Andrew Ng calls Tesla irresponsible for shipping an imperfect autopilot

There will be better autopilots, but never perfect ones. Aircraft have been using imperfect autopilots since their inception. Most planes have a prominent red button you can press to disable the autopilot whenever it misbehaves.<p>I&#x27;m not sure why this post routes through facebook, but here is a link to the article: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnet.com&#x2F;roadshow&#x2F;news&#x2F;model-s-on-autopilot-crashes-into-other-car-proving-yet-again-tesla-owners-arent-paying-close-enough&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnet.com&#x2F;roadshow&#x2F;news&#x2F;model-s-on-autopilot-crash...</a>

First, Andrew Ng is a co-founder of Coursera and helped teach a few Machine Learning classes just so we all know he has the chops to say something like this. That&#x27;s how I recognized his name a little more digging shows he really does have a good ML&#x2F;AI background.<p>Second, He isn&#x27;t saying an imperfect autopilot. He&#x27;s saying that 1000 to 1 is NOT acceptable error. So the title is misleading, unless he edited his post.<p>Third, he is correct. Lay people who see this will immediately think that Autopilot is WAY to hard and that software devs will never get it right. I&#x27;m not saying they are right, but I am saying it&#x27;s terrible PR for AI to release a system that is as buggy as this and assume zero responsibility.

Tesla is innovating rapidly in the Autonomous driving space AND releasing those inventions to the customer, which is great.<p>Typically these things used to take 5-7years to &quot;trickle down&quot; where a reasonably-priced car (not that $80k is reasonable) might have these available for end users.<p>However Tesla absolutely NEEDS to do more to prevent this technology push model that they have from tainting the whole Autonomous Driving trend. Expecting that a Driver will read the f&#x27;ing manual about<p>&quot;....Traffic-aware cruise control may not brake&#x2F;decelerate for stationary vehicles, especially in situations when you are driving over 50 mph (80 km&#x2F;h) ....Depending on TrafficAware Cruise Control to avoid a collision can result in serious injury or death.&quot;<p>is insane.<p>My suggestion: Enforce a must watch video tutorial with questions (such as is common for say a driving test) before enabling the Partial AutoDrive. It really is a matter of Life or Death - you have a very short time to react on the road. With their distribution model Tesla definately has the resources to pull this off, and might serve as a model for the rest of the industry.

I agree it is irresponsible. I think Google is correct in saying that self driving cars probably shouldn&#x27;t even have steering wheels...it is absolutely unrealistic to think that people will hang out for an hour while the car does things correctly, and then be alert when it happens to not do things correctly.<p>Humans don&#x27;t work like that.

From the Article<p>&quot; However, as YouTube commenter Shaimach points out, the Model S manual calls out this exact situation as something drivers need to be aware of:<p>Warning: Traffic-aware cruise control may not brake&#x2F;decelerate for stationary vehicles, especially in situations when you are driving over 50 mph (80 km&#x2F;h) and a vehicle you are following moves out of your driving path and a stationary vehicle or object is in front of you instead. Always pay attention to the road ahead and stay prepared to take immediate corrective action. Depending on TrafficAware Cruise Control to avoid a collision can result in serious injury or death.&quot;

i can&#x27;t get my head around a car and a human driver sharing the driving duties at the same time. if you can&#x27;t trust the car to do everything correctly, then what am i supposed to do as a driver?<p>sit there tensely with my right foot and hands hovering over the brake pedal and steering wheel?

This is just the cost of progress. If every imperfect piece of technology didn&#x27;t ship, we&#x27;d have no technology at all.

Well, seeing how Tesla just handed every auto insurance company in the world a free get-out-of-paying card for accidents dealing with that car, I&#x27;d say Tesla screwed up. Seeing as how Tesla has potentially exposed everyone involved in the supply chain to lawsuits, then yes, they screwed up.<p>If I were a well-backed lawyer, right about now, I&#x27;d be girding up to file requests for colonoscopies on the people who assembled the circuit boards in those cars.<p>Seriously, right about now, some lawyer is figuring out how to suck money out of Tesla until it&#x27;s a dry, twitching husk in the noonday say. Tesla handed that guy a gift.

Crash? That was an accident, and it was definitely the auto-pilot&#x27;s fault, but to me that looks like a fender-bender. Let&#x27;s resist the media&#x27;s attempt to use more extreme wording to sell stories.<p>Yes, I know the driver prevented it from being worse, but that&#x27;s one of the conditions Tesla&#x27;s auto-pilot is supposed to be working under, a driver paying attention. There are problems with this model, but that doesn&#x27;t mean we should ignore what actually happened in lieu of what <i>could</i> have happened when making a title.

Tesla should take a leaf out of Airbnb&#x27;s book and pay for all damages caused by a customer using Autopilot in the manner it was intended to be used.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;mashable.com&#x2F;2011&#x2F;08&#x2F;01&#x2F;airbnb-ransackgate&#x2F;#K9lVMU5w_iqF" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;mashable.com&#x2F;2011&#x2F;08&#x2F;01&#x2F;airbnb-ransackgate&#x2F;#K9lVMU5w_...</a>

The autopilot is still in beta and warns drivers to still pay attention to the road.<p>As long as drivers have control, they are responsible for the vehicle. Only after we remove steering wheels, the accelerator, and brakes; and have a fully autonomous system should the car manufacturers (or software manufacturers) be blamed.

This &#x27;imperfection&#x27; probably needs to be weighed against the fact that Tesla drivers apparently drive 2.5 million miles a DAY on autopilot. Cars have other imperfections that lead to accidents as well, like obstructed vision and blind spots for example. The real question is, is the autopilot, imperfections included, statistically a better driver than a human pilot also with imperfections. One or two fender benders does not make the case.

Because the regular pilots are so good at the job?

I dont understand, the ML systems he designs are not deterministic by design! He&#x27;s been letting that stuff fly (literally) for over a decade now[1]!<p>P.S: I realize a &quot;shipping&quot; scenario is different.<p>[1]<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=0JL04JJjocc" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=0JL04JJjocc</a>

I&#x27;m just wondering if Tesla has responded to this? Do we know it was the Autopilot? Do we have evidence? I know Tesla captures a great deal of information from the car.

Cruise control can also lull you into not paying attention. Autopilot is simply marketing term for &quot;advanced cruise control&quot; which is what this really is right now.

Tesla is NOT shipping an autopilot in the first place. They are selling LANE FOLLOWING driver assisted system and CALLING it autonomous AI &quot;Autopilot&quot;.<p>This is the main problem.

An imperfect autopilot, running on extra cpu cycles from the automatic door lock processor.

If an imperfect autopilot is better than a human pilot, we should use it!

The collision itself looks surprisingly minor.

he should try driving a model T...

Anyone have public link to video?

I guess from his experience their team rigging AI competitions at Baidu he might not be totally confident in <i>real</i> software :p