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Comment by tathastu | Hacker News Reader

Tesla's autopilot page (https://www.tesla.com/autopilot) says (as of today):

Full Self-Driving Hardware on All Cars

All Tesla vehicles produced in our factory, including Model 3, have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver.

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That seems like an incredibly misleading way to market it. I could throw a LIDAR[0] and some cameras on my car and say "wow I have all the hardware necessary for autonomy". That's irrelevant if self-driving is dependent on some software updates that are coming at an unspecified point in the future (or gradually over time, with some surprise regressions like this one along the way).

[0] Tesla thinks they'll have full self driving with just cameras but I'm not convinced. Regardless of how level 4+ autonomy is achieved, there's still some serious work that needs to happen on the software side

You're touching on one of the things that Tesla does that frustrates me to no end. They have this attitude of software being the solution to everything. Waymo has a reason they've mounted lidar to the roofs of their cars, it isn't because they can't build good enough software or their ML models aren't accurate enough, it's because they've realised that you can't just throw a bunch of cameras on a car, add some computer vision algorithms and market it to consumers as being fully self driving capable.

Compare that with the message displayed each time the driver turns on Autopilot. Is there any evidence that Tesla drivers are more influenced by marketing or by the message that they see every day?

>Is there any evidence that Tesla drivers are more influenced by marketing or by the message that they see every day?

given the behaviour of customers (putting down lump sums of money without knowing when they receive their car, camping out in front of stores), dedicated only communities (a 200k user subreddit for a car company?) and so forth I'm going to go with yes and it seems to border on the cult-ish.

There is a cult of personality around Musk and Tesla that is simply irrational

Also does Tesla have numbers to show that autopilot has actually been safer than a normal human driver?

I'm willing to bet that the NTSA report on this accident will explore that issue. The one number that Tesla has given included the effect of automatic emergency braking, so it's not a pure autopilot number.

Even if they do show the AP is safer than a human driver, the idea that a machine/software killing people is pretty unsettling to most of us. It's one thing to have a human driver make an error and kill himself and other and another to have a machine do it on a somewhat regular basis, even if in the long run less people die overall. There's something really uncomfortable for society. The justification for it feels very cold and calculated, even if it is right. We've arrived at Peter Singer's trolley car problem.

The trolley problem doesn't have a human in the loop.

Edit: Instead of downvoting me, can the downvoter please point out where the trolley problem involves a human in the loop? This is a level 2 system, where a human driver has to remain alert and ready to take over. That's not the trolley problem.

Oh we let machines kill people all the time. Trains, power transformers, oil rigs...

Sure autodriving is entering the uncanny valley and that's different. Lots of things are different about it. Instead of prosecuting one person for causing an accident, now a whole line of vehicles is 'at fault' and maybe get sidelined. Good news there is, they can all be fixed at once.

It'll end up more about the law and insurance implications, than what we feel about it.

While it might imply otherwise, the message is clear about the _hardware_ being ready for self-driving. That doesn't mean the car is capable of self-driving in general.

"This television's hardware is ready for 4K. The television is not capable of displaying 4K in general."

"This speaker's hardware is ready for stereo sound. The speaker is not capable of playing stereo music in general."

"This smartphone's hardware is ready for multitouch input. The phone is not capable of responding to multitouch input in general."

Doesn't help, the message they are sending are misleading customers and that's irresponsible.

Does messaging get clarified any if combining it with the messaging of always requiring the driver's attention?

How many non-programmers do you think recognize that Tesla is telling a half-truth here?

At this point it is not even clear that the hardware is in fact capable of self-driving, ever.

I think there is a reason everyone else is using Lidar.

And the reason Tesla is not is (among others) that it's unlikely to be economical on the Model 3.

Sure. But this is the sort of thing that is in my view an instigator of escalating adversarialism. I recognize this kind of cagey language, but I also recognize that most people don't and I think it's absurd to demand that they do understand it. I put this in the category of false advertising and I think a jury of random people will side with the dead. Hence the defense's job will be to disqualify ordinary people who will go for connotation over denotation.

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