Sam Altman on Twitter: It's gross seeing so many root against Tesla | Hacker News Reader

Sam Altman on Twitter: It's gross seeing so many root against Tesla

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39 pointsAndrewBissell81 comments

Criticism against Tesla is not rooting against Tesla. Playing options as a result of a CEO shooting his mouth off doesn't make you against the environment or against green technology. In this case, it just makes you a realist.

I'm an avid environmentalist. Elon Musk has lied so many times that I'm not rooting against him, I'm just afraid that his house of cards is going to come tumbling down and he will be another Solyndra where a good concept is ruined by a conman who has said that within a year you can make $30k/yr letting your tesla be a robotaxi and that in a year and three months there will be a million robotaxis on the road[0].

When criticism is valid, it's okay. We've seen Elon Musk lie about production time and time again. It's okay to distrust him. That's not "rooting against the environment."

[0] https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2019/04/23/elon-musk-say...

The tweet was refering to people who make it their life's mission to try and make Tesla fail like shabooshka, the guy literailly lived at the factory taking photos. Not people being critical or disagreeing with what they do.

skabooshka observes the factory to document actual Tesla production numbers and prevent it from lying to the public. He may have also thrown a monkey wrench in some kind of "full self driving" fake demo by taking photos of the pilot car they were filming before their investor autonomy day.

If Tesla wasn't lying about its numbers or engaging in some kind of shenanigans at the factory, then how could skabooshka taking pictures make it fail? Let's set aside Tesla's claims that he tries to hurt their employees since the Fremont police report already showed their account on that incident was very deceptive.

You can't with any sincerity believe that.

A troll hanging day and night outside a factory parking lot posting absolute crap on twitter is not in any way useful to anyone.

The guy was a nut case with some Moby dick like obsession. I can't find a single time where he was even remotely objective.

I'm seeing a trend that opinions must now involve name-calling, picking sides, and attacks on the reader's self-identity.

Altman doesn't just share an opinion here, he calls those who disagree with him "gross" and suggest that there are only two types of people ("be the person... not the person...")

I wish we lived in the kind of world where the Tweet said this:

"I'm disappointed that so many root against Tesla. I support them because it's good for the climate and I believe in innovation. That's more important than making money on puts."

Is it necessary to call people gross? Just read the other comments in this thread, there are plenty of rational reasons to short TSLA which don't make people gross.

Be the person on the side of the law and on the side of safety.

Not the person hoping to make money from dishonest marketing and publicity stunts.

Tesla has achieved way more than I would have expected, had someone told me about it beforehand. But it doesn't magically absolve them, just because the tech is cool.

I guess from Elon's POV, safety is sort of relative.

Their numbers[1] show autopilot as safer than human drivers, even though they don't have full autonomy yet. A lot of people consider 1 human death from a computer driving as unacceptable, but hundreds of thousands from human drivers as totally fine.

[1] https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport

That's easy to say when most of the public isn't driving your cars. Scaling the company can bring a lot of problems that weren't foreseen.

It's only a handful of deaths by automated cars now, but they've only been a thing for 10 years and in incridibly limited numbers.

Robots are almost certainly better drivers, but at the numbers we have now we can't say for sure.

Wasn't there some contention that within the same vehicle class (luxury sedan) Teslas were not as "safe" in comparison?

I don't have numbers, but their comparison of a luxury sedan to all drivers has seemed disingenuous (to put it kindly, lying with numbers to put it less kindly).

Let's be clear: Their numbers are bollocks, and a serious reason why not only should we worry about their cars killing people, we should be worried about their callous indifference to lying about it.

>In the 1st quarter, we registered one accident for every 2.87 million miles driven in which drivers had Autopilot engaged. For those driving without Autopilot, we registered one accident for every 1.76 million miles driven. By comparison, NHTSA’s most recent data shows that in the United States there is an automobile crash every 436,000 miles.

Take from this 2 things:

1. Either Tesla drivers are 4x safer than the average driver or their stats aren't comparable with the industry standard measures (1.76m vs 0.43m) and they have no problem with misleadingly comparing the two.

2. Tesla is not interested in supplying a real metric for how likely you are to crash in a Tesla, but instead provide PR numbers (accident per million miles when Autopilot is overwhelmingly used only on the safest roads?)

I said "From Elon's POV", not "From my POV". Don't shoot the messenger :)

I'm trying to explain what he thinks is reality, even if it is detached from what most of the rest of us think as reality. SpaceX's real goal is to send Elon back to mars to be with his real family.

