Do you make all your purchasing decisions based on the company's CEO? What if you don't know his or her stance to know whether it aligns with your values... what then? Better not to know?
CNN? Really, HN? Just announced 3 days ago: "Ford Delays Upcoming EV Three-Row SUV Until 2027, Prioritizes Hybrids". Who putting the brakes on producing BEVs? It's the OEMs. And why? Well, just throw a 7KwH battery in your gas-powered car and get the $7500 federal tax credit at point of sale... they can't make BEVs profitably at scale (outside of Tesla and BYD), so just keep pushing out the goal...
FSD being good isn't really the same as the Robotaxi idea. Robotaxi was where you could rent out your car and it could completely autonomously drive other people for a fare. Your car would make money.
I haven't seen 12.3 but other versions had some frightening mistakes in videos. It feels like it will eternally be 90% there but never actually reach the end goal of completely autonomy.
Personally I love Autopilot even if I only use it to drive on the freeways for me when I'm tired.
I think everybody understand that Musk (and others) were way to aggressive on self driving stuff. What their new version can do is impressive, but as you say, Robotaxi aren't all that close.
But do think saying this demo is fake based on to aggressive timelines for self driving is a stretch.
No, they were unequivocal lies. In 2019:“ I think we will be feature-complete full self-driving this year, meaning the car will be able to find you in a parking lot, pick you up, take you all the way to your destination without an intervention — this year. I would say that I am certain of that. That is not a question mark." [1].
See the part where he says: "That is not a question mark." That is called making a clear and direct, unequivocal, unqualified, statement that he knew for certain was wrong. That is called lying.
Not if he believed what he was saying, which is about intent, and impossible to prove. It is rather a lot easier to make unfounded claims about someone's intention than it is to engineer self-driving cars, reusable rockets, high resolution BCIs, world wide space internet, and faster lighter cheaper underground tunnel boring machines, let alone all of them at once.
Thank the stars someone is not judging you so harshly.
Good thing the most stringent generally accepted burden of proof for intent is “beyond a reasonable doubt”, not “100% mathematically certain”.
In his situation, no sane person of even average intelligence would have any cause to believe that Tesla would have autonomous vehicles by the end of the year.
At the time the statement was made, 5 years after Tesla began development, Tesla had not even begun testing with no driver. It has been 5 years since then and FSD is still 10,000x worse than human drivers and they have still not even begun testing with no driver.
He was lying beyond any reasonable doubt.
As to your laundry list of marketing slide bullet points. Can you please identify how a list of claimed accomplishments proves a unrelated statement is not a lie?
I can see how it could prove someone is a habitual liar since Elon Musk has not delivered safer-than-human “self-driving cars”, “cheaper underground tunnel boring machines”, or “high resolution BCIs” so half of your supporting statements are outright fabrications that you made zero effort to validate before repeating.
If that is the standard of proof you apply, then I would thank the stars if people would judge me as uncritically. I could make up any fantasy and people would eat it up because how could they know I am lying, maybe I am just a colossal moron, but also a genius visionary.
> In his situation, no sane person of even average intelligence would have any cause to believe that Tesla would have autonomous vehicles by the end of the year.
You literally have no idea what work he's exposed to from his engineering teams, and you have become the thing you hate by making authoritative sounding statements about subjects which you cannot know everything.
If you can't prevent yourself from making such statements, I'm not sure how you expect anyone else to.
Thank you for resorting to ad hominem, it shows you have run out of real arguments. But it is sad to see that you can not even resort to ad hominem without making logical fallacies.
In case you did not notice, it is Elon Musk who made the unequivocal, unqualified, direct, positive assertion that the cars would be self-driving by end of 2019. That demands clear and convincing evidence. To assert the absence of clear and convincing, as I have done, only demands establishing it is unclear or unconvincing, it does not reverse the standard to require me to prove the negative in a clear and convincing manner. You have failed to even apply to basic standards of burdens of proof as is commonly seen by those parroting the pernicious lies of Elon Musk.
But sure, let us assume my standard of proof is clear and convincing.
