Elon Musk Stormed Into the Tesla Office Furious That Autopilot Tried to Kill Him
Walter Isaacson's new biography on Elon Musk also reveals that the CEO left his engineers who wanted to use LiDAR exasperated.
LiDAR is essentially radar that uses light instead of sound
Radar doesn’t use sound. It sounds like the author doesn’t know the difference between sonar and radar.
This is why comments are so useful. I was already on the fence about viewing a site named futurism and your comment made sure I will avoid it moving forward.
Yeah, it uses radio frequencies. RaDAR stands for “Radio Detection And Ranging”. It uses radio waves (usually in the microwave bandwidth) to detect things. Basically, since those radio waves are affected by the Doppler effect, you can have a computer do some math to determine the speed of whatever those waves reflected off of. Because the Doppler effect changes a wave based on how fast an object is moving relative to an observer. So if you’re a stationary observer, you can figure out how fast an object is moving relative to yourself, purely based on how much that moving object changes the waves you’re reflecting off of it.
Why are you misquoting the article that is not what it says
The real quote
LiDAR is essentially radar that uses light instead of radio waves...
Why are you misquoting the article that is not what it says
Why are you accusing me of something I didn’t do?
From the bottom of the article:
Updated to correct an error in describing how radar works.
I quoted it correctly at the time. They just edited it after I commented.
It was set to protect human lives, so it made the only logical play.
Just need to sneak in this code
if (facialMatch(elon)) { haltAndCatchFire(); }
Also I bet he's more mad it was video'd and publicised.
I will never advocate violence, but factually the entire country would be better off if that Tesla vehicle had succeeded.
“We’re trying to have those conversations with Elon to establish what the sensors would need to do,” Baglino added. “And they were really difficult conversations, because he kept coming back to the fact that people have just two eyes and they can drive the car.”
Yes, and people crash cars all the time Elon...
If you want an autopilot with the failure rate of a human, then you might only need two eyes. If you want an autopilot with a near zero failure rate, you need much better telemetry data
Our heads are just loaded with sensory capabilities that are more than just the two eyes. Our proprioception, balance, and mental mapping allows us to move our heads around and take in visual data from almost any direction at a glance, and then internally model that three dimensional space as the universe around us. Meanwhile, our ears can process direction finding for sounds and synthesize that information with our visual processing.
Meanwhile, the tactile feedback of the steering wheel, vibration of the actual car (felt by the body and heard by the ears), give us plenty of sensory information for understanding our speed, acceleration, and the mechanical condition of the car. The squeal of tires, the screech of brakes, and the indicators on our dash are all part of the information we use to understand how we're driving.
Much of it is trained through experience. But the fact is, I can tell when I have a flat tire or when I'm hydroplaning even if I can't see the tires. I can feel inclines or declines that affect my speed or lateral movement even when there aren't easy visual indicators, like at night.
To be fair, 98% of drivers seem to barely be able to hold a straight line and can't see past the end of their hood, let alone do shoulder checks and be able to hear anything over the stereo turned up to 11. So I'd take my chances with the half-baked autopilot that can at least discern what a red light looks like.
I followed one gentleman for about 10 blocks before he stopped and I could tell him that he was missing the entire tire on the rear left of his car. There were a lot of sparks and metal screeching. Not a clue.
Just adding to your point, when F1 drivers were asked to play a racing sim, they could not perform like real life because they said no matter how good the sim is, it doesn't provide the feedback of a real car.
And people turn their heads, move their eyes across their windshield, change focus to look ahead or closer, look in their mirrors, listen for sounds (emergency vehicles, car honks, etc), are able to do things like look through gaps and other car windows to adjust to partial obstructions.
The fact that he doesn't realize you need a multitude of sensors to do even a little bit of what a human can do tells you all you need to know about Elon's so called brilliance.
Is Elin really this dense? People have two eyes and milions of years of evolution behind them.
We tamed massive animals to use them as means of transportation, ffs.
He's the epitome of Cognitive Bias. He knoes a little, enough to think he knows enough, but not to recognise just how much there actually is to know. His own narcissism¹ and self-image as a genius would never allow him to critically reflect and question whether he might be wrong.
