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Elon is obviously doing many stupid things but there’s many smart people at Tesla working on this issue so it’s not exactly a complete scam. Isn’t it more real

Elon is obviously doing many stupid things but there’s many smart people at Tesla working on this issue so it’s not exactly a complete scam. Isn’t it more realistic that FSD is one of those classic engineering problems where the last 10% takes 90% of the effort? Also, the “move fast and break things” is symptomatic of the broader tech industry. Despite being glorified for decades, it’s become a toxic mentality that’s hurt us with social media, and is now exponentially more pronounced with AI. Sure, maybe Elon should be “made an example of”, but collectively we need to sober up and realize this is a systematic issue in tech rather than scapegoating one eccentric billionaire.

taylodl 3y ago
"Move fast and break things" isn't entirely inappropriate in the world of non-consequential software, i.e. software not affecting lives or money. But for software affecting lives (people could die) or money (deposits and transfers could go awry) then "move fast and break things" is unethical. Obviously this bit would apply to things such as cars and airplanes, too. You really don't want us building the controls of a nuclear power plant, do you? Probably not. I'm appalled the NTSB hasn't reigned in Tesla. I'm cynical enough to start wondering what officials they've "bought off."
- programmarchy 3y ago
  Would it be unethical if FSD Beta causes 1,000 fatalities but FSD 1.0 prevents 1,000,000 fatalities? Real world training data is needed to get from Beta to 1.0. Seems like you are oversimplifying the ethical decision being made by NTSB.
  - taylodl 3y ago
    I'm not interested in dying for Tesla. Real people, innocent people doing nothing wrong, have been killed. It's past time to stop this madness.
  - AlotOfReading 3y ago
    Two points: 1) Tesla hasn't demonstrated that future hypothetical, so it's a speculative argument at best. 2) It's still unethical if they could have achieved that more safely by following industry norms and best practices, which they consistently fail to implement. Tesla could hire safety drivers for testing before public releases, but they don't. They could implement more redundancy to mitigate SPOF, but they don't. They could file the same regulatory paperwork others do (insufficient as that is), but they don't do that either. They don't even use industry standard terminology and safety concepts like ODDs.
rurp 3y ago
I put more of the blame on a related but slightly different principle, fake it till you make it. The subject matter makes a huge difference in how bad that approach is. Falsely claiming that an app uses AI to identify if a picture is a hot dog or not is dishonest, but not the end of the world. Lying about a medical test being valid, or that a car is fully self driving, is a whole other thing. Those lies directly result in people being killed and should not be tolerated.
- programmarchy 3y ago
  Agree that “fake it till you make it” is a good distinction to make. It’s also been glorified e.g. do things that don’t scale. But technically, Tesla is “fully self driving” in the sense that it can autonomously navigate, steer, etc. That doesn’t mean it won’t crash. It’s also still in Beta. In the long run, I think FSD will become better than the majority of human drivers. Seemingly, the only way these remaining edge cases can be solved is by collecting more training data from real world driving scenarios. So the NTSB is faced with the difficult decision of allowing this Beta version to crash and even cause fatalities in the short run, betting on the prediction it will drastically improve road safety in the long run. It’s a complicated dilemma, in my opinion.
  - thworp 3y ago
    > In the long run, I think FSD will become better than the majority of human drivers. You fell for a very common misuse of statistics there. It may become better than the average human driver, but the sample for that average includes the 5-10% of drivers who cause almost all accidents. Like for other things where power laws apply using averages (or medians) on that data essentially removes any information.
    - programmarchy 3y ago
      I said majority, not average, although what I really meant was anyone who is not a professional driver. But seems like you’re making a stronger argument for my point than I am for putting FSD Beta on the road to replace that 5-10% of bad drivers even sooner.
kaba0 3y ago
But you don’t advertise, let alone deploy a product when 90% of it is missing. FSD likely requires GAI.
- programmarchy 3y ago
  Oh, but you do! Moloch demands it. The GAI requirement is an interesting theory but why? I find it dubious because, at least personally, driving seems to occur semi automatically in my motor cortex. When a car pulls out in front of me I’m not using my frontal cortex to slam on the brakes. It feels involuntary.
  - kaba0 3y ago
    You have 86 billions of neurons with orders of magnitudes more connections between them — the motor cortex does its thing without conscious thought, but your brain still continuously processes the world using all of your senses, using its n years of experience/knowledge. From a few anecdotal experiences in this thread, you would be able to tell subconsciously that that Burger King sign is not a stop sign, not even for a brief second, that floating plastic bag is not an object that one has to avoid collision with and there are just millions of edge cases humans properly handle. Of course I might be wrong and it might not require GAI, but there is still no human construction that can even close on a human brain.

