Althouse: But that's not a child.

December 24, 2022

But that's not a child.

Dan is basically an unpaid intern on our QA team lol
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 23, 2022

61 comments:

Heartless Aztec said...: Well...that's an improvement over the driving here in Florida - the deadliest state to be a pedestrian in. So, given my druthers, I'll take TSD over 96 year old Beatrice in a Crown Vic on I95 blasting along at 45mph in the fast lane.; 12/24/22, 6:28 AM
Wilbur said...: "Dan is basically an unpaid intern on our QA team"

Shouldn't that be in the past tense?; 12/24/22, 6:40 AM
Howard said...: The stock plunge has More to do with the Musk Twitter side track, the political, technological and demographic collapse in China, the coming raw material embargo in Russia and the energy chokehold in Germany.

No one cares aboot self driving cars or how many kindergarteners that will need to die in the process.; 12/24/22, 6:47 AM
Mary Beth said...: Self-driving needs to be treated like an enhanced cruise control. Just because it is doing a lot more for you doesn't mean you shouldn't be aware of what's happening and ready to take over driving at any moment.; 12/24/22, 7:11 AM
Temujin said...: Further proof that Elon Musk is evil. In the minds of the left.; 12/24/22, 7:32 AM
Nobody said...: Nice feature! NM is #1 nationally for pedestrian deaths this year. #2 in people living in poverty, esp children. So people here are poor and suck at crossing streets. Beware the Tesla!; 12/24/22, 7:42 AM
Rocketeer said...: The stock plunge has more to do with the entirely avoidable recession, and tracks with other auto manufacturers, period.; 12/24/22, 7:43 AM
Lucien said...: People will over-react when self-driving vehicles are in fatal accidents; just as they do when cops shoot unarmed people, or kids are kidnapped by strangers (both rare events). Fatalities per million miles driven by FSD vehicles will probably have to be less than 10% of fatalities per million miles driven by humans before there is acceptance.; 12/24/22, 7:46 AM
Ann Althouse said...: "Self-driving needs to be treated like an enhanced cruise control."

No, it must go all the way. Once it gets as far as it already has, you've got drivers who will fall asleep — predictably and inevitably. They've got to close the circle. You can't expect people with almost nothing to do to maintain vigilance.; 12/24/22, 7:47 AM
Ann Althouse said...: Even in cars with no self-driving capacity at all, people fall asleep. It's a miracle we're not all dead by now, because this is going on all the time.; 12/24/22, 7:48 AM
Amadeus 48 said...: I am not going to join the self-driving caravan. As a friend of mine says, getting to 95% is hard. Getting to 100% is impossible. Self-driving needs 100%.; 12/24/22, 7:56 AM
Eric the Fruit Bat said...: There's something deeply wrong with a world where it's a number-one priority to perfect the self-driving car and yet there's absolutely no such thing as one that'll suck your dick.; 12/24/22, 7:58 AM
Narayanan said...: when flying cars become routine how many angels and demons will be killed in collisions/; 12/24/22, 8:01 AM
Achilles said...: Amadeus 48 said...
I am not going to join the self-driving caravan. As a friend of mine says, getting to 95% is hard. Getting to 100% is impossible. Self-driving needs 100%.

No.

Self driving needs to be better than human driving.

Safety is just one of the several positive benefits of self driving.; 12/24/22, 8:03 AM
Maynard said...: A few years ago, Scottie Kilmer made the point that self-driving cars will only work on an enclosed system in which all the cars are self driving.

People are too unpredictable in their driving for even the most advanced computers to predict.; 12/24/22, 8:26 AM
NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...: If it targeted and ran down people wearing MAGA hats the left would be giddy.; 12/24/22, 8:31 AM
Curious George said...: "Ann Althouse said...
Even in cars with no self-driving capacity at all, people fall asleep. It's a miracle we're not all dead by now, because this is going on all the time."

What a ridiculous statement.; 12/24/22, 8:31 AM
Bob Boyd said...: Eric the Fruit Bat's well-paid chauffer is not worried about losing his job to automation.; 12/24/22, 8:32 AM
Lem the artificially intelligent said...: In order for “self driving” to work, to be safe all the time, all the cars on the roads need to be self driving. As long as humans are behind the wheel, there’s going to be problems. See Althouse comment for confirmation.

