I saw the Tesla Robotaxi:
- Drive into oncoming traffic, getting honked at in the process.
- Signal a turn and then go straight at a stop sign with turn signal on.
- Park in a fire lane to drop off the passenger.
And that was in a single 22 minute ride. Not great performance at all.
Remember guys, Tesla wants to have a living person sitting behind the wheel for “safety.” Don’t YOU want to get paid minimum wage to sit in a car all day, paying attention but doing nothing unless it’s about to crash, at which point you’ll be made the scapegoat for not preventing the crash?
Welcome to the future, you’re gonna hate it here.
I mean, compared to getting minimum wage flipping burgers in a hot kitchen, or picking vegetables in the sun, or working the register in a store in a bad neighborhood, or even restocking stuff at Walmart… yes, I would sit all day in an air conditioned car doing nothing but “paying attention”.
Maybe they’re just getting the wrong people to provide training data. The kind of people who drive Tesla’s do tend to drive like morons, so it would make sense.
What real world problem does this solve?
Stonks?
Task automation
Is it really task automation if it does it worse than a drunk human could have done it?
I didn’t claim Tesla has solved this automation problem.
Waymo is closer to human levels, but not yet considerably better.
The rent seeking is so hard with this automate-the-profits bullshit.
The moment we perfect auto-taxis the service should be a public benefit and run by a nonprofit.
NYC Mayoral candidate Mamdani is talking about making busses free, and that makes a radical shitload of sense.
Free autotaxis would be a boon for productivity and personal freedom, like AI promises to be but democratized for everybody rather than just the richest fraction of a percent.
People are going to take a shit in them. And ride them around for fun
I don’t see a problem with the second one. The bus is already doing the route, it costs basically nothing to have a few joy riders.
Thanks for pointing out how insane and disconnected the elon glazers are in believing their Teslas will drive off while they sleep to earn any kind of positive cash flow, then show up back home just in time to recharge for the commute to work, smelling fresh as a daisy.
Guess what? People already do that.
I am entirely opposed to driving algorithms. Autopilot on planes works very well because it is used in open sky and does not have to make major decisions about moving in close proximity to other planes and obstacles. Its almost entirely mathematical, and even then in specific circumstances it is designed to disengage and put control back in the hands of a human.
Cars do not have this luxury and operate entirely in close proximity to other vehicles and obstacles. Very little of the act of driving a car is math. It’s almost entirely decision making. It requires fast and instinctive response to subtle changes in environment, pattern recognition that human brains are better at than algorithms.
To me this technology perfectly encapsulates the difficulty in making algorithms that mimic human behavior. The last 10% of optimization to make par with humans requires an exponential amount more energy and research than the first 90% does. 90% of the performance of a human is entirely insufficient where life and death is concerned.
Investment costs should be going to public transport systems. They are more cost efficient, more accessible, more fuel/resource efficient, and far far far safer than cars could ever be even with all human drivers. This is a colossal waste of energy time and money for a product that will not be par with human performance for a long time. Those resources could be making our world more accessible for everyone, instead they’re making it more accessible for no one and making the roads significantly more dangerous. Capitalism will be the end of us all if we let them. Sorry that train and bus infrastructure isnt “flashy enough” for you. You clearly havent seen the public transport systems in Beijing. The technology we have here is decades behind and so underfunded its infuriating.
Public transport systems are just part of a mobility solution, but it isn’t viable to have that everywhere. Heck, even here in The Netherlands, a country the size of a post stamp, public transport doesn’t work outside of the major cities. So basically, outside of the cities, we are also relying on cars.
Therefore, I do believe there will be a place for autonomous driving in the future of mobility and that it has the potential to reduce number of accidents, traffic jams and parking problems while increasing the average speed we drive around with.
The only thing that has me a bit worried is Tesla’s approach to autonomous driving, fully relying on the camera system. Somehow, Musk believes a camera system is superior to human vision, while it’s not. I drive a Tesla (yeah, I know) and if the conditions aren’t perfect, the car disables "safety’ features, like lane assist. For instance when it’s raining heavily or when the sun is shining directly into the camera lenses. This must be a key reason in choosing Austin for the demo/rollout.
Meanwhile, we see what other manufacturers use and how they are progressing. For instance, BMW and Mercedes are doing well with their systems, which are a blend of cameras and sensors. To me, that does seem like the way to go to introduce autonomous driving safely.
There’s usually buses from villages into the major cities though, it live in one and there’s a bus every hour to go to a nearby city, from where I can then take a train. I wouldn’t say it’s that bad
This technology purely exists to make human drivers redundant and put the money in the hands of big tech and eventually the ruling class composed off of politicians risk averse capitalists and beurocracy. There is no other explanation for robo taxis to exist. There are better solution like trains and metros which can solve the movement of people from point A to point B easily. It does not come with a 3x-10x capital growth that making human drivers redundant will for the big tech companies.
