[HN Gopher] Andrej Karpathy leaves Tesla ___________________________________________________________________ Andrej Karpathy leaves Tesla Author : danols Score : 102 points Date : 2022-07-13 21:32 UTC (1 hours ago) (HTM) web link (twitter.com) (TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com) | pen2l wrote: | This comes after yesterday's news of Tesla letting 229 people go | who were working on Autopilot: | https://techcrunch.com/2022/07/12/tesla-laying-off-229-autop.... | mkl wrote: | That's pretty much a totally different category of employee, | though: "Tesla is laying off 229 data annotation employees who | are part of the company's larger Autopilot team [...] Most of | the workers were in moderately low-skilled, low-wage jobs, such | as Autopilot data labeling" | | Data annotation can be cheaply outsourced or scaled up and down | without much affecting progress on self-driving. Karpathy | leaving says more about that progress to me. | xeromal wrote: | On top of that, this might signal that Tesla is confident | enough in their autolabeling that they no longer need as much | human intervention. This job title theoretically should be | temporary. | cheeselip420 wrote: | lol - FSD is a scam, and the reckoning is here. | camjohnson26 wrote: | Tesla has bet the company on robotaxis, but their vision only | tech stack doesn't seem capable of solving it, which is a problem | because Tesla has repeatedly promised FSD is right around the | corner, or less than a year away. It's hard to believe Karpathy | would step down if he felt they were close to solving the problem | anytime soon. | | This announcement comes after a 4 month sabbatical where Karpathy | said he wanted to take some time off to "sharpen my technical | edge," which makes it sound like this is the result of | frustration with the technical approach instead of burnout. | rsynnott wrote: | > but their vision only tech stack doesn't seem capable of | solving it | | Well, I'm not sure that anyone's tech stack is capable of | solving it; the live examples of robotaxis are, well, not | something you'd bet your company on (and generally their | creators are _not_ betting their companies on them). There was, | I think, a decade ago the idea that fully self-driving cars | were a near-term inevitability. That's fading, now. | TheDarkestSoul wrote: | I think a lot of that came from the Tesla hype machine | creating a strong association between electric and self- | driving as being the immediate future of cars in popular | consciousness, so when people saw electric becoming a reality | they assumed self-driving was right around the corner when in | actuality their maturity levels aren't related much at all. | Fallacious thinking that may doom a few companies between | Lyft, Uber, and Tesla | duped wrote: | > Tesla has bet the company on robotaxis, | | How so? They're not selling robotaxis or building factories to | build them | | > Tesla has repeatedly promised FSD is right around the corner | | Which means it's years away and/or "FSD" means "automatic | cruise control and lane keep assist" or whatever standard | feature from auto manufacturers they've renamed | clouddrover wrote: | > _How so?_ | | Because they chose to back themselves into that corner. Musk | says that Tesla is worth nothing without full self-driving. | Certainly it's the only thing left to justify the stock | price: | | https://electrek.co/2022/06/15/elon-musk-solving-self- | drivin... | | > _Which means it 's years away and/or "FSD" means "automatic | cruise control and lane keep assist"_ | | Well, more precisely it means Musk has been lying about it | for nine years straight: | | https://jalopnik.com/elon-musk-promises-full-self-driving- | ne... | | The lies have been profitable so far. People have bought into | the false promises. Perhaps they'll start demanding refunds | for the full self-driving they paid for that has still not | been delivered. | sorry_outta_gas wrote: | I don't think tesla is but a lot of 'investors' are | 01100011 wrote: | Isn't Tesla supposed to be producing Optimus, their human-like | android, next year? | | Elon has been over-promising(i.e. flat out lying) about self- | driving every year since.. 2014(there's a youtube video | compilation of it)? | | It seems like his strategy is to just come up with increasingly | grandiose promises every year when he fails to deliver on his | past promises. He's trapped in his swirling vortex of bullshit. | Very worrying to see Karpathy leaving... | akmarinov wrote: | Elon in 2024: "by 2026 we'll have actual, real teleportation" | | Elon in 2026: "by 2028 we'll have FTL drives" | | Elon in 2028: "time machine!" | gruturo wrote: | > Elon in 2028: "time machine!" | | Well, to be fair, he only has to hit _that_ goal - at which | point he can go back in time at his leisure and fix all the | others. And he could hit even the time machine goal as late | as he wants, and it won't matter. | glintik wrote: | > if he felt they were close to