust to sudden changes in lighting conditions, don't do any true depth sensing, suffer frequent frame drops and can't run for more than about 20 hours at a time before they basically stop working. My brain tries to hides all this from me, and makes me think that I see the world in glorious 3D technicolor all the time, but that's a lie as revealed by the many amusing optical illusions that have been discovered over the years. Meanwhile, today I used ML that knows more than me, can think and type faster than me, which is a much better artist than me and which can read and react far faster than me to visual stimuli. Oh, it can also easily look in every direction simultaneously without pausing or ever getting distracted or bored. Somehow it doesn't feel like I have a big advantage over computers when it comes to driving.
- mlyle 2y ago
  The cameras we are talking about have poor angular resolution, worse dynamic range than the human eye, and don’t do any direct depth sensing either.
  - mike_hearn 2y ago
    Are we talking about Tesla's cameras or the "best" cameras? There are smartphone cameras that do depth sensing and HDR, and cameras are cheaper than eyeballs so composing them to get more angular resolution seems OK.

rurp 2y ago

That vision-only argument is marketing spin from Tesla. The biggest thing it leaves out is that humans process their vision input with a human brain, which Tesla vehicles very much do not have. If and when we create true AGI they will have a good argument, but a world where that exists will be wildly different from our current one and who knows if Tesla's tech will even be relevent anymore.

bangaladore 2y ago
Why are you so confident that AGI, or a human brain, is necessary to be able to drive a car with only cameras? I get annoyed with statements like this because technology changes and advances so quickly, and Tesla has made substantial technical leaps in this field of machine learning. They have the state-of-the-art vision -> voxels/depth models and are only improving.
- michaelt 2y ago
  Tesla, who use cameras only, have not demonstrated full self driving, despite trying for a decade. Elon Musk has stated "It is increasingly clear that all roads lead to AGI. Tesla is building an extremely compute-efficient mini AGI for FSD" [1] Waymo, who use additional sensors like lidar, have a driverless taxi service which needs no safety drivers. The evidence kinda speaks for itself, IMHO. [1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1740641473849352450?s=20 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1740641473849352450?s=20
  - diebeforei485 2y ago
    Waymo does have safety drivers, they're just driving the vehicle remotely when it's in certain areas instead of being in the vehicle. So it isn't "full" self driving either. > Tesla, who use cameras only, have not demonstrated full self driving There are entire youtube channels with hours of continuous video showing Teslas driving around SF, but also other parts of California, with no human intervention.
    - kajecounterhack 2y ago