[godelski]

As someone who's done a lot of computer vision, it is insane to skip it. And it's sad because what everyone missed from that viral Mark Rober video [0] was not the Looney Toons wall hit but the fucking kid in the smoke. Add all the cameras and AI you want, you ain't changing the laws of physics: visible light doesn't penetrate smoke. But radar does. Every (traditional) engineer knows that safe systems have redundancy. That safe systems have redundancy through differing modalities. Use cameras, but also use radar, lidar, and even millimeter wave. Using just cameras isn't just tying one hand behind your back, it's shooting yourself in the kneecap afterwards

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQJL3htsDyQ

[ta8645]

The argument is that humans manage the task without lidar, and automation doesn't have to be perfect it just has to be better than humans, to be a net positive. It seems to me, you might as well use lidar if it's cheap enough, but the argument that computer systems can outcompete human drivers, without using lidar, is at least reasonable, although not yet proven.

[rytis]

Extending this line of thought I wonder why tesla didn't make cars on two legs and insisted on using wheels?

(Just wanted to make sure - this is not a stab at you, I'm well aware that the original argument is from tesla)

[godelski]

We could extend the argument more. Why build a self driving vehicle at all? Build a humanoid robot to drive the car for you! The argument that computer systems can outcompete human drivers, without using lidar, is at least reasonable, although not yet proven

(I didn't just want to just make sure - this is a stab)

[godelski]

It's a dumb argument on multiple accounts. While it's a routine argument in software engineering it's an argument that often will get people fired and sued in testimonial.

First off, humans don't do it "just by vision". Sure, we don't have lidar but we have hearing, we have touch, we have tons of experience. We can create world models for Christ's sake and that means modeling physics. I'm sure you've seen papers that claim world models but I'm a ML researcher who also has a physics degree and I'm not afraid to tell you that's bullshit. It's as honest as Altman calling GPT PhD level intelligence. A PhD has very little to do with the ability to recall information.

Second off, it doesn't matter much how humans do it. It matters how the car can. Why limit yourself. There's tons of cars with radar and lidar. They're not more expensive and they can see an object in fog or poor light conditions. It can do something humans can't do! Why in the world would you decide not to do that. You can make an argument about price but that argument changes when that thing becomes cheaper. When that happens you're now just someone adding danger for no reason. You can't argue that only cameras will be safer. It categorically isn't. The physics is in your way.

But that is the argument made when Tesla first said they were going to use only cameras. Because everyone knew lidar would come down with scale and that's why many other manufacturers went in that direction. Which is mutually beneficial, so Tesla would benefit from joining.

  > can outcompete human drivers

Third, be careful with those claims. I'm more willing to believe 3rd party reports like from NHSTA than directly from Tesla [0]

[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevebanker/2025/02/11/tesla-ag...

[jandrese]

Human suck at driving. Almost 2 million people are killed by vehicles on roads every year. While not all of this is due to limitations of vision, it's certainly a contributing factor. Tesla tries to handwave this saying that their systems don't text and drive, get distracted, etc..., but this strikes me as more "AI will become superintelligent real soon now and render humans obsolete" when actual experience with AI is that it is dumb, forgetful, and prone to hallucinations.

[fragmede]

> visible light doesn't penetrate smoke. But radar does.

This is the key insight that frustrates me to no end about the whole thing. We have sensors that are better than human eyes, but we should limit ourselves to that because what? I don't use a calculator because it's slightly better at math, I use a calculator because it's fucking awesome at multiplying numbers in a way that my human brain can't remotely compete with. I want to be able to see where Elon is coming from but lately I can't.

[gmueckl]

Is Tesla getting into legal mess if they need to add sensors to make self driving work when they already sold that feature to car owners? Would that imply that they need to retrofit already sold cars with upgraded sensor packages?

[_ea1k]

Yes, and this is already turning out to be a problem for them. They've acknowledged that HW3 is not sufficient, and will be on the hook for those who bought the FSD package with those cars.

That isn't the end of the world, but it'd turn into a much bigger problem if they also had to add additional sensors and body modifications to support those sensors.

[idiotsecant]

Solution: just never implement FSD.

[_ea1k]

For a long time, I honestly thought their solution might be something like this. Either that or they could ship more advanced hardware for 3-5 years before updating the software, so that most vehicles would have the new hardware.

[Ancapistani]

My understanding is that they went the opposite direction - their cars used to have lidar, but don’t anymore.

Worse, they turned them off for the older vehicles with a software update.

[_ea1k]

They never had lidar. They had a very low resolution radar that was used for AP, and some pretty terrible ultrasonic sensors with massive blind spots.

[ndsipa_pomu]

IIRC Musk specifically said that the cars had sufficient hardware for FSD mode and advertised them as such. Tesla would have to retrofit the LIDAR sensor or pay money back to their customers if they rolled out FSD with LIDAR.