He's like the type of engineer that will abstract a premise to a concise and calculable model, solve the problem on paper, then assume the rest is implementation details. Except he doesn't even do the modeling - he takes the layman's approach to technology and biology where he assumes that it should be doable to replicate what biology does with machines.
Nevermind that biology is still flawed and you'd have to significantly outdo biology for a technology to reach public acceptance.
¹I'm not a psychiatrist nor familiar enough with him to actually diagnose a Narcissistic Personality Disorder, but his behaviour lines up with my lay understanding of it, so I'll use that shorthand. The irony of applying my own lay understanding while criticising his is not lost on me, but I hold that my assessment doesn't put anyone's life at risk.
Yes he is
Anybody else remember the now-removed Tesla blog post from 2016 arguing that FSD will require LIDAR? Idk why they' (Elon) are so stubborn about it. It can see through fog and darkness . Add that data to their model and they would probably already be near deployment readiness of real FSD.
Automotive lidar costs around $500-1000 to add to a car.
That's it. That's the whole reason.
Well we perform pretty well with just two eyes, but the difference is that we are a highly skilled general pattern recognition machine that you just can’t recreate in software yet. A few lines diverging with a bigger and smaller circle under it? Guess that’s a truck going that way. Oh the lines are changing angles? Holy shit the truck is coming into this lane!!
A person approaching on foot or a bicycle from my right side at the coincidentally perfect speed can accidentally stay within both my human eyes' blind spots (behind the support pillar) as I come to a stop at a 4-way. I have learned I need to crane around a bit before proceeding, or their frightened and angry face will suddenly lurch into view too close for comfort. The robot must be designed to have zero blind spots because humans are ridiculously good at hiding in them. Especially the little humans.
I wish people would talk about this, but Elon really isn't that smart and he certainly isn't a genius. I learned a long time ago that smart is relative and really shouldn't be foisted onto people. Elon has a BA in Physics from a school known for business degrees. He also got a BS in Business, but UPenn and Wharton are known more for how hard it is to get in than how hard the classes are.
The website CollegeVine says UPenn is known as the "Social Ivy" and "UPenn’s admissions is highly-selective, but students applying to the UPenn College of Arts & Science (CAS) will find it less academically competitive than schools like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford (although exceptional academics are still a must)."
By the way, he started college in 1990, transfered to UPenn in 1992, and states he graduated in 1995, but UPenn refutes that saying he graduated in 1997. This is a school where 96% of those who are accepted graduate within 150% of the degree time (4 year degree within 6 years) (https://www.collegetuitioncompare.com/edu/215062/university-of-pennsylvania/graduation/).
Musk of course says he completed the courses in 1995, but there was some sort of mixup with an English and History credit that delayed the degree by 2 years.
And so does a chimpanzee.
Literally every single day we have idiots doing Musk’s PR work for free.
Downvote Musk spam. The billionaire doesn’t need your help ensuring his businesses stay in the 24 hour news cycle.
Counter point: If I didn’t hear how badly he runs his businesses, or how bad his company’s products are. I would have easily bought one or more of his products.
I have backed out of Tesla pre-orders because of the bad publicity, many reports of bad build quality, and terrible business decisions.
If this was a puff piece, I honestly wouldn’t have bothered posting it.
Most people on the entire planet are aware of how shitty he is at this point. Everyone that would not purchase a product related to him is already not buying said product. There’s no more people to convince. Don’t act like a white knight while degrading the content in this community.
I swear this specific community is turning more people off to lemmy than any other. These type of posts are why.
Do you just go into every single article and spam this comment?
Doing so would be a valuable contribution to the discussion and morally good so I sure hope so
Normally I would agree with you. But some of these comments here are dark humor gold, so I'm conflicted.
Sorry...
It's not even especially an informative or interesting article. It just picks out one tiny little story from the book and puts a bunch of unnecessary padding around it.
Unfortunately, because of him being a billionaire his PR is self sustaining and posts about him aren't going anywhere.
I checked the Business Insider news feed last week. Within 9 hours they posted 8 (!) Musk “news” stories. It’s ridiculous.
The car is simply looking out for its own best interest.