Blogger Ann Althouse said...
“No, it must go all the way. Once it gets as far as it already has, you've got drivers who will fall asleep — predictably and inevitably. They've got to close the circle. You can't expect people with almost nothing to do to maintain vigilance.”

“Even in cars with no self-driving capacity at all, people fall asleep. It's a miracle we're not all dead by now, because this is going on all the time.”

As long as there’s an unpredictable actor behind the wheel, the loop will be impossible to close.

Eventually I predict there’s going to be a government program called cash for cuckoo cars.; 12/24/22, 8:33 AM
Steven Wilson said...: Getting from 95% to 100% is a lot like the frog that jumps half the length of a board… when will it jump off the end?; 12/24/22, 8:36 AM
iowan2 said...: No one cares aboot self driving cars or how many kindergarteners that will need to die in the process.

It's the CHILDREN!!!!! (the ones that survive their abortion phase of development).

Leftists gona leftist, its is all they got.; 12/24/22, 8:39 AM
Wince said...: The problem seems to be with the sensor not detecting the mannequin.; 12/24/22, 8:41 AM
JAORE said...: "Self driving needs to be better than human driving. Safety is just one of the several positive benefits of self driving."

True... statistically.

Butthat ignores the deeppockets of Tesla and other companies.

Grieving Mom sits in a courtroom. Tyke run down. There is a HUGE difference in jury awards between:
- Sam worked a double shift, voluntarily, fell asleep and ran down the kid.
= The autopilot feature of the Tesla, that multi-BILION dollar company, callously ran over my child.; 12/24/22, 8:47 AM
Original Mike said...: Agree with Althouse. "Enhanced cruise control" is worse than worthless. It's impossible to remain fully alert if you're not actually driving yourself.; 12/24/22, 8:49 AM
Yancey Ward said...: It doesn't matter whether it is a real child or not- it is still an obstacle the vlogger claims wasn't identified and accounted for by the self-driving system. Now, I wouldn't trust this demonstration without verification (there are plenty of motives to lie here), but it is a data point to consider.; 12/24/22, 8:52 AM
iowan2 said...: Several have gotten to the core of it.

Will traffic deaths go up or down? Yes seAlf driving cars will kill people. People kill people all the time in cars. Why do Self driving cars have to be perfect?

To me is seems interstate highway driving is the first phase. Cars are only programed to operate on limited access highways.
There is enough data and mapping technology to automatically disable self driving in areas where risks cannot be managed. School zones would be such an area. Even school zones.e

Agriculture is getting lots of realtime hours with self driving equipment. Our fields are quickly becoming GPS mapped down to ?8 cm. Combines geo reference their field postion, as they map yields. The catch cart, then can use the harvest map to know where the crop has been harvested, allowing the self driving catch cart to drive to the combine when the combines grain tank is approaching full. All the communication is without human prompts. The grain cart has scales, the combine maping tells the combine acres covered and measures yield internally, but the scales on the catch cart communicates with the combine and constantly calibrated the combines yield measuring equipment.

The lengthy explanation is just a single example showing that the wheel does not have to be reinvented, lots of parallel work is taking place in other applications.; 12/24/22, 9:01 AM
Lem the artificially intelligent said...: Make that ‘cash for cuckoo clunkers’; 12/24/22, 9:01 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: “The stock plunge has More to do with the Musk Twitter side track, the political, technological and demographic collapse in China, the coming raw material embargo in Russia and the energy chokehold in Germany.”