In 2019, they had not even begun testing with no human driver. I will repeat that, they had not even tested the claim at all in any official capacity. We know this because you are required to get a driverless testing permit before you begin testing and you must publicly report any driverless testing miles. Tesla has reported 0 miles as of 2024 as they have so far failed to even receive a permit. This is because they have not even done any driverless testing with a safety driver since 2016. 5 years after "That is not a question mark." they have still not even started testing.
In 2019, they were unable to detect and respond to "Do Not Enter" signs. 5 years later, they still can not detect and respond to "Do Not Enter" signs. You would have to be a colossal moron to believe the car will be better than a human driver when it still can not even handle the, what, 5th most common road sign? The road sign that tells you not to drive down a dangerous street. No normal person would believe the car will be ready within 1 year if it can not even handle common road signs and has been completely untested.
As to what he is exposed to from his engineering teams. We know from sworn testimony by the, now current director of Autopilot, that Elon Musk was made aware that the 2016 Autonomy Day demo introducing their self-driving system was done over multiple takes, using technology they have repeatedly declared they will not use in production products (such as HD mapping), and literally crashed during at least one of the takes [1]. Despite this, he still directed the initial frame of the video to state: "The person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself." That is direct and clear deception meant to insinuate the system is ready when the engineers directly and clearly indicate that it is not. Elon Musk demonstrably, literally, has a past record on this exact topic of being intentionally deceptive.
As to your statement that I, "literally have no idea what work he's exposed to", turns out I actually do know, so you are wrong on that as well. I actually have mutual friends with one of the former heads of Autopilot in the mid 2010s who repeatedly told Elon Musk that the systems were not ready. Despite that, Elon Musk announced that it would be safer than a human driver on a schedule that the engineers said was impossible (which we now know to be correct as they still can not do it nearly a decade after that deadline). He then fired the team when they failed to do the impossible. Then he fired the next team when they failed to deliver on his promises. Then he fired the next team. Then he fired the next team. Then I think he hired Karpathy, though maybe there were a few more firings in between that. Then he fired that team. Then I think he promoted the loyalist who helped make the deceiving 2016 demo.
He fired like half a dozen teams because they could not meet his insane deadlines showing that his promises were not based in what he learned from his engineering team, but lies in the hopes that a miracle would happen and make his lies into truth. I have not read his biography, but I have been told that this process of: "Promise it is almost ready. Relentlessly drive engineering team. Fail to meet deadline. Fire team so you now have nothing working. Promise the thing that was not working is now almost ready." is well documented.
So yeah. Your arguments consist entirely of logical fallacies and even then they do not hold water.
> No normal person would believe the car will be ready within 1 year if it can not even handle common road signs and has been completely untested.
No normal person has access to custom built supercomputers to train AIs or teams of engineers dedicated to such. It's a weird false equivalency to base your entire argument on and leaves me to conclude that you would feel similarly about anyone engineering something which hasn't previously existed.
> He fired like half a dozen teams because they could not meet his insane deadlines showing that his promises were not based in what he learned from his engineering team, but lies in the hopes that a miracle would happen and make his lies into truth. I have not read his biography, but I have been told that this process of: "Promise it is almost ready. Relentlessly drive engineering team. Fail to meet deadline. Fire team so you now have nothing working. Promise the thing that was not working is now almost ready." is well documented.
If the man wasn't landing rockets, forcing the auto industry to electrify after even California failed to do so, connecting the world with Starlink, and allowing paralyzed people to live more fulfilling lives, you might have an argument? Whatever he's doing seems to work. Seems like a lot of problems just need management that believes the problem can be solved with enough investment and effort.
"In Australia and New Zealand, tall poppy syndrome refers to successful people being criticised. This occurs when their peers believe they are too successful, or are bragging about their success.[1][2] Intense scrutiny and criticism of such a person is termed as "cutting down the tall poppy"."
And no, it is not established that because you cited one person's deposition and "mutual friends with one of the former heads of Autopilot" that you "actually do know" what work Elon is exposed to from his engineering teams. What a weird claim to make when you're not sitting in on the meetings yourself.
