Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

[Intl Professor]

This assumes that computing power cannot reach the levels of processing of the human brain.

According to this estimate that's not the case:

Neuron firing rates in humans​

The firing rate in the neocortex (which hosts 80% of the brain's neurons) is between 0.3 and 1.8 per second. With 80 billion neurons in the neocortex that's a firing rate of about 24-144 billion per second.

The average number of synapses per neuron is 10,000 - while the average information content of a synapse is 0.1 bits, or ~100 bits per neuron.

So the NN processing speed of the entire human neocortex is ~2,400-14,000 billion bits per second. Now the operations it performs per firing is addition and multiplication and capping - which we can recognize with a ~10x complexity factor, so the net speed is about 24,000-140,000 billion bits of simple arithmetic operations per second. (This is probably generous to the brain.)

The Tesla AI chip computes ~144,000 billion mini-floats per second (144 TOPS), where a mini-float is 8 bits. So the total processing power is ~1,152,000 billion bits of simple arithmetic operations per second.

So if we believe these estimates then the Tesla chip is already comfortably beyond the NN processing power of the human brain, by a factor of ~8x.

Put differently, every Tesla camera has as much NN computing power allocated as a single dedicated human brain watching that camera 24/7 ...

What the human brain arguably does much better is information storage: 1,000,000 billion synapses can store about 1,250 TB of data, which is a lot more than what Tesla can store in their NNs.

But if we accept that "legally safe driving" requires only a very small subset of the vast amount of data a human brain stores, then the Tesla AI chip can already do an order of magnitude better job, with vastly superior control latencies.

That is going to save lives, and this will be apparent from the accident statistics.

There's an article by Jerison, if I remember correctly, which argues the eye and immediate neural apparatus integrates the image into a two dimensional framework before the signal is sent to the brain. Does this alter in any way your calculations?

 

[Causalien]

Ark bought some more Tesla View attachment 399899 today

People like you are the scums of society. Charge your phone.

 

[Fact Checking]

That said, while I don’t remember the specifics, I believe the cones/rods don’t work in such a straightforward way that those would equate directly to pixels.

They certainly don't, which is why I cited the optic nerve bandwidth.

There's a fair amount of photoreceptor grouping to increase detection sensitivity, but IIRC there's also some surprising edge detection pre-processing features in the human retina, but I'm not 100% sure about that.

It's certainly not 100 million RGB pixel equivalent input - not even close, but probably more than the 1.2 MP of Tesla's cameras.

 

[humbaba]

MarketWatch - this afternoon: CNBC’s Jim Cramer has a new nickname for Tesla’s ‘annoying’ Elon Musk

And this year’s “Pot Calling the Kettle Black” award goes to:

what, is he still upset that Tesla didn't die after the IPO. Cry baby.

 

[PhaseWhite]

This is incorrect. Again I'm only pointing out things that are clearly incorrect. I need every Tesla fan who have the absolute truth to their disposal. Nvidia performance at batch size of 1 has exponentially increased compared to Drive Px 2. Again Tesla is comparing a 3 year old, 3 gen old chip to a chip from 2019 rather than comparing a chip from 2019 to a chip from 2019. They also compared their chip to the TPU1 when talking about "batch size of 1". But notice that its TPU1 which came out 4-5 years ago.

Again you have to look at every Tesla comparison in close context. The devil is in the detail.

Honest question: Where can I find the benchmarks that show this?

Also what’s the unit cost of a Pegasus system?

 

[bhzmark]

Would love to know what the amount of shares short are heading into Q1 earnings.....gotta be near an all-time high.

Interesting that the high was exactly a year ago with 7 days to cover. Might be about same by now.

 

[M3Rider]

You didn't read my statement. My statement was correct.

There are areas where computers are helpful in medicine (I'm not sure "AI" is a meaningful word), and that's one of them. A much bigger one which should be implemented immediately is to devise a database where doctors can punch in all known symptoms and have all known diagnoses spit out from the database. Leave it to the doctor to filter through the possible diagnoses; but a computer is much better at coming up with all possibilities. (A computer might even be better at ranking them by likelihood based on what it knows... but then when an actual doctor looks at it and talks to the patient, they may go "Yeah, we know the #1 likelihood one is wrong because of this information which the computer didn't have", and move on to #2.)

AIs aren't going to REPLACE DOCTORS, which is what the other person to whom I was responding was claiming. We flat out don't know enough about the human body yet. You can't train a neural net or an expert system when you don't really know what you're doing either; "computerized exploratory science" is in its infancy. Might replace specialists in some fairly cut-and-dried areas.

I am not going to go into the medical stuff I've dealt with in my life. None of it could have been handled by computers at this point. Much of it doesn't even have proper diagnostic names.

