Comment by bko

> Why make things more complicated than they need to be? Humans don't have lidar and we are the only intelligence that can reliably drive.

Because we want self driving cars to be safer than human driven cars.

If humans had built in lidar we would use it when driving.

Self driving cars are not equipped with human brains so this doesn’t really make sense.

“We should achieve self driving cars via replicating the human brain” strikes me as an incredibly inefficient and difficult way to solve the problem.

> we are the only intelligence that can reliably drive.

Science would like to point out that rats also can learn to drive

https://theconversation.com/im-a-neuroscientist-who-taught-r...

The bitter lesson I think is a great way of explaining the logic behind Tesla's strategy. People aren't getting it.

Whether or not it'll actually work remains to be seen, but it's a perfectly reasonable strategy. One counterargument would be that the bitter lesson can be applied to LIDAR too; you don't have to use that data for feature engineering just because it seems well suited for it.

Humans can drive with eyes only, but we are better drivers when we can also use other senses like hearing. If humans has lidar we would use it when driving.

Don't cars already use a ton of sensors that don't reproduce human senses and ways of doing things?

This knee-jerk reply is old and tired, and the counterarguments are well-trod at this point. Even if cameras-only can build a car that’s as good as humans, why should we settle for “as good as“ humans, who cause 40,000 fatalities a year in the US? If we can do better than humans with more advanced sensors, we are practically morally obligated to do that.