1,911 karma · joined October 6, 2009
I wrote up my experience in slightly longer form here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16773903
As a safety matter, I am pretty confident that nobody gets through configuration and delivery (let alone a test drive) thinking this is what their car does when they turn on Autopilot.
If you check out NVidia's DriveNet demo from a couple years back, you'll see that they already have a vision-based NN that outperforms humans in fog and snow[1]. We can debate whether people should drive in those conditions at all, but today's expectations will be the baseline that SDVs are up against, and cameras are much better suited than Lidar to achieve that baseline.
[1] Start at 7:21 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJ58dbd5g8g
Most companies are pursuing a Lidar approach because dev_speed(Lidar approach) > dev_speed(camera approach). Tesla is pursuing a camera approach because max(camera approach) > max(lidar approach).
Solid lol, but I stand by it!
> Maybe you are an exceptional driver, to be able to be vigilant at all times even when AP is active.
I've had driving moments I'm not proud of. But it's because I was being dumb, not because Autopilot made me do it.
I think the relevant question is: does Autopilot make people less attentive? I have no data on this. My personal experience is that most drivers are already inattentive, and Autopilot (1) makes it easier to be attentive (for a driver who chooses to be); and (2) is better than the alternative in cases where a driver is already inattentive.
> Even so, it would probably only take one instance where you weren't in time to change your mind on all this (assuming you'd survive) so until then it is a very literal case of survivors bias.
I hope I'd be more thoughtful and independent than that, but maybe you're right. But I don't think my view in the face of a terrible accident should be what drives policy, either.[1]
On the issue of survivorship bias, I would add that "Man Doesn't Text While Driving, Resulting in No Accident" isn't a headline that you're likely to read. I see a much greater quantity of bias in the failure cases that are reported and discussed than in the survivorship stories told (as evidenced by the proportions of comments and opinions here, vs in a user community like TMC or /r/teslamotors). I posted my experience because I think it brings more to this comment thread in particular than my survivorship bias detracts from it.
> Which makes me wonder how that person that died the other week felt about their autopilot right up to the fatal crash.
See: [1]
Yes, you still need to pay attention. It is hard for me to believe that any Autopilot user doesn't know this because you learn it by experience almost immediately. People text and drive all the time in manual cars, but for some reason when they do it in a Tesla, we declare that Autopilot lulled them into it.
While I agree that you need to be ready to grab the wheel or hit the brake on short notice, I disagree about what that means. There is a big difference between having to be ready to do those things and actually having to do them every few seconds. This difference wasn't intuitive to me, but in practice I've found it to be extremely mentally liberating and true beyond question.
I've also found that Autopilot makes it easier to take in all of your surroundings and drive defensively against things you otherwise wouldn't see. One thing that has struck me, as I now see more drivers than just the one in front of me, is how many people are distracted while driving. If I glance continually at an arbitrary driver on my way to work, there is a greater likelihood than not that within 10 seconds they'll look at a phone. That is terrifying to me, but it is also good information to have as I drive -- I am now able to drive defensively against drivers around me, not just the one in front of me.
I've also found I'm more able to think or listen to music or podcasts than I was before Autopilot. I could never get much out of technical audiobooks, for instance, while driving manually. But Autopilot has changed that. I hesitate to say this because I worry that I will give the impression that I am focusing less on the road, but I don't think that's what's happening. My mental abilities feel much higher when I am not constantly turning a wheel or adjusting a pedal. I'm listening to music, podcasts, or audiobooks either way -- I just get a lot more out of them with Autopilot. I think it goes back to the lack of mental fatigue.
Whatever you make of my experience, I urge you to try it on a long drive if you ever get an opportunity. I have put over 60k miles on Autopilot, I have taken over on demand hundreds if not thousands of times, and I've never had a close call that was Autopilot's fault.
> Add to that that Elon said "self-driving is basically a solved problem" and that they'll be doing a cross country trip soon.
He's referring to the approach, and while perhaps a silly statement, Tesla is very clear on their web site that there is more work to do. Immediately after the pull-quotes in the parent comment, Tesla writes in bold letters: "Please note that Self-Driving functionality is dependent upon extensive software validation and regulatory approval, which may vary widely by jurisdiction."
Nobody gets to buy Full Self Driving without seeing a litany of disclaimers that it is not ready and that the timetable is unknown (and which are presented front and center, not buried in some lengthy contract).
> I'm honestly puzzled that Musk doesn't seem to be taking this seriously
I don't think this is right. Safety has been a first order concern in every vehicle Tesla has designed. It's the thing Musk has lead with in every vehicle presentation (even though crowds continue to find it boring). And it's been repeatedly cited by Musk and others at Tesla as a major motivation behind building Autopilot, even before NHTSA confirmed it as a safety improvement. We can debate approaches and results (and hell, even motives if you really want), but it seems clear from both words and actions that Tesla takes safety extremely seriously. I don't see the connection between a short-seller April Fool's joke on Twitter and taking Autopilot safety seriously.
> They just issued a massive recall
Yes, voluntarily, for a component that Bosch makes (and for which Bosch is paying for replacements) which may be prone to corrode, and that has never caused a known accident or injury. While we debate the seriousness of this, Ford is recalling more cars than Tesla has ever produced because the steering wheels are falling off. This is barely a footnote within the industry, is certainly not an existential threat to Tesla, and IMO it speaks all the more to how seriously they take safety.