This technology purely exists to make human drivers redundant and put the money in the hands of big tech and eventually the ruling class composed off of politicians risk averse capitalists and beurocracy. There is no other explanation for robo taxis to exist.
There is another reason, though, and it’s much simpler. Basic greed.
There are people who see the opportunity to make more money for themselves, so they’ll do it. When it comes to robo taxis, they’re not interested in class struggles, it’s not about politics, their interest in making human drivers redundant extends only so far as increasing their customer base. These aren’t Machiavellian schemers rubbing their hands together and cackling at their dark designs coming to fruition, it’s just assholes in suits who’s one and only concern is “number go up.”
Even when it comes to their politics and to the class dynamics, their end goal is always the same. Number go up. They don’t care about what harm it could do. They’re not intent on deliberately doing more harm, they give no thought to doing less harm, they do not care. All that drives them, ever, is Number Go Up.
The Tesla is is just following the regional driving style. Humans make the same mistakes at 15:06
/s
Fucking hell. We don’t let drunks drive taxis, and that goddamn thing drove like it was under the influence.
Does Tesla get sent tickets for traffic violations, or are we OK with this?
I’m sure they’re legal team is hard at work trying to find loopholes to circumvent any traffic infringements
Depending on how exactly the laws are worded, they might even get away without paying fines. Many traffic codes define that only the driver (not the owner of the car) can be fined, and these robo taxis don’t have drivers.
The system of corporate veiling of responsibility is going to kill us all. What should happen is every single person who signed off on, voted for, or materially contributed to the implementation of this dangerous hardware should be prosecuted for criminal negligence. Gut the C-suite and the board.
You aren’t wrong.
If we’re gonna let them on the road, I say that software should get points just like a driver, but when it gets suspended all the cars running that software get shut down.
How about we leave the driving to people, and not pre-alpha software?
There’s no accountability for this horribly dangerous driving, so they shouldn’t be on the road. Period.
You can tell it’s a Tesla because of the way it is.
At least it’s not driving straight into a tree, I call that an improvement.
this would get a normal person’s car impounded and drivers license revoked. why can a company get away with it?
Elon has enough fuck-you money to pay off anyone who would’ve complained.
He also paid his way into a government position to shut down the government offices that opposed him.
Systemic corruption.
Regulatory
capturedecapitationIt wouldn’t say corruption, I think it’s more that the law around the road was designed with a driver in mind, not with a company or even a robot. the consequences have been thought to hurt a person at fault because at the time only a person could drive
Its very convenient that corporations can both be people and not be people depending on whatever outcome is best for them.
They had so many cameras on this car, how many laws do you think each average driver breaks every 22 minutes?
It would be interesting if they could figure out why the car chose to do these specific things,
And this is why DOGE gutted the Office for Vehicle Automation Safety at the NHTSA.
I thought that was to economize for expenses?!
So naturally they started with 5 employees in the smallest office of one of the smallest divisions of the NHTSA. Nooooo ulterior motive, nosiree
Not great performance at all.
That’s better than I was expecting to be perfectly honest.
I’m pretty impressed with the technology, but clearly it’s not ready for field use.
Yeah, it’s a few years away from being ready. Plus the dumb shits need to backpedal on this “cameras for everything!” idiocy.
I’m surprised the taxis aren’t being driven remotely while Musk lies about their amazing AI or whatever.
It is probably being remotely driven from India and they just lost wifi for a minute.
AI=ALways indian.
To quote AVCH, “His controller disconnected.”
Hehe got it in one.
Some people will find him unbearable or a bit repetitive, but he really enjoys himself.
Favorite phrases of his seem to be Apocalyptic Dingleberry His name is John Sena Woa Woa Woa. Play stupid games win stupid prizes. NPC move. Need to know when to pull out. You’re not in the UK now.
Yea, I am not surprised given that the regular lane keep is still ghost braking when going under bridges.
Still, I am surprised how well they are doing, using only cameras.
Imagine if they used other sensors than just cameras like the competent companies!
No no no, you don’t get it! Humans only have eyes, so cars that only have eyes should perform just as good as humans! Disregard that humans don’t perform well in fog or rain or generally anything that isn’t good weather and also disregard that to match our eyes’ resolution you’d need extremely high resolution cameras that produce way too much data for current computers and also disregard that most of the stuff isn’t happening in our eyes but in our brains and also disregard that the point that is usually being made to advocate for self driving cars is that they should be better than humans!
Humans only have eyes, so cars that only have eyes should perform just as good as humans!
Everybody knows that a good driver uses his ass.
