Comment by bgwalter
18 hours ago
This is from the man who has no finished open source projects and who recommended camera-only FSD to Tesla, which he also did not finish.
The actually productive programmers, who wrote the stack that powers the economy before and after 2023 need not listen to these cheap commercials.
> FSD to Tesla, which he also did not finish.
That's why I've never understood HN's continuing infatuation with him. He failed to deliver FSD to Tesla, and arguably even sent them down a R&D dead end, and he doesn't seem to have played a significant role in the generative AI revolution, only joining OpenAI after they developed ChatGPT. Yet when his talks or blog posts get posted here, they're met with almost uniformly positive comments, often many.
He reminds me of Sam Altman, where for a while, pointing out that pg's emperor was naked, that his first big "success" was a startup, Loopt, that devolved into a seedy, gaunt gay hookup app, slowly wasting away, that only got acquired thanks to face-saving VC string-pulling, and that that "success" was the springboard of all that followed (YC presidency, feeling out a gubernatorial campaign, OpenAI CEO)--that would get you swiftly flagged.
> This is from the man who has no finished open source projects
To be fair, which open source project can really claim that it is "finished", and what does "finished" even mean?
The only projects that I can truly call "finished" are those that I have laid to rest because they have been superseded by newer technologies, not because they have achieved completeness, because there is always more to do.
Then replace "finished" with "production software".
> not because they have achieved completeness, because there is always more to do.
this is because SWEs love bloat and any good idea eventually needs to balloon into some ever-growing monstrosity :)
> To be fair, which open source project can really claim that it is "finished", and what does "finished" even mean?
https://github.com/left-pad
who recommended camera-only FSD to Tesla
That's a bummer if true. Is there a reliable source that lays that decision at Karpathy's feet?
He was "AI" director at Tesla from 2017:
https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-ai-director-hiring-autopilot...
He gave a glowing recommendation for camera-only FSD in 2021:
https://thenextweb.com/news/tesla-ai-chief-explains-self-dri...
Then he left Tesla in 2022. So yes, you could argue that it was all Elon's fault and he just followed for 5 years. We won't know with 100% certainty, I'd find it odd to stay 5 years if you think it doesn't work.
Ouch, thanks for the cite.
What a weird, dumb call that was. "I don't always tackle the toughest engineering problems where lawsuits and lives are at stake, but when I do, I chug a few beers first and tie one hand behind my back."