We are in a recession. The only real question is how deep and how long. Congress, knowing that the Dems weren’t going to completely control the budget in a couple weeks, took their last huge swallow at shoveling as much money to as many cronies and constituents, skimmed their take off the top, one last time. It was massive, and that means that the recession is going to be both long and deep, accompanied by significant inflation. New cars don’t sell in recessions. Moreover, with Dems’ rush to insanity, by doubling down on EVs just when much of the 1st World is facing brownouts, and requests not to charge EVs, puts the entire nonsense in question. We have several double Tesla families around here, including the couple living next door to the east. This is looking more idiotic by the week. My point here is that it isn’t about self driving cars, but rather about the future of EVs themselves. Tesla, being the biggest and best manufacturer of EVs, is probably going to suffer the most from this downturn in EV sales.; 12/24/22, 9:08 AM
tim maguire said...: You can’t ask for perfection, but you can ask for improvement. What percentage of fully responsible drivers would have hit that “child”?
I don’t think I’ve ever faced that situation in my life, but I try to be ready for it at all times. Am I actually ready at all times? Of course not.
It’s not a child, but do we have reason to think the car would behave differently if it were?
We worry about a car choosing to plow into a tree to avoid hitting a bag of leaves. Is this child-mannequin different in any identifiable way from a similar-sized bag of leaves?; 12/24/22, 9:09 AM
Tom T. said...: "Eric the Fruit Bat is basically an unpaid intern on our product development team LOL"

:-); 12/24/22, 9:11 AM
MadTownGuy said...: Heartless Aztec said...

"Well...that's an improvement over the driving here in Florida - the deadliest state to be a pedestrian in. So, given my druthers, I'll take TSD over 96 year old Beatrice in a Crown Vic on I95 blasting along at 45mph in the fast lane>"

We visited Florida for the first time ever this year, twice. Once, to drive to Key West, and the second time to celebrate Thanksgiving with relatives. I grew up in Southern California so I know how traffic should work, but the chaos we saw on I-95 all the way down to Key Largo and all the way back was beyond anything I was familiar with. Between the Mustangs, Camaros and Challengers going supersonic as they weave from one lane to the next, and the crotch rockets approaching light speed along the lane dividers, it was too much adventure. Next time, we'll ride in the Senior Fun Bus, thank you.; 12/24/22, 9:11 AM
Mark said...: Typical Musk. Attacks the bearer of bad news with insults instead of addressing the problem.

I am sure this is a great advertisement for the Twitter CEO position ... this could be you in Elon's crosshairs!; 12/24/22, 9:12 AM
PJ said...: Achilles is right: FSD doesn’t have to get to the impossible 100% safe in order to be a net saver of lives.

Ann is right: The video shows us that the dummy child didn’t register, but it tells us nothing about whether a real walking child would have.

Still, it’s a bad look that Elon doesn’t have anything responsive to say and just attacks the messenger. I want my FSD to detect stuff like my neighbor’s Pekingese and the rare turtle up ahead on the marsh road. Get back to me then, Elon.; 12/24/22, 9:13 AM
William said...: Highway driving can probably be made safer with auto driving cars. Maybe have sensors that only can only be activated on certain roads. Children are small and hard to hit. If you wish to run them over, manual driving is the way to go....I wish Musk good luck in all of his endeavors, but I bet he wishes he never bought Twitter. Not only did he overpay for it, but now he's got all of the propagandizing classes out for his scalp. Some of the tech people might be on his side, but the unpaid interns are gunning for him. And the unpaid interns are the future of Tesla and humanity.; 12/24/22, 9:18 AM
William said...: Highway driving can probably be made safer with auto driving cars. Maybe have sensors that only can only be activated on certain roads. Children are small and hard to hit. If you wish to run them over, manual driving is the way to go....I wish Musk good luck in all of his endeavors, but I bet he wishes he never bought Twitter. Not only did he overpay for it, but now he's got all of the propagandizing classes out for his scalp. Some of the tech people might be on his side, but the unpaid interns are gunning for him. And the unpaid interns are the future of Tesla and humanity.; 12/24/22, 9:19 AM
Rusty said...: I wanna be on Erics build team.; 12/24/22, 9:54 AM
iowan2 said...: stuff like my neighbor’s Pekingese and the rare turtle up ahead on the marsh road. Get back to me then, Elon.

Humans these things now. As we have already noted, there is more than enough data to allow self driving in specific areas only. We can expand those areas as understanding expands.

