NHTSA Investigates Tesla's Driving Automation Systems / Tesla Livestreams AI AUTONOMY DAY Tomorrow

Please note: There's an earlier post on this blog about Elon Musk's assertions about Artificial Intelligence (AI) if readers would like get some more information ahead of this online piece

Forbes | 2021-08-18

Editors' Pick|Aug 18, 2021,02:53pm EDT|

Elon Musk’s Plan To Tout Tesla AI Comes As Tougher Scrutiny Of The Company Looms

"The timing of Elon Musk’s plan to promote gains Tesla is making in artificial intelligence and as a leader in the technology this week has grown somewhat awkward as the billionaire CEO’s event will take place amid signs that tougher U.S. government scrutiny may be on the way. 

Tesla is scheduled to livestream its “AI Day” event on Aug. 19, likely starting at 5 p.m. Eastern time.

 

As was the case for 2020’s “Battery Day” presentation and 2019’s “Autonomy Day,” analysts and investors have been invited to join though, so far, news outlets have not been asked to participate. 

The company’s tech showcase comes days after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened up its biggest investigation to date of Tesla’s Autopilot feature, centered around 11 crashes with emergency vehicles that resulted in numerous injuries and at least one fatality. In each of the collisions, either Autopilot or Tesla’s Traffic Aware Cruise Control were found to be in use.

Then on Aug. 18 two U.S. Senate Democrats, Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, asked the Federal Trade Commission to probe Tesla’s use of the terms Autopilot and Full Self Driving for its partially automated technology.

 

"Tesla’s marketing has repeatedly overstated the capabilities of its vehicles, and these statements increasingly pose a threat to motorists and other users of the road,” the senators said in a letter to FTC Chair Lina Khan. “Accordingly, we urge you to open an investigation into potentially deceptive and unfair practices in Tesla’s advertising and marketing of its driving automation systems and take appropriate enforcement action to ensure the safety of all drivers on the road.”

Tesla, which no longer has a PR team, didn’t respond to a request for comment, nor has it responded on its website or social media channels. . .

Tesla fan site Electrek, which apparently obtained an AI Day invitation, provided a few details about what to expect. “This invite-only event will feature a keynote by Elon, hardware and software demos from Tesla engineers, test rides in Model S Plaid, and more,” it said, citing the invitation. “Attendees will be among the first to see our latest developments in supercomputing and neural network training. They will also get an inside look at what’s next for AI at Tesla beyond our vehicle fleet.” 

 

Though news of the NHTSA investigation appeared to hammer Tesla shares earlier this week, the stock rose Wednesday, closing up 3.5% at $688.99 in Nasdaq trading. It’s down 2.4% so far this year. 

. . .Safety advocates have raised concerns that the Autopilot name suggests the driver-assistance feature can lead many users to place too much confidence in it. That’s been borne out by numerous Tesla owners posting videos over the years treating Autopilot as an autonomous system, with some sleeping at the wheel or even sitting in the back seat while traveling down the highway. Autopilot is an 2 Advanced Driver Assistance System, or ADAS, and the company warns users that they are to remain ready to take control of the vehicle at all times. they are to remain ready to take control of the vehicle at all times. 

A German court determined in 2020 that calling the system Autopilot was misleading and banned Tesla from using both that term and Full Self Driving for vehicles sold in that market.

“There are no fully autonomous vehicles currently available on the market,” Markey and Blumenthal said in their letter. “Understanding these limitations is essential, for when drivers’ expectations exceed their vehicle’s capabilities, serious and fatal accidents can and do result.” 

___________________________________________________________________________

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Send me a secure tip. 

Alan Ohnsman

I track technology-driven changes that reshape how we get around (from Los Angeles, America's sunny capital of congestion).

==================================================================

RELATED CONTENT > https://www.tesla.com/autopilot 

What to expect from Tesla’s AI day event

Recruitment, robots, and really powerful supercomputers

By Andrew J. Hawkins@andyjayhawk Aug 18, 2021, 10:00am EDT

 

. . .

A lot has happened between the 2019 event and now. Last month, Tesla began shipping over-the-air software updates for FSD beta v9, its long-awaited, definitely not autonomous, but certainly advanced driver assist system. That means that Tesla owners who have purchased the FSD option (which now costs $10,000) would finally be able to use many of Autopilot’s advanced driver-assist features on local, non-highway streets, including Navigate on Autopilot, Auto Lane Change, AutoPark, Summon, and Traffic Light and Stop Control.

The update doesn’t make Tesla’s cars fully autonomous

The update doesn’t make Tesla’s cars fully autonomous, nor will it launch “a million self-driving cars” on the road, as Musk predicted. Tesla owners who have Full Self-Driving still need to pay attention to the road and keep their hands on the steering wheel. Some don’t, which can have tragic consequences. . . .

Loved by fans, loathed by safety advocates, the FSD software has gotten Tesla in a lot of hot water recently. In recently publicized emails between Tesla and California’s Department of Motor Vehicles, the company’s director of Autopilot software made it clear that Musk’s comments (including his tweets) do not reflect the reality of what Tesla’s vehicles can actually do. And now Autopilot is under investigation by federal regulators who want to know why Teslas with Autopilot keep crashing into emergency vehicles.

Aside from the rollout of FSD beta v9, Tesla has also had to adjust to the global chip shortage. In a recent earnings call, Musk said that the company’s engineers had to rewrite some of their software in order to accommodate alternate computer chips. He also said that Tesla’s future growth will depend on a swift resolution to the global semiconductor shortage.

Tesla relies on chips to power everything from its airbags to the modules that control the vehicles’ seatbelts. It’s not clear whether the FSD chips, which are produced by Samsung, are being impacted by the shortage. Musk and his cohort may provide some insight into that during this week’s event.

Credit: Tesla

Dojo

Outside the car, Tesla uses a powerful supercomputer to train the AI software that then gets fed to its customers via over-the-air software updates. In 2019, Musk teased this “super powerful training computer,” which he referred to as “Dojo.”

“Tesla is developing a [neural net] training computer called Dojo to process truly vast amounts of video data,” he later tweeted. “It’s a beast!”

He also hinted at Dojo’s computing power, claiming it was capable of an exaFLOP, or one quintillion (​​1018) floating-point operations per second. That is an incredible amount of power. . ."