Elon stretches the truth constantly. Should be a good fit.
[0]: https://techcrunch.com/2010/12/01/larry-ellison-hearsay-we-c...
That's putting it gently. Putting aside his twitter spats, Tesla is still prominently advertising "Full Self-Driving Hardware on All Cars"[0] even though their cars do not contain LIDAR, which essentially every expert in the field unconnected to Tesla seems to agree is necessary to implement Level 5 self driving cars[1][2].
[0] https://www.tesla.com/autopilot
[1] https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/mobileye-ceo-tesla-self-d...
[2]https://www.wired.com/story/lidar-self-driving-cars-luminar-...
> every expert in the field unconnected to Tesla
Besides, the fact that I can drive my car relying primarily on two eyes and a brain suggests that it must be possible to extract and process the information to drive a car with stereo vision, and without LIDAR. LIDAR may become cheap and small enough that it should be added purely from a safety perspective - more better information is better. However, I think plenty of experts would agree that theoretically it is possible without.
Here are some experts that think it works without LIDAR, so you may wish to edit “every”. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1708.09839.pdf
>"The autopilot feature [19] in cars produced by Tesla Motors enables autonomous driving on highways through a combination of a forward-looking camera and radar. Due to the limited field-of-view, these cars cannot execute autonomous driving in cities which require surround perception."
So while you may have found some experts who think Level 5 automation can be done using only CV, you've only reinforced my main point that Elon Musk is not a trustworthy person.
I'm saying that when you ask people not getting a paycheck from Tesla, they say that LIDAR is required. Very notably including Mobileye, who severed their connection with Tesla over this disagreement. Mobileye is particularly notable since they invested heavily into camera-only solutions; Mobileye has a strong financial incentive to dismiss LIDAR, yet they don't.
It's obvious why Tesla doesn't either put LIDAR in all their cars or remove the self driving hardware claims from their advertising; Elon wants to have his cake and eat it too.
More from mobileye:
> Level 3 – Autonomous Under Certain Circumstances [...] Mobileye expects this additional redundancy to be covered by additional sensors like radar and lidar (for shape and object detection) and by Mobileye’s REM™ localization map for identification of safe drivable paths and knowledge of intersections and other traffic signage or instructions.
https://www.mobileye.com/future-of-mobility/history-autonomo...
Harsher words than mine, from GM’s director of autonomous vehicle integration Scott Miller:
>“The level of technology and knowing what it takes to do the mission, to say you can be a full Level 5 with just cameras and radars is not physically possible,” said Miller. He went on to add that Musk is “full of crap.”
https://futurism.com/gm-expert-calls-elon-musk-full-of-crap-...
An article about the angular resolution limitations of radar (overcoming this is exactly what LIDAR is for):
>Raj Rajkumar, who researches autonomous driving at Carnegie Mellon University, thinks those assumptions concern one of Tesla's key sensors. “The radars they use are apparently meant for detecting moving objects (as typically used in adaptive cruise control systems), and seem to be not very good in detecting stationary objects," he says.
>That's not nearly as crazy as it may seem. Radar knows the speed of any object it sees, and is also simple, cheap, robust, and easy to build into a front bumper. But it also detects lots of things a car rolling down the highway needn't worry about, like overhead highway signs, loose hubcaps, or speed limit signs. So engineers make a choice, telling the car to ignore these things and keep its eyes on the other cars on the road: They program the system to focus on the stuff that's moving.
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/tesla-fire-truck-crash-autop...
If you search around for this, you'll find there are A LOT of people calling BS on Tesla's claims that cameras and radar are adequate sensors for Level 5 automation. Tesla's website hints at none of this. The only caveats I see from them are concerning software and regulation:
>Please note that Self-Driving functionality is dependent upon extensive software validation and regulatory approval, which may vary widely by jurisdiction. It is not possible to know exactly when each element of the functionality described above will be available, as this is highly dependent on local regulatory approval. Please note also that using a self-driving Tesla for car sharing and ride hailing for friends and family is fine, but doing so for revenue purposes will only be permissible on the Tesla Network, details of which will be released next year.
Required for Level 5 automation. Tesla claims to be selling the required hardware, waiting only on the software and legislation allowing it. All other players in this field are focusing on a combination of cameras, radar and LIDAR.
