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Comment by moralestapia | Hacker News Reader

Yes, but Steve Jobs delivered. He was rude and whatnot, but far from a fraud.

And Jobs' "reality distortion field" was primarily used to motivate / burn-out his team by demanding things that were technically very difficult but feasible (one of the original anecdotes was about reducing the boot-time for the original Macintosh), not something like solving AGI which FSD would ~apparently require.

I fully believe Elon and Jim Keller truly thought the deep learning HW delivered by Tesla was capable of self-driving in the early 201x time frame because, frankly, a lot of us did. More than likely, like the rest of us, they slowly came to see that the problem was much more difficult, and deep learning much less capable, than we had originally envisioned. Most of us didn't make a bunch of stupid promises to shareholders based on the original, incorrect assumptions though. Unlike Elon, we're able to admit we were wrong.

As someone who has worked for almost a decade with safety critical software, system design and functional safety analyses (both aerospace and automotive) etc. I don't think I ever met anyone who believed they would be anywhere near FSD/Level-5 what-have-you in the timeframe they presented.

The only ones I met who thought so was managers and software developers and ML-people, i.e. people who has never in their life seen the level of effort it actually takes to get something qualified for RTCA or other safety standards.

> As someone who has worked for almost a decade with safety critical software, system design and functional safety analyses

And you were right, but most people aren't like you, and people like you don't drive the discussion on what trends are coming. The world needs more folks with your background. Generally no one wants to listen to folks like you because you come off as a Debbie Downer despite being correct most of the time.

Hah, to be fair I am somewhat of a Negative Nancy from time to time ;)

I think Mercedes has a reasonably sensible game-plan as far as I know. They currently have Level-3 on some highways in Germany which is still freaking hard to achieve, but still a narrow enough scope that you might be able to pull it off.

Time will tell, my bet is its still 10+ years off.

ML approach for FSD was critized right from the start by mobileeye CEO who gave a very thorough talk on why that couldn't possibly work. I think the talk is still on youtube.

The guy was critized for being old school and not having adapted to the latest tech (including by elon musk when he dumped mobileeye), but in fact he was just plain right.

i think the tech community owes him an apology.

Until any FSD solution delivers, it's far too early to vindicate the mobileye CEO. As it stands, even with additional (expensive) sensors, it seems very likely that ML will be required regardless. Running purely off sensors is not going to be feasible when braking distances alone are greater than the sensors will be able to accurately measure.

He did give a second talk a few years later explaining how the purely cognitive aspect may be handled by ML, and the total system probably going to end up being a mix.

But his fundamental opposition to ML for things related to safety was, IMHO absolutely correct.

Betting on vision-only self-driving was still a very bad bet, not only in hindsight. The competition all added additional sensors.

You don’t think SpaceX and Tesla have delivered quite a lot? FSD is really the only big project I can think of this far behind, and maybe Cybertruck. I don’t think it’s fair to ignore all his other accomplishments.

Solar rooftops hasn't gone anywhere. Boring company and Hyperloop didn't go anywhere.

Let's face it Neuralink isn't going anywhere too.

Tesla wasn't started by Musk and relies heavily on Panasonic battery developments and SpaceX and Starlink is good old fashioned ex-NASA and MIT talent.

What does Musk actually do? Annoy the SEC, go on Joe Rogan to smoke weed and have more girlfriends per hour than Gengis Khan?

Ok troll.

If you had a point you wouldn't be so flippant.

I made my point. Pointing to additional examples of grandiosity (some might call ambition) doesn't invalidate it. Neither do attacks on his character or lame arguments like "Tesla wasn't started by Musk" ignoring that he grew the company from 4 people to 100,000 people. Or that somehow recruiting large amounts of NASA and MIT talent is a bad thing? That's good leadership.

Seriously? Either you're trolling or you have some irrational hatred of the guy.

Oh you don't get what I mean. Yeah those things are good and I'm grateful for the progress SpaceX is making. What I want to know is how much is really attributable to Musk and what his Ego is really worth at the end of the day.

Lets remember the only reason he's around today is because some very rich people and NASA bailed him out. SpaceX left to just Musk's ability, ego and resources died in 2008.

He relies so much on mysticism for parting people from their money, eventually some people get fed up with the 'mysterious future and repeated failure' business model.

Expectations around his personal abilities should be lowered. His track record is not that great and it's a fact people call trolling. Sorry, not sorry.

The abilities that made spacex and tesla were hundreds of highly skilled engineers. Elon just raised money and is the face brand for japanese battery tech.

He's not worth worshipping and his incompetence is covered by idolatry.

I would care more about NASA “bailing him out” if there were even a single other reusable orbital class rocket.

“Just raised money” is patently false. He’s known for being extremely hands on with both Tesla and SpaceX.

I maintain you’re either trolling or ignorant.

HN safely ignores anything positive about Elon because they prefer to think the richest man on the planet is both an idiot and also a failure in everything he does

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