Can software understand our world in this way?
Objective basis
Tesla’s Full-Self-Driving software 12.3.4 is now completely based on Artificial Intelligence. Trained on millions of cars and trillions of hours of video footage. A network of neural networks. You’re probably also reading this on American software. If Tesla doesn’t succeed, no one can. It is now or never.
The software is only available in America at the moment, to get a good idea I recommend the first one three minutes of this video:
Self-driving Tesla in San Francisco with explanation
It is discussed here that every new Tesla can be self-driving, and you can see that. Where we used to have many interventions in 2021, it has now been reduced to almost never. All main functions are now in the software and we can now assess whether AI is technically sufficient to drive independently in our complex world.
Driving style in Chill, Average or Assertive
Technology and Software
FSD now only uses cameras and powerful hardware. Only cameras was a discussion for a long time. Why not other sensors such as Ultrasonic and Lidar? According to Elon Musk, we are biological neural networks with 2 cameras – so why couldn’t an 8-camera neural network perform better?
The car has an AMD RDNA 2-based Ryzen APU
The network trains for much longer than an average person could ever do. Tesla continues to continuously train and update FSD. As children, we also learned to look and do – why couldn’t a neural network learn this?
Training the AI was already done in 2021 by Tesla’s supercomputer. Tesla currently has 35,000 H100 Nvidia chips that do this work. Tesla was already in the top 5 of the most powerful computer in the world in 2021. It is unknown what ranking it currently has.
scaled from 5760 GPUs in 2021 to 35000 GPUs in 2024
Eight cameras on the car
At the moment there is hardware version 4. In the first video he says that every Tesla can become self-driving. I doubt that. I only think from hardware 4 and not hardware 1, 2 or 3 that is in the older Teslas (boring video here).
Only the newest Teslas have colorfast cameras.
Front camera resolution
Moisture, fog and blinding, that’s where Elon Musk is wrong. Our eyes are self-cleaning (blinking), cameras do not have that function. How do you clean the cameras while driving?
My opinion
At first I had serious doubts. I estimated the chance at 20%. Now I’m turning around.
I already know about AlphaGo (the best documentary ever) and that AI is human be able to and think can transcend. First the United States this year, later China and only then Europe. A single function such as automatic parking upon arrival is still missing, but even this is possible after you say which parking space you want.
What this topic is not about
I hope the comments are less about Elon Musk. Or about electric driving.
I am purely concerned with the technical realization: Can an AI drive around independently in our complex world?
Poll: Are self-driving cars technically possible in 2024?
• Yes
• Ever (what year?)
• Never (why not?)
Would you also like to make a poll? click here
Unanswered questions:
Are cameras as sharp as eyes?
Do cameras need sunglasses?
Can the cameras clean themselves – blink – as well as humans?
Can a neural network of 40,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs realize logic that is as smart as the best human drivers?
How do you charge self-driving cars?
Questions answered:
“We accept an error from a human, but not from a computer” @Himalayas
At sometime. Every computer car accident will be put under a magnifying glass. Isn’t it irrational if ultimately the computer is much more secure? A tipping point will come when humans are five times more dangerous than computers. A little safer will indeed not be enough. That is why I want to focus here on technical feasibility, because social feasibility is too unpredictable.
“Legal hornet’s nest” @The Eagle
Beats. So it is first about proving that technically things go well 99.999% of the time. As far as I am concerned, I still doubt whether it is technically possible, and I would like to focus on that. The best example is the invention of the calculator. During the first year, everyone started calculating everything manually, and now we rely blindly on the calculator. Then enter it into the calculator. Unfortunately, driving is more complex than a calculator.
“Why is it now or never?” @-tom-562
It has become a well-known joke that people have always promised that it would work ‘this year’. However, now there is no more excuse. The cars are on the road, the videos are there, the best engineers have improved the software and the GPU clusters have been scaled up. So it has to work this year, otherwise it will probably not be technically possible and our reality will be too complex for computers.
“It’s impossible until it’s done” @Harm_H
Just like the plane, people would never believe it. The software is only available in America at the moment, it seems reasonable to me that if it succeeds in America (which I still doubt), the rest of the world can follow with training data.
[https://twitter.com/i/status/1785004398793380294]
“Why the focus on Tesla, and not Waymo or others?” @van der Berg
Other self-driving cars use technology that cannot be deployed globally. Limited to a certain route. Like a train. No other company currently does the way Tesla does: Strong hardware, 8 cameras, many training GPUs and much more video data available. What other company has that video data on a global scale?
“America absolutely cannot be compared to ‘the whole world’.” @eric.1
Fair point. It is indeed my assumption that if it technically works in America, the rest of the world will also succeed. Of course, this will take time and effort, but I have no doubt that with the video data from our countries this will work, and the AI will learn this.
“What is that red tint on the camera image?” @Harm_H
The red tint are infrared light filters. Filtering out IR will get you better saturation (color) and better black levels (darker shadows). But having the extra IR light data might be useful for AI, just not for us humans who only see from Red to Violet. The red tint is actually a more advanced lens coating. It’s used in many camera lenses and has nothing to due with tinting for color correction. The coatings help reduce flare and “ghosting”. It was introduced decades ago by Pentax who called it “Super Multicoating” and went through many iterations and was eventually named “Ghostless”. The red tint became more noticeable in the later versions. Pretty much all high end lens manufacturers followed suit. The original funding and use was via the Japanese military for improved surveillance optics.
The self-driving car – Robotaxi – will be unveiled on August 8, 2024 @BlueTooth76
Disclaimer:
In this article I try to provide as objective a picture as possible of Tesla Full-Self-Driving. By asking the right questions I can make a better assessment. I own shares and derivatives in Tesla. This is not financial advice.
ChatGPT:
At the current pace of technological progress, I could suggest a specific year like 2035 for the technical realization of fully autonomous driving based on cameras alone.
[Voor 255% gewijzigd door Harm_H op 30-04-2024 13:42]
Mercy to the Guilty is Cruelty to the Innocent.
Tags: Selfdriving cars poll Mobility
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