Since LIDAR is expensive and the self-driving hype is real, Tesla have a strong short term financial incentive to forgo the former while claiming to sell the later. Combine that with virtually every other expert in the field saying they're full of BS, and I think the picture becomes crystal clear. Elon covers for himself by promoting conspiracy theories about grand industry-wide plots to keep an underdog down, and that has worked very well for him so far. But like most conspiracy theories, this is one you should think critically about.
I am not opposed to LIDAR. I just think it is unnecessary and that computer vision is likely to get good enough before LIDAR gets cheap enough.
LIDAR currently being very expensive (and a bit bulky) is obviously the reason Tesla hasn't put LIDAR in their cars. I don't really fault them for that, I fault them for their deceptive advertising. The LIDAR industry has not yet progressed to the point where it makes sense to bring a car to market with hardware ready for Level 5 automation, so Tesla should stop claiming they've done so.
Assuming the current Level 5 automation hype doesn't fizzle then smoulder for decades like the AI craze of the 60s, then it's success will coincide with rapid advances in size and price of LIDAR.
But this is an important factor to consider when evaluating safety statistics. Humans operate cars in all sort of adverse conditions and human accident rates include accidents in those kind of conditions. Accident rates for autonomous systems that refuse to attempt operation under anything less than ideal conditions won't be directly comparable to human accident rates... but expect this to be glossed over by automotive marketing departments who will eagerly compare apples to oranges as soon as the opportunity presents itself.
The main obstacle for self-driving car is much more on the processing side than on the sensor side. After all, humans are able to drive with audio + stereo vision that's not even 360 degrees.
It could very well be that the reason Tesla's statement about "full self-driving car HW" is inaccurate is because of the lack of sufficient onboard computing power rather than the lack of sensors (IIRC they have an Nvidia X2 and GP106 onboard, which only have a total of about 4 SPFP TFLOPs).
>"Please note that Self-Driving functionality is dependent upon extensive software validation and regulatory approval, which may vary widely by jurisdiction. It is not possible to know exactly when each element of the functionality described above will be available, as this is highly dependent on local regulatory approval."
Well, spinning hyperbole that fires up the clickbait is definitely effective advertising.
Are there any companies that are taking the purely computer vision approach then?
>"(IIRC they have an Nvidia X2 and GP106 onboard, which only have a total of about 4 SPFP TFLOPs)."
Can you say how far off is that compute power from what is actually required for a "full self-driving" car?
Calm down a second.
Elon/Tesla are trying to do things differently/do things that other people are not or think can't be done.
To name a few"
Every "export in the field" said you can't land an orbital class booster vertically.
Every "expert in the field" has not figured out how to save billions and years digging tunnels.
Every "expert in the field" seems to design electric cars that look like a cartoon joke.
Every "expert in the field" was pretty sure Tesla could never be profitable.
Don't confuse "has never been done before" with "Can't be done". Let the results speak for what's possible.
As someone that doesn't know anything about self-driving cars, how can this be true? Humans can drive cars with only visual input. Why can't AI?
Lidar lets you get a high degree of accuracy for certain variables in your model - because you can know fairly accurately when and how strong the signal you sent out is, you can have a fairly high degree of confidence when you get reflection of how far away the object is, and feed that into your persistent idea of the world, versus having to use a bunch of heuristics to try and extract that from purely audiovisual data.
(That's my understanding, at least - I don't work in that industry.)
Google/Waymo has obviously been throwing a ton of resources at nailing computer vision, their recaptcha that's plainly training such a system is doubtlessly just the publicly visible tip of an iceberg. Yet they're still investing into LIDAR as well. If Google/Waymo is bearish on a pure CV solution, I don't see any justification for Tesla thinking they can do it. Not in any near future.
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/01/googles-waymo-invests-i...
If you had vision that bad, the State of California would not let you get a drivers license, they require at least one of your eyes to be 20/40. Anyway, the point of the GP is that the brain isn't the only piece of wetware doing image processing, but more to the point the current state of the art CV really is not up to the task.
And it really doesn't seem like it's going to be there anytime soon.