I had to drill into my kids all them times cruise control is wrong. Available technology should not always be utilized.; 12/24/22, 9:58 AM
Spiros said...: Maybe crosswalks should have devices that sense when a pedestrian is waiting at a crosswalk or when a pedestrian is walking on the crosswalk and automatically send that signal to cars on the road?; 12/24/22, 9:59 AM
Original Mike said...: At this point, what difference does it make? Ownership of cars is going to be outlawed anyways.; 12/24/22, 10:17 AM
Rusty said...: Mark said...
"Typical Musk. Attacks the bearer of bad news with insults instead of addressing the problem."
The irony is lost on you.; 12/24/22, 10:19 AM
rcocean said...: Full self-driving means you're putting YOUR life in the hands of the computer. Its not just about OTHER people's safety. In any case, what good is "Full Selfdrive" if you can't lay down and take a nap, or read a book or whatever? You might as well do it yourself.

Its not like regular driving is some incredible drain of energy. You can drive and talk, listen to music, or just think. You maintain a certain alertness and move your foot and steering wheel.; 12/24/22, 10:27 AM
Original Mike said...: "What percentage of fully responsible drivers would have hit that “child”? "

Virtually zero, IMO. The child was freaking obvious through the car windshield. I believe that self-driving advocates have seriously underestimated the difficulty of the task, but I'm still shocked at the car's performance in this case.; 12/24/22, 10:31 AM
n.n said...: "Self-driving needs to be treated like an enhanced cruise control."

Yes, autopilot... or a third-party.; 12/24/22, 11:01 AM
Achilles said...: JAORE said...
"Self driving needs to be better than human driving. Safety is just one of the several positive benefits of self driving."

True... statistically.

But that ignores the deeppockets of Tesla and other companies.

Grieving Mom sits in a courtroom. Tyke run down. There is a HUGE difference in jury awards between:
- Sam worked a double shift, voluntarily, fell asleep and ran down the kid.
= The autopilot feature of the Tesla, that multi-BILION dollar company, callously ran over my child.

The problem you describe is not with the new technology that will eventually save lives and improve our standard of living.

The problem you are describing is greed and too many lawyers.

We should ship those people that would sue a playground owner because their kid hurt themselves on the playground provided to the community for free and the lawyer that filed the suit to the bottom of the mariana trench.; 12/24/22, 11:51 AM
boatbuilder said...: I have been a passenger in my buddy's Tesla while he operated it on autopilot (not "full" I guess because the car requires him to touch the wheel every few seconds). I was impressed and we didn't run over any children. I question what this is about. Obviously Musk/Tesla aren't going to put out an automatic self-driving car that doesn't stop for signs or people. WTF?; 12/24/22, 12:01 PM
rehajm said...: PJ said...
Achilles is right: FSD doesn’t have to get to the impossible 100% safe in order to be a net saver of lives

The ‘net saver’ is the fatal flaw for level 4+ FSD. You’re trading lives saved from drunk driving and texting while driving for a few random mass killings of everyone in the car or a sidewalk of pedestrians when the car encounters a situation not encountered by the software engineers…or worse, encountered by the software engineers and they decided to wipe out these people instead of those people because fatalities were unavoidable. I don’t think that will sit well with people once they figure out what’s happening…

I’m on an advisory board for Land Rover and they titled a feedback discussion about FSD as ‘your future of driving’. They have no idea what’s coming…; 12/24/22, 12:18 PM
Mark said...: Rusty is unaware of the difference between my position as blog commenter and Elon's as CEO of the involved company, able to definitively address the point made in the tweet.

No wonder why he struggles so.; 12/24/22, 12:39 PM
Lem the artificially intelligent said...: On his Twitter bio Dan says he’s out to stop Tesla auto drive technology.; 12/24/22, 12:45 PM
Walter S. said...: First, I don't care whether the Tesla would have spotted a real child. A good self-driver should not run down small moving mystery objects in crosswalks, either.

Second, I also don't care if the self-driver causes horrible accidents now and again. The worst examples of human-caused accidents are pretty horrible, too. I want to see honest comparisons between self-drivers and humans as to the frequency and severity of accidents.; 12/24/22, 1:23 PM
Original Mike said...: "Ann is right: The video shows us that the dummy child didn’t register, but it tells us nothing about whether a real walking child would have."

