Tesla's AI Day Event Did A Great Job Convincing Me They're Wasting Everybody's Time

[Dusty]

I quit reading Jalopnik articles years ago. The site is a strong hold of car luddites on the internet. The readers march to the same tired "purist" view.

 

[jerhenderson]

No, no. It finds an emergency vehicle and crashes into that.

bahahaha

 

[Alpeyev]

Tesla's AI Day Event Did A Great Job Convincing Me They're Wasting Everybody's Time

Level 2-assisted driving, especially in-city driving, is worse than useless. It's stupid.

By
Jason Torchinsky

Today 1:30PM

Tesla’s big AI Day event just happened, and I’ve already told you about the humanoid robot Elon Musk says Tesla will be developing. You’d think that would have been the most eye-roll-inducing thing to come out of the event, but, surprisingly, that’s not the case. The part of the presentation that actually made me the most baffled was near the beginning, a straightforward demonstration of Tesla “Full Self-Driving.” I’ll explain.

The part I’m talking about is a repeating loop of a sped-up daytime drive through a city environment using Tesla’s FSD, a drive that contains a good amount of complex and varied traffic situations, road markings, maneuvering, pedestrians, other cars—all the good stuff.

The Tesla performs the driving pretty flawlessly. Here, watch for yourself:


Now, technically, there’s a lot to be impressed by here— the car is doing an admirable job of navigating the environment. The more I watched it, though, the more I realized one very important point: this is a colossal waste of time.


Well, that’s not entirely fair: it’s a waste of time, talent, energy, and money.

I know that sounds harsh, and it’s not really entirely fair, I know. A lot of this research and development is extremely important for the future of self-driving vehicles, but the current implementation—and, from what I can tell, the plan moving ahead—is still focusing on the wrong things.

Here’s the root of the issue, and it’s not a technical problem. It’s the fundamental flaw of all these Level 2 driver-assist, full-attention required systems: what problem are they actually solving?

That segment of video was kind of maddening to watch because that’s an entirely mundane, unchallenging drive for any remotely decent, sober driver. I watched that car turn the wheel as the person in the driver’s seat had their hand right there, wheel spinning through their loose fingers, feet inches from those pedals, while all of this extremely advanced technology was doing something that the driver was not only fully capable of doing on their own, but was in the exact right position and mental state to actually be doing.


Screenshot: YouTube/Tesla

What’s being solved, here? The demonstration of FSD shown in the video is doing absolutely nothing the human driver couldn’t do, and doesn’t free the human to do anything else. Nothing’s being gained!

It would be like if Tesla designed a humanoid dishwashing robot that worked fundamentally differently than the dishwashing robots many of us have tucked under our kitchen counters.

The Tesla Dishwasher would stand over the sink, like a human, washing dishes with human-like hands, but for safety reasons you would have to stand behind it, your hands lightly holding the robot’s hands, like a pair of young lovers in their first apartment.


Screenshot: YouTube/Tesla

Normally, the robot does the job just fine, but there’s a chance it could get confused and fling a dish at a wall or person, so for safety you need to be watching it, and have your hands on the robot’s at all times.

If you don’t, it beeps a warning, and then stops, mid-wash.

Would you want a dishwasher like that? You’re not really washing the dishes yourself, sure, but you’re also not not washing them, either. That’s what FSD is.

Every time I saw the Tesla in that video make a gentle turn or come to a slow stop, all I could think is, buddy, just fucking drive your car! You’re right there. Just drive!

The effort being expended to make FSD better at doing what it does is fine, but it’s misguided. The place that effort needs to be expended for automated driving is in developing systems and procedures that allow the cars to safely get out of the way, without human intervention, when things go wrong.

Level 2 is a dead end. It’s useless. Well, maybe not entirely—I suppose on some long highway trips or stop-and-go very slow traffic it can be a useful assist, but it would all be better if the weak link, the part that causes problems—demanding that a human be ready to take over at any moment—was eliminated.

Tesla—and everyone else in this space—should be focusing efforts on the two main areas that could actually be made better by these systems: long, boring highway drives, and stop-and-go traffic. The situations where humans are most likely to be bad at paying attention and make foolish mistakes, or be fatigued or distracted.


Screenshot: YouTube/Tesla

The type of driving shown in the FSD video here, daytime short-trip city driving, is likely the least useful application for self-driving.

If we’re all collectively serious about wanting automated vehicles, the only sensible next step is to actually make them forgiving of human inattention, because that is the one thing you can guarantee will be a constant factor.