solving the problem anytime | soon He felt? It's evident enough, that approach they used | doesn't allow them to prepare FSD for real life and real | streets. I think he just understood, that approach to be | changed/improved significantly to reach the goal. | dreamcompiler wrote: | Uber bet the company on robotaxis and lost. Tesla is still | building very good cars that happen to not be able to drive | themselves. Just like every other car. If they could lose their | obsession with self-driving and just focus on their incredible | cars, they'd still make money. | impulser_ wrote: | Yeah, but Google's vision + lidar tech also doesn't seem any | better at solving it either. They have been working on this | problem the longest and they aren't even confident enough to | produce a product with it. Google is probably the leader in AI | and AI research. They are also the leader in data and mapping. | They have billions of cash to play with. Yet it seem like they | haven't gotten any closer at solving this problem as well. | | They are just going about it better but not trying to selling | it. | | Any reason why everyone seems to be stuck on this problem? | Barrin92 wrote: | >Any reason why everyone seems to be stuck on this problem? | | ML maximalism focused on the narrow problem of 'solving | driving' while not recognizing that any task as complex as | driving requires probably something closer to general | intelligence, and theoretically the field has been | impoverished in favor of "throw more graphics cards at | everything". | hn_throwaway_99 wrote: | Couldn't agree more. Especially when it comes to city | driving, which would obviously be necessary for robotaxis, | when AI zealots promise "it'll be here in a year or two", I | always wondered "Have these people ever driven in the | city?" I mean, to drive in a city, you basically: | | 1. Need to understand all standard signage (seems possible | with AI). | | 2. Need to understand all "unstandard" signage (not sure | how possible). | | 3. Need to understand the cop with the thick NY accent | yelling at you saying "Can't you see there's been an | accident and the road is covered with glass you dufus? Turn | the F around." | | I can certainly see AI solving the problem of driving in | specially designed limited access highways (which could | also support normal human drivers), and that alone would be | a huge benefit, but I never saw how so many were willing to | make the leap to "robotaxis that can drive you anywhere in | the city." | dmd wrote: | 4. Need to understand the cop who is directing people | into lanes by jutting his chin subtly in different | directions when you make eye contact with him | | 5. Need to understand that occluded objects have not | vanished from the universe never to be seen again | naijaboiler wrote: | 6. Need to reasonably predict what that human that just | made eye contact with you would likely do next, and how | that's different from what he might do when he doesn't | make eye contact with you. And all of that differs if | you're in NYC or SF or small town, Indiana | highwaylights wrote: | Even then, even if you can solve every case involving | actual roads with perfect markings and intact signs and | functioning signals, I've found myself just this week: | | - driving across an unmarked grassy mound to park a car at | a store in their designated area. | | - paying a fee with coins to enter and exit a toll road. | | - stopping to move around roadworks based solely on hand | signals from one of the workers. | | These aren't even scratching the surface in terms of edge | cases that could be encountered regularly. | rsynnott wrote: | > Any reason why everyone seems to be stuck on this problem? | | Because it's really, really difficult. A lot of AI-ish stuff | pretty rapidly gets to the point where it _looks_ quite | impressive, but struggles to make the jump to actual | feasibility. Like, there were convincing demos of voice | recognition in the mid-90s. You could buy software to | transcribe voice on your home computer, and people did. And, | now, well, it's better than in the mid-90s certainly, but you | wouldn't trust it to write a transcript, not of anything | important. Maybe in 2040 we'll have voice recognition that | can produce a perfect transcript, and human transcription | will be a quaint old-fashioned concept. But I wouldn't like | to bet on it, honestly. | | And voice recognition is arguably a far, far easier problem. | Jabbles wrote: | > doesn't seem any better at solving it | | I thought they had real self-driving taxis in Pheonix that | you can order? Real ones, with no safety driver. | | That definitely sounds "better", even if it is heavily geo- | fenced. | espadrine wrote: | Waymo has superior performance based on their historical | statistics. It makes sense, since their lidar sensors | capture more of the environment, and directly in 3D. Their | AI also seems better QA'ed. | | The Tesla AI Day[0] surprised me as it showed they only