The cited "AI" example is specifically in one of those areas where the doctors have trouble coming up with a list of possible diagnoses, because recalling a long list is something humans are extra bad at. A competent combination of computer and doctor would do even better.

From the article:
"AI can reduce workloads for doctors and help them keep improving their skills. It would function like a GPS, while human physicians remain behind the wheels."

Yes, this is the way forward. Computer-*assisted* doctors.

There will be more than just likelihood of diagnoses. All these likelihoods will be tied to a bunch of other "big data" parameters, like your blood type, hereditary factors, the zip code you live in(with poisoning plants nearby), the illnesses you had in the past, etc, etc.
There will be so many factors, that human brain cannot comprehend them all and make the right conclusions (at the higher probability than AI). AI will need the input from a doctor, like your blood test results, X-ray results, etc. and from there AI should be able to give you top 10 (or top 100) leads to follow up on(the doctor is an accessory at this point, not somebody you can rely on). I am just speculating, because I have no knowledge in the field, but it is obvious to me that having access to a large amount of data and knowing how to process/draw conclusions from it is a lot more valuable than any single doctor.

Seeing how it takes years to some people to figure out what's going on with them, like CO poisoning in Ford Explorers, some parasites brought from tropical countries, etc. etc. Doctors just don't know what to look for and are poking around in the dark.
Imagine that the car you drive is on your file and AI can instantly connect headaches with your car having issues...

The more (seemingly unrelated) information it has and if that information is centralized and is being accumulated as time goes by, the more valuable this becomes compared to a doctor.

I have a feeling that Elon/Andrej have a very good idea that the problem is not solved when you have 99% and they have a good idea of what it will take to get the last 1%. While they may miss their estimate by some time, I think that dismissing it completely as if they don't know what they are doing is not fair.

You want to be a cautious investor that only counts on what's in hand. Elon obviously has bigger goals that matter to him and provides us a visibility into them. Would as many people invest in TSLA if he never talked about TN, autonomy and how they plan to reach these goals?

 

[brantse]

I can't keep up with this thread anymore, so I apologize if this was already mentioned. What if in addition to S/3/X cars, they eventually add Semi's as well to the TN? Think about how that could possibly disrupt the trucking industry. It may take a long time until it impacted interstate and intermodal transport, but it would be very interesting for local trucking.

 

[The Blue Owl]

They said that they were two years away in 2015 or 2016. I said they were wrong. I was right. Game, set, match.


Yeah, that's called "being an idiot" on your part. They are deluded, and so are you.

I have an awful lot of background knowledge here. I was not impressed by the technical detail of the presentation, and I did follow all of it. The Tesla guys are very smart, but they are too close to their work and are not seeing the next wave of problems they're going to hit -- and Musk is an incurable extreme optimist. I already know what they're going to hit. I'm waiting for them to notice it.

Once they notice that set of problems, it will take at least two years for them to resolve it (and that's optimistic). They haven't noticed it yet, therefore it will take more than two years.

For the longest time, I fully agreed with this view.

But now that I've finished watching the full presentation, beginning to end, my conclusion is this: I am certain every word that was spoken on that stage will prove to have been the literal truth. This was no technical presentation; it was a prophecy. I am now of the opinion that Tesla actually implemented, by hand, the first superhuman AI instance able to operate on the physical world at global scale, all at the turn of a switch. Right now. The dawn of MAGI (Manual Artificial General Intelligence), so to speak.

One has to be high to believe this, so I believe it.

 

[humbaba]

I can't keep up with this thread anymore, so I apologize if this was already mentioned. What if in addition to S/3/X cars, they eventually add Semi's as well to the TN? Think about how that could possibly disrupt the trucking industry. It may take a long time until it impacted interstate and intermodal transport, but it would be very interesting for local trucking.

I've been assuming that semi's will be using autonomy. In fact, I believe that has been part of Tesla's pitch.

 

[Causalien]

About that... where does the FCA money go? Both quarters? Is it quarterly income?

Nobody knows. Hope one of the analyst will ask on ER. Assuming the worst FCA want to cause the max damage. They wait till end of the year, or end of 2020.

 

[MarcusMaximus]

They certainly don't, which is why I cited the optic nerve bandwidth.

There's a fair amount of photoreceptor grouping to increase detection sensitivity, but IIRC there's also some surprising edge detection pre-processing features in the human retina, but I'm not 100% sure about that.

It's certainly not 100 million RGB pixel equivalent input - not even close, but probably more than the 1.2 MP of Tesla's cameras.

*Ahem* That would be 9.6MP, 1.2 per camera x 8 cameras

 

[MarcusMaximus]

For the longest time, I fully agreed with this view.

