[tronje]

Little bit of a tangent here, but I've always hated the fact that Tesla calls its assisted driving thingy "autopilot", which clearly implies complete autonomy, while still requiring a person to stay alert and intervene at a moment's notice.

What Google is trying to do is an actual autopilot, which is much more difficult, I suppose.

[skybrian]

The irony is that people think autopilots work this way but they don't. A simple one might just keep the plane flying in a straight line. So "autopilot" is a better metaphor for what Tesla is doing than what Google is doing.

When flying on instruments, air traffic control keeps planes apart. It's up to the pilot to program the autopilot correctly. (There are other collision avoidance systems but planes can fly on instruments without relying on them.)

But in the end they're not really comparable. Collision avoidance for airplanes is a different problem.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopilot

[afterburner]

They're toying with public perception and they know it.

[dmix]

The public's perception and 'common sense' understanding of technology is sadly very limited. So it wouldn't be difficult to 'toy' with it. But I don't think that's the point here.

As long as they are telling people they have to be alert while using autopilot I don't see a problem with it. The 'common sense' assumption then would be that autopilot = assisted driving rather being an autonomous self-driving car. Therefore Google et al shouldn't be using the term autopilot when they mean autonomous self-driving vehicle.

Eventually as this tech becomes wide-spread the distinction will become common knowledge to people.

This is mostly just semantics... context is everything. The important thing is preventing people from dying. Which means looking beyond marketing material to educate people.

[Cybiote]

Telling people to remain alert will do no good because it is simply asking for too much. A person is supposed to sit still, not driving but maintaining their full attention while being ready to automatically take over in an emergency situation. This will lead to the same failure of vigilance over time we see in guard duty and it really can't be helped. Task unrelated thoughts crop up more frequently for simpler tasks; with few stimuli, low surprises and little to attend to, the brain will begin with experience replay (this is actually more a machine learning term but it's appropriate here).

Driving already leads to mind wandering states; it is overwhelmingly likely that the passive aspect of autopilot will lead to mind wandering at even higher rates. Asking a less practiced driver to shift attention from internal to external states very quickly and then make complex judgments is simply not fair. A simple physics and statistics based model will be far more reliable. If it isn't, then Google's strategy of shooting straight to level 4 makes sense.

> The public's perception and 'common sense' understanding of technology is sadly very limited

Common sense is contextual and one of the more complicated aspects of cognition; it depends on the level of detail in the model being used to make inferences. A model's sophistication is dictated by internal preferences and goals. If most people's understanding of a technology is limited, then they're going to be doing what looks like averaging over distinct possibilities to a more informed model.

It doesn't help that if you know nothing about technical uses of the term autopilot but do know something about words (which will be the case for most) then in truth, it is the aviation industry that has misnomered.

[vacri]

It's a straight-up terrible misappropriation of the term, and it's clearly done for marketing purposes. Taking a word that the public thinks means one thing, then telling them that technically, they're wrong in what they think... that's just terrible.

It's not a matter of 'educating people', merely so they can use a popular term. It's just plain the wrong thing to do.

[drcross]

As much as it pains me, you are right. As a sailor I would never rely on my autopilot to get me anywhere except in a straight line. The term has a connotation of coolness because it directly references similar features in the airline and yachting industry, if you understand what it means but the unwashed masses don't comprehend this.

[dmix]

> As a sailor I would never rely on my autopilot to get me anywhere except in a straight line.

Doesn't this support my argument that this is the real meaning of the term? Which makes 'autopilot' distinct from 'self-driving' or 4th gen?

If you as a sailor can understand this then why can't drivers understand autopilot as a glorified cruise control?

[darawk]

They're telling people that essentially in the fine print. If they wanted to be transparent about it, they'd have called it something like 'Assisted driving', which unambiguously requires your attention. 'Autopilot' could mean assisted and it could mean full autonomy.

[enraged_camel]

>>They're telling people that essentially in the fine print.

