I've calmed down after your "heads will roll" comment so I promise to be civil. To continue. Yes, you should put back your original comment to reduce confusion. I'm fine reading a long comment.
> No idea why you had to tout out that you had a PhD when I was pointing out that you were not a user.
You said:
And then we have bystanders like you with no understanding of what’s actually going on, who want to ban everybody from using Autopilot because you think drunk people are using Autopilot or something.
Which I took to mean you assumed I was a nonpractitioner who didn't know what I was talking about. I know you work at Tesla, so I know your credentials. Since you seemed so eager to dismiss me as a "bystander", my only point in telling you about my background wasn't to threaten you with it or to assert an unquestionable authority, but to inform you that I have the necessary experience and education to fully understand all the complexities you think are beyond my comprehension. I am not a "bystander", and while I do not own a Tesla (because
of course I don't), that doesn't set you up to dismiss my point of view as uninformed. You can communicate to me as a peer, not a "bystander".
> (Most are from Stanford, Berkeley or CMU in Tesla AP)
Absolutely, I've gone to school with some of those people. I've been taught by some of those people. I've also taught some of the people you work with. I don't know who you are, but I know you know better, or at least your colleagues do. Which is why this is so especially painful for me.
> I can assure you they think as deeply about safety as you claim you are.
Do they though? Because... again, you're building a product that allows people to drive around town fucking in their car. I notice you didn't address that at all in your reply. What does your team have to say about that, and when will this be banned? Why did your team release "beta" quality hardware and software onto public streets? Why wasn't the public consulted?
By the tone of your earlier comment about drunk drivers, it seems to imply that you think drunk people driving Teslas is beyond the pale. And yet, what do you say about people fucking in their Teslas? That's happening. Isn't that just as dangerous as drunk driving, if not more so?
It's really easy to say you're thinking deeply about these things, but that seems to be as far as the consideration goes when looking at how your product is being used in reality. You didn't think enough about it that you realized the camera sensors on the AP system would be overwhelmed by a bright white obstruction, and it would cause the AP system to run into it at full speed. You didn't think enough about it to have robust sensing to overcome a single sensor being overwhelmed. Yet you shipped that to the public, and then someone died due to the lack of consideration of that failure mode by your company.
To me, it seems like your company's decisions are based purely on maintaining a competitive edge by being a market leader and aggressively pushing unfinished products onto the general and unsuspecting public. Can you please outline the ethical framework you used to arrive at this decision? Please don't tell me it was "We need this as fast as possible to save as many lives in the future, short term casualties are a necessary evil for the greater good."
> I do in fact sleep soundly, knowing I don't call engineers murderers on online forums.
Thanks for confirming my expectations. I figured as much. I figured you had no problem with the fact that your product decapitated someone, and then your company did literally nothing about it for 3 years, leading to it happening again. For the sake of your sleep, I'm glad you're able to rationalize these decapitations as "it was just a glorified cruise control" as if it's the user's fault. Maybe the first time. But the second one is on your company.
But to be clear I didn't call you personally a murderer; I literally said you're not responsible. But the thing you built is directly responsible. Your team is responsible for releasing these things into communities, which you yourself admit are beta quality. That's something you chose to do. Engineers must be held accountable when the things they engineer hurt people, otherwise they will engineer things that hurt people.
If you haven't realized it yet, this whole feeling I have really about you but your company, so don't take what I'm saying personally, unless in fact you do feel your personal work had contributed to these people's deaths.