He strikes me more as a physicist arguing from first principles. Once you have drive-by-wire and a sensor array, self-driving is a pure software problem. You should be able to get 99% of the way there in simulation with a team of 4 really smart coders and an endless supply of Redbull and a year, tops. Also, the world's energy problems are trivial when you consider how cheap and efficient solar power is, and how little surface area is required. Clean water is just a matter of filtration at best or desalination at worst, which just devolves into an energy problem. And so on.
I do it myself sometimes, but at least I recognize how annoying and inaccurate it is. It is kind of nice to have someone arguing these positions and even better to act on them, and I for one wish that these analyses held (the world would be a better place if they did). But the real world just doesn't care about your first principles, and even simple ideas present obstacles you never imagined. Musk knows this, but willfully leaves it out during his pep talks, which is dishonest. But sometimes I get the uncomfortable feeling he's deceiving himself, which is quite chilling considering the amount of real power he's amassed (being able to launch large things into space is about as real as real power gets.)
> Once you have drive-by-wire and a sensor array, self-driving is a pure software problem.
This argument proves a little too much. Even if we assume that the sensors are equivalent to whatever input stream humans are working with, reduction of the problem to ”software eng” doesn’t mean it is tractable in our lifetime. Compare: ”Once you remove the requirement that employees work from the office, building a software engineer is a pure software problem.”
Once you have drive-by-wire and a sensor array, self-driving is a pure software problem.
This is correct, but only if you have the right drive-by-wire and sensor array tech. Essentially what you're saying is "Once you solve the hardware problem the rest is just software" which isn't particularly insightful.
What happens if Tesla can't solve the software problem because the sensors aren't providing the necessary data?
>what you're saying .. which isn't particularly insightful.
Which was my point. I'm intentionally making silly arguments that are valid from first principles, but clearly wrong in the real world. I'm sorry that wasn't obvious because I endeavored to make it so.
add more inaccurate sensors and do corrections in software? We have photos of black holes out of almost a pure noise, surely it is possible to build self driving car with current gen of hardware.
The point here is that Tesla have already sold the $10k FSD sensor pack to people and told them that one day in the future a software update will provide FSD, with no additional sensors necessary. Adding more sensors is not an option (well, maybe Tesla will do that for people who bought the upgrade, but it seems unlikely they'd do that for free.)
One part of the argument you are missing is that FSD requires real-time decision making as well, so when complexity goes up with a larger number of inaccurate sensors that can become an issue. No one cares if getting a picture of a black hole from noisy data takes one year to process, the same is not true for self driving.
To others commenting on the comment above: read the entire comment, the first paragraph is a satire on the trivialization Musk and others often do of complex subjects.
Thanks for saying that. But the lesson for me, or anyone making points like this, is that you can never be too explicit. Intricate constructions are dangerous on the internet. I like them but I have to admit they function something like a trap that readers can fall into. It's tempting to blame them for not understanding, but it's really on me. At the very least I should have put a warning label at the bottom.
> self-driving is a pure software problem. You should be able to get 99% of the way there in simulation with a team of 4 really smart coders and an endless supply of Redbull and a year, tops.
Hyperloop was a great example of a project that made no sence from first principles, yet he pushed it anyway. It makes no sence because it's capacity, passengers it can move per hour, is like 2% of a high-speed train line. Additionally he came up with some pure fantasy cost estimates where the whole things cost less to build than a cycle path would, budgeted $0 for land aquisition, compacting or earth-works.
Re software problem:
Human genome is now digital too now, so figuring out immortality is a pure software problem.
Making money on the stock market is a pure software problem.
Simulating a concious mind is a software problem.
> I get the uncomfortable feeling he's deceiving himself
Maybe tha's what happens when you fire agressively anyone who disagrees and end up surrounded by yes-men
> You should be able to get 99% of the way there in simulation with a team of 4 really smart coders and an endless supply of Redbull and a year, tops.
I can say this about a lot of things, but man, it scares me that there’s people in the world who are crazy enough to think that’s true. Even Elon Musk isn’t that delusional.
> But sometimes I get the uncomfortable feeling he's deceiving himself
That is one of the best ways to lie. If you stop caring whether things are true, it can be much easier to sound like you believe whatever thing is most useful in the moment. And think of all the brain cycles you can save by not checking in with thinks like external reality or consistency with one's past statements.
Software can no doubt be capable of being written to implement the alg... but no one has a good enough alg or even knows if one can exist or can exist with tesla's limited sensors.
I do it myself sometimes, but at least I recognize how annoying and inaccurate it is. It is kind of nice to have someone arguing these positions and even better to act on them, and I for one wish that these analyses held (the world would be a better place if they did). But the real world just doesn't care about your first principles, and even simple ideas present obstacles you never imagined. Musk knows this, but willfully leaves it out during his pep talks, which is dishonest. But sometimes I get the uncomfortable feeling he's deceiving himself, which is quite chilling considering the amount of real power he's amassed (being able to launch large things into space is about as real as real power gets.)