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An open letter to the Tesla fan who wants to run over a kid
- CaliforniaKarl 4y agoFor more info on what’s doing on: Controversy Erupts over Video of FSD Tesla Striking Child Mannequin (thedrive.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32444601 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32444601
- aaron695 4y ago
- krnlpnc 4y agoOf course this half baked system that requires constant over the air bug fixes would plow through a kid in a crosswalk. What puzzles me is that people actually bought into the marketing hype. Its a prototype quality car running alpha software…
- dieselgate 4y agoThere are so many deer around california/oregon this time of year driving around outside of the city for a bit wouldn't take too long to find one. Not the same though of course
- kingofpandora 4y ago
- CaliforniaKarl 4y agoThe Twitter post in question (https://twitter.com/wholemarsblog/status/1557112809132945408 https://twitter.com/wholemarsblog/status/1557112809132945408) says “(this is a serious request)”. Fine, then let’s treat it like a serious request. Apparently someone volunteered a child (https://twitter.com/wholemarsblog/status/1557206098876194816 https://twitter.com/wholemarsblog/status/1557206098876194816, presumably their own child). Has this (pseudonymous) person done a proper study workup? This is a proposal to put a child into a potentially life-threatening situation. I hope they’ve written up (and had reviewed) the rationale for why this can’t be simulated first. And I hope they’ve gotten the snapshot of the Tesla software used, for reference. And for the person who volunteered their own child, I wonder if they should be talking to CPS right now. The person who made the Twitter post mentioned the Bay Area. If they are serious, try going to a place like the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford, talking to the people there, and doing a study.
- kochindustries 4y agoThis person is Omar Qazi, he's pretty close to Elon Musk, not just a run of the mill superfan. See also this stuff by Aaron Greenspan. https://twitter.com/PlainSite/status/1558129429733261312?t=cDc7NqYBSkKfAHTjD4M_CQ&s=19 https://twitter.com/PlainSite/status/1558129429733261312?t=c... Note: Aaron is somewhat nutty himself, kinda obsessed about this stuff.
- renewiltord 4y ago
- ajross 4y ago
- CaptainZapp 4y ago> And for the person who volunteered their own child, I wonder if they should be talking to CPS right now. And the fan who made the request should get his driving license yanked indefinitely. He just proved without a doubt that his character is unfit to let him drive a potentially deadly vehicle on public roads.
- tomatotomato37 4y agoSeems easiest solution is for those wanting to test this just use themselves. After all, a squatting or sitting adult Is same height as a child, it would be the perfect substitute!
- zbird 4y ago
- FilthyAnalyst 4y agoWe can squat. Some of us just need a little help getting up.
- treesprite82 4y ago> Don’t force a kid to walk in front of your 4,000-pound metal box traveling at god knows what speed Some consolation, according to the tweet chain, is that it'll be at 5MPH and the child wouldn't be in front of the car (just on the sidewalk approaching the road). Still not sure the need to put an actual child at any risk when the car stopping for a dummy would prove the same point if not stronger.
- giantrobot 4y agoThere's a non-zero chance the Autopilot will think the kid is a freeway center divider and accelerate into it.
- renewiltord 4y ago
- johnnyanmac 4y agowell at least we have 4 years to make good on this world if that's the case.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- wnevets 4y agoThere is something seriously wrong with Elon fans.
- haihaibye 4y agoInstead of writing on open letter why not reply to the Twitter post?
- trhr 4y agoYeah, come on guy. Don't use a kid, use a little person. They can consent.
- dieselgate 4y agoAgree with not using an U-18 human for the consent part
- pid_0 4y ago
- AbrahamParangi 4y ago
- Veserv 4y agoThe person in question has already written a response to the open letter: https://twitter.com/WholeMarsBlog/status/1558122848601812993 https://twitter.com/WholeMarsBlog/status/1558122848601812993
- Shank 4y ago> I’ll run over as many kids as I want and you can’t stop me!! I'm actually not expecting the Tesla to run over the child (because either it will stop, or the driver will intervene and slam on the brakes or avoid the child). But it also gives me 100% confidence that this person is the exact wrong person to perform any scientific test of the system to even remotely validate its safety.