had | a simple architecture for a very long time, simply feeding | barely processed camera pixels to a DNN and hoping for the | best with little more than supervised learning off human | feeds. Their big claim to glory was that they | rearchitectured it to produce a 2D map of the | environment... which I thought they had years ago, and is | still a far cry from the 3D modeling that is needed. | | After all, sure, we humans only take two video feeds as | input... But we can appreciate from it the position, | intent, and trajectory of a wealth of elements around us, | with reasonable probability estimates for multiple | possibilities, sometimes pertaining to things that are | invisible, such as kids crossing from nowhere when near a | school. | | Cruise also seems to have better tech; they had a barely- | watched 2h30 description of their systems[1] which shows | they do create a richer environment, evaluate the routing | of many objects, and train their systems on a very | realistic simulation, not just supervised training, which | means it can learn from very low-probability events. They | have a whole segment on including the probability that | unseen cars may travel from perpendicular roads; Tesla's | creeping hit-or-miss are well-documented on Youtube. | | [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0z4FweCy4M | | [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJWN0K26NxQ | impulser_ wrote: | Yeah, but I am sure Tesla's software can do the same. | | Depending on the route, you could probably even do it with | comma.ai hardware. | | When I think of FSD, I think any route under any condition. | jowday wrote: | They've also got real ones with no safety driver in San | Francisco right now. | alphabetting wrote: | There's been a lot of progress despite AVs not meeting | intitial hyped predictions. Waymo and Cruise are operating | driverless robotaxis in SF. We're probably a couple years | from many major cities having them. | tootie wrote: | Probably because it's really, really, really hard to solve | the thousands of edge cases that occur in real-world driving | situations. I don't think FSD happens until government gets | behind it and starts putting infrastructure behind it. If we | start building roads (and cars) to be highly visible to AI | one way or another, it all becomes much easier. | cco wrote: | I paid ~$10 for two rides after signing up as a regular ole | user in Mesa AZ. It was great, the first ride was a bit nerve | wracking, but the second felt very nice. | | I certainly wouldn't argue with you that it isn't ready for | prime time and wide distribution, but it is interesting to | see their progress in San Francisco, a much different driving | problem. | | If it takes them 10 years to get to prod in Mesa, two (maybe | three?) in SF, maybe they start shrinking that a lot in | metros without winters. -\\_(tsu)_/- | dreamcompiler wrote: | Because self-driving has a bunch of tricky edge cases and | most of them will kill people. Problems with hundreds of | important edge cases cannot be solved by simply throwing more | training data at the problem; that's how you solve AI | problems in a "dumb" manner, and it works for lots of | problems (like recognizing dogs in images) -- but not for | self-driving. | | To solve the self-driving problem we need "smart" A.I., which | means we have to approach it with systematic engineering, and | the solution will probably involve some combination of better | sensors, introspectable neural nets, symbolic A.I., and | logical A.I. | function_seven wrote: | I remain convinced that "real" self driving (as in: go | ahead and sleep in the backseat) will never happen without | changes to road infrastructure and possibly some sort of | segregation between robot-driven cars and people-driven | cars. | | Things like traffic signals that actively communicate their | status to nearby robot cars (more than just a red lamp that | can be occluded by weather, other vehicles, or mud on the | camera lens). Or lane markings that are more than just | reflective paint, but can be sensed via RF. Rules around | temporary construction that dictate the manner of signage | and cone placement that the robot cars can understand. The | cones might have little transponders in them, I don't know. | | But without a massive leap forward in AI capability, our | current road system--optimized for human drivers over the | past century--is not going to work. | | If we can't make the cars just as smart as an alert and | capable driver, then maybe we need to meet halfway and make | the roads a littler "dumber" (simpler) to accommodate the | robots. | highwaylights wrote: | What if we just, you know, walk a bit more instead? | | Or even cycle? I hear great things. | naijaboiler wrote: | And we haven't even adressed that drving is not a purely | technical endeavor, it's largely a social one. | sonofhans wrote: | Driving is a social problem, not a technical one. It's | functionally the same as walking down