Photo: Mark Christian on Facebook
Christmas is less than a week away so it feels like the right time to pop some corn, snuggle under a warm blanket, and fire up Netflix as you go to the "Christmas movies" section to watch one of those films you wouldn't even go near during any other period of the year.
We could turn this into a group therapy where everyone confesses their guilty pleasure, but we won't do that. Instead, we'll just mention one: "Deck the Halls." The 2006 comedy may not go down as one of the classics - or, indeed, not even as a good movie - but its storyline makes sure it will get mentioned every time there's talk of decorating your house for the winter.
You probably never thought the subject would come up on a website dealing (mostly) with automotive matters, but then again, you probably didn't think cars would be relying solely on visualization to make their way around a town either. And when the two combine, we get something like this picture (make sure you click on it to get the full idea) posted on the "Tesla Model 3" Facebook group by a user called Mark Christian.
They say an image is worth a thousand words and, at least in this case, I'd have to agree. You can spend hours talking about Tesla's FSD, the technology behind it as well as the moral dilemmas it raises or write endless essays debating whether going down the "vision only" path is the right thing but, at the end of the day, neither would carry the same impact as this single image.
People argue for the use of radars, LiDARs, and street mapping for a reason, and that reason is called "redundancy". If an AI has multiple types of sensors telling it the thing in front is a street, it'll drive on it based on the complete congruence of the information received; if only one of the three does, however, depending on how it's been programmed, it will have to make a decision. It'll either continue driving, ask the driver to take over, or stop.
In Tesla's case, the only sensor feeding in information is the camera system. That puts the programming at an immense handicap because, no matter how well it is executed, it can only make decisions based on the information decrypted by the AI. With just the one source, it needs to trust it blindly and, as this picture clearly shows, that can lead it to all sorts of troubles.
Here is another parallel I never thought I would make: autonomous driving is a bit like journalism. Just like an editor needs either one rock-solid or several credible sources to have a clear idea about what's going on and inform the public, so does an autonomous vehicle's AI. Sadly, when it comes to self-driving, there is no such thing as a rock-solid source - not yet anyway - hence the need for redundancy.
If like me you're looking at this picture slightly worried about what might happen once you too will decorate your house, I think I might have a little piece of advice from you. The safest thing you can do at this point is to forget about using lights that are any other color than red. Make your house look redder than Rudolph's nose and you should be able to get through the holidays without having a Tesla parking in your living room.
Whatever the FSD's brain will make of the sea of red, it will surely not be "go forward." I mean, you can't really be completely sure about anything when it comes to it, but the chances are low. Alternatively, you could simply invest in a handful of stop signs and place them at every corner of your property. What, they are red and white after all, aren't they?
You probably never thought the subject would come up on a website dealing (mostly) with automotive matters, but then again, you probably didn't think cars would be relying solely on visualization to make their way around a town either. And when the two combine, we get something like this picture (make sure you click on it to get the full idea) posted on the "Tesla Model 3" Facebook group by a user called Mark Christian.
They say an image is worth a thousand words and, at least in this case, I'd have to agree. You can spend hours talking about Tesla's FSD, the technology behind it as well as the moral dilemmas it raises or write endless essays debating whether going down the "vision only" path is the right thing but, at the end of the day, neither would carry the same impact as this single image.
People argue for the use of radars, LiDARs, and street mapping for a reason, and that reason is called "redundancy". If an AI has multiple types of sensors telling it the thing in front is a street, it'll drive on it based on the complete congruence of the information received; if only one of the three does, however, depending on how it's been programmed, it will have to make a decision. It'll either continue driving, ask the driver to take over, or stop.
In Tesla's case, the only sensor feeding in information is the camera system. That puts the programming at an immense handicap because, no matter how well it is executed, it can only make decisions based on the information decrypted by the AI. With just the one source, it needs to trust it blindly and, as this picture clearly shows, that can lead it to all sorts of troubles.
Here is another parallel I never thought I would make: autonomous driving is a bit like journalism. Just like an editor needs either one rock-solid or several credible sources to have a clear idea about what's going on and inform the public, so does an autonomous vehicle's AI. Sadly, when it comes to self-driving, there is no such thing as a rock-solid source - not yet anyway - hence the need for redundancy.
If like me you're looking at this picture slightly worried about what might happen once you too will decorate your house, I think I might have a little piece of advice from you. The safest thing you can do at this point is to forget about using lights that are any other color than red. Make your house look redder than Rudolph's nose and you should be able to get through the holidays without having a Tesla parking in your living room.
Whatever the FSD's brain will make of the sea of red, it will surely not be "go forward." I mean, you can't really be completely sure about anything when it comes to it, but the chances are low. Alternatively, you could simply invest in a handful of stop signs and place them at every corner of your property. What, they are red and white after all, aren't they?
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