“There’s no line of code that says ‘slow down for speed bumps.’ So it’s doing this based entirely on video training.”
Elon Musk
A New Kind of AI
On Friday, Elon Musk demoed FSD 12, Tesla’s latest self driving software. Watching the demo is at turns nervewracking and exhilarating.
Tesla’s latest self-driving system doesn’t work from a list of traffic laws. Instead, it digests countless hours of video of humans driving, learning bit by bit.
The system, which has yet to be released, is unlike anything on the road today.
Let’s take a ride along with Elon and see it in action!
Rolling With Elon
As we pulled out, my breathing sped up and my heart began to race. Even as a viewer, this loss of control is scary at first.
The car happens upon a construction site almost right away. Surely this will confuse the FSD, right?
Wrong. Autopilot navigates it smoothly and confidently, despite never having seen that construction site before.
As we glide down the verdant Palo Alto streets, we slow for a speed bump. The car handles it with aplomb, then glides back to normal speed.
Up one street and down another, our Tesla is steady and calm. The nearly silent car whirs about autonomously as we listen to classical music.
How different is this from the stinky, belching gasoline cars driven by angry drivers that we’ve known all our lives? We’re seeing the future, and I love it.
But There Are Still a Few Kinks…
Elon does have to intervene once, about 20 minutes into the video. Autopilot tries to advance into an intersection as oncoming traffic is turning left.
Elon is able to quickly stop it long before there’s any danger. But quirks like this is why FSD 12 isn’t publicly available yet.
“…the solution is essentially to feed the network a bunch more video of traffic lights,” Elon muses.
How FSD 12 Changes Everything
Before FSD 12, Tesla autopilot used countless C++ rules to determine its behavior. Now, all those rules are gone.
In their place: a huge dataset of actual driving. FSD watches the videos at warp speed and incorporates their lessons.
ChatGPT already works this way. It produces a blog post not by following a bunch of rules, but by reading other blogs and producing something similar.
This works great in the world of bits. Why not try it in the world of atoms?
The Future of Robotics
A Tesla equipped with FSD is essentially a robot. I’m itching to see the lessons of FSD 12 applied to other branches of robotics.
Imagine a robot that can lay brick because it has watched millions of hours of video of humans laying brick. That could drastically cut the cost and time it takes to build a house.
YouTube might become the world’s most valuable dataset. It contains countless hours of, well, anyone doing anything.
Robots could learn to paint houses, assemble iPhones, or play the violin.
Is it Safe?
Autopilot performed flawlessly for all but a few seconds of the 50 minute demo. But sometimes, it’s those few seconds that count.
Aided by the classical music, the drive that scared me at first soon began to lull me to sleep. This will probably happen to many human drivers.
When it does, will they be quick enough to stop Autopilot before it makes a huge mistake?
I’m glad Tesla is waiting to release this until they test it further. An autopilot that works most of the time may be worse than no autopilot at all.
But let’s not forget what rotten drivers humans are. I recently saw a man cruising down the street in a Bentley SUV, vacuuming his dashboard with a tiny vacuum!
Was his full attention on the road? I think not.
It won’t be hard for Autopilot to beat the average distracted, excitable human driver. As a lifelong pedestrian, I look forward to a future with cars driven by robots immune to boredom, impatience or intoxication.
Wrap-Up
What ChatGPT did for bits, Autopilot may do for the real world. Flexible AI systems that learn from experience can transform our lives.
Let the robots take over mundane tasks like driving. We’ll have more time to unleash our human creativity.
Or maybe just vacuum our dashboards.
What do you think of Elon’s demo? Leave a comment and let us know!
If you enjoyed this post, subscribe for more like this!
More on tech:
They Invented the iPad in 1989 — And Lost it All
From AI to Satellites, US Dominates All Competition
Google Search AI vs. GPT-4: Smackdown!
Save Money on Stuff I Use:
This platform lets me diversify my real estate investments so I’m not too exposed to any one market. I’ve invested since 2018 with great returns.
More on Fundrise in this post.
If you decide to invest in Fundrise, you can use this link to get $100 in free bonus shares!
I’ve used Misfits for years, and it never disappoints! Every fruit and vegetable is organic, super fresh, and packed with flavor!
I wrote a detailed review of Misfits here.
Use this link to sign up and you’ll save $15 on your first order.
Tremendous 
Leave a comment