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It’s not even been a week since Tesla hosted its AI Day, a live-streamed event full of technical jargon meant to attract the best AI and vision engineers to come work for Tesla and help the company achieve autonomous greatness, and already CEO Elon Musk comes up with some hot spots on Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology.
In a tweet posted on Tuesday, Musk said, “FSD Beta 9.2 is actually not a good imo, but the Autopilot / AI team is mobilizing to improve as quickly as possible. We’re trying to have a single tech stack for highways and city streets, but it requires a huge [neural network] reconversion. “
This is an important point. Many others in the Autonomous Space reflected this sentiment. Don Burnette, co-founder and CEO of Kodiak Robotics, says his business is focused exclusively on trucking for now because it’s a much easier problem to solve. In a recent Extra Crunch interview, Burnette said:
One of the unique aspects of our technology is that it is highly personalized for a specific purpose. We don’t have this constant requirement to maintain very high road performance for trucks while still maintaining very high performance for dense urban passenger cars, all in the same stack and system. Theoretically, it is certainly possible to create a generic solution for all driving under all conditions and in all form factors, but it is certainly a much more difficult problem.
Given that Tesla only uses optical cameras, despising lidar and radar, the “massive” training on neural networks as a requirement is by no means an understatement.
Despite the sympathy we all feel for the AI and vision team who can no doubt feel a little touched by Musk’s tweet, this is a singular moment of clarity and honesty for Musk. Usually we have to filter Tesla’s news about its range with a fine-tuned BS meter, which beeps wild with every mention of its “Full Self-Driving” technology. Which, for the record, is not at all autonomous; it is simply advanced driving assistance that could, we grant, lay the foundations for better range in the future.
Musk followed up on the tweet by saying he had just driven the FSD Beta 9.3 from Pasadena to LAX, a ride that was “much improved!” Do we buy it? Musk is still the optimist. Earlier this month, Musk said Tesla would release new versions of its FSD every two weeks at midnight California time. Then he promised the 9.2 beta would be “tight,” saying the radar is holding the company back and now that this is a fully accepted pure vision, progress will go much faster.
Maybe Musk is just trying to steer away from the wave of bad press about the FSD system. Last week, U.S. auto regulators opened a preliminary investigation into Tesla’s autopilot, citing 11 incidents in which vehicles crashed into parked first responder vehicles. Why first responder vehicles in particular, we do not know. But according to investigative documents posted on the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration website, most incidents took place after dark. Poor night vision is certainly a thing with many human drivers, but these kinds of incidents just won’t happen in the world of autonomous driving.
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