[MegaButts]

Disclaimer: I own no financial stake in Tesla, and while I love the goal of converting the world towards electric vehicles as whole I am not a fan of Tesla or Elon Musk.

There are people much more informed than myself that believe Shadow Mode isn't real, and that Tesla is outright lying about its existence.

https://twitter.com/greentheonly/status/1096322810694287361

[ajross]

That twitter thread (which is great, btw, everyone interested in this stuff should be following @greentheonly) doesn't remotely substantiate "Shadow Mode isn't real, and that Tesla is outright lying".

I don't know the extent of public statements about it, but comparing collected data like the stuff detailed there to driver behavior is certainly feasible and almost certainly being done. It's also likely true that the marketing department had their way with the announcement and made it sound more like an on-vehicle entity, but.. meh.

I just don't see how you got from that (again, really great) analysis to such an outraged conclusion.

[MegaButts]

I was stating his opinion, but I'll just quote him directly:

> We'll start with the bitter truth. The "shadow driver that just sits there in the computer comparing notes and sending discrepancies and interesting events to Tesla" is a myth. I used to think people just misunderstood Elon, but now I believe Tesla lies about it on purpose

I really did not mean for my comment to be inflammatory (hence the disclaimer and including a source), but considering how quickly it was downvoted I guess people do not approve.

[ricardobeat]

That quote has no substance still. In the thread he proves that he can inspect some data logging routines in his Tesla, how does that lead to “shadow mode does not exist” is a mystery.

It is an obvious thing to do and the ‘shadowing’ aspect would not be particularly challenging tech, why the disbelief?

[jklinger410]

The thread then goes on to not support this statement very well. Including a Tesla employee disagreeing with him directly.

[MegaButts]

If we're starting with the assumption that Tesla is lying about shadow mode, which is the entire premise of the claim, it would not be surprising for a Tesla employee to disagree. Obviously this is one of those you-can't-win scenarios, so I fully understand the Tesla employee could be acting in good faith, but that alone is no more evidence than the original hacker's claim that it doesn't exist considering the context.

I consider it a very interesting thread where someone went looking for proof of shadow mode and couldn't find it. Maybe his conclusion is a little extreme, and I guess people thought I was trying to derail a Tesla thread with FUD when really I was trying to share an interesting piece and someone else's better-informed opinion (which is why I worded it the way I did). I sort of consider it similar to saying "expert A believes that..." but I guess I communicated that poorly.

For what it's worth, I'm glad people are actually looking at the source and critiquing it.

[AnthonyMouse]

> I consider it a very interesting thread where someone went looking for proof of shadow mode and couldn't find it.

This seems to be assuming that it's something that exists entirely within the car, whereas the more sensible implementation is that the car uploads the sensor data and driver choices to a server in a datacenter somewhere and "shadow mode" happens there by running the autopilot code against the data.

That way you can continue to use the data even with newer or experimental versions of the autopilot code that didn't exist when some of the data was collected, compare different versions to see which ones do better and when, etc.

[RandallBrown]

How does that person know they are running the latest software with every feature turned on? Just because their car doesn't run in shadow mode doesn't seem to mean that no cars are.