Given that these systems work without the network, how does Tesla get to use them for learning how to improve the system? People complain that they are using the US population of 3/Y owners as a giant Beta test, but wouldn't that require a lot of data be sent?
This is an area of discussion, just how much data Tesla can actually get from cars on the road, and what type of data they get.
We can all agree that this data sharing does not have to happen real time. The cars store the video other data, and upload it afterwards. Tesla waits until your car is on WiFi, as paying for LTE data is very expensive, and your WiFi is free.
The thing is, the car cannot collect all data all the time. Video is 10's of gigabytes per hour, and Tesla can't store or process that much data, and it's clear cars don't upload this much data after every drive (It's your WiFi, you can see how much it sends).
So now Tesla has to program the car locally to determine something is interesting, save that, and upload it later. But this means anything not flagged is lost, and it's an interesting area to discuss how you can detect something that is "interesting" if you simultaneously are trying to learn about that exact thing.
Some people believe Tesla is great at this, and is collecting amazing data from all the billions of miles being driven, and this gives them an amazing advantage in autonomous development, especially with "edge cases". Others say that Tesla is so limited in what they can collect that while worthwhile, it's not going to be the critical path to a generalized solution.
This data collection probably is very useful in the "beta" way- Tesla can tell if you needed to take over for the car, so even just a report of how many disengagements they need tells them something about how well the SW is doing. They get other big data too- maybe all they are using the radar-less 3/Y's for right now is to see how many accidents they get into at 70 MPH before they up the speed limit to 90 MPH.