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Comment by robojamison | Hacker News Reader

> The car computer will then silently compare when it would have braked to the driver action and upload that to the Tesla database...whether Autopilot is turned on or off, then that object is added to the geocoded whitelist.

(emphasis mine)

This has interesting privacy implications. I am not a Tesla owner, but I imagine that by enabling Autopilot you consent to providing Tesla with diagnostic, error, and sensor data. But what about those who have not enabled this feature? Their Tesla will automatically phone home with data regarding their location and surroundings regardless of whether or not they have consented to this?

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I was really fascinated by that comment as well, but not for privacy reasons, I believe that while it would be able to peruse server logs at Tesla to understand where a particular car was at a particular time, that is no worse than OnStar or current phone GPS tracking.

The interesting thing is the data set of watching humans drive and using models to drive for the same place. This only works if the "place" is not notably different from the model, say a semi has hit the overhead and its now hanging into the roadway, can the car distinguish between a sign hanging sideways and one that is attached normally?

Severe storms and down power lines is another interesting question. Does autopilot recognize the environment has been grossly modified and refuse to drive? Earthquakes, tornadoes, floods, all can grossly change the environment at a particular geocoded location.

What if a Tesla owner's club decides to use a piece of highway 58 out in Nevada as a race strip? Does autopilot assume that when you hit this point you are supposed to stomp the accelerator and go as fast as you can? (ok that is a stretch)

It's the data without the knowledge. Something machine learning is bad at (hence turning chat bots into vitriol spewing fascists). VERY interesting times.

> say a semi has hit the overhead and its now hanging into the roadway, can the car distinguish between a sign hanging sideways and one that is attached normally? Severe storms and down power lines is another interesting question.... Earthquakes, tornadoes, floods, all can grossly change the environment at a particular geocoded location.

Humans are not perfect in those situations either, and cause plenty of fatal crashes.

Remember, autopilot doesn't have to be anywhere near perfect. It only has to be better than humans are now.

To be honest, it really has to be close to perfect - else, the public will deem the technology killer, even if it is in fact safer.

I think that's what we are going to find out. So far, I haven't seen anyone with pitchforks and torches demanding Tesla be stopped after the first autopilot fatality.

I used to think about it the way you do, but lately I think if they can make the numbers work out, then there will be some insurance companies willing to step in and turn risk of lawsuits into a manageable cost of doing business.

You mean like autopilot on commercial airlines?

Or like x-ray machines?

Or like any other machinery that is automated and kills the odd person here and there?

These cases show us it doesn't need to be perfect at all.

> Earthquakes, tornadoes, floods, all can grossly change the environment at a particular geocoded location.

As do other car accidents.

Interesting to think what an autopilot system should do when it is suddenly in the presence of a car accident. I would love to read about frustrations at the NHSTA trying to crash test cars with autopilots that kept swerving just before they hit the test barrier.

I feel like Tesla is a super creepy company that people aren't giving enough scrutiny to just because their tech is so great. What was that story about them remotely locking out a hacker from snooping around in their software? What about all those articles where they do an uncomfortably accurate play-by-play of someone's accident? I'm not comfortable with the idea of a company having that much access to private data.

I don't quite see how it is "creepy". Tesla's autopilot is not a requirement for operating their vehicle. It is an experimental value add that you have to agree in order to be included in the program.

As with any beta testing of software, high-fidelity diagnostic data is a must, especially in these circumstance as you have no other way of simulating the various scenarios people find themselves in when driving.

I could be wrong, but it seems they phone home for all sorts of things even without autopilot enabled.

They log everything whether you opt in or not. But as a cell phone user, I feel like I have opted out of all location privacy already.

I'll trade my location privacy for awesome car capabilities.

Software that can end lives should not be beta tested on customers. Full stop.

In no way is it acceptable to give customers "experimental" software, overhype it, and disclaim responsibility when it inevitably fails.

...which gets you Toyota brake pedal software, which, in retrospect, doesn't look tested at all. Better? (Deadlier for sure)

Most people don't own a Tesla anyway. It's a little harder to avoid being tracked by Google, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft.

What surprises me is how (at least here in HN) there was a general feeling of annoyance when Apple tracked user locations with Apple Maps to identify traffic patterns, even though Google did the same for Google maps.

But now with Tesla user-tracking, people seem to be actively psyched at being tracked by Tesla.

People are more comfortable with data collection when they understand what the data will be used for and agree that the use is valuable to society. If the use is unclear or doesn't seem important, then people worry that the real reason is something creepy that's been left unsaid.

In this case, people mostly agree that R&D in self-driving cars is important, and can clearly see how this data helps with that. Whereas identifying traffic in Google Maps/Apple Maps feels less important, and the connection between location tracking and detecting traffic takes a little more work to understand.

Perceived value is greater. Everyone wants self driving cars to be easily accessible and without human intervention. I'd give up my data personally for that goal. Its certainly more valuable than having Google direct me to a route which is 2 minutes faster.

I would assume that this is because it is already kinda-sorta common behavior for software to track this kind of data, while this is an entirely new thing for cars.

Exchanging privacy for direct physical safety is a little easier to swallow I'd imagine.

Assuming of course that new Starbucks don't start showing up on routes preferred by Tesla drivers.

This is no different than how people viewed the idea of using your real name online pre- and post-Facebook.

Privacy erodes naturally. It is inventible. The benefits outweigh the costs almost always. The need of the many outweighs the needs of the few.

The future is one in which humans are recognized, at least by the machines, as being more like a single organism than a group of individuals.

I would argue the opposite is true: the perfectly anonymous population can have policy and management at only the broadest granularities of abstraction.

Data collection is all about machines being able to treat you as an individual.

It's been a fracas with Google too. Take this discussion (the first substantial one I dug up on the topic): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6873032

There's someone making the same consent argument (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6873947 ) and lots of people expressing ambivalence and more about sharing the data with Google.

As far as how people are responding to Tesla doing it, you did reply to a comment questioning their practices without evening being exposed to them.

If Facebook or another company with goals that may not be clearly noble did it people may question their motives more. I also believe these is a natural higher level of trust in people like Elon Musk who have more praise worthy missions set for their companies than let's say someone like Mark Zuckerberg, ie. Elon wants humans to have a backup plant and is taking actions to save this planet, he seems to have dedicated his life to that mission, Mark maybe not so much.

Musk also isn't on record as calling his customers "dumb fucks," the way Zuckerberg is.

What are you on the record saying when you were 19 ?

Musk doesn't have to call anyone a dumb fuck, he just points to some graphs. The log data clearly shows that the driver was an idiot.

It's easier to see that Tesla are going to do something exciting and positive with the data.

This has been discussed extensively in the past - apparently the ownership contract includes the downloading of all that information most constantly

It's perplexing to me that to own something, you must agree to a contract.

How does this work for second hand sales? The new owner wouldn't be party to the contract.

I thought that Tesla have always been tracking their cars, autopilot or not. IIRC, there was a story from over a year ago where Tesla complained about a car review, citing the data that the reviewer's car had transmitted. This included location information, battery power, etc.

Perhaps there is a way to opt out of this - but also, if you opt out, do Tesla disable features of the car?

I wonder if/how insurance companies will get this data. It is only a temporary concern until we have fully autonomous vehicles, but still a concern.

By installing the autopilot software update, or purchasing the car with the radar installed I'm sure you signed away these rights.

All of the cars since late 2014 have autopilot hardware installed. This allows purchasers to activate autopilot after the sale of the vehicle.

What happens if I cut the leads?

Tesla will accuse you of industrial espionage, apparently.

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