The car issues obvious and repetitive warnings about what the technology is capable of and what the driver has to do, and turns off the Autopilot if the driver doesn't pay attention. I wouldn't call that "fine print".

[MichaelGG]

Good thing all that matters is the actual drivers. Tesla's system tells you (and now going to be clearer) to stay at the wheel and alert.

[vkou]

What's the point of using it, when I have to stay at the wheel and be alert, and be ready to steer at a moment's notice, while driving a dumb car?

Either I can fully rely on the system to get me from point A to point B, or I have to fully concentrate on driving. People aren't robots - they can't go from half-assed sorta-paying attention to a split-second life-saving reaction.

[drcross]

That's not a fair argument, 1. Cruise control makes cars easier to drive, adaptive cruise control even more so. 2. The end goal is full autonomy anyway; Tesla seems to be the only manufacturer to release incremental updates towards reaching that.

[vkou]

Cruise control is as far from autonomous driving as a piece of graph paper is from being a computer. Nobody has ever described it as a paradigm shift, and its invention did not prompt unsubstantiated speculation about how driverless taxicabs are literally two years away. And yes, from a safety perspective, Tesla's autopilot is no different from cruise control. Keep your hands on the wheel, your feet on the pedals, and constantly pay attention.

Why are you assuming that other manufacturers are not working towards full autonomy? I strongly doubt that everyone at Ford, GM, VW, Toyota, and Honda is asleep at the wheel... Especially when their luxury vehicles are all incrementally moving towards autonomy.

They certainly have a lot fewer PR pieces about how amazing their autonomous-but-not-really lane assist is.

[michaeldunworth]

I know what you mean, but I think I've got to disagree. The general sense of "Autopilot" implies the same level of sophistication that other vehicles have that use "Autopilot"... Boats use it for mid course, as do planes, now having cars using it. It won't park, and it's not going to get out the carpark and onto the road, but it'll take over once the course is set and there's less technicalities on direction.

I think it's a fair call using this term.

[robotresearcher]

There's a mismatch between the way professionals and the public use the term 'autopilot'. Pilots know it's an aid, not a turn-key solution. The public misses that important detail. Since Tesla must understand this effect, I resent them using this a marketing term since they can exploit the misunderstanding while not being technically wrong.

By the way, I'm pretty sure completely autonomous parallel parking is already available retail.

[hsod]

> The public misses that important detail.

I bet if I asked ten people in my office right now, less than half would say confidently that airplane autopilot is a turnkey solution.

[scrollaway]

So you're comfortable with "less than half" of tesla drivers leaving their autopilot on for everything?

"Less than half" is way too much.

[grahamburger]

If you can get more than 50% of people to understand what your thing does just from the name I'd say that pretty good, actually. Literally no one is turning on Tesla's auto pilot with no information on how it works beyond the name.

[zazen]

Not many people would literally declare "I confidently believe that airplane autopilot is a turnkey solution". But perhaps the point is that a lot of people would vaguely feel that way without exactly crystallizing it as a thought. And those vague feelings would be what the branding is seen to be playing off.

[smallnamespace]

But are your coworkers representative of the general public?

[icc97]

I fall into this trap so many times. You know in your logical brain that what you see isn't a good enough sample for any kind of statistical significance but at the same time you keep seeing things that every other part of your brain reckons is significant.

Like I see Belgian drivers driving terribly every day and I'm pretty certain that they're much worse than British and German drivers in every way. But the only statistical thing I can go back to is the number of deaths [1], which could include other aspects rather than just stupid driving.

My brain wants to shout out that their's clearly a problem, but that 'clearly' is only on the stretch of road I see. It could be that Belgian drivers are really good everywhere else in Belgium.

  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate

[gr3yh47]

> By the way, I'm pretty sure completely autonomous parallel parking is already available retail.

it is. Tesla was also beta-testing (last I saw a few months ago anyway) completely autonomous head-in/rear-in parking including finding the spot in a crowded parking lot.

[enraged_camel]

>>Since Tesla must understand this effect, I resent them using this a marketing term since they can exploit the misunderstanding while not being technically wrong.

