That mentality is how we got here in the first place. A person should have a right to understand and repair/modify everything happening in devices they own. Because they don’t, we get stuck in the shitty situation where Elon Musk can unlock any Tesla he pleases and I can’t refuse to send my data to him. Or any other car manufacturer. Or tractor manufacturer. Or IoT manufacturer.

Yup, but that’s going to be true in every environment. Conflicting or noisy signals are always going to be there when you have multiple sensors. Theres going to be conflicts between pure camera systems - what if a camera sensor goes buggy and starts putting out data that says there’s always a thing to the left?

More systems giving data to establish ground truth is better. Dont Boeing yourself into thinking that one sensor is good enough - that’s how you kill people.

Edit: you also know how they’re doing the depth detection with cameras? With AI. You know, that thing that we keep having troubles hallucinating data with. So the data it’s getting from the depth subsystem isnt ground truth, it’s significantly worse and could be completely wrong.

1. FSD won’t solve the “the sensors don’t detect the wall” issue
2. That was not the point of the video.
3. It did stop, yes. That is a win. Didn’t kill the kid. The Tesla didn’t. It killed the kid. That’s a fail. What’s your point?
4. Why would you run a test multiple times with the high potential for damage to a very expensive vehicle when it’s not supposed to be published in a journal? You talk about cost vs features for manufacturers but don’t apply that same logic to Rober. Its also a one-off thing for Rober, so the math is better for him than the “cheaper, OK with kids dying” method of Musk.

I think you’re underestimating how many situations a LIDAR system will be better than an all camera system. Its also a tradeoff in human lives. I’d rather it be slightly more expensive up front and not have kids die than cheap and kill kids.

And yes. Self driving should be better than humans. Cause humans suck as drivers. We have two cameras in one location in the car. Self driving must be better and make up for the limitations of humans. Cameras dont make up for them and thus are a terrible replacement for humans.

The friendships with LIDAR suppliers aside (always a problem with these kinds of things),

1. the full self driving wouldn’t have saved the wall.
2. He’s telling a story. Disabling autopilot because he’s nervous is good storytelling because it’s science communication, not science. Its also cause he knows it’s super likely to fail.
3. He did show LIDAR having troubles - the heavy rain. Its just good enough to peak through it to stop the car before it hits the kid. it’s just that the self driving ALSO has trouble with this, and in fact worse troubles. LIDAR has trouble in places where the light is going to be blocked, a situation that a pure camera solution on a Tesla is not going to solve. Not unlikely to solve, NOT GOING to solve. In the real world, if light can’t penetrate through a thing twice, it’s unlikely to only do it once.
4. Its not supposed to be scientific, it’s science communication. Science is testing and retesting. He did one test and called it good.

Yup, LIDAR isn’t a silver bullet for every situation to do sensing. But it’s a damn sight better than pure cameras. And Musk would have known this if he was a good engineer. But hes not. Hes a spoiled, rich, apartheid-loving, racist asshole that thinks he’s a good programmer and engineer.