[ClumsyPilot]

> hink the Musk/Karpathy-style argument for vision-only self-driving is quite strong

> humans do driving with ~only vision -> roads are therefore universally designed and built to be driven via by vision -> computers should do driving with only vision

What is 'should', is it a moral imperative? Is it a social obligation? Who made this argument, a catholic priest?

Where is consideration of this argument from an engineering perspectove - analysis of advantages disadvantages, where consideration of cost benefit? Where is assesment that, for example, 50% of human crashes are due to poor visibility or spatial awareness and comparison of how well computer handles them?

If I posted this vacuous, unsupported argument here, I would be laughed at, and rightly so.

But if Elon announces something, there is always 10% of the population willing to defend it, no matter how dumb it is.

[snovv_crash]

I don't get it. Do you have an experience in designing navigation systems? In Stereo vision systems? In computer vision? Or is this just a "Musk bad therefore idea he has is bad" counterreaction to what he said?

Karpathy is one of the world's top self driving engineers. This isn't a vacuous argument. People are driving with just vision every single day. The part we're missing is the ChatGPT moment on the computational side.

[ClumsyPilot]

I have produced 3D maps with lidars, drone mounted near-infrared cameras and with thermal infrared cameras.

You can tell apart grass and green carpet with a simple formula. You can coint trees without machine learning. Yoi can detect which plants are whilting, land that is wet from land that is dry. All of that is easy with the right sensors - becauae they have more data than an RGB camera can produce.

I know people that work with mutispectral imagery, they can tell you that pixel N45 has a spesific substance - concrete, steel or wood - jusy from spectra alone. Thye dont need to know what pixels around it are showing, or classify objects.

[snovv_crash]

Agreed, I have a similar background with both LiDAR and vision for 3d reconstruction and mapping systems, plus I've designed some fairly impactful commercial multispectral software which is now widely used in the agricultural space. And vision can give you perfectly sufficient data to build world models and to localise yourself rapidly and robustly. What I believe is missing on the Tesla side is primarily on the navigation and 'social interaction' component of driving.

It's not like Waymo dropped a LiDAR onto the roofs of their vehicles and started driving unsupervised in traffic the next day. Nor Cruise, nor Uber. The sensing is just a small part of the whole system.

[ctchocula]

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it" seems apt here regarding both Karpathy and Elon. You can call me skeptical, but when there are millions and billions of dollars on the line for the two respectively, I don't know if I believe in Karpathy's expertise (which is in AI, not self-driving per se) and personal integrity sufficiently to believe he is doing what he considers to be the right thing vs. putting profit ahead of human lives.

[snovv_crash]

Do you have any expertise on self driving, remote sensing, computer vision, navigation systems or anything else on this topic? Do you have a Tesla with the FSD package and participate in the beta program?

From what I've heard firsthand Autopilot still steadily improves, irrespective of what people say about their favourite sensing modalities...