I resent that you're accusing Tesla of intentionally misleading the public on what the feature does.

The car issues very obvious and repetitive warnings to the driver to explain the shortcomings of the technology and what the driver has to do to compensate. If the driver fails to act in accordance with the warnings, the car turns off the feature.

I mean, I dunno. To me, it looks as if Tesla has already gone above and beyond to communicate accurately, and the main reason they're pushing things even further is because of the intense media scrutiny on Tesla accidents (which the incumbent manufacturers probably love).

[robotresearcher]

> I resent that you're accusing Tesla of intentionally misleading the public on what the feature does.

Whether or not they intend to mislead, in practice the name is misleading, and I think it is a mistake they could easily fix.

For example 'copilot': a competent, capable partner, but the ultimate responsibility still rests with the pilot.

[haimez]

I can't agree more. For a company that is expected to understand the science behind the control systems they develop, they absolutely do not get a free pass on what would historically be called "human factors".

They are both fully aware of the importance of the human awareness implications not expecting continuous input from the human driver and choosing to encourage it.

Humans fundamentally can't stay attentive when their attention has no reactive feedback loop and they're only using the "stay attentive" (even though we know that it's essentially impossible at a psychological level) argument to shield themselves from legal liability.

It's both fair play because they knew in advance (and have since proven) that they can beat the odds against a human driver, and have simultaneously built in their legal defense to mitigate their downside. "We told you to pay attention. Your death is not on our hands."

[spullara]

Autopilot is accurate but most people don't know wat a plane's autopilot does.

[Xylakant]

A plane autopilot is supposed to be capable of flying the plane unattended and handing over control in an orderly, controlled fashion before critical problems arise [1]. A ships autopilot is expected to do the same. The same should be expected from a car autopilot. The fact that the environment is much much simpler for planes and ships doesn't change the fundamental expectation. As long as car autopilots are not capable of fulfilling the expectation that they can autonomously and safely control a car in a given real-worlds environment with other participant they should not be marketed as autopilots. They're driving assist programs.

[1] there are examples where this did not happen, but they're considered a failure.

[skybrian]

As far as I know there isn't any autopilot that can fly a plane unattended unless you are flying on instruments. Collisions are avoided by relying on the air traffic control system knowing where all the planes are scheduled to be. (Plus plenty of backup warning systems.)

You can still use an autopilot when flying visually but then it's up to you to watch for traffic. This is using it like cruise control.

[Xylakant]

> Collisions are avoided by relying on the air traffic control system knowing where all the planes are scheduled to be. (Plus plenty of backup warning systems.)

Yes, perfectly fine. If Teslas autopilot can rely on external traffic control to provide that information, call it autopilot. As long as it can't don't.

[assface]

> As far as I know there isn't any autopilot that can fly a plane unattended

CMU is working on this (seriously).

[danielsju6]

A plane's auto-pilot maintains bearing, altitude, and speed—seems pretty similar to "lane assist" / tesla-autopilot to me.

Some can land, in optimal conditions, but can't taxi.

[dogma1138]

Landings are also mostly automated just through a different system(s) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrument_landing_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoland

[grahamburger]

Have you tried Tesla's autopilot? It's not far off from your description.

[mortehu]

I haven't. As I understand it, it basically doesn't work at all in city traffic? Like going across Manhattan on 59th street?

[grahamburger]

That seems roughly equivalent to taxiing in a plane, something which isn't handled by a plane's autopilot. After using it, it feels very intuitive to understand what it can and can't handle, and it does degrade very gracefully (beeps at you and says 'take steering wheel to maintain speed' if it starts to get confused.) It works very much how I would have expected knowing nothing more than the name.

[kmonsen]

I can't detect red lights unless the car in front of you stopped for one. So not really.

