Business Insider says human beings are behind the scenes of Tesla's AI-driven cars:
The company relies on a small army of human "data annotators" who continuously improve how the cars drive by reviewing camera footage from thousands of Tesla drivers and teaching the vehicle how to behave like a human driver, like deciding when it's appropriate to use a blinker or identifying a construction cone.
This is nothing unusual. Annotators are key parts of every commercial AI model. But then there's this:
Business Insider has learned that those annotators focus their efforts on two high-profile categories of drivers: Tesla CEO Elon Musk and a select set of "VIP" drivers. BI spoke with over a dozen current and former Tesla employees, all but one who spoke on condition of anonymity, who said images and video clips from Musk's Teslas received meticulous scrutiny, while data from high-profile drivers like YouTubers received "VIP" treatment in identifying and addressing issues with the Full Self-Driving software.
This comes via Atrios, but unlike him I mostly find it kind of funny. Musk is a man so rich he can afford to have an army of annotators to make his drive more pleasant instead of just hiring a chauffeur.
It's all part of Musk's theory of life. He owns an auto company so that he, personally, can have a custom self-driving car. He owns Twitter so that he, personally, can have an extra special megaphone for his political opinions. He owns a rocket company so that he, personally, can someday be emperor of Mars.
I guess there are worse things to do with billions of dollars.
"He owns a rocket company so that he, personally, can someday be emperor of Mars."
When, Lord, when?
He's Bling the Boozyness.
"He owns an auto company so that he, personally, can have a custom self-driving car."
This is a silly analysis. Musk has made it clear from day one that his priority is getting people off Earth (essentially to, long term, protect humanity against having all its eggs in one basket).
The ULTIMATE goal of self-driving is to have self-driving robots on Mars to prepare the planet for humans. The intermediate goal of selling it as a product is simply to raise money. Same thinking goes into the Tesla autonomous robot, intended for Mars but will be sold on earth if a viable monetization strategy appears.
Look if you want to hate Musk's culture and politics do so. Whatever.
But when you hate someone while demonstrating you also know NOTHING about their life's work and entire motivation, the main message you are sending is "I am not worth listening to! I hate and mock people based on fashion, not actual knowledge." - and why do I need to hear the opinions of yet more people who are simply repeating the most idiotoc fashions of our time?
Getting people off the Earth seems increasingly less likely as every couple of months, it seems, there's a new article about how anything lower than Earth-normal gravity seriously damages human health in yet another way.
And then there's AI. If it does become sentient, isn't the final frontier a more likely environment for it than bothering with fighting with humanity over one dumb planet? It's just going to say, it's all yours, buddy, stay here and don't bother me.
Maybe that's the real aim, instead of a cool ride for his body, it's a cool ride for his cybernetic brain/mind...
He plans to conquer eternity with his beautiful mind!
I don't think it is going to be that important to use a blinker or identify a construction cone on Mars.
Well he's going about it backwards. He needs to be in the matter transformation game. Great computing and neat rocketry do not trump warmth, air, water, and food.
I agree the main message being sent by one of you, the other one being Kevin, is "I am not worth listening to! I hate and mock people based on fashion, not actual knowledge." I just happen to think the message is being sent by you.
Based solely on our description of Musk's goals, Elon is delusional, and he wouldn't be if he actually took anyone seriously other than himself. Delusional people exist within a bubble that extends to the end of their nose.
Well that's kinda the problem, isn't it?
Why would you base your thinking on "*our* description of Musk's goals" rather than what Musk himself, and his engineers, have to say?
That's pretty much the definition of what I was complaining about, that you'd rather attack some fantasy Musk than understand the reality of the situation.
As for delusional aspirations, well in the hands of some people, yes, maybe. But if someone has actually built the rockets required, and is making substantial progress on the off-planet robots required, I'd give them the benefit of the doubt...
Getting people to Mars is easy.
Getting water to Mars is hard. The only way to do that is to harvest the asteroid belt for ice. If there is any ice there.
I got some of Edgar Rice Borroughs' Mars books as a kid. Fun reading!!
Pellucidar for the win!
Do people who want to colonize Mars not understand how evolution works? We're not going to be able to exactly mimic the conditions of life on Earth, and we're going to have a much smaller pool of genetic diversity on Mars. It'll be like that island of the last inbred Mammoths, but with even stronger evolutionary pressures.
What does understanding how evolution works have to do with colonizing Mars? People colonized Antarctica. And, yeah, it has extremely low genetic diversity. So what?
There are long term habitats, no long term residents in Antarctica.
So your theory of Mars colonization is that we shouldn't do anything today because we can't predict how this might play out over 100 million years, especially if we freeze everything at 2024 levels of technology?
Well, it's an opinion, I guess.
Again, I am as much not a fan of Musk's shitposting personality as anyone, however this is a great example of a Tesla hit piece.
So, let me get this straight, a company has an industry leading product which uses vision acquisition converted to computer instructions to drive cars, its obviously working, its just as obviously needing more research to perfect, and so the in house development team is ..........
Drum roll please .......
Focusing on a select group of beta testers? What the F else is any company supposed to do?
Its just such disappointing click bait, we all know anything involving Musk is going to get clicks, and anything negative will get the max clicks, so why not take a swing at this.
This is a great example of the sort of brainless defense of Musk that is typical of a fanboi stockholder in the company.