> I said "From Elon's POV", not "From my POV"

Elon's POV has access to a lot more data than we do.

He could give more fine grained details about safety. He actively chooses not to:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqvatzjHGyk&t=47m17s

Pre-cursor: 1. Don't assume anything 2. Don't take anything personally.

Can you help understand what's wrong in that statement, "In the 1st quarter, we registered one accident for every 2.87 million miles driven in which drivers had Autopilot engaged. For those driving without Autopilot, we registered one accident for every 1.76 million miles driven. By comparison, NHTSA’s most recent data shows that in the United States there is an automobile crash every 436,000 miles."

Answering your questions: 1. Either Tesla drivers are 4x safer than the average driver or their stats aren't comparable with the industry standard measures (1.76m vs 0.43m) and they have no problem with misleadingly comparing the two.

-> Well, Tesla has one of the best NHTSA safety ratings.. so their driver might be actually be 4x safer... or at-least based on 1.76m vs 0.43m number...

-> one can argue that oldest Tesla on road is 8-9 years and the total # teslas on road are less thus they have lower denominator for total miles driven by all teslas / total # tesla vehicles on the road, which help them get to 1.76M but that doesn't change the fact 1) it is 4x safer based on that number and 2) it has one of the best NHTSA safety ratings.

-> first, Tesla used NHTSA metric here, which is "NHTSA’s most recent data shows that in the United States there is an automobile crash every 436,000 miles."

-> Based on that metric, they provided 2 data points, 1) "we registered one accident for every 2.87 million miles driven in which drivers had Autopilot engaged." and 2) "For those driving without Autopilot, we registered one accident for every 1.76 million miles driven."

-> that is the real metric on how likely a Tesla car (either autopilot or not) could run into accident... now for "supplying a real metric for how likely you are to crash in a Tesla" (emphasis on "you") would be difficult for any car provider...

I'm strictly commenting for the statement you quoted and the 2 questions you posed. I'm not discussing anything like, how they have over-sold (an idea) of auto-pilot, if its truly safe, if its ready and so on.

1. Either Tesla drivers are 4x safer than the average driver or their stats aren't comparable

Most car accidents happen to drivers that are very young/inexperienced or very old, two groups very unlikely to own a Tesla. People in the 40-55 age range, which is the 'safest' age range, are probably greatly over-represented among Tesla drivers so just that fact probably makes Tesla drivers 'safer' than average. It would be interesting to compare Tesla, not to all cars, but to 'equivalent' cars.

Their numbers are slanted, to say the least. You can't compare freeway crashes with all crashes.

> Be the person on the side of the climate

Elon Musk is not on the side of the climate, he's on the side of Elon Musk. His forays into tunneling put the lie to his pro-climate claims awhile ago. He has a bizarre hatred for public transport, which is the real solution to reducing transportation emissions in cities. He would rather everyone take a tunnel (in their Tesla, of course) than countenance the possibility real, effective public transport, and he's actively seeked to divert public funding away from public transport to his privately-owned Boring Co. Meanwhile, moving an entire car around for each person is absurdly inefficient, even if it's electric. It still has to be charged up, and that electricity is not certain to be renewable. In fact, in the US, your electric car is not likely to be significantly more green than a very efficient gasoline vehicle:

http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Sh...

Of course, that's what the SolarCity acquisition is about, right? Except there is still no solar roof, and Gigafactory 2 is turning into a major scandal - that whole acquisition seems now to been disastrously ill-advised in retrospect, and it's hard not to notice that it was hugely profitable for Musk.

I am on the side of climate. I do not think this requires mindlessly recapitalizing Elon Musk's ventures over and over. He's not the only one working on clean energy. Other people can carry the torch if his hubris and reckless behavior catch up to him and he goes bankrupt.

There are only two options here— either you can root against Tesla, or you can be indifferent to the death of Walter Huang. Tesla has been irresponsible with their rollout of self-driving technology, and someone has died as a result.

There's nothing wrong with rooting for other entrants in the self-driving technology space, like Waymo, which aren't willing to grease their path to market dominance with the blood of innocents.

You're ignoring lives saved and potential future lives saved.

Can you (or anyone, really) show that there were, or were not, any lives saved? That there were people killed is quite easy to show, but showing that there were crashes prevented... that does not even seem provable.

