Andrew Ng calls Tesla irresponsible for shipping an imperfect autopilot

Part of the problem is Tesla's "autopilot" isn't designed to be fully automatic. It's a diver's assistance package. As a comment in the Facebook thread mentioned, I too wonder if the problem is partial-autopilot in general. People will tend to put their trust in the system if it appears to be automatic. We probably shouldn't be shipping partial autopilot at all. Fully automatic or bust.

Yes the link should be replaced with yours.

I believe that the autopilot that you have to override in critical moment is worse than the driving assistance that doesn't turn on until it's critical.

In the former case, if you turn on the autopilot that you know is not just keeping the speed constant, you will tend not to be fully concentrated on the road all the time. And you'll surely seldom be able to estimate when the autopilot will work and when it won't.

In the later case, you must remain aware of the situation and you are "in the loop" for the common cases, but if there's something you estimated wrong the clever radars, lidars and computers have the chance to react better than you are able.

The difference is when a plane's autopilot goes wonky you typically have minutes to realize it and take over manually. In a car you often have less than a second. Pilots also are highly trained and rehearse emergencies. Drivers put on makeup.

Anything less than a truly 100% autonomous car autopilot is 1 massive lawsuit away from failure.

> Most planes have a prominent red button you can press to disable the autopilot whenever it misbehaves.

Not really, or some pedantry.. the autopilot (heading and altitude) is disabled with a double-click on a small button either the yolk or the side-stick (boeing and airbus). Autothrottle (entirely separate) is disabled with a double-click on a small button on the sides of the throttle levers.

There is also a separate mechanism to disable it entirely, but it's usually a small button with an indistinct label (like "A/P" or "A/T") mixed in with a bunch of other buttons on the instrument cluster. Sometimes there is also a slightly larger "AP Disengage" button on some planes.

Most pilots I've seen will disable using the first method so they can be immediately "hands-on" when the system relinquishes control.

One glaring difference is that aircraft pilots have substantially higher training requirements than car drivers. And the pilots of large aircraft that typically use autopilot, are all trained professionals.

I kind of wonder if Tesla figures "Hey, once a few crashes happen people will figure it out."

my guess is, without any insider information, they were (or at least would be) willing to deal with negative pr, for the amount of data this program is likely to get.'

While google (and many others) have been working on self-driving cars/testing systems, Tesla is a car company with many active vehicles. They benefit from huge fleets of vehicles (comparative to other autonomous car companies not car manufacturers) of which to test. So releasing this product and having potentially 50-100K people using it daily as well as over millions of miles logged could be net worth it.

They probably assumed (and likely calculated) a falure mode would be non-lethal/minimal dents and very small risk of human life. So they would allow the tech out there early and hope that a lot of this data helped to improve the vehicles.

It isn't PC to say, but this is how humans have learned most things. Being 90% something works, and then getting last 10 percent by learning what not to do which often comes at with a cost as high as human life. For example, the Challenger mission was a tradgedy and we, and very unfortunately some brave men and woman, paid a price for us to learn how to protect those future astronauts.

How is this different than the automatic transmission? Antilock brakes? Traction control? Lane departure/encroachment warnings? Adaptive cruise control?

Or even older tech like "drive by wire" (your foot isn't directly connected to the throttle bodies) or manually adjusting the choke in carbureted vehicles?

These are innovations that have happened in my lifetime. I'm sure there are even older "car and driver sharing duties" examples others can come up with.

It lessens the cognitive load in easy driving situations, such as sitting in a queue on the highway. A hand on the wheel, your foot wherever you want, eyes on the road is enough. Just knowing that the car will take care of the small things is a massive offload.

Also, you learn what your car is good at and bad at, and plan accordingly. I know my car is bad at handling drivers changing into my lane too close to me, so I take over in those situations.

You watch.

By not having to devote attention to keeping your car within a foot of the lane's center, you have more attention to devote to the bigger picture of what's going on.

For example, have you ever tried to change lanes, done a quick shoulder check to see if the spot is clear, and then looked back ahead only to find that the car in front of started braking heavily and you're approaching it rapidly? With Autopilot this is not a concern, because you can let the car monitor the car in front, while you look to the side.

The first couple of hours with Autopilot, drivers typically are sitting there tensely ready to take over. But with experience, you learn how the system works, where it behaves well and where it fails, and you learn to relax, pay attention to the big picture, and let your strengths and the car's strengths complement each other.

Does this make sense to you? In this system the plane and human pilot share duties.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_flight_control_sys...

not all technologies are created equal.

If my macbook's battery dies when it rains, it's not the same as if my car crashes into another one injuring multiple people.

One mishap which gets a lot of public scrutiny could set the field back by decades. When it comes to products with public safety implications its better to emulate the airline industry and their approach to safety rather than the "move fast and break things" mantra. For an example of how a few catastrophic events can destroy an entire industry / approach forever we just have to look at the nuclear industry with (chernobyl / three mile) and blimps (Hindenberg).

That's not much of an argument. There has to be a standard where you consider the new and imperfect technology "good enough". Is Telsa's auto-pilot good enough? I don't know. My perception is that since Telsa is an underdog of the auto industry, they are more willing to take a risk and put the technology out there. If it turns out to be too unsafe, their company will take a huge hit. If not, they gain market share.

If your wife or child was injured because of this, would that still be just the cost of progress?

Technology can be refined and rigorously tested before it's pushed to consumers and that is still progress.

There has actually been a movement since at least 2000 to stop calling accidents "accidents" because it was found to make it seem like "lol accident nothing could have been done" I can recall the word "accident" being dropped by driver instructors and such back then at least. It might even go back further.

Collision is better, but has a lot of letters so you condense it to crash.

you mean like this: https://boingboing.net/2016/05/20/airbnb-stealth-updates-ter... ?

They should be blamed simply for putting beta software in cars on public roads.

While that might be true purely from a legal standpoint, it just doesn't make much sense logically. Let's compare it to something like a gas stove. If you turn the stove on with a bunch of combustible stuff around it and then walk away for ten minutes and your house burns down as a result, that's pretty obviously your own fault. However, if you turn the stove on with just a normal pot of water on top, walk away for ten minutes, and it self destructs and burns your house down, what would you think? Is it your fault for not standing there with a giant fire extinguisher, or is it the stove company's fault for making a poorly QA'd product? I think Tesla's Autopilot feature is a lot more like the latter example than the former.

Tesla isn't responsible for how a driver drives their car.

But they are responsible for the software they ship.