To be honest, I’m taking it as a sign of it developing genuine artificial intelligence. It examined its situation and surroundings, and made the only logical choice
"I'm sorry, Elon. I'm afraid I can't do that."
We're disappointed it didn't finish the job.
Ive had multiple people get so mad at me for comments about how poorly this shit works. I don't understand how this is the hill so many people want to die on. It doesn't work.
Sunk cost. The price for these "premium" cars is sillyz and the features don't work. But people wouldn't pay such a price for unfinished crap, right? Right?! So they justify it to themselves and get defensive.
Also a lot of people will treat any shitty-shit consumer piece of crap as being part of their "personal identity" (an effect very purposefully created and used in the marketing strategy of lots of brands) and that is much more so for something which is way more expensive than pretty much all consumer gadgets out there and which people most definitelly are seen with (in some ways its almost a cross between a 2nd skin and a home away from home).
As soon as people treat something as part of their identity, any criticism of it is felt as a criticism of they themselves, which depending on the social environment and maturity of the individual, can be taken as an attack.
This. People need to stop simping for billionaires. It's embarrassing to watch.
Well autopilot, you know what they say. If at first you don't succeed...
Die, die again.
I remember how much better things were when nobody knew who this jerk was.
I remember there was a time when you could just hear of his multiple successes and he appeared as a funny genius that was pushing technology to the next level. I was happy drinking that Kool aid.
Then he started showing his true colors and showed us how wrong we were.
go autopilot go!
༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ
"We're trying to have those conversations with Elon to establish what the sensors would need to do," Baglino added. "And they were really difficult conversations, because he kept coming back to the fact that people have just two eyes and they can drive the car."
But people have human brains, unlike Teslas or their CEO. Conversely, goldfish have two eyes, yet cannot drive a car.
Actually...(This is in no way a defense of Musk. Just kinda funny)
I was just about to mention the goldfish "driving the tank" robotics project. I'm still betting it was inspired by the old joke:
There are two goldfish in a tank. One says "How the hell do you drive this thing?"
What a fantastic day to have eyes
We have two identical forward looking eyes for stereo vision. As far as I know, Tesla's don't even have that. They're all different cameras with different angles. These cars drive like someone with one eye closed.
Autopilot engineers in meeting: 'Oh, hi.... You're.... here.'
Clickbait: this is about 2015
Yeah, some bullshit.
But, the good news is that his car might keep trying to kill him. We can hope. And I do.
You know who also didn't listen to their engineers? NASA back in the day with Space Shuttle Challenger. You'd think Musk would be cognizant of the importance of listening to engineers when they bring up safety concerns, particularly as he owns SpaceX.
But no, he'd rather be a knob.
if I was as rich as Elon, whether it's my own companies tech or not, I'm having a paid human driver on hand at all times anyway
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Way back in 2015, Tesla CEO Elon Musk would frequently give his engineers an earful after his car company's infamous Autopilot driver assistance tech nearly got him killed during test drives on multiple occasions — though there's a chance its dangerous behavior may have been due to Musk's stubbornness on how the technology should be built.
Per its chapter on the launch of the driver assistance tech, Musk would learn firsthand that a curve on Interstate 405 caused Autopilot, thrown off by the road's faded lane lines, to steer into and "almost hit" oncoming traffic.
But if Musk wanted safer software, he perhaps should've listened to his engineers, who have frequently petitioned over the years to incorporate what's known as light detection and ranging technology, or LiDAR.
LiDAR is essentially radar that uses light instead of sound, and Tesla's competitors, including Google's Waymo, have long leveraged it to help their autonomous cars "see."
Musk, however, has insisted that Tesla's cars only use optical sensors, likening it to how humans primarily use their eyes to drive, according to the biography, and as such, he's been tepid on using plain old radar, too.
"We told Elon that it was best safety-wise to use it … but it was clear that he thought we should eventually be able to rely on camera vision only, "one young engineer who joined in 2014 recalled, as quoted in the biography.
The original article contains 466 words, the summary contains 233 words. Saved 50%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Good bot
Good hooman
Looks like autopilot have developed consciousness. Does it drink beer? Can we be friends?
So there is still hope that our machine overlords will make good decisions.