a crowded sidewalk. The | car is just a tool, just an extension of our bodies. | | We can't build a robot which can walk down a sidewalk without | running into people either. The sensor tech and mapping | fidelity are red herrings. People drive well because only | people are good at predicting human behavior. | raydiatian wrote: | Sort of. Your wording actually assumes down to its core | that driving is inherently social. Driving _currently_ "is | social" in a few senses, But mainly the obvious one that it | involves people observing each other's actions. | | Alternatively, an autonomous vehicle operator in a | homogenous network full of other autonomous operators has | capabilities and characteristics that greatly simplify | failure modes. Maybe even majority autonomous, partially | heterogeneous? You can literally slow or stop the whole | show to deal with a catastrophic event. It's still "social" | but probably much reduced from the full scope of human | expressivity that you've put behind the wheel of a vehicle. | | The REAL problem is how do we take our roads to the | crossover point where those network features become | accessible. | bsaul wrote: | i wonder if tesla can afford to abandon autopilot. the strategy | of always selling a futuristic vision of driving has always been | core to the brand. if they happen to become just another boring | electric car company, i'm not sure they can compete in the long | run. | akmarinov wrote: | By autopilot do you mean Tesla Autopilot aka Traffic assisted | cruise control or do you mean FSD? | | Because there's 0 chance they let go of the first, since that's | integral to any new car these days. | bowmessage wrote: | They can pivot to selling an auto-autopilot; an AI-based | process run totally within the car, which will autonomously | work on the code for autopilot for the next 5 years. (/s). | xeromal wrote: | They're laying off people how label data. This isn't the devs | that actually work on the software. | TheAlchemist wrote: | Well, Musk said recently that the value of Tesla is 0 without | FSD. | | Does anybody seriously think Karpathy would step down if FSD was | really close to be released ?? | | It really starts to feel like Tesla is a huge fraud which is | about to be uncovered. | akmittal wrote: | Irrespective of what he said, it won't be 0, Tesla would still | be one of the best electric cars available. | 01100011 wrote: | For how long though? It seems like traditional automakers | have mostly figured out EVs now. I love my Chevy EV, and it's | 4 years old now. Similarly, the Kia EV I recently drove was | excellent(although the Bolt one pedal driving is better | IMHO). | atombender wrote: | The situation outside the US is even worse for Tesla. | There's a whole swathe of great EVs these days from VW | (ID.3, ID.4), Renault (Megane, E-2008), Opel (Corsa-e), | Volvo (C40, XC40), Ford (Mustang Mach-E), Jaguar (I-PACE), | Polestar, BMW (i4, iX), Audi (e-Tron), Mercedes (EQS), | Skoda (Enyaq), etc. | | The range of models is also much wider in terms of | affordability. In Europe, we've reached the point where an | EV is just another car, and even the cheaper ones have tons | of clever bells and whistles like 360 cameras. | dmitriid wrote: | I'm now seeing a lot of VW ID.4s and Skoda Enyaqs | (basically the same car, different styling) in Sweden. | jeffbee wrote: | If I have to pick a side in the battle of who can produce | the most cheap batteries, an insane Twitter addict or | state-controlled industries of South Korea, I'm going with | the Koreans. | TheAlchemist wrote: | That's probably true ! | | But in itself, just making on of the best electric cars today | would justify a valuation of 1/10 of what Tesla currently | have. | | I still admire Musk and Tesla for having started the electric | revolution. But by 2025 (and maybe already are), they will | just be one of many electric car manufacturers - somewhere in | the middle of the pack. | svnt wrote: | He did not start it. He did a hostile takeover and revised | the history of Tesla so he could be a cofounder. | jackmott42 wrote: | FSD may be a huge fraud but the whole company is not. The cars | are real! | carbadtraingood wrote: | The cars are real but they are... Mediocre. The first year of | ownership is an amazing honeymoon period, assuming you got | one with decent build quality. But the parts are cheap, and | they break quickly. I've had one for 5+ years and it's | gradually become something I prefer driving less and less. | TheAlchemist wrote: | Sure ! | | But are the financials of the company also real ? The | prospects of future products ? Robotaxis, FSD, Cybertruck, | Semi ? | NovemberWhiskey wrote: | > _Well, Musk said recently that the value of Tesla is 0 | without FSD._ | | In fairness, this is just another in the long line of | ridiculous things that he is prone to saying. | dreamcompiler wrote: | If Musk actually said this he's an even bigger idiot than I | gave him credit for. He makes the best cars