[detaro]

But a technically very similar set of features results in a vastly different user experience. A driver with a Tesla autopilot has a way smaller margin of error and needs to react a lot quicker once the autopilot encounters a situation it can't handle. Flying planes generally have way larger error margins, and a lot of effort goes into making sure they are nicely separated from traffic and obstacles (and when they come close, it's known early and the pilots can get ready to take over). Until we have highways with similar traffic control cars can't match that without a lot more intelligence.

[kalleboo]

For one thing a plane's autopilot doesn't automatically avoid obstacles.

[jedmeyers]

There are other systems on the plane (TCAS, ATC communications) that provide information about conflicting traffic. Does Tesla provide those? Will there be enough time to react if it did?

[FabHK]

There are far fewer obstacles in the air than on the ground.

If you put a plane on autopilot and then go read a book for some hours, most likely nothing bad is going to happen (particularly on IFR, but even on VFR, realistically).

Tesla's autopilot is more advanced than aircraft autopilots, I'd say, yet more dangerous (for now) because of all these darned cars and trucks and pedestrians.

In that sense, "Autopilot" was an unfortunate and overly ambitious name.

[fastball]

Nope.

Autopilot (before Tesla) is a feature on modern aircraft. If you'll notice, aircraft always have an attentive person behind the wheel (if it's a commercial flight, two).

A plane can fly itself under normal conditions (highways for Tesla) and many can land themselves now (Model S can park / summon feature).

Autopilot couldn't be more apt.

[throwaway729]

The environments, errorr tolerances, and required sensing capabilities are so vastly different that no comparison is apt.

[jedmeyers]

TCAS Resolution Advisory will give an attentive pilot a good 5 seconds to react in the worst case. How much time does a Tesla 'pilot' have in case of "oh, crap, there is a truck stopped 20 feet in front of you that I failed to detect at highway speed. Now you drive!"?

[smileysteve]

> TCAS Resolution Advisory will give an attentive pilot a good 5 seconds

> "oh, crap, there is a truck stopped 20 feet in front of you that I failed to detect at highway speed.

To appreciate your differences in measurement. 5 seconds in a plane is something about a mile away. A high performance car can still stop from 60-0 at 110ft; which is about 1 second. In context of time; it takes at least .7 second for the human to respond.

(The car or terrain monitoring autopilot can react in <.1 s; which means if the car sees the obstacle at 110 feet away it can stop in time, while, if a car pulls out in the highway in front of a human it would take closer to 200ft to stop.)

[jedmeyers]

> The car or terrain monitoring autopilot can react in <.1 s; which means if the car sees the obstacle at 110 feet away it can stop in time

What happens if the driver expects the car to react upon seeing the obstacle but it fails to do so? Will the driver have enough of the remaining time to react?

[smileysteve]

Nope. And in the case of terrain following airplane algorithms, it's practically impossible to maintain minimum clearance AND allow for any expectation of pilot override.

The >=.7 second human reaction time (with a planned/known reaction such as brakes or jerking steering wheel) is the very reason why Autopilots are safer.

[throwaway729]

The differences between TCAS and Tesla are even more extreme.

> TCAS Resolution Advisory will give an attentive pilot a good 5 seconds to react in the worst case

5 seconds in order to avoid violating intruder's airspace, not to avoid actually hitting the intruder. AFAIK there's even then some additional buffer zone.

Also, reading the list of actual TCAS advisories sheds additional light of the substantial differences:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_collision_avoidance_sy...

Differences from Tesla / cars:

1. Almost all advisories actually tell the pilot what the problem is and what to do, not just that there's a problem. Tesla Autopilot basically has one advisory: "TA".

2. Almost all of the advisories resolve collisions by making one-dimensional maneuvers. Having an extra dimension allows you to substantially simplify the collision avoidance problem.

3. It's a safe bet (although not assumed) that both planes involved in a TCAS event are receiving advisories and cooperating with ground ATC.

[ProAm]

All marketing is a thinly veiled lie.

[Dylan16807]

Enormous amounts of money are spent on product awareness, with no deception at all.

[nothis]

I think Tesla is genuinely regretting that decision already.

[EpicEng]

I think the problem is more to do with your erroneous definition of 'autopilot'