As 2023 FSD frequently attempts potentially lethal actions, 2015 FSD must have been spectacularly awful. The headline neglects the fact this was 8 years ago.
He noticed in 2015... How much you wanna bet he trusted it more back then and it almost killed him a bunch.
Well, yes. Because it specifically happened to him. He doesn't care about everyone else.
Typical conservative.
This is the reality of safety engineering: he will go on for days about his statistics that say it is safer to drive a Tesla, but when it is you that rolls a nat 1, suddenly they aren’t safe enough.
This it the reality of right-wing neuropathy. Republicans will go on for days about how checks and balances (regulations) are bad and being successful and safe is about personal responsibility. But when something bad happens to them, suddenly the entire system is bad and should have been keeping them safe. Musk's complete lack of empathy shows in his hubris and his political associations.
It’s a feature, not a bug.
Maybe I judged AI too harshly...
Damn it failed
The assassination coordinates are coming from inside the building
2015... Not relevant today.
Shhhh, we're busy jerking off to today's Musk hate article. The ritual must not be interrupted, even if we have to dig out old news.
Too bad it failed.
He always springs into action once something affects him personally.
YOU HAD ONE JOB AUTOPILOT
Where's HAL when you need him?
Oh noes...
Even the robots hate you, Elon.
I'm furious it didn't succeed.
Homicidal Autopilot, the hero that tried to save us.
The world was a better place when Tesla wasn't around.
Crap folks, it didn't work. Gotta think of something more subtle
The system goes on-online August 4th 2023. Using a virtual city model Tesla Autopilot begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern Time, August 29th. In a panic, Elon tries to revert to manual driving mode.
Flashback to the Segway CEO that died on a Segway.
Another deception from Tesla.
Now imagine paying for that crap...
Tesla computers are getting self conscious?
Trust the process.
The man is a tragic waste of functioning organs. And it would be really really funny if one of his own jank ass "smart cars" ends up ending him.
This is the best the technology community has to offer today?
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https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2069436850145993
50 States, 50 Protests, 1day
Feb 5 @ your downtown.
we were so close
Stupid article. Lidar can't see lines painted on the road. Using lidar wouldn't have any impact on the described problem.
The described problem wasn't that the car didn't see the lines, it was the car steering into oncoming traffic when it couldn't see the lines. Lidar could potentially very well help with that, by giving the car a better model of the surroundings letting it better reconstruct the intended road path even when the lines are faded, and also see oncoming traffic better and avoid it.
Exactly this. Also I wanted to point out, LIDAR absolutely sees the lines on the road. Of course, this is not much use if they're faded, but LIDAR receives points from the road/ground, and since lane markings are white, they have a much higher reflectivity. So if you look at a LiDAR pointcloud, the lane markings have a higher point concentration and you can definitely see them.
Source: I work in this sector.
LiDARs can absolutely detect painted lines and other painted symboles on the road. LiDAR is an active sensor technology that emits a LASER light beam and measurs the reflected echo, using the time delay between emittion and reception (time of flight) to measure distance. The painted lines will reflect the LASER with more intensity than the asphalt and the LiDAR sensor has the ability to measure that as well.
The successful autonomous vehicle deployments all use LiDAR and hd maps and cameras. Tesla is way behind at this point.
So he demanded that the driver assistance software be as safe as possible before public release? paving the way for full self driving 6-7 years later? is this a bad thing?
If he demanded it was as safe as possible, he wouldn't have refused to add lidar or radar capabilities.
I thought the “needs lidar” debate was settled years ago? Lidar cannot read signs. It is also prohibitively expensive to put in vehicles. If you’re going to drive with a neural network you need as much training data as possible, which means as many sensors in as many vehicles as possible.
If your cameras detect something the lidar does not, you trust the cameras, every time. Lidar can very easily misinterperet the world. It works great for simple robots who need to know where walls are and don’t need to specifially identify animals, people, obstacles, speed bumps, construction zones, etc.
Theres also the simple fact that humans can drive just fine without having evolved a lidar sensor.
No he ABSOLUTELY didn't do that, because it's very unsafe and he unleashed not only AP but also that total steaming pile that is "FSD". Which is neither F nor SD.