Level 5 drive-everywhere cars are a foolish goal. We don’t need them, and the effort it would take to develop them is vast. What’s needed are systems around Level 4, focusing on long highway trips and painful traffic jam situations, where the intervention of a human is never required.

This isn’t an easy task. The eventual answer may require infrastructure changesor remote human intervention to pull off properly, and hardcore autonomy/AI fetishists find those solutions unsexy. But who gives a shit what they think?

The solution to eliminating the need for immediate driver handoffs and being able to get a disabled or confused AV out of traffic and danger may also require robust car-to-car communication and cooperation between carmakers, which is also a huge challenge. But it needs to happen before any meaningful acceptance of AVs can happen.

Here’s the bottom line: if your AV only really works safely if there is someone in position to be potentially driving the whole time, it’s not solving the real problem.

Now, if you want to argue that Tesla and other L2 systems offer a safety advantage (I’m not convinced they necessarily do, but whatever) then I think there’s a way to leverage all of this impressive R&D and keep the safety benefits of these L2 systems. How? By doing it the opposite way we do it now.

What I mean is that there should be a role-reversal: if safety is the goal, then the human should be the one driving, with the AI watching, always alert, and ready to take over in an emergency.

In this inverse-L2 model, the car is still doing all the complex AI things it would be doing in a system like FSD, but it will only take over in situations where it sees that the human driver is not responding to a potential problem.

This guardian angel-type approach provides all of the safety advantages of what a good L2 system could provide, and, because it’s a computer, will always be attentive and ready to take over if needed.

Driver monitoring systems won’t be necessary, because the car won’t drive unless the human is actually driving. And, if they get distracted or don’t see a person or car, then the AI steps in to help.

All of this development can still be used! We just need to do it backwards, and treat the system as an advanced safety back-up driver system as opposed to a driver-doesn’t-have-to-pay-so-much-attention system.

Andrej Karpathy and Tesla’s AI team are incredibly smart and capable people. They’ve accomplished an incredible amount. Those powerful, pulsating, damp brains need to be directed to solving the problems that actually matter, not making the least-necessary type of automated driving better.

Once the handoff problem is solved, that will eliminate the need for flawed, trick-able driver monitoring systems, which will always be in an arms race with moron drivers who want to pretend they live in a different reality.

It’s time to stop polishing the turd that is Level 2 driver-assist systems and actually put real effort into developing systems that stop putting humans in the ridiculous, dangerous space of both driving and not driving.

Until we get this solved, just drive your damn car.


SOURCE: JALOPNIK

Well you see, that is where the robot comes in. Thanks to regulations, even when FSD is ready to not be hovering over like an idiot, it will still require fail safe. That’s where the robot will get in to hold a steering wheel, even if for no reason.

 

[fritter63]

Well you see, that is where the robot comes in. Thanks to regulations, even when FSD is ready to not be hovering over like an idiot, it will still require fail safe. That’s where the robot will get in to hold a steering wheel, even if for no reason.

Now it's REDUNDANT and HIGHLY AVAILABLE!

 

[Ehninger1212]

I LIKE READING JALOPNIK.. AS SATIRE LOL.

 

[Woo]

While I totally understand with and agree with the main point that eliminating the need for human attention is where the real value is, and I totally disagree with their click-baitey kinda vibe of "tesla has it wrong" through the whole thing, and it really seems clearly written just to stir up some sort of fanboy controversy, I have to admit, I love this paragraph:

The Tesla Dishwasher would stand over the sink, like a human, washing dishes with human-like hands, but for safety reasons you would have to stand behind it, your hands lightly holding the robot’s hands, like a pair of young lovers in their first apartment.

 

[uppadaandroid]

This author is the one that's useless!!! I quit reading right here.

"What’s being solved, here? The demonstration of FSD shown in the video is doing absolutely nothing the human driver couldn’t do, and doesn’t free the human to do anything else. Nothing’s being gained! "

Maybe the car was doing what that author is capable of doing himself, but really?
Basically, the car drove and never needed any human intervention through city streets with pedestrians and lots of action. How does this yahoo think cars are going to get to the point where they can drive without any human in the car? It's way past crawling, but you still gotta walk before you can run! And Tesla obviously is on that path. This author doesn't take into account that not all people have the ability to drive as well as he can, yet they still want to be able to go places. I have a 24 yr old special needs son who probably could pass a driver's test and get a license. But without a self-driving vehicle that could drive to where I could trust it, I'm not going to have him get a license and drive. How about elderly drivers or people with bad eyesight, someone who's highly capable but has seizures. There are so many people that need FSD, and we're not even talking about robotaxi's. Instead of driving rental cars when you fly to a strange city, Robotaxi's would be awesome.
What a waste of a read!

