Smart Enough Tesla Artificial Intelligence: Just Not Safe It Seems

November 3, 2021

Who would have thought developing smart software is harder than marketing it? We learn from Mashable, “Tesla Pulls Full Self-Driving Update Due to ‘Issues’.” It turns out the “issues” only come up if one needs to turn left at traffic lights. Otherwise, there is no problem. This version 10.3 that is being rolled back was released as a beta to a select few drivers. Reporter Stan Schroeder writes:

“The Full Self-Driving (FSD) is optional software that enables a number of autonomous driving features in Tesla cars (though it does not really enabled autonomous driving without driver supervision). The company released it as limited beta software to eligible U.S. drivers in October 2020, causing controversy as some experts feared that this puts other traffic participants at risk. On Saturday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on Twitter that there was an issue with ‘left turns at traffic lights’ in the 10.3 version of FSD. On Sunday, he followed up by saying that the company is temporarily rolling back FSD to version 10.2. ‘This is to be expected with beta software. It is impossible to test all hardware configs in all conditions with internal QA, hence public beta,’ he tweeted.”

Sure, testing such a lucrative product is totally worth risking a few accidents, right? The company is mum on what, specifically, goes wrong when the AI tries to turn left at a light. However, we learn:

“The Verge points out that some drivers who tested the FSD 10.3 update have seen phantom forward collision warning (FCW) alerts and a disappearing Autosteer option, among other issues.”

Will Tesla think twice before deploying another experiment on actual roads? We are not sure, but you may want to give any Teslas you see a wide berth, just in case.

Cynthia Murrell November 3 , 2021

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under AI, News

Comments

One Response to “Smart Enough Tesla Artificial Intelligence: Just Not Safe It Seems”

Joe on November 7th, 2021 2:48 pm

Also *zero* accidents and think about all the lives it will save!

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.