Tesla Full Autonomy Coming “Hell Of A Lot Faster” Than You Think, Next-Gen Autopilot Solution To Be Focused Around “Narrow AI” & Neural Maps
Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!
The recent Tesla Quarter 2 financials call yielded a lot of new information, including some interesting new comments about the company’s progress towards the achievement of fully autonomous driving.
Of particular note was a series of comments made by CEO Elon Musk concerning the use of “increasingly sophisticated neural maps” and “narrow AI” as the company’s means of achieving full autonomy relatively faster than is currently expected.
The exact comments made by Musk were: “Well, again, major product announcements are not — I shouldn’t do those on an earnings call, obviously. And all I’d say is that full autonomy is going to come a hell of a lot faster than anyone thinks it will. And I think what we’ve got under development is going to blow people’s minds. It blows my mind, so.”
And, when questioned about the obstacles in the way: “Well, full autonomy is really a software limitation. I mean the hardware is just to create full autonomy, so it’s really about developing advanced, narrow AI for the car to operate on. I want to emphasize narrow AI, it’s like not going to take over the world, but it needs to be really good at driving a car. So, increasingly sophisticated neural maps that can operate in reasonably sized computers in the car. That’s our focus. I’m very optimistic about this. It’s exciting, it blows me away, the progress we’re making. So I think if I’m this close to it and it’s blowing me away, it’s really going to blow other people away when they see it for the first time.”
What should someone make of that kind of relatively detail-free “sales talk?” As Musk has a pretty good track record to date on advancing technology faster than we think is possible, perhaps quite a lot.
How soon is “a hell of a lot faster?” In time for deployment in early Model 3s? That would be something, wouldn’t it?
If Tesla does manage to achieve a compelling, relatively reliable, fully autonomous driving technology years before any of the competitors, then it will likely lead to some big changes in the industry….
Just in case you haven’t read up on AI as much as cleantech, Teslarati provides some background here, noting that “narrow AI, also known as weak AI, defines non-sentient computer intelligence or AI that is focused on one narrow task. Weak AI is defined in contrast to either strong AI (a machine with consciousness, sentience and mind) or artificial general intelligence (a machine with the ability to apply intelligence to any problem, rather than just one specific problem). Wikipedia cites Apple’s Siri as an example of a narrow AI.”
Chip in a few dollars a month to help support independent cleantech coverage that helps to accelerate the cleantech revolution!
Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.
Sign up for our daily newsletter for 15 new cleantech stories a day. Or sign up for our weekly one if daily is too frequent.
CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy here.
CleanTechnica's Comment Policy