But now that I've finished watching the full presentation, beginning to end, my conclusion is this: I am certain every word that was spoken on that stage will prove to have been the literal truth. This was no technical presentation; it was a profecy. I am now of the opinion that Tesla actually implemented, by hand, the first superhuman AI instance able to operate on the physical world at global scale, all at the turn of a switch. Right now. The dawn of MAGI (Manual Artificial General Intelligence), so to speak.

One has to be high to believe this, so I believe it.

Praise our god on high, Pot. Though the order may be wrong.

 

[j6Lpi429@3j]

I have an awful lot of background knowledge here. I was not impressed by the technical detail of the presentation, and I did follow all of it. The Tesla guys are very smart, but they are too close to their work and are not seeing the next wave of problems they're going to hit -- and Musk is an incurable extreme optimist. I already know what they're going to hit. I'm waiting for them to notice it.

Once they notice that set of problems, it will take at least two years for them to resolve it (and that's optimistic). They haven't noticed it yet, therefore it will take more than two years.

This is a forum for investors...which normally means people who want to make money. If you know so obviously and clearly more about self driving solutions that the entire dev team at a multi-billion dollar company then how come you dont:
1) offer them this information in return for maybe a simple $10 million lump sum or
2) work for one of their rivals like waymo, cruise etc, and earn the same amount?

Either of these seems logical, but what seems extremely unlikely is the thrid option
3) sit smugly on this knowledge, earning absolutely nothing from it, but brag about it on the intenet to total strangers.

Maybe you could talk us through your strategy here?

 

[MP3Mike]

Ihor Dusaniwsky on Twitter

Ihor Dusaniwsky‏ @ihors3 48m48 minutes ago

seeing additional shorting in $TSLA today

Surprise!

 

[anthonyj]

Chances of Elon guiding for profit in Q2? Margins seem too slim and S/X needs a refresh to pull in big numbers again. If he can say that Q2 will be profitable then the stock will rally

 

[SOULPEDL]

Well, about that... Waymo already went live. Of course, that deafening thunder you are not hearing is the sound of all those people who need a cab service that can only pick them up from fixed stops (you know, like a bus), follow certain routes (you know, like a bus) and drop them off at fixed stops (... you get the point). The sole advantage to the bus is you don't have to share space with the hoi polloi.

The Bolt beat the M3 to market, sure. And it had no impact on the sale or profitability of the M3.

Waymo has beaten Tesla to the taxi market (well, to the not-a-bus market, anyway). I don't expect it to have any impact on Tesla's "ride sharing" network (if that ever comes to pass) because its very design means that it cannot scale. And, in any case, it is only for those who will pay a premium to avoid a bus, but won't use a taxi or similar service. Meh.

[as @Nocturnal pointed out, Waymo's service isn't actually autonomous. I can't believe I left that out. But other than the implication what I wrote was accurate: I referred to "bus service" vs "taxi"]

Did I mention Waymo pays drivers about $20/hr? They must be raking it in!

 

[Intl Professor]

OT


Oh, it doesn't. I don't know why I try to explain things to people who don't want to learn; I think it's a compulsion.

Whether to tone it down or not is a tradeoff between the social value of "shut up because all you're doing is making other people angry at you, they don't want to hear it" and the value of having been the one who pointed out that the Emperor had no clothes, just in case someone was actually listening.

I'm always #2. Something in my brain makeup means I get zero mental reward for the first (and walk away angry at the stupidity and worthlessness of humanity) and some mental reward for the second (and I walk away feeling that at least I've done my duty, and humanity can go hang). Sense of responsibility probably.

As an "extinguished" teacher it is hard to argue against pointing out errors. For that you are a highly respected rose with great talent and vast information at your disposal. I think you missed Buddha's point applied to this case. It is unimportant as well as asocial to fix personal responsibility for the error maker and only focusses attention on the pointer while diverting from the message. The goal of wisdom is to expunge compulsions as well as illusion. Don't tarnish your bloom for another's thorn, a signal on the path to enlightenment. Thus the burden of compulsions are lifted.

I am reminded daily by my wife when my tell, a rising voice, fails to cloud anger and impatience. For all her Buddhist manners, her prickles nick when this Dick is a prick. But that is only because I let them.

 

[AlexS]

Chances of Elon guiding for profit in Q2? Margins seem too slim and S/X needs a refresh to pull in big numbers again. If he can say that Q2 will be profitable then the stock will rally

he also needs to explain how the profit will be made. and this should be realistic.

 

[Big Blue 1011]

Chances of Elon guiding for profit in Q2? Margins seem too slim and S/X needs a refresh to pull in big numbers again. If he can say that Q2 will be profitable then the stock will rally

My prediction: Near term profit will be de-emphasized. Guidance will need to be adjusted to accommodate increased R&D required to bring robo-taxis to market as soon as possible. Short term hit to P&L in exchange for long term market dominance.