I don't understand this (and I don't know that Althouse is making this argument). Is the claim that it was something about the object's gait that caused the car to decide 'it's not a child, therefore I can just plow over it"? Highly doubtful. I can't imagine that the software isn't supposed to stop for any object of that size in its path, if for no other reason than an abundance of caution and in recognition of the potential consequences. I can see no other reasonable conclusion than that car didn't see it.; 12/24/22, 1:25 PM
Iman said...: At the age of 70, I still enjoy driving too much to either want or need “TSD”. The secret is to buy cars that put a smile on your face when you drive it. If you think of/treat a car as an appliance, YMMV.; 12/24/22, 1:27 PM
Big Mike said...: The engineer can retire, but the engineer cannot stop being attracted to interesting problems. Dan O’Dowd notes that the “child” does not show up on the Tesla’s display. Why not?

Perhaps the mannikin does not trigger the sensor suite. Why not? Is it something to do with the plastic that would not be true if it had been a real child? Are the sensors not aimed properly to detect a small object emerging from low and right? Were the sensors deliberately disabled?

If the sensors did detect the small object, did the AI choose to ignore the event? This was the problem when an Uber autonomous vehicle that was being tested hit and killed a jaywalking woman pushing her bicycle across the road. If so, why.

Back in the day I would have set up a brainstorming team to identify as many ways as we could think of to generate plausible (and even some implausible) ways things might have gone wrong. Then set up tiger teams to check them all out. Probably more than one thing went wrong.; 12/24/22, 1:42 PM
Drago said...: Dumb Lefty Mark: "Typical Musk. Attacks the bearer of bad news with insults instead of addressing the problem."

Typical Dumb Lefty Mark comment. Attacks perhaps THE corporate leader in problem solving in the nation to try and score moronic "Teh Interwebs" points.

Why dont you just go back to screeching The End Is Nigh!!! for Twitter?

And how is Twitter even still up and running? Dumb Lefty Mark assured us almost daily that Twitter was going to collapse at any moment.; 12/24/22, 2:06 PM
madAsHell said...: took their last huge swallow at shoveling as much money to as many cronies and constituents, skimmed their take off the top, one last time.

I think that also explains the $45 billion going to the Ukraine kick-back machine as well.; 12/24/22, 2:09 PM
Lem the artificially intelligent said...: When you are driving you are either fully engaged or you are not. A few years back the first auto pilot taxis in California were approved on the condition a driver had to be behind the wheel at all times. One night, in a 'driver' distracted moment, a homeless person walked across the street and got run over by the auto pilot volvo.

There is no half-assing it.; 12/24/22, 2:29 PM
Yancey Ward said...: I suspect, given his animosity towards Musk these days, Lefty Mark owns a Tesla.; 12/24/22, 3:25 PM
Mark said...: Drago, I claimed it would have issues by the Super Bowl arrived. Has it?

Full Self Driving was always a long way off, not by next year as Musk has insisted for almost a decade now.

Keep drinking the Kool aid, buddy; 12/24/22, 5:30 PM
MikeR said...: Heh. The "context added" on that tweet is hilarious. Basically, "btw this is false"; 12/24/22, 5:50 PM
Josephbleau said...: We have been instructed to hate Elon Musk. Therefore we, as the good, will hate Musk.; 12/24/22, 6:56 PM
Drago said...: Dumb Lefty Mark: "Drago, I claimed it would have issues by the Super Bowl arrived. Has it?"

Compared to pre-Musk? No. Now, to a censorious fascist, perhaps you think its a "yes"...but you'd be wrong.

Dumb Lefty Mark: "Full Self Driving was always a long way off, not by next year as Musk has insisted for almost a decade now.

Keep drinking the Kool aid, buddy"

LOL

Not yet perfected = Failure in Dumb Lefty Mark World.

Keep carping from the cheap seats little laddie. Its where you belong.; 12/24/22, 8:46 PM
Rusty said...: Mark
You obviously don't understand irony.
You also, obviously, don't think much of Musk. How would you have managed Twitter?; 12/25/22, 4:01 PM