Comment by galangalalgol
8 hours ago
The reasoning is cynical but sound. If the system uses only the sensing modes people have, it will make the mistakes people do. If a jury thinks "well I could have done that either!" You win. It doesn't matter if your system has fewer accidents if some of the failure modes are different than human ones, because the jury will think "how could it not figure that out?"
I don't think that's the reasoning.
The reasoning was simply that LIDAR was (and incorrectly predicted to always be) significantly more expensive than cameras, and hypothetically that should be fine because, well, humans drive with only two eyes.
Musk miscalculated on 1) cost reduction in LIDAR and 2) how incredible the human brain is compared to computers.
Having similar sensors certainly doesn't guarantee your accidents look the same, so I don't think your logic is even internally sound.
Sensor fusion is also hard to get right, since you still need cameras you have to fuse the two information streams. Thats mainly a software problem and companies like Waymo have done it, but Tesla was having trouble with it earlier, and if you don’t do it right, your self driving system can be less reliable.
> how incredible the human brain is compared to computers.
It is pretty incredible but people will (rightly so?) hold automated drivers to an ultra high standard. If automated driving systems cause accidents at anywhere near the human rate, it'll be outlawed pretty quickly.
> If automated driving systems cause accidents at anywhere near the human rate, it'll be outlawed pretty quickly.
This is evidently false. Robotaxi crash rates exceed human drivers', but there's not an effective regulatory agency to outlaw them!
https://futurism.com/advanced-transport/tesla-robotaxis-cras...
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> Musk miscalculated on 1) cost reduction in LIDAR and 2) how incredible the human brain is compared to computers.
And, less excusable, ignorant of how incredible human eyes are compared to small sensor cameras. In particular high DR in low light, with fast motion. Every photographer knows this.
And also ignorant about how those two eyes have binocular vision, adjustable positions, and can look in multiple mirrors for full spatial awareness.
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Considering he also runs a company that puts computer chips inside brains to augment them you’d think he ought to have a more sound understanding as to the limits of both.
> Musk miscalculated on 1) cost reduction in LIDAR
Given that Musk has a history of driving lower costs, it's unlikely he overestimated the long-term cost floor. He just thought we were close to self-driving in 2014.
Another factor is Andrej Karpathy, who was the primary architect for the vision-only approach. Musk wanted fewer parts, and Karpathy believed he could deliver that. Karpathy is still an advocate of vision-only.
Right, for the reasons that I just mentioned
Eh, I think ‘miscalculation’ might be giving too much credit about good intentions.
He wanted (needed?) to get on the hype train for self driving to pump up the stock price, knew that at the time there was zero chance they could sell it at the price point lidar required at the time - or even effective other sensors (like radar) - and sold it anyway at the price point that people would buy it at, even though it was not plausibly going to ever work at the level that was being promised.
There is a word for that. But I’m sure there are many lawyers that will say it was ‘mere fluffery’ or the like. And I’m sure he’ll get away with it, because more than enough people are complicit in the mess.
Miscalculation assumes there was a mistake somewhere, but near as I can tell, it is playing out as any reasonable person expected it too, given what was known at the time.
I think Musk is really not as smart as he thinks he is and this specific thing was probably an earnest mistake. Lots of other fraudulent stuff going on though of course!
IMHO not using lidars sounds like a premature optimisation and a complication, with a level of hubris.
This is a difficult problem to solve and perhaps a pragmatic approach was/is to make your life as simple as possible to help get to a fully working solution, even if more expensive, then you can improve cost and optimise.
There certainly is a pretty on going miscalculation regarding human intelligence, and consrquentially, empathy.
Seeing the SOTA in FSD techs it is not obvious that Musk made a miscalc so far.
Until a lawyer points out other cars see that. My car already has various sensors and in manual driving sounds alarms if there is a danger I seem not to have noticed. (There are false alarms - but most of the type I did notice and probably should have left more safety margin even though I wouldn't hit it)
also regulators gather srastics and if cars with something do better they will mandate it.
Very recent issue with Waymo https://dmnews.co.uk/waymo-robotaxi-spotted-unable-to-cross-.... This is 17 years after they bet the farm on LIDAR, with no signs its ever going to be cost effective or that it's better than multiple cameras, with millisecond reaction 360 degrees, that never gets tired, drunk, distracted, and also has other cheaper sensors and NN trained on Billions or real world data.
Tesla does not handle rain well either. This is not a LIDAR problem, it is a problem with self driving cars in general.
My Tesla can't even tell if it should turn the wipers on consistently or correctly. Let alone drive in the rain.
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People also don't handle rain well.
That's an example of it failing safe. I'd rather it did that than drive me into a sinkhole because it thought it was a puddle.
Ok so Waymo is useless in the rain then, kind of limiting. But at least that 0.000000000001% times it actually is a sinkhole you won't damage the bumper.
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There is also a report from the same flooding in LA of a Waymo driving into a flooded road and getting stuck.
They might have flipped a switch after that, causing this.
Dude that's not a 'puddle' as the article claims, that's a body of water that it's not even visually obvious whether it's safe to drive through. Maybe I'm a bad driver but I'd hesitate to drive through that in a small car either.
I think the difference is the prior knwoldege a commuter has of that section of road. Does it always flood shallowly in heavy rain?
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>A vehicle got stuck trying to figure out an obstacle so sensors with less information are better than sensors with more information.
It is sound to think that cameras plus an accelerometer, plus data about about the car and environment (that you get from your ears) ought to be able to mimic and improve on human driving. However humans general purpose spatial awareness and ability to integrate all kinds of general information is probably really hard to replicate. A human would realize that an orange fluid spilling across the road might be slippery, guess the way a person might travel from the way their eyes are pointing...
It may just be faster to make lidar cheap. And lidar can do things humans can't.
IIUC, the cameras in a Tesla have worse vision (resolution) at far distances than a human. So while in the abstract your argument sounds fine; it'll crumble in court when a lawyer points out a similar driver would've needed corrective lens.
Most accidents happen because people are human, aren't paying attention, are inebriated, not experienced enough drivers, or reckless.
It's not fair to say that vision based models will "make the same mistakes people do" as >99% of the mistakes people make are avoidable if these issues were addressed. And a computer can easily address all those issues
Which means the mistakes vision-based models for today are unique to them.
This is a new and flawed rationale that I haven't heard before. Tesla cameras are worse (lower resolution, sensitivity, and dynamic range) than human eyes and don't have "ears" (microphones).
The cars do have at least one microphone.
Inside the car though, right? With multiple exterior microphones they could do spatialization like Waymo.
Pretty hard to do if your whole selling point is ‘better and safer than human’ however?