Tesla, the company, does not trust robot. We know this because they say so, refuse to back it, and disclaim it whenever anything bad happens with it.
"That's just legal stuff", you say? I suspect you'd develop a keener interest in liability after some robot T-bones you at an intersection, but who can say.
And we follow up with the rich-guy perks being referred to as "beta testing", which is just chef's kiss. William Shatner was just beta-testing Bezos rockets, right?
You are lacking in reading comprehension skills. You should learn to just stfu.
It explains why Teslas suck so much.
They're designed for and cater to douchebags with no sense of taste and infinite money.
It may explain some of the issues with Tesla’s self driving software, the Al is learning how to drive from Elon. A brilliant (on occasion) guy not known for always making good choices when confronted with situations in real time.
Good grief! Elon doesn't even know whether Martians drive on the right or left side of the road!
As I've said before, I don't seem much evidence of AI being involved in "self-driving" cars. The cars collect data, apparently from selected drivers, and then human programmers change the algorithms to correct faults.
If AI were really being used on all cars and if it were as good as Kevin seems to think it is the rollout of true self-driving cars would have happened long ago.
There is exactly zero "AI" involved in Tesla's FSD software, and for those interested (I have found it extremely interesting since first getting the software in its 2019 iteration) I will explain why.
It turns out that for us humans, there is quite a bit of "I" in driving, specifically we use far more than our two eyes, we anticipate based on, for some of us, a lifetime of traffic patterns.
We do it so much that until you try a Tesla with FSD you might not realize how much you do it.
But Tesla FSD has exactly zero anticipation. It gets it done via attentiveness (eight cameras in 360 vs. two eyes which might, at any given time, be looking at ones phone or the kid in the back seat) and computer level reaction time.
Its my opinion, based on years of watching FSD develop, that superior attentiveness really covers driving, with only minor other rules (such as don't wait to merge into turning lane until half a mile before turn -- but its a stretch to call such a simply algorithm "AI"). That was the bet Tesla made, and its paid off. The last percentage of developments are smoothing out algorithms for given input data from the cameras.
How much credit Musk ought to get or not get is the exact same question of whethef "Citizen Kane" is great because of Gregg Toland or Orson Welles. The real answer is likely because Welles allowed Toland to experiment on all of the camera work, so I say Toland. But whatever.
That's why the versions of the software not released to the pubic, have bespoke software engineer input. Who those versions are tested by is irrelevant, although if I was CEO of Tesla I'd have it on my car, as its the type of product improvement you don't need any scientific training to evaluate.
Now back to slamming Musk, I mean, its not as if he doesn't deserve it personally.
> we anticipate based on, for some of us, a lifetime of traffic patterns
Yeah, that's *exactly* what AI does.
Self-Driving cars requires getting rid of all human driven cars. Easy for Felon. Just build the robot that will destroy all carbon based life forms.
> human programmers change the algorithms
That's not how it works. The AI is given additional training to adjust the weights in its neural network. Annotators are not Programmers.
"He owns an auto company so that he, personally, can have a custom self-driving car. "
Musk is terrible, I am not at all a supporter of what he's up to with Twitter, or his politics. We are definitely at odds with regard to how to behave as the father of a trans woman.
AND, this is revisionist. That isn't why he started Tesla. He started it to fight climate change.
The "going to Mars" is the BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) that drives SpaceX. SpaceX exists because he realized that it was possible to make rockets that can be operated much, much more cheaply than what we were doing, and that this would be good for humanity, and I agree with him.
Again, don't trash me as a Musk lover. I'm not.
I also am not a political apparatchik. I am much more interested in understanding the world than engaging in political manifestos. I have my moment for them, of course, but it doesn't come up here.
Musk did not "start Tesla" he took it over (hostily) from the two people who originally came up with the concept. I have not seen any evidence that he cares particularly much about climate change beyond it being useful as a promotional taking point for an electric car company. You?
"I guess there are worse things to do with billions of dollars."
You haven't given him enough time. Given enough time, he'll get there.
With so many people fellating him on here and elsewhere, it's amazing Musk has any focus at all for all his projects.
I’m not particularly fond of Elon Musk, but with regard to the white glove treatment of his Teslae, is that really going to end up training the cars differently? The goal of the as yet misnamed full self driving is to teach the cars how to drive correctly on public roads. Not simply to drive like Musk.
He's a bad person and I hope he has a drug overdose.
I don't understand this post.
You're going to take a data stream, annotate it, add it to the pile of annotated data streams, and train the AI on that pile of data streams. Then release the new AI to production to make decisions in all cars.
This isn't: "The whole company is fine-tuning just the AI that drives Musk around."
Who cares which car the data stream is taken from? Maybe Musk and you-tubers are particularly good at highlighting points in time where the AI made a bad decision, which makes it easier to focus annotations where the most improvement is needed.
Agreed. The only Musk-y inference you might take from this is that it exhibits his control-freak character. He wants to see/influence/highlight what he noticed himself in his own driving experiences.
The world is Musk's blog.
It isn't an auto company. It's a technology company.
The sooner he goes to Mars, the better. He deserves to spend the rest of his life in a hole in the ground.
BTW, this is a good example of how all the intelligence in AI is in the minds of the data annotators. The machines are just stochastic parrots.
He deserves to spend the rest of his life in a hole in the ground.
In an airless radiation drenched freezing desert.