Agree with you @Sirfun, there are several people I know who drive and at some point had a stroke or seizure or heart attack and had to be hospitalized. Luckily, they weren't driving at that moment. Even if lets say, one is an amazing driver, can't trust the idiots out there who think while driving a 3000+ lbs vehicle, they could text while driving at 70 mph. I used to drive from Seattle to Portland on i5, there are so many people distracted and don't indicate or check while changing lanes. Especially around Tacoma area where there are tons of accidents daily plus all the construction. It's quite stressful sometimes and AP or FSD takes most of that stress away while you can pay better attention to your surroundings. I have seen arguments that AP or FSD will lead to more distractions of people will play with their phones etc. I have friends who are using AP and they are responsible and still have the same old good habits of not touching the phone while driving. I'm one of those people to be honest. I like my eyes on the road irrespective of what kind of driver assist I'm using. In short, distracted drivers have tough time changing habits and may be AP and FSD can save others from those kinda drivers.
I do Machine Learning and AI related programming and I don't think the author knows or has any clue of the extent of information that was covered. What Tesla was doing is absolutely mind blowing in the way they were creating their own simulations to create situations that their current data doesn't cover which is billions of miles more than any competition that's out there. In the Machine Learning space itself, they have done some much advancements that other big techs don't have. I'm more excited for their applications in healthcare.

 

[uppadaandroid]

I have not ordered FSD and don’t plan to unless circumstances change. I do find putting my hands on my lap or touching the wheel periodically and watching the road while the car is driving as ridiculous as he makes it sound like but saying the effort is a waste of time because it is too difficult or because this stage of the process is not the same as final stage is short sighted. I am sure the author is the beneficiary of thousands of automations without noticing it. Many of which I am sure were quite difficult while being developed and have failed many times. My understanding is Level 5 does not need a human in the car. That is just a matter of regulations. Sending your car to pick up grandma, or take you home when you are drunk have value. One thing he has failed to mention is that self driving is not just for Transporting people. A lot of drivers are on the road to transport goods and services. A car can deliver a Robot technician to a job site. The robot need similar image processing capability to walk to the washing machine and fix it. Even Bezos will pay Musk so his Rivian vans can drive themselves. Many people may choose not to own a car because FSD taxies are much cheaper to use. Same kinda tech would be essential if you are sending ton of Robots to a new planet were they have to move around in unknown environment with other robots. There will be countless applications we can not think of. Stopping progress to a place we know we will have to be because it is difficult is what I do but the reason I can afford to chicken out is that there are people out there like Musk that won’t. It would be idiotic for me to try to stop them.

Well said!!!

 

[jerhenderson]

Agree with you @Sirfun, there are several people I know who drive and at some point had a stroke or seizure or heart attack and had to be hospitalized. Luckily, they weren't driving at that moment. Even if lets say, one is an amazing driver, can't trust the idiots out there who think while driving a 3000+ lbs vehicle, they could text while driving at 70 mph. I used to drive from Seattle to Portland on i5, there are so many people distracted and don't indicate or check while changing lanes. Especially around Tacoma area where there are tons of accidents daily plus all the construction. It's quite stressful sometimes and AP or FSD takes most of that stress away while you can pay better attention to your surroundings. I have seen arguments that AP or FSD will lead to more distractions of people will play with their phones etc. I have friends who are using AP and they are responsible and still have the same old good habits of not touching the phone while driving. I'm one of those people to be honest. I like my eyes on the road irrespective of what kind of driver assist I'm using. In short, distracted drivers have tough time changing habits and may be AP and FSD can save others from those kinda drivers.
I do Machine Learning and AI related programming and I don't think the author knows or has any clue of the extent of information that was covered. What Tesla was doing is absolutely mind blowing in the way they were creating their own simulations to create situations that their current data doesn't cover which is billions of miles more than any competition that's out there. In the Machine Learning space itself, they have done some much advancements that other big techs don't have. I'm more excited for their applications in healthcare.

when does it become self-aware?

 

[Bill906]

when does it become self-aware?

The system originally went online on August 4, 1997. Human decisions were removed from strategic defense. The system then became self-aware at 2:14 am Eastern Time on August 29th, 1997.

 

[Cybertruck Hawaii]

I only have a GED and listen to a group of engineers talking over my head about AI to make people think that I have a college degree, noting that I will never get that hour of my life back.