Youtube is full of crashes prevented. Spending a few minutes on Google would show you otherwise. If you're not seeing it it's because you have refused to look. You already made up your opinion.

Right, right. And also I am shorting 27 thimgamajillions of Tesla stock, of course.

You can't show (least of all on some fanboy Youtube video) that AutoPilot had prevented a crash, compared to a normal person just driving a car. A Tesla crashing into a firetruck -- that you can show.

What you could show would be crash statistics over a significant population of similar cars, in similar conditions, driving on similar roads. These statistics don't seem to show any safety benefit to Tesla, but believers will believe.

I disagree with respect to one point: The death is insufficient evidence. What matters is relative safety (compared to non-self-driving cars). You cannot only count the hits but ignore misses. Or in this context: Avoided crashes need to be considered as well.

Not really though. Human drivers both crash and avoid crashes all the time. In the instances where a fatal crash happens, there is a party at fault and they are held liable under the law. The same logic applies here. If the software caused the crash by being imperfect, then Tesla is liable. It is doubly bad if Tesla caused more people to rely on the software in a perilous manner by overstating the software's safety/feature-completeness. We could argue all day about an ideal future where no human drivers or accidents exist and how we get there, but today Tesla has blood on its hands.

Yes, really, though.

If autopilot (or similar system) are safer than humans, then this should get reflected in the statistics. Just because people die in a crash with a self-driving car (even if that software was at fault), is NOT sufficient evidence. What matters is the net effect!

After another read of your post: You seem to argue a totally different point. I did NOT say Tesla was not liable if their AP causes a crash in a fully self-driving mode. They are. My point in the original post was a different one.

It seems from your original comment and your reply that you're arguing that liability can be discharged if the AP system has fewer crashes per capital than humans do. You can't argue relative liability based on statistics. That's like me murdering someone and then arguing that I'm not liable because it just so happens that I didn't increase the per capita murder rate over last year. Now, whether Tesla has any claim that their liability can be discharged because the operator wasn't following legally binding instructions not to operate in that way is a different issue, and one I'm not privy to.

Yeah, I was not arguing about liability. That's the misunderstanding. I was not concerned with liability. And you're completely right wrt liability.

It's possible to both think their branding of "autopilot" is irresponsible, and also think that they make great cars, self-driving tech aside.

As a side note, there's an article every time someone is killed in a Tesla, but there are never (rarely?) articles when someone is saved by one.

Not to be indifferent to Huang’s death, but people die in cars all the time. I’m more interested in whether or not Tesla’s autopilot is better on total deaths per X miles than human drivers.

I guess this is one of those derail the train or kill the man questions, is society willing to kill a man to save thousands of lives in the future?

Of course it’s not quite as clearcut since we’re not certain self driving cars will ever be safer than human drivers (although my intuition is that they will be since they won’t get drunk, fall asleep, or text at the wheel).

And of course comparisons are a bit difficult since humans are of course at level 5 autonomy and statistics are generated from those conditions, and of course Tesla is not and stats won’t be.

Interesting stuff.

People die all the time, but when they get in the car, they generally do not agree to be beta testers for an FSD system that one day might be as safe as human driver. Or not.

You still have to babysit autopilot. Walter Huang knew his Tesla had a problem on that part of the road and still allowed himself to be distracted when passing that area. Looks like a case of pilot error while operating an imperfect system. I don't think the company is liable since autopilot wasn't recommended to be used unsupervised and its flaws are readily acknowledged.

You mean the guy who told people autopilot had trouble in that spot, repeatedly, and then negligently caused his own death by not paying attention in that very same spot?

No one deserves to die, but he is responsible for his own death.

Thousands die every day from crashes of cars that people actually drive. Trading one set of deaths for a different set of deaths with less people is a morally correct position to hold.

I'm not "against" Tesla, but they basically epitomize the advent and promotion of "wealth virtue," where rich people buy a product or lifestyle that the vast majority could never afford and then act like poor people are ethically inferior accordingly.

They're also a fantastic example of the silicon valley "Fake it 'till you make it" selling products for life-changing sums on money based on lies about their capabilities.

Umm what. I own a Tesla and am middle classed and don't think people poorer than me are ethically inferior. This is a huge stretch.

Most of the Tesla owners I've met fall into one of two categories:

a) (this the majority) wealthy virtue signalers

b) (this is the minority) upper-middle class/moderately wealthy tech/gadget lovers

Buying a luxury car isn't a middle class purchase. Maybe you're some sort of angelic exception, I don't know.