I find the thousands of hours of RE work done by https://www.youtube.com/@MunroLive to be a much more credible indicator of the kind of thinking and work that goes on at Tesla.
Your argument is that Elon Musk knows something we do not about how fast they are improving which is why every single year for a literal decade he has promised a unsupervised self driving system and every single year for that decade he has a produced a unsupervised self driving system that can not even read basic road signs, is 10,000x worse than a human driver, has not even begun validation, and that has killed tens to hundreds of people. Your argument flies in the face of reality. He is demonstrably unable to predict progress by literal factors of thousands and yet makes unequivocal statements that it will be completed in timelines that would be impossible even if the product were literally already done and only validation was required.
And again you go to irrelevant arguments. Are you saying that it is okay to lie aggressively just because you happen to get it right in unrelated fields? Because as we see, he is totally and utterly wrong on his self-driving promises. But that is okay because he lies all the time and sometimes it works out? Who cares about the lying as long as we electrify the auto industry. Oh, should we also overlook all the ridiculous racism in the factories as well? And all those people they killed for no reason are just fertilizer for a glorious future, they should be glad that they could be sacrificed.
At this point I am bored of this thread since I have already made my point and all you do is present the bad faith and irrelevant PR bullet points parroted by the Elon Musk cult. Anybody who is actually reading this thread should see how fallacious and morally bankrupt that position is so I am done here. Have fun.
Bored and pissed off at successful people is a rough way to live life, buddy. I feel for you. I know hating on Elon is the popular thing to be doing these days, but you don't have to demonize folks you don't agree with. I happen to appreciate the work each of his companies are doing. I appreciate the level of engineering knowledge apparent in discussions with him, which in my experience is unusual at the management level. No one else out there is building Starship - Jeff Bezos and NASA included. And my appreciation for all these things stems from a multidisciplinary understandin of the complexity of the engineering and organizational and economic efforts involved in making a Mars shot not only viable but profitable and sustainable. Elon has absolutely done things I don't agree with - everyone has - that just doesn't prevent me from appreciating the things he invests his time and effort and resources into doing, when he doesn't need to.
I think it's fair to say that autopilot hasn't worked out as quickly as Musk had hoped. But I also find myself forced in the same breath to acknowledge that Tesla has made a great deal of progress, maybe more than any other car company, at solving a problem I've paid attention to since the DARPA grand challenge days.
I think it's wonderful to have big dreams as a society, and to reach for them, and accomplish them. It's inspiring. Maybe you should take notes. Thanks for expressing yourself.
And what is this author’s motivation for writing an entire series of vitriolic articles about bad man Elon Musk? I’ve noticed lately that such articles get upvoted a lot on HN.
Well, he did remove the current administration's tight collaboration with Twitter's censorship system. He also fired the majority of Twitter's engineers. Between these I can imagine a lot of people in the San Francisco don't particularly like him, regardless of anything else.
He's done a lot of bad things? Things that are bad for the public? In a very public way? Feels like the sort of thing that a series of articles was invented exactly to address.
I don't see anyone "worshiping", I see neutrals and haters. Haters spend a lot of time talking about these supposed worshipers, but I don't see them in comment sections.
Calling Democrats the party of "division and hate" (not suggesting they are perfect), encouraging people to vote Republican, moving out of state to dodge regulations, defending Scott Adams, opposing unions (sometimes using illegal tactics), allowing Alex Jones to return to Twitter, agreeing with antisemitisic tweets, advocating for absolute free speech (except where people criticize him / his interests).
the author's motivation is likely to expose bad man Elon Musk
I remember like six or seven? years ago when I used to be active on reddit I was on a sub called r/enoughMuskSpam. At the time this was kind of a fringe view. It is less so now, partially due to work like this (and partially due to Musk's own, very public stunts)
I don't understand the point of this question in that you could ask it of almost anything.
If you accuse me of hubris, are you willing to take a $10,000 bet? It's clear that there is no science happening at OpenAI. It's pure brute force. You won't learn anything with that approach.
You don't think there's any possibility of emergent properties? Given that we understand physically how the human brain works, but not how consciousness emerges from that, I'm pretty damn unconfident.
