Agree- so many are dismissing it because its not perfect
In fact, I'd submit that phenomenon as its own entry in the Weirdest or Most Surreal Tech Trend contest. People who, when confronted with a talking dog, say things like, "This talking dog is an idiot. It thinks 429 is prime, its painting looks like something from Bob Ross on acid, and the C++ code it wrote for me is full of bugs. I don't see what all the hype is about."
Some of this dismissiveness is just whistling past the graveyard, but much of it comes from people who genuinely think the human brain is something that operates by means of ethereal, ineffable, and unreproducible mystic forces.
I feel this way about self driving cars as well. Its like even 10 years ago, the capabilities they have today would be considered mind blowing, yet they receive so much hate because they aren't yet adapted to all situations. Its baffling to me, every time I watch a video of one I get all giddy and I am like we are living in the future! Yet even from tech circles, they get so much criticism because they aren't 100% there yet.
Its just a mindset I don't understand. And on places like reddit there is definitely some astroturfing going on or at least some definite "camps" that don't like SDC technology, but on HN AFAICT its been genuine disdain. So weird.
I think most of the criticism with self driving is around the over-hyped under-delivered "full self driving" from Musk -- it actually seems to be getting worse compared to 5 years ago.
Apparently Cruise and Waymo are doing much more impressive things, but they only get a fraction of the press.
I'm curious how many people who criticize full self drive have actually ridden in the car while it navigates city streets. It makes about as many mistakes as a 1-3 years of practice new driver. I don't own a Tesla so I've ridden with friends. It's a barely noticeable difference between human and FSD operation, with very few overrides necessary.
If they're doing more impressive things why is it not in production at scale, right now? Just earlier today there was a story of a Waymo car getting stuck in an intersection in SF. Those cars still need constant intervention and human assistance that's why.
Tesla has FSD released on literally every car in the US that has purchased it. Hundreds of thousands of cars.
No one serious in the self driving space is using disengagements to pick winners or leaders on the path to commercialization. There is no standard about what qualifies as a disengagement and companies will interpret and report their disengagements differently. Those interpretations also change over time, making it even more difficult to actually understand how a company has progressed in its technology.
And again you're missing the point. Waymo/Cruise are operating in an extremely different and much more narrow context than Tesla's FSD. Let's go put Waymo on a random road in a random city and see how it fares compared to Tesla FSD. I guarantee it will be tremendously worse and no one who knows anything about the space would argue otherwise.
Also, why is Tesla so adamant about how many accidents occured simply with FSD disabled? Shouldn't we know how long prior to the accident FSD was engaged? I mean, hitting the brakes in panic only technically makes it "not FSD".
I'd be happy if you showed me any reported data, self or Tesla, of 30k miles before disengagement with FSD. Even within one order of magnitude instead of two.
Show me data of Waymo or Cruise doing 30k miles before disengagement in the 99% of the country where they don't operate. I guarantee their stats are worse anywhere outside their carefully chosen, extremely narrow operating areas.
If there was a single operating area that Tesla could do as well, they would be shouting it from the rooftops. They are not only silent. They are trying to argue to the state of California that they are not testing self driving capabilities past level 2. Have a great day.
> it actually seems to be getting worse compared to 5 years ago.
You pretty clearly don't know what you're talking about.
> Apparently Cruise and Waymo are doing much more impressive things, but they only get a fraction of the press.
They are doing objectively much less impressive things by relying on sensors that require much less intelligent analysis and will lead them to dead ends at the higher end of abilities that Tesla's approach won't.
They can't even keep up with self-parking technology. All the other electric car manufacturers don't seem to have any problem with it. But Tesla's implementation is laughable.
Agreed. However, in the detractors' defense, self-driving cars were hyped beyond all reason by people like Musk, so it's easy to justify some very vocal pushback.
GPT wasn't hyped much at all, in comparison. It just appeared. The next couple of iterations will be interesting to watch, since right now we don't really know what the rate of improvement is going to be. We might be fighting Skynet next year, or we might be in for another 50-year-long AI winter.
I consider it more like the golden calf that people worshipped while Moses was away. The Quranic version is it was made of gold, it made a sound, and so people idolized it.
I think it's a good parable. It's something expensive and man made. Even though it's on average dumber than a typical human, people try to ascribe godliness to it. And so many judge whether it has achieved omniscience. For many of us, it's just a better tool, an IDE, but for some, it's an oracle or divination tool that they use to decide whether they should marry someone.
I think the term "artificial intelligence" makes it even more confusing.
In fact, I'd submit that phenomenon as its own entry in the Weirdest or Most Surreal Tech Trend contest. People who, when confronted with a talking dog, say things like, "This talking dog is an idiot. It thinks 429 is prime, its painting looks like something from Bob Ross on acid, and the C++ code it wrote for me is full of bugs. I don't see what all the hype is about."
Some of this dismissiveness is just whistling past the graveyard, but much of it comes from people who genuinely think the human brain is something that operates by means of ethereal, ineffable, and unreproducible mystic forces.