Most accidents, >90%, are caused by human error. Something like inattentiveness and speeding. So if we have human level performance, and solve the problem of inattentiveness, speeding, etc..., then theoretically can get to 10x human performance.
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Most accidents, >90%, are caused by human error. Something like inattentiveness and speeding. So if we have human level performance, and solve the problem of inattentiveness, speeding, etc..., then theoretically can get to 10x human performance.
Elon sure loves his pseudoscientific metaphors and dumbed down marketing that his followers lap up without scrutiny and repeat endlessly. I think he’s implying FSD+human is safer than human. This is the same messaging as in the Tesla marketing material called ”safety report”. 40 years of research show that human+system isn’t much (or at all) safer than system due to automation complacency, so this line reasoning isn’t proved to be relevant if the design goal is to make an ADS.There is this weird inconsistency in what he says. On one hand he says humans don’t need it…so FSD does not…on the other hand he says that FSD needs to be 10x better than human. Is he saying the capability of average humans vs. the best human varies by an order of magnitude? Is he saying humans just get tired or drunk and that causes accidents? How does one get 10x better (or even more as he suggested in the latest earnings call) than a human with the same sensors as a human? Seems like more might be needed.
Yeah, but as Koopman says, computers will make different mistakes. Currently CV has a very hard time understanding that a cyclist or a stop sign on a billboard isn’t an actual cyclist or a stop sign. A human isn’t prone to that sort of failure because we have reasoning and actual intelligence, so this “a human drives with two eyes, so then computers will be able to” snakeoil marketing doesn’t hold up for even basic critical thinking. Perhaps in the next decade cameras will be enough, but not likely in the coming years.View attachment 958767Interactive Highway Safety Design Model: Accident Predictive Module | FHWA
The Summer 1994 issue of Public Roads introduced the Interactive Highway Safety Design Model (IHSDM).highways.dot.gov
From the above diagram we see that 57% of accidents are solely attributed to driver issues, back in 1995. Roadway and driver issues accounted for 27% of accidents.
At the end of the day it's just a faster training computer. It solves nothing but faster round trips. If everything that was needed was more compute and more data, self driving on computer vision alone would have been "solved" years ago.In recent earnings call Elon said he is going to spend $1 billion on dojo. It is obvious to me if you are spending $1 billion on dojo, then it is not just for FSD. This is a springboard to general A.I.
There is this weird inconsistency in what he says. On one hand he says humans don’t need it…so FSD does not…on the other hand he says that FSD needs to be 10x better than human. Is he saying the capability of average humans vs. the best human varies by an order of magnitude? Is he saying humans just get tired or drunk and that causes accidents? How does one get 10x better (or even more as he suggested in the latest earnings call) than a human with the same sensors as a human? Seems like more might be needed.
A human isn’t prone to that sort of failure because we have reasoning and actual intelligence, so this “a human drives with two eyes, so then computers will be able to” snakeoil marketing doesn’t hold up for even basic critical thinking. Perhaps in the next decade cameras will be enough, but not likely in the coming years.
This 576 MP number is often quoted but is highly misleading. This number is derived by taking the receptor density in the very narrow-angle central fovea region of the retina, being very roughly 200,000 color-sensitive cones, and then pretending that the entire very wide field of human vision is filled up with receptors of that density. If you had something like 2 minutes to scan your foveal vision across your whole visual field, l and nothing moved during those minutes, you could then take in the equivalent detail of something like 576 megapixels.I would point out that the hardware and software that Tesla is using is vastly inferior to the human brain and eyes. Human eyes have a resolution of about 576 MP while Tesla uses 1.2 MP cameras. So Tesla's cameras have a resolution about 480x worse than human eyes.
This 576 MP number is often quoted but is highly misleading. This number is derived by taking the receptor density in the very narrow-angle central fovea region of the retina, being very roughly 200,000 color-sensitive cones, and then pretending that the entire very wide field of human vision is filled up with receptors of that density. If you had something like 2 minutes to scan your foveal vision across your whole visual field, l and nothing moved during those minutes, you could then take in the equivalent detail of something like 576 megapixels.
By the way, your suspicions and skepticism are should be aroused as soon as you read such an obviously stretched equivalence calculation, that results in a widely repeated number having 3 significant digits!
Please understand that I'm not denigrating human vision (except in my own case which could use a lot of help ), but it's really a highly fraught comparison with digital camera sensors. Human vision works in a substantially different way. The non-foveal peripheral vision has very poor resolution and color sensitivity, but specializes in edge-movement detection - evolved exactly to trigger the visual cortex to redirect and refocus those ~200,000 central receptors onto the latest and most important threat/opportunity.
