Comment by wilun | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wilun | Hacker News Reader

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And yet that is quasi criminal (from an ethical pov) that they have worded it that way for 2 reasons:

a. When you buy a car why should you even care about that hw/sw distinction, and more importantly do you have the distinction in mind at all time, and are advertisement usually worded that way, stating that maybe the car could become self-driving one day (but without even stating the maybe explicitly, just using tricks)

b. It is extremely dubious that the car even have the necessary hardware to become a fully autonomous driving car. We will see, but I don't believe it much, and more importantly competitors and people familiar with the field also don't believe it much...

People clearly are misunderstanding what Tesla Autopilot is, but this is not, ultimately, their fault. This is Tesla's fault. The people operating the car can NOT be considered as perfect flawless robot. Yet Tesla's model consider them like that, and reject all responsibility, not even considering the responsibility that they made a terrible mistake in considering them like that. We need to act the same way as when similar cases happens for a pilot mistake in an Airplane: change the system so that the human will make less mistakes (especially if the human is required for safe operation, which is the case here). But Tesla is doing the complete opposite! By misleading buyers and drivers in the first place.

Tesla should be forced by the regulators to stop their shit: stop misleading and dangerous advertisement; stop their autosteer uncontrolled experiment.

A.) Pretty sure that statement was made to assuage fears that people would be purchasing an expensive asset that rapidly depreciates in value, only to witness it becoming obsolete in a matter of years because its hardware doesn't meet the requirements necessary for full self-driving functionality. Companies like Tesla tout over-the-air patching as a bonus to their product offering. Such a thing is useless if the hardware can't support the new software.

I think I actually sort of disagree with your reasoning in precisely the opposite direction. Specifically, you state the following: "The people operating the car can NOT be considered as perfect flawless robot.".

I agree with that statement 100%. People are not perfect robots with perfect driving skills. Far from it. Automotive accidents are a major cause of death in the United States.

What I disagree with is your takeaway. Your takeaway is that Tesla knows that people aren't perfect drivers, so it is irresponsible to sell people a a device with a feature (autopilot) that people will use incorrectly. Well, if that isn't the definition of a car, I don't know what is. Cars in and of themselves are dangerous and it takes perhaps 5 minutes of city driving to see someone doing something irresponsible with their vehicle. This is why driving and the automotive industry is so heavily (and rightly) regulated.

The knowledge that people are not save drivers, to me, is a strong argument in favor of autopilot and similar features. I suspect, as many people do, that autopilot doesn't compare favorably to a professional driver who is actively engaged in the activity of driving. But this isn't how people drive. To me, the best argument in favor of autopilot is - and I realize this sounds sort of bad - that as imperfect as it may be, its use need only result in fewer accidents, injuries, and deaths, than the human drivers who are otherwise driving unassisted.

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