> their autopolit system is killing people
At worst, Autopilot is preventing more crashes than it is causing. Almost certainly saving more lives than it is taking although of course proving a negative is harder. One-off situations and the element of control color how we think about crashes with automated systems, but NHTSA seems to feel that Autopilot is a significant net safety improvement.
> their financials are terrible
Eh, yes and no. They're operating on a maximization function for growth, which requires a high degree of financial risk-taking. So sure, they're in a tight spot, but it's in line with where they are on a risk/reward spectrum, and while capital may be expensive for them if the market loses confidence, there doesn't appear to be any threat that they won't be able to raise it.
> and they haven't lived up to their manufacturing promises.
Yeah. This is probably the best, fairest, and most lasting criticism of Tesla. I hope they can turn that around.
I did have one mold issue with Private Reserve in my TWSBI, and to be safe I have avoided using it in my Vanishing Point. I may be being overcautious though; I'm not sure how much to extrapolate from that one incident. My mother is an artist and has used several dozen Private Reserve inks spanning over a decade, all without any issues.
Would you be open to talking about this project? I'd love to hear an insider's perspective on things, and poke at how my project could be most helpful/useful to astronomers.
robby@freerobby.com
Thanks Robby
I think this is preferable to a pure hardware approach because people can use their existing equipment, and they don't have to make a major upfront investment in something proprietary. The initial cost (for the controller) should be under $100.
My goal is to make astronomy more accessible to folks without deep pockets or STEM backgrounds, and to increase the pace at which we make discoveries in outer space. If anybody's interested in contributing to this project, or participating in the beta, please drop me a line (@freerobby on Twitter, or robby@freerobby.com).
More about my thinking, motivations, and plan can be found here: http://astroswarm.com/2017/02/12/making-space-easy-to-study....
It looks like this will only send me notifications for my personal account. Is it possible to get them for the (public/open source) Github organization I created?
I agree with this, but cost savings and forward thinking design aren't mutually exclusive. I think the constraints of the former make the latter even more evident. Most cars with only one screen provide a driver's display. So why did Tesla choose a center display instead? I think it's because in the world they see coming, the center screen will be more useful.
That world may be five years away, but Tesla claims the Model 3 you buy this year will be fully self-driving, so it stands to reason they'd design it with that future in mind.
This is the equivalent of saying the $999 you saved for your Macbook didn't actually buy you that Macbook, because once your money entered the bank, it became indistinguishable and inseparable from all the other money in the bank, and who knows which pennies went where.
Well, that's true, and if you insist that your $999 bought your Macbook, you can take precautions to ensure that (at enormous temporal sacrifice). As a practical matter, this doesn't matter to anybody, so we come together as a society and agree that transactions don't need a perfectly isolated series of exchanges, so long as the credits and debits match up.
The same is true for energy.
Specific responsibilities of this role include:
* Oversight of our infrastructure platform (built on Kubernetes), our internal video service (which handles all uploads, storage, transcoding, and delivery of video), our video analytics data pipeline, and our in-house product metrics warehouse.
* Automating manual processes to make them more reliable and less toilsome. Defining service level objectives that keep customers happy while allowing developers to swing for the fences.
* Directing local and remote SREs.
* Contributing to architectural decisions that underpin the larger Wistia platform.
* Finding clever ways to do big things without spending big money.
* Translating business needs into an infrastructure roadmap.
> One of the scientists who approved Igor Bogdanov's thesis, MIT's Roman Jackiw... was intrigued by the thesis, although it contained many points he did not understand. Jackiw defended the thesis:
> "All these were ideas that could possibly make sense. It showed some originality and some familiarity with the jargon. That's all I ask."
In terms of what an appropriate sacrifice is, I suppose there's a pretty wide spectrum. At the extreme, he could've publicly resigned and refused to have any part in something so unethical. On the lighter end, he could've penned an op/ed stating that it's a terrible practice but that he's going to stay and do his part to make it as comfortable as possible for the condemned, while calling on lawmakers to end the practice. I'm not prescriptive about how exactly people should react when their ethics are challenged, but I think it's reasonable to ask them to wander in the direction of their moral compass even when their job points the other way.[2]
[1] http://www.people-press.org/2015/04/16/less-support-for-deat...
[2] Obviously, some people would be hurting for work if they lost their job, and cannot afford to take big risks or piss off their bosses. But that doesn't apply to prison wardens, and if anything, the imperative of a prison warden to have solid ethics is much higher than that of a typical worker.
The whole premise of this piece is that the author went along with a broken system because "that's the way it's supposed to work" -- that people on the inside oil the machine and people on the outside look the other way, and both are to blame for their part in it.
The author bends over backwards throughout to show that he was no exception, that he went right along with it, and he seems to regret that now. If evidence to the contrary is available, I'm all ears.
> with regards to this single issue of many that affect his facility.
Well yeah, but "this single issue" is the premise of the article, a major social issue, and the topic of discussion here. I'm not saying this guy shirked his moral duties all throughout life; I'm saying he shirked them on capital punishment.