taylodl 3y ago

"Move fast and break things" isn't entirely inappropriate in the world of non-consequential software, i.e. software not affecting lives or money. But for software affecting lives (people could die) or money (deposits and transfers could go awry) then "move fast and break things" is unethical. Obviously this bit would apply to things such as cars and airplanes, too. You really don't want us building the controls of a nuclear power plant, do you? Probably not. I'm appalled the NTSB hasn't reigned in Tesla. I'm cynical enough to start wondering what officials they've "bought off."

programmarchy 3y ago
Would it be unethical if FSD Beta causes 1,000 fatalities but FSD 1.0 prevents 1,000,000 fatalities? Real world training data is needed to get from Beta to 1.0. Seems like you are oversimplifying the ethical decision being made by NTSB.
- taylodl 3y ago
  I'm not interested in dying for Tesla. Real people, innocent people doing nothing wrong, have been killed. It's past time to stop this madness.
- AlotOfReading 3y ago
  Two points: 1) Tesla hasn't demonstrated that future hypothetical, so it's a speculative argument at best. 2) It's still unethical if they could have achieved that more safely by following industry norms and best practices, which they consistently fail to implement. Tesla could hire safety drivers for testing before public releases, but they don't. They could implement more redundancy to mitigate SPOF, but they don't. They could file the same regulatory paperwork others do (insufficient as that is), but they don't do that either. They don't even use industry standard terminology and safety concepts like ODDs.

rurp 3y ago

I put more of the blame on a related but slightly different principle, fake it till you make it. The subject matter makes a huge difference in how bad that approach is. Falsely claiming that an app uses AI to identify if a picture is a hot dog or not is dishonest, but not the end of the world. Lying about a medical test being valid, or that a car is fully self driving, is a whole other thing. Those lies directly result in people being killed and should not be tolerated.

programmarchy 3y ago
Agree that “fake it till you make it” is a good distinction to make. It’s also been glorified e.g. do things that don’t scale. But technically, Tesla is “fully self driving” in the sense that it can autonomously navigate, steer, etc. That doesn’t mean it won’t crash. It’s also still in Beta. In the long run, I think FSD will become better than the majority of human drivers. Seemingly, the only way these remaining edge cases can be solved is by collecting more training data from real world driving scenarios. So the NTSB is faced with the difficult decision of allowing this Beta version to crash and even cause fatalities in the short run, betting on the prediction it will drastically improve road safety in the long run. It’s a complicated dilemma, in my opinion.
- thworp 3y ago
  > In the long run, I think FSD will become better than the majority of human drivers. You fell for a very common misuse of statistics there. It may become better than the average human driver, but the sample for that average includes the 5-10% of drivers who cause almost all accidents. Like for other things where power laws apply using averages (or medians) on that data essentially removes any information.
  - programmarchy 3y ago
    I said majority, not average, although what I really meant was anyone who is not a professional driver. But seems like you’re making a stronger argument for my point than I am for putting FSD Beta on the road to replace that 5-10% of bad drivers even sooner.

kaba0 3y ago

But you don’t advertise, let alone deploy a product when 90% of it is missing. FSD likely requires GAI.

programmarchy 3y ago
Oh, but you do! Moloch demands it. The GAI requirement is an interesting theory but why? I find it dubious because, at least personally, driving seems to occur semi automatically in my motor cortex. When a car pulls out in front of me I’m not using my frontal cortex to slam on the brakes. It feels involuntary.
- kaba0 3y ago
  You have 86 billions of neurons with orders of magnitudes more connections between them — the motor cortex does its thing without conscious thought, but your brain still continuously processes the world using all of your senses, using its n years of experience/knowledge. From a few anecdotal experiences in this thread, you would be able to tell subconsciously that that Burger King sign is not a stop sign, not even for a brief second, that floating plastic bag is not an object that one has to avoid collision with and there are just millions of edge cases humans properly handle. Of course I might be wrong and it might not require GAI, but there is still no human construction that can even close on a human brain.