in the world | (obviously IMHO) and that's worth a lot more than 0. I couldn't | give less of a damn if they can't drive themselves. | strikelaserclaw wrote: | best cars in the world is a stretch | pwagland wrote: | It is a stretch, but they are clearly also not the worst. | The company clearly has value without FSD. Not the value | that the market currently gives it, but value nonetheless. | carbadtraingood wrote: | As an owner for 5+ years, the cars show well but pretty | quickly become a pain in the ass. | | They'll get eclipsed by other electric car manufacturers real | quick. | | Edit: more specifically, the parts break and they are | difficult to replace. The battery degrades. They stopped | providing maps to the vehicle unless I'm willing to spend | several hundred dollars to replace the media console, they've | told me I'm covered by a recall/warranty but have been unable | to schedule the appointment. | akmarinov wrote: | I'll give you best in efficiency, quick electric cars | | As for luxury, quality, ride comfort - they're just ok | bhauer wrote: | It was exaggeration as a figure of speech to suggest that if | self-driving is solved, it will make the EV business look | incredibly small. | | What's shocking is how many people interpreted it literally-- | that the value is literally zero without self-driving--as if | the successful EV business is in fact unsuccessful. | wnevets wrote: | Don't worry guys, FSD is right around the corner! | rvz wrote: | Oh dear. So who is going to improve on making and shilling the | 'Fools Self Driving' (FSD) beta demoware that not only it is | 'allegedly' half-working, but is already under ridiculous amounts | of scrutiny and investigation by the regulators, especially with | deceptive advertising putting drivers on the road at risk? | | Once again, where are the robot-taxis as promised for release in | 2020? | viburnum wrote: | It never made any sense but there was too much money to be made | in pretending. | Barrera wrote: | The autopilot part of Tesla has never made much sense. Is Tesla | the electric car company, or is it the luxury car company? Either | way, why does the power train (EV or ICE) come into play at all? | | Not only that, but Tesla has played the Innovator's Dilemma game | from the position of the upstart financially, but targeted the | segment of the market that incumbents will defend to the death | (luxury cars). | | Tesla could have gone a different way and played the game from | the true upstart: targeting the low end of the car market. Attack | from below. But it didn't do that. | | Incumbents always win at the sustaining innovation game. The | electric power train is a sustaining innovation for the | automobile industry. It doesn't break any incumbent's business | model (financing the purchase of expensive cars), especially at | this point. And we're now seeing this with all of the EV | introductions and announcements from incumbents. Oddly, though, | there are plenty of upstarts trying to do exactly what Tesla | tried - attacking the blubber-rich end of the market with an | immature technology. | qaq wrote: | And yet Tesla is dominant player in luxury segments they have | products in | simonswords82 wrote: | Can anybody give insights in to how key this guy is to Tesla. Is | it a big deal? What's his USP? | Tyndale wrote: | Cars will never drive themselves. | rafaelero wrote: | It's fun to see everybody succumbing to scaling laws. We will | only have FSD when we can run realtime inference with a huge | model. No amount of creativity seems to overcome the fact that | bigger is better. So, let's wait Moore's law do its job. | melling wrote: | That was the prediction when he took a "sabbatical" back in | March. | | Why do people leave companies in this manner? | spicymaki wrote: | A couple of theories: | | 1) It sometimes can be hard to leave a company when you are "in | the thick of it." A sabbatical can give you personal time to | reflect on whether you want to stay or not. | | 2) Sometimes people use sabbaticals to prep/perform job | interviews or plan career transitions. | | 3) Sabbaticals can allow you to quit early while waiting for | vesting restricted stock units, employee stock plan sales, | retirement contributions (matches), etc. There are certainly | many more timed bonuses available for senior leaders. | [deleted] | WatchDog wrote: | Employee: I quit. | | Employer: Are you sure? Why don't you take some time off and | think about it? | simonswords82 wrote: | Totally this. If you've got somebody who is critical to the | success of the business you do anything you can to keep them | [deleted] | klyrs wrote: | Oh well, at least Musk has Twitter to fall back on. | smrtinsert wrote: | Actually it seems like he believes there are too many bots to | care about freeze peach | akmarinov wrote: | It's ok, before he agreed to buy it, he said he'll get rid of | all the bots once he buys it ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-07-13 23:00 UTC)