The considerations of what today's digital cameras need to for driving, what they can see and how they are is in some ways inferior and in other ways superior to human visual perception, it's beyond the scope of a post that anyone's going to read. If you've followed my own arguments for a while, you know that I tentatively disagree with some of Tesla's choices of camera positioning, and I have various engineering suggestions of how it could be done differently and I think better. (I say tentative, because for some reason, no one has ever invited me to review the topic with the Tesla Autopilot team )
A huge benefit of the multi-camera system (anyone's) is that it monitors pretty good detail, simultaneously and tirelessly all around the car - setting aside said debate over the exact implementation. It also has mostly better night vision, though again I have some suggestions for improvement. The real point here is that it's substantially different from human vision.
To me, a theme of ADAS engineering should be to leverage available and cost-effective hardware for its "superhuman" capabilities (and there are plenty of those in even the now-dated HW3 cameras) to offset aspects that are inferior or less adapted to the driving environment.
I'm not going to get into the computer vs. brain "specs" debate; it's harder and even less well understood. My take is that the camera vision is more generally capable but less specifically capable then human. By contrast the present silicon computer is more specifically capable (e.g. in precision, repeatability and reaction time) but less generally capable and adaptable (i.e. intelligent) then human. This is essentially what you said also. TLDR: the computer and brain are still very different, despite the significant point that huge progress is being made by trying to understand and mimic processes of the brain.
I would agree that the argument "humans drive with only two eyes" is not helpful. It's certainly incomplete, it's not really true in most cases, and it focuses the argument on a justification for sensor hardware when, as you say, it's much more than that.I appreciate the thoughtful post. Thank you for providing more detail. I think the general point still stands that the "humans can drive with 2 eyes and a brain" argument to defend FSD is flawed since as you pointed out eyes and cameras work differently and the human brain and computers work differently.
I do think that making computers more generally intelligent is the main obstacle for autonomous driving. That's because even if cameras were as good as the human eye today, AVs would likely still struggle in certain situations due to lack of intelligence. But if computers were more generally intelligence, AVs would be able to handle those edge cases even if the cameras were less good. And AVs can use radar and lidar to compensate for weaknesses in cameras. So cameras being less good as the human eye in certain ways can be addressed now. But it is harder to compensate for the lack of intelligence. I feel that we see that today with the current robotaxis. They don't have perception issues, they have intelligence issues.
I found both your posts insightful and educational beyond the typical Google search spin most posts offer. Thanks for sharing.I would agree that the argument "humans drive with only two eyes" is not helpful. It's certainly incomplete, it's not really true in most cases, and it focuses the argument on a justification for sensor hardware when, as you say, it's much more than that.
By the same token however, pointing to a particular difficulty or failure of vision-based FSD as proof that lidar or radar would have solved the problem, is also an incomplete argument and often a probably false conclusion. Spin serves the narrative on both sides.
Point is: When one does disengage L2 driver assist (as they should), total miles driven without an accident is completely meaningless metric. It does not measure whether the driver assist is good or not. Instead, it measures whether the driver (who is always in control regardless of the L2 assist) is a good driver or not.Not sure I understand the question but yes I have disengaged it?
Point is: When one does disengage L2 driver assist (as they should), total miles driven without an accident is completely meaningless metric. It does not measure whether the driver assist is good or not. Instead, it measures whether the driver (who is always in control regardless of the L2 assist) is a good driver or not.
Unless you're saying that Tesla drivers that opted for FSD just so happen to be twice as safe as Tesla drivers that didn't.
All that said: People seem to interpret the mentioned safety numbers as something to do with autonomous driving. They have little to do with that.
This is probably the wrong place for this debate, but I'd like to stick my oar in.I don't think anyone in this thread was doing that. The quote that started this conversation was "Interesting. Pretty sure I have averaged 10k annually on FSD or really close to that. No accident yet."
Meanwhile, there are people that like to imply that FSD Beta is too unsafe to warrant public testing. I just don't think the statistics support that idea. Even with all the demographic issues you raised, the direction and magnitude of the difference between FSD Beta and all other Tesla drivers is too great. It's implausible for those with FSD Beta to be something like naturally 4 times safer than all other Tesla drivers, and be lowered to only 2 times safer by FSD Beta.
ready for Prime Time
It does not help that Tesla has marketed the feature as L5 and L2 (at different times)