Karpathy gave a talk about radar - they were getting worse results with radar than without (according to him).
Mostly because they would get false readings from radar shooting under the car and stuff like that - vision alone was more accurate.
Mostly because they would get false readings from radar shooting under the car and stuff like that - vision alone was more accurate.
But yeah: the feature minimally seems to work well enough--...even surprisingly well!--given the lack of having the sensors that Tesla previously swore were amazing, and so in some sense that particular cost cutting measure was a success. I was even thinking of buying one to own... but then they removed the parking sensors, and frankly that feature only barely works WITH the sensors--I drive a ton of random cars as I am always renting stuff, and the Tesla's parking radius feature is a cool UX but has tons of slop and has massively high latency... it is frankly just super dumb--and I cancelled my order when it finally arrived a week after it was for sure I wouldn't have the sensors.
Regardless, though, even if you feel it works perfectly, radar was another situation of just hastily scrapping stuff and working on it in the field, as they removed the sensor before they had the software which was tolerable, and then they just kept promising people it was going to get better as they frantically tried to turn their marketing into reality. Over time it got better and after a long time it finally started to work at higher speeds, but for a long time it had a cap lower than the in-practice speed of even my nearby highways here in the United States, and still hasn't managed to regain all of the functionality of the prior design. Can you imagine Apple removing a sensor in a new iPhone without already having the software to replace it, and then just promising new customers they'll figure it out in the hope it doesn't affect sales?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6bOwQdCJrc
For example look at this section: https://youtu.be/g6bOwQdCJrc?t=1370
Also if you look into it you will find Google's self-driving car project ran into similar issues. They upgraded the radar in response to the issues rather than removing it, but there are actual issues.
Vision only was better than radar plus vision in their stack. For real world situations that frequently come up in driving radar wasn't worth it. The theoretical accuracy of the sensor fusion didn't happen in practice because in practice you needed to have vision tell you when sensor fusion wasn't going to be accurate. It isn't naive sensor fusion as in toy math models of sensor fusion. So when there was a disagreement you needed to go with vision. Yet vision was already able to predict both the failure of and the actual result of radar. In theory, you could just have done the more complicated sensor fusion. In practice, the relative advantage of improving other parts of the vision stack far exceeded improving the sensor fusion. Over time one would expect the relative advantage to change as other improvements were made such that this was no longer true. That doesn't mean the time at the decision wasn't correct, it just means people who evaluate it with future changes already in place are suffering from hindsight bias/committing an anachronistic fallacy.
You are explaining the observed safety record of Tesla being on top for safety by appealing to them being inferior and reckless. You are explaining Tesla causing a greater reduction in accident death than Waymo by them being more inferior and reckless than Waymo.
You are not explaining the evidence with your theory.
Your theory doesn't even reflect reality. Google invested in Tesla and in Waymo. Google did both things. Google didn't make the right call. They made both calls.
Look - I get it. I too thought radar sensor fusion would improve the results. Guess who else thought this? The people you consider stupid and reckless thought this. Do you know why they changed their mind? According to you, because they are stupid and reckless.
I can't stress this enough: you are telling yourself inaccurate stories about what happened. If you just /look/ at the /measured impact/ instead of /wrongly guessing what Karpathy thought/ and /wrongly guessing what Karpathy has said/ and /wrongly guessing what other people were referencing when they talked about what Karpathy said/ then you would realize this.
It’s so naive to just take Tesla’s word for all of this, and to believe that they took this approach because they decided it was the safest and most effective. Meanwhile, other credible teams out there have not gone with vision-only, and as a result their systems aren’t a pile of dangerous dogshit that are killing customers. But Tesla is incredibly arrogant and reckless, and they just keep doubling down.
Vision-only is the wrong choice, it won’t get us to L4, and that should have been pretty easy to see from the start.
If you propose a theory that suggests overconfident individuals are taking reckless actions, compromising safety, it's crucial to treat that theory as a hypothesis and extrapolate conjectures based on it. For instance, if your theory revolves around adopting vision-only technology leading to increased accidents, this should be reflected in the accident rates per mile. However, current data indicates a decrease in accidents per mile, which, while not conclusively disproving your theory, serves as strong evidence against it.
Dismissing such reasoning by claiming naivety on the part of Tesla supporters is unconvincing. As a Tesla owner, I have experienced the car's safety features firsthand. For example, I have noticed the vehicle slows down when passing under an underpass, and this improved after the update, making it safer.
Furthermore, it's essential to consider the full range of evidence available, not just a specific instance. One such piece of evidence is Karpathy's CVPR talk, which demonstrates accuracy improvements through video evidence. It's challenging for your argument when you accept Karpathy's comments only when they align with your intuition but dismiss them when they contradict it, especially when the latter is supported by video and metrics and the former alignment with intuition was a misunderstanding of Karpathy on your part.
Additionally, you're overlooking evidence from sources not affiliated with Tesla. For instance, safety assessments by NHTSA and regulatory agencies in other countries consistently rank Tesla as one of the safest cars. While the electric design contributes to this, it remains an issue for your argument, as Tesla's top safety rankings are confirmed by multiple independent bodies. When theorizing about reckless overconfidence, receiving accolades for safety doesn't support the idea that these individuals are taking actions that endanger others.