[PaperBagger'14]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Waymo is largely regarded as the leader here, but Chinese companies are making more progress lately. Tesla's main fault is that they've decided to rely on one type of sensor that is cheap. Their logic is that humans have eyes, and drive with eyes only, so a computer should be able to as well. I find this premise entirely flawed, least of which is that humans have brains. So we have eyes and brains. A Tesla has fixed position cameras and a computer. That computer is trained on human drivers who are imperfect. This computer has no knowledge of how a child holding a ball will behave, or a dog, or a cyclist, or any other obstacle on the road. It can only infer actions from it's training set, which will always be incomplete, since every drive you are encountering something novel. Tesla thinks more miles and training can overcome this fundamental problem that can't be solved without AGI.


The other issue with just cameras is we don't just drive with our eyes. We drive with our ears, the feeling of the road, the experience and memory of situations. We also drive on inference when we can't see things, like when a truck passes you in a snow storm. Why wouldn't you want extra sensors for situations like that? They got rid of ultrasonic parking sensors years ago, and the vision only replacement is largely regarded as garbage.



You can peruse the Tesla forums and see just how far they have to go as people describe the vehicle crossing yellow lines, not stopping for red lights, stopping for green lights, phantom breaking, inability to read road signs, and on and on. They have a long way to go, but I fundamentally feel they can't get their with the tech they have. And they've proved that every year since 2016 when Musk has said it's coming by the end of the year. I'm not sure what more evidence is needed that they are nowhere close than what is already out there.


The most accurate description is that it works incredibly well 95% of the time, other than the 5% it's trying to kill you.

Yeah I think that’s a false statement given the drivers on the road. I’m convinced most have one or the other, but not both.