Just because humans use vision to drive, doesn't mean that we should restrict ourselves to vision for cars. Also, as another comment points out, our visual system does a lot more than just 'see' in the literal light/color processing sense that a camera does
Elon has publicly trashed LIDAR plenty of times. I think you should treat his rants as defenses of his products' reputation, not earnest impartial engineering appraisals. If Elon were to admit that LIDAR will play a vital role in Level 5 automation, he'd be admitting that his company has been mistaken or lying for years. I think Elon's personality precludes him coming clean on something like this.
> "it's not enough to build a full self-driving vehicle."
As far as I know, nobody is trying to build a Level 5 system using only LIDAR. The serious teams who are working on this problem are all using LIDAR in addition to cameras and radars. LIDAR can't read a street sign; cameras and computer vision will obviously play an important role in Level 5 systems for that reason and more. But the teams that aren't trying to use automation hype to sell luxury cars don't share Elon's enthusiasm for CV/radar with no LIDAR.
To be fair, in my mind this is the one most common trait I find in successful entrepreneurs and leaders. I've seen leaders who I didn't think were particularly bright, or extroverted, or empathic, but man, did they not get stressed out by obstacles that came in their way. They either sidestepped them or overcame them, but they did not dwell on them and let those obstacles lead to self doubt.
This is one reason why I think sociopaths are over-represented in leadership positions. They are not burdened by a conscience that can lead to self doubt in times of stress. Of course, it's possible to have this "does not get discouraged by big obstacles" attitude and not be a sociopath, but it is certainly an area where sociopaths have a natural advantage.
In any case I think that it would be safe to say that sociopaths have at least the embedded advantage of being "quicker", as they most probably ponder less than other people about in/direct consequences of their actions.
Without getting too political, take Donald Trump, who in my mind kind of exemplifies this definition of success. Whatever your thoughts about Trump, he's definitely not lazy, and his early morning tweet storms seem to signify that he gets by on little to no sleep. Of course, he may cause WWIII in the process.
being swiss, if he gets little or no sleep (because or routine work or anything which he triggered himself) I would judge that as mismanagement :)
Fortunately for me I'm happy with my own definition of "success".
I wouldn't say it's that they don't get stressed, but that they are able to quickly compartmentalize it and move on without dwelling on it.
On the "are they just great at hiding" question, at least in my experience this isn't really possible. Personally, I have severe negative physical effects in response to long term, chronic stress. I sleep poorly, get severe intestinal issues, etc. At some point it becomes pretty impossible for me to just "hide it" - I'd LOVE to be able to quiet my body's physiological responses, but I'm just not capable. In seeing how some of my colleagues dealt with the same stressors, I can assure you they weren't just "hiding it" - if they were experiencing the same physical effects I was, at some point it would have been impossible to hide.
Edit: I would be absolutely interested in hearing Larry's wished next steps, but I don't think that board members usually release statements (I think that they only "steer" the CEO, help "facilitating" whenever issues arise and perform overseeing activities), right?
Ellison has been talking about what he called "Network Computing" since the mid 1990s. He said "We need computers that do less not more". He was laughed at and ridiculed, but today Chromebooks are the implementation of his "Network Computer" vision. "Computers that do less" are now a reality.
What we know today as "cloud computing" was first envisioned by Ellison in the mid 1990s. He called it "network computing". He talked about why it is important to "centralize complexity" and keep the end-user devices simple. Meanwhile Steve Ballmer was touting the "power of the local hard drive". Ellison's vision seems like commonsense today, but it wasn't back then.
There are lots of other things. For example he was the first to move Enterprise applications to the Web when web-based applications weren't a thing yet. Oracle Parallel Server was his idea. He even wrote the first implementation himself.
Ken Olsen (Digital Equipment Corp) is also reputed to have shared this view as far back as 1987 [1].
[0] https://www.computerworld.com.au/slideshow/334210/pictures-r...
[1] https://slidex.tips/download/don-t-forget-the-network
EDITED to fix URL [1]
That’s incorrect. Acquisition of Sun cane much later. “Network is the computer” is very different from Ellison’s Network Computing because in Ellison’s vision complexity is centralized and end-user devices are glorified dumb terminals which is very different from Sun’s “Network is the computer”