According to the Pew Research Center the household income of the middle class ranges between roughly $45K-$135K. If you're middle class and buying a Tesla then you're definitely on the upper end of that range. The overwhelming majority of the middle class cannot afford a Tesla.

I find it interesting how every Tesla car autopilot crash is widely reported yet all other car manufacturers' self-driving propositions are not better[0] compared to Tesla's and almost nobody is talking about that -- at least not in the news outlets I've been following.

Media seems to really want to see Musk fail. That doesn't look like objective journalism to me.

(Additionally, did somebody actually investigate Waymo's and Uber's self-driving car departments inner workings and if they report the accident counts truthfully?)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-driving_car#Incidents

Because no other car manufacturers sells consumer a car with something they claim to be “autopilot” creating a clear association with complete self-driving you can trust.

What association the customer makes and what is really happening are different things.

If we are going to talk about deceptive marketing, Tesla is definitely not the first company I would attack.

They are, however, very relevant to this overall discussion.

Because other car companies aren't pretending they have a L5 system ready for commercial deployment

In my experience the Uber incident was also intensively covered, even more than each fatal AI incident that happened with a Tesla. While not living in the US, I'm reading up on such issues as does anybody else at HN, but the Uber crash was the only such incident that made my country's evening news (as far as I can remember) [1].

Apart from that: Of all companies involved in the R&D of autonomous driving Tesla is probably the "loudest" (i.e. they make the strongest claims to the greatest audience), so being criticized the loudest is just about right IMHO.

[1] Granted, maybe that was just due to the video footage the killer-car taped.

EDIT: [1] And probably also due to the fact that not the car's passenger/driver was killed, but a pedestrian.

Yep, I admitted my filter bubble might have skewed my opinion on which events are covered how much.

But HN itself demonstrates a lot of negative bias towards Tesla and Musk in particular. I get it that the marketing can be deceptive but I still fail to see what Tesla does so much worse than anybody else; many people are furious with dubious marketing claims of many other companies yet Tesla always seems to get the most flak here in HN and, to an extent, on Reddit.

If other manufacturers released a public beta, opt-in version of an incomplete self-driving solution, I’d consider them dangerously irresponsible with human life. Tesla makes it part of their sales and marketing.

From the same article:

Uber's system killed a person. They received a huge backlash and their permission to test self-driving cars have been revoked in the state of Arizona. They also pulled out from testing California as well.

Waymo had 13 non fatal crashes, of which, 12 of them were other drivers' fault. One was caused by the software where the car wanted to maneuver around some sand bags on the road and side swiped a bus. No injuries. Google took the blame and said it's a learning experience. AFAIK, Waymo cars are not available to public by default.

Tesla had multiple fatal accidents as a result of "Auto Pilot" which is just a bunch of driver assistance systems taped together and marketed as a complete self-driving system. At every single accident, Tesla never admitted the blame, and just reiterated it's statistically safer to drive with AutoPilot than without.

Obviously, this pisses people off. The never-take-the-blame attitude gets old and annoying. It's like a colleague who would throw everyone under the bus to avoid taking the blame.

Secondly, I've seen the video of the accident with the Apple employee. It's clearly AP error and I don't care if it's statistically safer to drive with AP, if a system causes and accident that I could have avoided easily, I don't trust that system.

I don't disagree. But in the end, looking at statistics, it's still safer to drive with AP indeed.

Self-driving cares are done for the first time (I mean, almost fully autonomous ones). Accidents will happen still. We are very far away from a good generic AI that can adapt to different tasks so it's gonna be a bumpy road, pun intended.

> But in the end, looking at statistics, it's still safer to drive with AP indeed.

There's no publicly shared statistics that show that. You may have been confused by Tesla's PR.

That's not the right conclusion I don't think. That published statistic is referring aggregates and averages.

As we know there are safer and riskier drivers on the roads.

If everybody was driving with AP the total number of accidents would drop.

However if you are already a safe driver, there's a chance that AP is riskier.

I don't want to bash AP to the ground, I think the tech is still phenomenal, and forced the car industry to catch up. However Tesla has the attitude of the classic move fast and break things mentality and not willing to take responsibility for it. When lives are at stake, you gotta do better than that.

You don't get to blame the customers for getting distracted for using a system that's literally called and marketed as Autopilot.

There's a reason similarly capable other cars in the market their systems as driver assistance and will force you to give input on tighter intervals.

