[rootlocus]

Both articles were written for a wide audience, which includes non technical people. Tesla's image and technology were bashed by someone claiming to know everything there is to know in the field. Non technical people see 'a limited demo on a known stretch of road' and assume Tesla engineers are idiots who wasted two years when they could have employed this awesome dude to think outside the box (that's always cool) and magically implement machine learning to solve all the problems.

'Learning by doing' as presented by Hotz is all fine and dandy when you drive on a motorway with a very limited set of road signs, no pedestrians, no traffic lights, etc. Hotz also assumes people learn to drive by watching others, which is only partially correct. Traffic rules are not learned from experience. Low light conditions, fog, handling the car on snow and wet surfaces and numerous other factors have to be trained (if they can be taught through training). And after all that work, the algorithm must be tested extensively before it can be shipped into production. The reporter omits asking any questions regarding these aspects.

I don't see the problem with Tesla highlighting these aspects to people who may be fooled into thinking one boy genius would solve all the problems with self driving cars in a couple of years, while they (Tesla) are wasting time.