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Comment by leobg | Hacker News Reader

I still find it funny that Google, with the advantage of having millions of Internet users train their AI like galley slaves for free, hasn’t yet been able to crack vision driven self driving. Tesla had no such advantage when training their FSD to recognize traffic lights, bicycles, motorcycles, etc.

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It's a much harder problem, and Tesla is nowhere close to the solution

Tesla, the company that just recalled 2 million self driving cars?

In fairness, the company best positioned to harness user input to an AI that avoids crashes would probably be Rockstar. OTOH, that AI would definitely not obey stop signs or pedestrians.

"recall"

Tesla recalled two million vehicles after federal officials said it had not done enough to make sure that drivers remained attentive when using the system. Not because their self-driving system sucks, or whatever you were trying to imply.

If the self driving system were worth it's salt, it wouldn't matter if the drivers weren't paying attention. Ergo, the system sucks, or is at the very least not nearly as good as Tesla likes to tout.

Well it's not like there's a self driving car system in operation today that does not require a human in the driver seat at all. Waymo has so much catching up to do.

It can be "worth it's salt" but the government still doesn't see it as such (for many possible reasons).

I don't know if it is or isn't, I never drove one, but those are two completely different standards

Doesn't matter, the original point was about Google not being able to build a better self-driving system than Tesla, despite abundance of data, which is true, as far as I'm informed. Whether or not Tesla's self-driving system is "good enough" (for any chosen metric) is beyond the point.

But I guess people these days just love to jump on the opportunity to hate whatever is trendy to hate at the moment.

By recall you mean a completely routine OTA software update done while the driver is asleep.

How can it detect the driver is asleep?

A neural implant that only kills 10% of monkeys.

Monkeys at the wheel is probably the solution for self driving cars.

Seems like we already have those amongst the Tesla FSD proselytizers.

Amusingly the infotainment system in our Model Y actually crashed on the way home tonight, and when it rebooted it decided to install the update then, while driving. Sent me a notification on my phone immediately afterwards. To be fair, the updates don't usually go that way.

Wow, that never happened to me and is unacceptable. Was that for the infotainment only or the drive train? Just for others, they are separate systems, you can even safely reboot the infotainment (main display with maps, music etc) if you need to while driving, as it doesn't affect the drive train. I'm guessing it was not the drive train which would be incredibly dangerous.

Yeah, it didn't affect the drive train, and it was also quite quick - less than a minute between when the screen went dark and when it had finished rebooting and sent notifications that an update had been installed. So presumably just an infotainment update as you said; I didn't try to dig into exactly what the update included though.

It will also reboot the infotainment sometimes (but not always) when it crashes.

A recall for essential maintenance is just that. I would focus on the need for an urgent update due to the flaws rather than the issuing agency's lack of more accurate terminology for a relatively new element to cars. Rolling around in semantic mud on the term recall is not sensible, as the definition in regards to cars is fairly specific [0]. Basically a recall just means there is a safety defect that must be addressed by the manufacturer. In Tesla's case, yes, they can push out an update, but the delivery mechanism of the means of addressing the defect should not be the focus.

0 - https://www.progressive.com/lifelanes/on-the-road/understand...

It would be much more expensive and a bigger mistake to have the vehicles physically returned. The distinction is very important. There's also a difference whether a safety defect last for 1 hour/1 day/1 week or a year.

I don’t think anyone cares about what is the recall’s cost to Tesla owners. They care about the fact there are two million unsafe vehicles driving around at high speed near their loved ones. Especially ones driven by people who respond to such complaints with, “ehrm actually it just updated overnight so it wasn’t even a hassle for me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯”

A dystopian future we can all agree is more plausible than it should be

The tesla system is exciting and dangerous, because it does identify many things in the environment, but it's extremely unsafe because on city driving it will not make the right choice most of the time. On the freeway it does much better, but then that's a more restricted environment.

I have an older tesla S with the pre-ai so called autopilot. It has one camera in the front and a radar and the system detects a few things like speed limit signs. The main extent of what it can do is follow the current lane pretty wall, even when it curves, slows down if it comes up to a car going slower than its preset speed. The good thing is it works on any road. It does a shockingly good job.

The later systems with onboard special processors are like a crazy beginning driver to has way too much confidence and drives in dangerous situations willy nilly. There are many other people who have explored it and written long posts. It's not safe. You can try to use it be you have to be constantly paying extreme attention. It's like watching your kid drive the first time. I know you should be watching the stupid ai all the time, but it's far from being safe.

Yea, that's the problem with self driving, especially in cities/dense areas. We really need AGI first. There are so many issues that humans react to before there is identifiable danger.

"Good" drivers see questionable situations and slow down or position themselves farther from potential issues before they get to the issue so they don't have to react at the last minute.

> hasn’t yet been able to crack vision driven self driving

But they have? For years Google Street view has read signs, house numbers, phone numbers of businesses, etc. from the environment. It is safe to assume they have this built into Waymo as well.

I assume you might be trying to reference "vision only" self-driving, which is a fantasy made up by Elon Musk because nobody would sell him LiDAR sensors cheaply.

https://www.thedrive.com/tech/43779/this-tesla-model-y-dummy...

This is a meme.

“Sour grape Elon, touting vision because no one will sell him LiDAR sensors. Which are the gold standard sensors that solve self driving.”

How exactly does LiDAR tell you whether the thing in question can move (dog) or not (trash can)? How does it allow a neural net to infer intent?

You’ll actually have to solve vision. Even if you had LiDAR. There’s no way around it. And once you’ve solved it, LiDAR becomes superfluous.

Chesterton’s fence.

> How exactly does LiDAR tell you whether the thing in question can move

LIDAR is continuously scanning, usually multiple times a second. It is irrelevant if the object is a trash can or a dog if it has a trajectory into the street.

> And once you’ve solved it, LiDAR becomes superfluous.

Only if you have the low Musk level standards of simply being equal to a human. There are plenty of jobs robots can do better than humans and driving is one of them. But it does require LIDAR and/or radar.

https://abc7news.com/tesla-s-autopilot-self-driving-car-offi...

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