I don't know, but maybe the bias you see has something to do with the fact that, for the most part, other manufacturers' cars are not getting into fatal crashes while under autonomous control? When an Uber car did, it was reported as thoroughly as anything that has happened to Tesla.

> (Additionally, did somebody actually investigate Waymo's and Uber's self-driving car departments inner workings and if they report the accident counts truthfully?)

Do you have any basis for believing this is the case, or are you asking to insinuate something there is no actual evidence for?

I think it's pretty toxic to disingenuously suggest that anyone who has a problem with Tesla is just shorting the stock. It's like coming out and "It's gross seeing so many root against Uber" back when Uber was the subject of a new sexual harassment expose every other week. Sometimes companies with interesting tech behave unethically.

I agree. It's also why I can't understand people who root against Theranos. I, for one, am on the side of health.

You have perfectly and beautiful illustrated why the linked tweet is nonsense.

That said, even as a Tesla skeptic, I don't think Tesla is a fraud on the level of Theranos. That won't hinder my up-voting!

The vast majority of people I see who are "rooting against Tesla" aren't against innovation, electric cars, or helping the planet. I feel like most people who are bullish on Tesla are really just bullish on Elon Musk.

I don't see many people claiming electric cars are stupid (anymore) or that Tesla's aren't good products. Most of the criticism is that Elon is reckless as a CEO and has over promised what he can deliver at an affordable price which has put Tesla in a tough place financially.

I root for innovation, technology and electric vehicles.

But I find the CEO repulsive because he's narcissistic, dishonest and can be downright cruel to other people. This is not apparent, I came to this realization slowly, I initially felt mildly positive about him.

Also, I don't like the general cultishness and stupidity of some Tesla fans.

Cool tech. Not so cool CEO.

Being 'against' Tesla isn't being against the environment and innovation. The vector of personal transportation is pointed in the right direction here with or without Tesla. They have moved things forward, no doubt. But Tesla and these larger issues can and should be separated.

Musk is a lot like Trump. Boisterous, tends to exaggerate, accidentally lies a lot. It's their manner. They don't focus on technical accuracy etc. They're focused on the feeling - the vision - the faith. That's what it takes to do the most difficult things. Realism tends to crush really difficult projects.

I think more people are concerned with his poor performance (in several companies), and poor human relations than just with shorting the stock.

Truth.

It is little surprising Sam Altman say this. The whole notion of startups is that the entire world is rooting against you. The reason why Uber or Pinterest went to VCs and not the banks for loans is because Banks do not give loans to such risk businesses. That aversion to risk is essentially what makes startup success spectacular. It is not just Tesla that people are rooting against. People rooted against Ford Model 3, Google and Internet itself if you simply bother to look at news of those times. Paul Krugman, the patron saint of left liberals predicted that Internet would simply disappear.

Also what you say is irrelevant. What matters is your portfolio. Are you making money off Puts or Calls ?

TBF about the Paul and his prediction of the internet, there are some who would argue it hasn't actually produced or improved anything.

Hackernews never fails to blow me away.

I can't be the only one who thinks it is insane to say the Internet hasn't produced or improved anything.

Gross or net? Gross, huge upsides. Truly. Net? Not so clear. The socialised downsides now include hollowing out and killing mainstreet, the end of privacy, rampant porn and pornification of normal life, spam, and hacked elections.

BS !

Such compelling argument!

Actually calling out BS when it is BS is actually the best response. Honestly FU is a better response than a logical argument for thickos.

Uber and Pinterest went to IPO because they wanted liquidity for their investors and employees. And, surprise, there are venture loans.

I agree with Sam. It's just stupid that people are rooting for the failure of one of the most brilliant and ballsy entrepreneurs we've seen in many years.

Those rooting against him deserve to stay in the dark ages.

Stock valuation has nothing to do with whether you want a company to succeed or not.

Maybe a mod can explain why a direct link (with no attached commentary) to a Sam Altman twitter post about a prominent Silicon Valley company is flagged?

HN is primarily community moderated, and there are plenty of reasons why it might reasonably be flagged. That Altman tweeted it doesn't make inherently make it on topic or appropriate for HN.

Because everyone here hates on Elon endlessly and hate anything supporting him

The results for searches like "Tesla" and "Elon Musk" cast a lot of doubt on your claim. The top-ranked HN link for "Autopilot" is still the NHTSA study which purported to demonstrate a 40% reduction in driving incidents and has since been thoroughly debunked.

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