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Comment by rightbyte | Hacker News Reader

This is stupid. All the demos are on public roads. George Hortz needs to chill before he ends up in jail.

>This is stupid. All the demos are on public roads. George Hortz needs to chill before he ends up in jail.

There are literally thousands of community members using this software on a daily basis, driving thousands of miles in real life situations daily. I've been commuting to work with it for 3 months now and it's the most lifechanging piece of tech I've come across since the iPhone. I get on the highway, engage the system, and sit back sipping my coffee for the next 45 minutes. It costs $800 to get fully setup with an EON/Panda/Giraffe and almost every Toyota, Honda, and Hyundai since 2017 is now supported. Check out some of the videos on youtube and you'll want one too.

>I get on the highway, engage the system, and sit back sipping my coffee for the next 45 minutes.

Please, do not do this.

>Please, do not do this.

I get that people are unable to comprehend the fact that true level 2 autonomy is here and ready to use, but it is. It's perfectly safe to sit back completely disengaged from the controls on OpenPilot, so long as your eyes are on the road (which the software enforces with head tracking). Any sort of situation that could require you to take control is warned in advance.

>Any sort of situation that could require you to take control is warned in advance.

And what about false negatives, where something happens but it doesn't warn you?

The fact that comma.ai pulled out of releasing the comma one when the NHTSA asked them some fairly basic questions is a massive red flag. They can't even guarantee that openpilot will detect low slung trailers or motorcycles [1]. If they want to develop and release autonomous cars of any level they should be going through proper procedures and regulations, not just sticking a "for research purposes only" sticker on everything and distancing themselves from any responsibility.

There are far, far too many unknown unknowns when it comes to autonomous vehicles. If you're already forced to keep your eyes on the road, stop being lazy and do everyone around you a favour: grip the steering wheel, keep your feet on the pedals, and focus on the road.

[1] https://opc.ai/faqs/does-openpilot-see-people-animals-motorc...

> If you're already forced to keep your eyes on the road, stop being lazy and do everyone around you a favour: grip the steering wheel, keep your feet on the pedals, and focus on the road.

You do that, and I'll continue enjoying my self driving car.

Until it kills an innocent pedestrian. What are you gonna do then?

This is extremely reckless

>This is extremely reckless

I find driving without it to be reckless at this point. Humans are susceptible to distraction, OpenPilot is not.

That might be the elephant in the room: contemporary driving is reckless _to begin with_. Autonomous assists are bringing this to light - not necessarily making it more or less reckless.

No more reckless than doing the same with Tesla Autopilot.

It's unlikely he chills until someone dies or property in excess of hundreds of thousands of dollars is damaged, and an attorney pursues him personally. A hacker ethos is no defense against a personal judgement you can never repay in a lifetime. Unlike most judgments, punitive damages awards are not dischargeable in bankruptcy as long as the relevant cause of action was based upon willful actions.

The audience won't be a room full of domain experts, but a jury of twelve.

No Tesla programmers have been arrested for Autopilot-related crashes.

Tesla makes it extremely clear to its users what the shared responsibility model is for Autopilot features (through warning messages at each Autopilot engagement and in the user's manual for all Tesla vehicles), and has general counsel on staff to reinforce this through legal actions indemnifying their staff. Openpilot is a drastically different model. It is a software breadboard for your own vehicle.

For example, this is laughable (from the repo):

(Top) > openpilot is an open source driving agent. Currently, it performs the functions of Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) and Lane Keeping Assist System (LKAS) for selected Honda, Toyota, Acura, Lexus, Chevrolet, Hyundai, Kia. It's about on par with Tesla Autopilot and GM Super Cruise, and better than all other manufacturers.

(Bottom) > THIS IS ALPHA QUALITY SOFTWARE FOR RESEARCH PURPOSES ONLY.

I remember Germany regulators wanted Tesla to stop branding it as "auto-pilot" when really their features are more like Lane Assist and Adaptive Cruse that many other vehicles have.

Also, Tesla's have had their share of issues (the car that ran into an off-ram barrier killing the driver, the guy who was passed out for hours before his Tesla crashed), but they're also a large enough company they've probably settled some or all of these cases out of court.

It is laughable, because it is probably true. The quality of the systems produced by the named manufacturers is abysmal.

Well, what you mention Tesla does is the disclaimer part, but what Elon boasts about is the headline/first paragraph part...

Tesla probably have the paperwork and certs in order when NTSB knocks the door. NHTSA have already shut down comma.ai products before. EDIT: I personally thinks it's a bit to reckless to let the general public use the Autopilot in it's present state.

https://comma.ai/shop/products/eon-gold-dashcam-devkit

"Retrofit your car with a copilot." "Note: This product is not designed to drive a car. This product is designed to be a dashcam."

With comma.ai hosting firmware via Github to do self-driving with it, it's hard to imagine that NTSB will buy that.

NHTSA came knocking and then openpilot was opensourced. It's to be used as a prototyping tool.

To me, the fact that Hotz didn’t seem to realize that NHTSA was a thing that existed and that he should be talking to them makes me not trust anything the guy does. If someone can be that colossally ignorant about something that’s so central to what they’re trying to do, and they react to it by basically throwing a tantrum instead of trying to get their shit together and move forward constructively, it calls into question everything about them, including their actual expertise with stuff people think they’re experts in.

It’s like finding out that the neurosurgeon who’s about to operate on you is also a flat earther- it doesn’t directly impact his ability to be a neurosurgeon, but it would be a big red flag that calls everything else into question.

One side of me agrees, the other thinks of the Wright brothers. Oh wait, they got someone killed.

He did? Wow, I have never heard this story:

https://www.thoughtco.com/the-first-fatal-airplane-crash-177...

..he killed an Army Lt during a demonstration, and took some pretty bad injuries to himself.

Ye, it is cool.

How ever, I feel there's a huge difference between pioneering flying and risking the general public's lives to feed your proprietary machine learning model. Because Hortz hasen't released that part of the software right? Last time I checked it was still closed source.

I am genuinely interested, do you think that the Wright Brothers should not have developed the technology that they did because of the risk that someone would get killed? I am having trouble imagining any way (at least at the time, but probably today as well) of inventing manned flight without anybody dying in the process.

Inventing manned flight without anybody dying would have been completely possible. Use more caution, pay more attention to safety. But that's not the right hypothetical. This is inventing manned flight without endangering or killing innocent bystanders.

I don’t think anything is possible risk free. So it comes down to your/societies risk tolerance how save, expensive and slow or risky, cheap and fast progress should be. Ideally the risk is taken by conscious and free individuals. But yes, bystanders will be hit as well.

For manned flight it was totally worth the risk.

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