(I do agree partial-self-driving just seems like a terrible idea. I guess crash stats can reveal if this is true or not, but are perhaps not available.)
It does remain to be seen how well Tesla will trust the general public with this level of improved autonomy. As you get closer and closer to the uncanny valley where things just appear to work, you get into the more tricky situations that truly befuddle humans and machines alike.
NHTSA scrutinizes crashes that involve anything close to Autopilot and FSD quite heavily. Aside from one or two incidents they've had complaints about, none of them have risen to the point where they had to put their foot down. Admittedly, Tesla were a big bunch of jerks about how they handled the situation, but still, these were isolated incidents with clear misuse from the driver's part.
I agree with you, in that Musk is overly optimistic (no shit, he's been saying this would be ready in 2018, and it's unclear if it will be in 2021). But he's also quite well informed of the facts on the ground, and is clearly aiming for the moonshot-winner-take-all prize by skipping Lidar and high-precision mapping. That might be a gamble, but need not be an inherently dangerous one, depending on how Tesla handles the super-grey areas around the uncanny valley, where the system appears to work, but really isn't worth risking your life upon. To some, it's already there, as you can see from idiots sleeping in their Teslas while on Autopilot. But again, outside of a couple of incidents over years and millions and miles, the rate of catastrophic failure (accidents) has been surprisingly low.
I completely underestimated the role of professional safety drivers for autonomous vehicles. I thought it's "just a guy" sitting in the car for good measure, but it turns out that the majority of drivers is not fit for the job even after lengthy training, see e.g. [1] (a gread podcast in general).
Also all autonomous driving companies employ safety drivers - except one.
> NHTSA scrutinizes crashes that involve anything close to Autopilot and FSD quite heavily.
I wouldn't put too much hope into the NHTSA regulating Autopilot. It took a two year legal battle to get the data driving their analysis of the Autopilot in 2017, turns out it was completely provided by Tesla, but worse, when confounders where removed, it still showed a higher crash rate for Autopilot.
If you take a non-American view of Autopilot, Europeans agencies did scrutinize the crashes more closely and as a result have restricted the use of Autopilot.
If you are interested in the topic of autonomous driving I recommend the Autonocast podcast.
[1] http://www.autonocast.com/blog/2020/10/29/205-why-teslas-ful...
[2] https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/02/in-2017-the-feds-said-t...
https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-pedo-guy-doesnt-mean-p...
https://twitter.com/shannonwoodward/status/13275176940992757...
We really are in the best possible timeline for general lulz and nonsense.
Whoa. You have strong feelings.
One of my Life Rules that has served me enduringly well is to avoid believing that I can confidently have real insight into what motives drive someone. That rule is not for their benefit, but for my own: to putatively "know" something is to invite an incorrect model of reality and thereby incorrect action. It doesn't actually matter what drives Musk or anyone else: ego, pure business interests, a desire to take humanity to the stars, boredom, pathology, space ghosts, whatever. What matters is behavior and its effects.
If you criticize Musk's ego, ambition, pride, there's nothing actionable for anyone, neither Musk himself nor Tesla's potential customers. If you criticize the Tesla FSD rollout, now there's something people can do.
Debatable how significant this impacts his decision making but it's pretty hard to argue that doesn't impact it at least a little.
He has been an optimist on this technology of a long time and has made that argument for a long time.
The claim that the FSD testing is to boost the stock price is truly bizard, specially because there is very little evidence of any correlation between FSD and stock price.
Go look at the Wallstreet models, most of them don't have large considerations income from FSD. If you look at FSD testers, their videos don't have millions of views.
(That scene, by the way, is a perfect example of why I hate superhero movies.)
Edit: Since I’m being downvoted, here you go, today you learned: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/true-story-elon-musk-robert-d...
From what I have heard, it was both:
Elon Musk, Larry Ellison Appear In Iron Man 2
https://www.forbes.com/sites/velocity/2010/04/29/elon-musk-l...
More importantly though, treating someone "as a peer" is kinda a weird criticism? Superheros on TV these days don't seem terribly stuck-up. When other characters in the films seem honest the heroes usually treat them with respect and dignity.
Anyway, thanks for the heads-up that you hate superhero movies, will keep it in mind next time I see one on a plane.