Quote:In a damning new video, YouTuber and former NASA engineer Mark Rober has perfectly demonstrated why Tesla relying entirely on visual data from a suite of cameras isn't such a good idea for driver-assistance tech.
The Elon Musk-led EV maker has given up entirely on LIDAR or radar sensors, which its many competitors have been using for object detection for years, with Musk once calling LIDAR "fricking stupid, expensive and unnecessary."
But by relying only on visual data, Tesla's Autopilot can easily be fooled by anything from heavy fog to a wall-scale painting of the road ahead, as Rober showed in his latest video.
Quote:The CEO of the company behind a driverless car model in China has spoken out after three people died in a crash involving their car.
Three girls lost their lives on March 29 after an SU7 electric car made by Xiaomi Automobile Corp crashed while operating on the Navigate on Autopilot (NOA) intelligent-assisted driving mode.
Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun posted to social media on Tuesday saying: "On behalf of Xiaomi, I extend my deepest condolences and sincere sympathies to the families."
Quote:General Motors had high hopes for its self-driving subsidiary, Cruise, with company leaders boasting that it would one day be a multibillion-dollar revenue stream. But it never made a penny. Instead, GM poured billions into it until the automaker finally cut the cord and rolled it into its engineering division this past week.
Experts identify a number of reasons why Cruise went from the promise of being a cash cow to its reality: a money pit.
Industry insiders say poor leadership, extensive capital investment, regulatory hurdles and consumer safety concerns were all likely factors that prompted GM to end its Cruise experiment. A pedestrian accident that prompted a nationwide recall of all Cruise vehicles, the resignations of top Cruise executives and regulatory concerns about an initial lack of transparency by Cruise certainly didn't help the company's public image. But the real reason to cut a potentially profitable business model, experts say, is the discovery of a problem to which you have no solution — or at least, aren't willing to shell out the cash to figure it out.
'Historically, we may regard materialism as a system of dogma set up to combat orthodox dogma...Accordingly we find that, as ancient orthodoxies disintegrate, materialism more and more gives way to scepticism.'
- Bertrand Russell
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(This post was last modified: 2025-04-08, 06:13 PM by Sci.)
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The following 1 user Likes Sci's post:1 user Likes Sci's post • Laird
I watched that video not long after it came out, and had been meaning to share it here, but it kept slipping my mind. Even aside from its implications, it's an interesting watch.
By Nick Robins-Early, Dara Kerr and Johana Bhuiyan for The Guardian on 29 June, 2025.
Quote:“Tesla continues to have this fetishistic view that it’s going to operate its system solely on cameras, despite every intelligent human being in this entire space saying that can’t be done,” said Brett Schreiber, an attorney who represents several alleged victims of Tesla’s autopilot failures.
“Everyone who has been following collision-avoidant technology since the 90s knows that the holy trinity is radar, lidar and cameras.”
Schreiber said he was not surprised to see the wobbling rollout of Tesla’s robotaxis in Austin.
“What you’re also going to see, which is the true tragedy of this thing, is people continuing to be injured and killed by this technology,” he said. “And that’s where it becomes less of a ‘Oh, isn’t that cute? The vehicle can’t make a left’ to now we’re actually at someone’s funeral because of the choices Tesla makes.”
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The following 1 user Likes Laird's post:1 user Likes Laird's post • Sci
Quote:The driverless cab, which is part of the automated transport arm of the tech firm Alphabet, attempted to change lanes but to no avail. Despite the abundance of signs, lights and cones, the Waymo went straight into the off-limits lane before taking off, per the passenger.
Quote:All the while, Slade said he was shouting, “Stop Waymo,” and wondering, “What the heck is going on?”
The automated car chase finally ended after the car departed the construction zone and took a freeway exit into a residential neighborhood.
Slade thanks his lucky stars there wasn’t a collision.
“In that moment it’s like, ‘Oh this technology is not ready,'” said the relieved rider, who Ubered home that evening. “If something else had gone wrong, someone in that road might have got hit. We might have crashed in the car.”
The car was filmed at a traffic stop in Inglewood blocking vehicles coming the other way, including a large articulated truck, ABC7 Los Angeles reports.
Quote:The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has opened an investigation into a crash that happened over the weekend in Texas, in which a driver slammed into a home in Katy, Texas, killing a resident.
The family of that victim, 76-year-old Martha Avila, has also filed a lawsuit against the driver, Michael Butler, and Tesla, alleging negligence.
'Historically, we may regard materialism as a system of dogma set up to combat orthodox dogma...Accordingly we find that, as ancient orthodoxies disintegrate, materialism more and more gives way to scepticism.'
- Bertrand Russell
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The following 2 users Like Sci's post:2 users Like Sci's post • Typoz, Valmar
I have come to loathe the deceptive language used around LLMs more and more ~ it's not "driverless" or "self-driving", it's basically a computer on wheels directed by an algorithm. But even the language is contradictory ~ if it's "self-driving", it's not "driverless". Where's the "self" in an algorithm, anyways?
“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”
~ Carl Jung
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The following 1 user Likes Valmar's post:1 user Likes Valmar's post • Sci
(2026-06-27, 05:59 AM)Valmar Wrote: I have come to loathe the deceptive language used around LLMs more and more ~ it's not "driverless" or "self-driving"
You do realise that LLMs aren't the technology powering self-driving cars, right?
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