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If I had a dime for every hackernews who commented that FSD version X was like a revelation compared to FSD version X-ε I'd have like thirty bucks. I will grant

If I had a dime for every hackernews who commented that FSD version X was like a revelation compared to FSD version X-ε I'd have like thirty bucks. I will grant you that every release has surprisingly different behaviors. Here's an unintentionally hilarious meta-post on the subject https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29531915 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29531915

modeless 2y ago
Sure, plenty of people have been saying it's great for a long time, when it clearly was not (looking at you, Whole Mars Catalog). I was not saying it was super great back then. I have consistently been critical of Elon for promising human level self driving "next year" for like 10 years in a row and being wrong every time. He said it this year again and I still think he's wrong. But the rate of progress I see right now has me thinking that it may not be more than two or three years before that threshold is finally reached.
- ben_w 2y ago
  The most important lesson I've had from me incorrectly predicting in 2009 that we'd have cars that don't come with steering wheels in 2018, and thinking that the progress I saw each year up to then was consistent with that prediction, is that it's really hard to guess how long it takes to walk the fractal path that is software R&D. How far are we now, 6 years later than I expected? Dunno. I suspect it's gonna need an invention on the same level as Diffusion or Transformer models to be able to get all the edge cases we can get, and that might mean we only get it with human level AGI. But I don't know that, it might be we've already got all we need architecture-wise and it's just a matter of scale. Only thing I can be really sure of is we're making progress "quite fast" in a non-objective use of the words — it's not going to need a re-run of 6 million years of mammilian evolution or anything like that, but even 20 years wall clock time would be a disappointment.
  - modeless 2y ago
    Waymo went driverless in 2020, maybe you weren't that far off. Predicting that in 2009 would have been pretty good. They could and should have had vehicles without steering wheels anytime since then, it's just a matter of hardware development. Their steering wheel free car program was derailed when they hired traditional car company executives.
    - ben_w 2y ago
      Waymo for sure, but I meant also without any geolock etc., so I can't claim credit for my prediction. They may well best Tesla to this, though.
      - IX-103 2y ago
        Waymo is using full lidar and other sensors, whereas Tesla is relying on pure vision systems (to the point of removing radar on newer models). So they're solving a much harder problem. As for whether it's worthwhile to solve that problem when having more sensors will always be safer, that's another issue...
        ben_w 2y ago
        Indeed. While it ought to be possible to solve for just RGB… making it needlessly hard for yourself is a fun hack-day side project, not a valuable business solution.
Laaas 2y ago
Doesn’t this just mean it’s improving rapidly which is a good thing?
- jeffbee 2y ago
  No, the fact that people say FSD is on the verge of readiness constantly for a decade means there is no widely shared benchmark.
kylecordes 2y ago
On one hand, it really has gotten much better over time. It's quite impressive. On the other hand, I fear/suspect it is asymptotically, rather than linearly, approaching good enough to be unsupervised. It might get halfway there, each year, forever.

modeless 2y ago

Sure, plenty of people have been saying it's great for a long time, when it clearly was not (looking at you, Whole Mars Catalog). I was not saying it was super great back then. I have consistently been critical of Elon for promising human level self driving "next year" for like 10 years in a row and being wrong every time. He said it this year again and I still think he's wrong. But the rate of progress I see right now has me thinking that it may not be more than two or three years before that threshold is finally reached.

ben_w 2y ago
The most important lesson I've had from me incorrectly predicting in 2009 that we'd have cars that don't come with steering wheels in 2018, and thinking that the progress I saw each year up to then was consistent with that prediction, is that it's really hard to guess how long it takes to walk the fractal path that is software R&D. How far are we now, 6 years later than I expected? Dunno. I suspect it's gonna need an invention on the same level as Diffusion or Transformer models to be able to get all the edge cases we can get, and that might mean we only get it with human level AGI. But I don't know that, it might be we've already got all we need architecture-wise and it's just a matter of scale. Only thing I can be really sure of is we're making progress "quite fast" in a non-objective use of the words — it's not going to need a re-run of 6 million years of mammilian evolution or anything like that, but even 20 years wall clock time would be a disappointment.
- modeless 2y ago
  Waymo went driverless in 2020, maybe you weren't that far off. Predicting that in 2009 would have been pretty good. They could and should have had vehicles without steering wheels anytime since then, it's just a matter of hardware development. Their steering wheel free car program was derailed when they hired traditional car company executives.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    Waymo for sure, but I meant also without any geolock etc., so I can't claim credit for my prediction. They may well best Tesla to this, though.
    - IX-103 2y ago
      Waymo is using full lidar and other sensors, whereas Tesla is relying on pure vision systems (to the point of removing radar on newer models). So they're solving a much harder problem. As for whether it's worthwhile to solve that problem when having more sensors will always be safer, that's another issue...
      - ben_w 2y ago
        Indeed. While it ought to be possible to solve for just RGB… making it needlessly hard for yourself is a fun hack-day side project, not a valuable business solution.

Laaas 2y ago

Doesn’t this just mean it’s improving rapidly which is a good thing?

jeffbee 2y ago
No, the fact that people say FSD is on the verge of readiness constantly for a decade means there is no widely shared benchmark.

kylecordes 2y ago

On one hand, it really has gotten much better over time. It's quite impressive. On the other hand, I fear/suspect it is asymptotically, rather than linearly, approaching good enough to be unsupervised. It might get halfway there, each year, forever.