- mrjin 4y agoAnything can go wrong, will (eventually) go wrong.
- boomboomsubban 4y agoDoes a proximity to Elon Musk make people forget that optics are a thing? Yeah this is a dumb joke, making a dumb joke about running over children still makes you look like an asshole.
- chihuahua 4y agoIn the Muskiverse, that's called "being edgy", and it's considered a good thing.
- suid 4y agoMusk has that quality that Steve Jobs had - the so-called RDF or "Reality Distortion Field". Proximity to Musk seems to scramble a lot of people's minds and thought processes.
- tim333 4y agoIt kind of worked for those two because they made good stuff - iPhone, cars, rockets etc. You can get away with saying this will be great if you deliver occasionally.
- contravariant 4y agoCan someone explain to me what the point is in proving a Tesla won't run over children provided it detects they are real?
- superchroma 4y agoNothing. This is idiotic attention seeking. Software engineers know that you don't set up a demo and proclaim that a previously demonstrated edge case isn't real because it "works for me". You just fix the issue. That's it.
- dannyobrien 4y agoSo I've mentioned this before -- traditionally, journalism involves reaching out to the person you're writing about for comment before posting it. I wish they'd mark off as "opinion" pieces like this that clearly don't follow those methods.
- _moof 4y agoIt's an open letter. Did you expect an open letter not to be opinionated?
- tsol 4y agoWhy would you use a real child? That's so dumb
- superchroma 4y agoThe car would know otherwise. It has to be real or the car won't take the exercise seriously.
- dieselgate 4y agoThis is sarcasm and not actually true right? Presumably a full self driving car wouldn't run into a stray shopping cart in the parking lot
- superchroma 4y agoYes, it's humor.
- Lendal 4y agoEven if the AI could tell the difference between a cardboard cutout and a human, I still wouldn't want my car to run over a cardboard cutout, or a box, or anything else on the road. I don't trust it because I know first-hand that Tesla FSD consistently runs over both large pieces of debris and large potholes in the roadway that every other vehicle on the road avoids. So yeah, I don't trust the car is smart enough to avoid hitting anything other than another vehicle or bicyclist. I don't rely on it at all. It was a waste of $10,000. After two years' experience with FSD, I absolutely would not buy FSD again if I were buying another Tesla right now. But I still don't believe it's something for lawmakers to get involved in.
- superchroma 4y agoPersonally I wouldn't be relying on a car not to hit anything at all, at least, not in this decade. To me, it seems like a last chance dice roll, to lean on the scales a bit and maybe help in a case where I mess up.
- mysterydip 4y agoHow many times would you need to test it to verify it worked? Different time of day, weather, lighting, etc could change the outcome.
- groffee 4y ago
- mrjin 4y agoActually it doesn't matter how many times it has been verified working properly. One single failure would be more than enough...
- imgabe 4y agoHmm, has there been one single failure of a human driver hitting a child?
- Brian_K_White 4y agoThat is the difference between an accident and murder. If you try your best to adhere to all best practices, and still a bad thing happens, that is an entirely 100% different thing from the bad thing that happens when you voluntarily, deliberately, knowingly, do something wrong or unnecessary, and then a bad thing happens.
- imgabe 4y agoSo the AI driver knowingly, deliberately decides to murder children?
- Brian_K_White 4y agoget a new pharmacist
- imgabe 4y ago
- acer4666 4y agoI guess he should've run over a straw man instead, like the author of this letter
- elisharobinson 4y ago
- suid 4y agoI mean, it's not even that hard to put together a child-size dummy of ballistic gel (a la Mythbusters). Doesn't have to be a work of art, and it should be indistinguishable from the real thing (in terms of radar signature, etc). Why not just have someone put one on a low cart and drag it along the road in front of your speeding Tesla, and beta-test it that way? Isn't Tesla doing that?
- Glant 4y agoYou don't even need to match the radar signature of humans, it shouldn't be driving through any object of that size in the road.
- jacknews 4y agoI think he should let the kid drive the car, and then walk in front of it himself, on his knees so he's kid-high.