[ModernMech]

In 2016 a Tesla on autopilot mode decapitated a man because of deficiencies in its sensor stack. Rather than recalling and fixing the deficiency, Musk doubled down and refused to admit his mistake. Then, predictably, a second person got decapitated in the same exact manner. The issue still has not been fixed to this day.

Are these the decisions of a good engineer and a moral person? Or someone who would rather be right than prevent deaths?

[mlindner]

> Rather than recalling and fixing the deficiency, Musk doubled down and refused to admit his mistake.

Except they did fix the deficiency and he never "doubled down" on the events that happened. He did remind people to pay attention while driving reminding people that it was beta software. Your recollection of events seems to be mistaken. Additionally, "Recalls" are a legacy regulatory requirement based around the era that required you to take a vehicle into a service station to have something replaced or serviced. They're not required for a software update to fix some problem.

> Then, predictably, a second person got decapitated in the same exact manner.

You're going to have to source that as I'm not aware of any second instance of the exact same thing happening.

> Are these the decisions of a good engineer and a moral person? Or someone who would rather be right than prevent deaths?

They're the decisions of a person who's working toward the long term and thinks that saving lives in aggregate is a good thing to do even if in the process very few deaths of a different type are caused. Yes they're moral. By some accounts he's saved several thousand lives already in prevented car accidents based on the lower accident rate of vehicles running on autopilot.

[ModernMech]

Here you go: https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/17/18629214/tesla-autopilot-...

You could have saved yourself the trouble and done a Google search before writing all of that.

Obviously they didn’t fix the problem because it happened again. The problem wasn’t software it was hardware. Musk’s excuse was PEBCAW (problem exists between keyboard and wheel), but in reality it was his marketing and the failure of his products to live up to his own misleading hype.

And Musk did absolutely double down because he seems to have something to prove by eschewing LiDAR. The doubling down comes from the fact that the Model 3 could have corrected these issues but it didn’t. It made them worse by removing certain sensors. And again, the issue still isn’t fixed.

> They're the decisions of a person who's working toward the long term and thinks that saving lives in aggregate is a good thing to do even if in the process very few deaths of a different type are caused. Yes they're moral.

There are many such people working toward that goal, and those who are doing so earnestly aim to create a culture of safety. Musk is not one of these people. He has chosen to unleash beta quality software/machines with deficient sensor stacks onto an unsuspecting public, a public that has not agreed to his beta test. These cars are operating in stealth mode on public streets, when they should be clearly marked with flashing lights indicating that they are autonomous vehicles, as had been established as a common safety practice among autonomous car researchers for over a decade.

Musk threw out all of this and has caused literal deaths as a result. That’s on him. He ignores industry best practices for bragging rights, and he does so with no technical or engineering basis. There’s no ethical basis for it either, including your utilitarian “ends justify the means” take, because it’s quite clear at this point he will never even get to that end. He has boxed himself into a local maxima and his pride is preventing any advancement toward the safe future you imagine. Instead he’s stuck with machines that decapitated multiple people, and he can’t design one that won’t.

Musk and Tesla have been a giant step backwards for robot ethics in the industry. The whole world would be safer if he never even got the idea of autonomous cars in his brain. We were doing just fine developing safe autonomous vehicles without him. That better safer future you imagine will happen in spite of Musk, not because of him.