What Riding in a Self-Driving Tesla Tells Us About the Future of Autonomy By Cade Metz 1. When we decided it was time for lunch after our day long tour of Jacksonville, Florida, Chuck Cook tapped the digital display on the dashboard of his self-driving Tesla Model Y and told the car to drive us to the Bearded Pig, a barbecue joint on the other side of town. 2. "I don't know how it's going to do. But I think it's going to do pretty good," he said with the folksy, infectious enthusiasm. 3. For more than two years, Tesla has been testg a technology it calls Full Self-Driving with Cook, a 53-year-old airline pilot and amateur beekeeper, and a limited number of car owners across the country. 4. Tesla has long offered a driver-assistance system called Autopilot, but Full Self-Driving is something different. It is an effort to extend this kind of technology beyond highways and onto city streets. Elon Musk, the company's CEO, said the system would be available in more than 1 million cars by the end of 2022. Journey to the Bearded Pig 5. On the way to lunch, after navigating heavy traffic on a four-lane road, taking an unexpected turn and quickly remapping its route to the restaurant, the car took a right turn onto a short street beside a small motel. But as the Tesla struggled to make sense of its environment, veering from ASUS 13 14 15 f6 f7 f8 / f9 f10 112 zone in the median. Facing the Unexpected to Cook and he car's display now showed a blue overlay that indicated what was a safe 17. On another test drive, Cook took the car to a small neighborhood park near the river, the skies were overcast and the streets were wet from summer rain. Guided by Tesla's self-driving technology, the car drove along the river and over a bridge before reaching an intersection lined with trees. Then it turned left toward an unmarked road that ran between several giant oaks draped in Spanish moss. As the car approached the shadows beneath this mossy canopy, it suddenly changed course, turned sharply right and headed the wrong way down a one-way street. 18. The moment highlighted the difference between Tesla's self-driving technology and "robotaxi" services being developed by companies like Waymo, owned by Google's parent company, and Cruise, backed by General Motors. The robotaxi companies are trying to reduce these unexpected moments by tightly controlling where and how a car can drive. Using laser sensors called lidar, they build 3D digital maps of individual neighborhoods that give cars a fine-grained understanding of their environment. Then they spend months or even years testing cars in these contained areas. 19. Tesla is not operating in this way. Lidar sensors are too expensive for most consumer vehicles. This means that Tesla cars face the unexpected more often than Waymo or Cruise cars -and that testers like Cook must keep their hands on the wheel at all times. 20. Recently, Cook and his car revisited a few of the scenarios encountered in Jacksonville. Sometimes, the car performed perfectly. Sometimes, it did not. It drove past the motel on the way to the Bearded Pig six times, and though it remained on the road three times, it mistakenly drove into the parking lot three times as well. Cook admits that there is improvement, but far more progress is needed. 21. Since releasing the new beta, Musk has softened his claims about the immediate future of the technology. He now says that the technology will not be widely available until 2023. 22. "It is inevitable," said Jake Fisher, senior director of Consumer Reports' Auto Test Center, who has used the technology. "The problem comes as this system gets better and people get complacent. It will still do the unexpected." ASUS riting TWO distinct paraphrased ideas from the reading cited in APA format. 1. Tesla is beta testing its self-driving car using a select group of people in several different neighborhoods in the country. As a results, problems and unexpected events are very public. Metz (2022) asserts that Tesla's competitors are using a better approach to development of self-driving cars by restricting where and how their cars can go. A friend just phoned you stating that he is considering investing in Tesla. How would you advise your friend having recently read this article by Metz? Prepare a Preliminary Essay stating your position and defending your position.. 2. Metz (2022) seems to indicate, by providing examples of unexpected glitches caused by technology as noted by one of Tesla's beta testers (Chuck Cook), that reliable self- driving cars won't be realized until far into the future. Does Metz really understand technology development? Prepare a Preliminary Essay stating your position and defending your position. 3. Tesla's Autopilot (driver-assistance system) is in the beta test phase of development and is being tested by a limited group of people. Metz (2022) seems to be very critical of Tesla and doesn't hold much hope for Tesla's fully autonomous car. Is Metz reasoning flawed? sudden turn into the parking lot. "The world is a big place, and there are many corner cases that Know what it is trained to know," Cook said of the Tesla may not have trained it for." Experts say no system could possibly have the sophistication needed to handle every possible scenario on any road. This would require technology that mimics human reasoning -technology that we humans do not yet know how to build. 11. Such technology, called artificial general intelligence, "is still very, very far away," said Andrew Clare, chief technology officer of the self-driving vehicle company Nuro. "It is not something you or I or our kids should be banking on to help them get around in cars." Chuck's Turn' 12. In the tight-knit community of Tesla enthusiasts, stockholders, bloggers and social media mavens, Chuck Cook is famous. This summer, Musk noticed the meticulous way he explored the boundaries of the technology in a series of YouTube videos. 13. Using the earnings from YouTube ads and donations from viewers to pay for cameras and other equipment, Cook had been posting online clips of his Tesla trying to navigate an unprotected left turn near his home in Jacksonville. To make this turn, the car must pass through three lanes of traffic approaching from the left, squeeze through a gap in the median and merge into three more lanes of traffic approaching from the right. 14. Sometimes, the car made the turn with aplomb, edging into the thoroughfare and waiting for a moment when it could speed into a far lane. Other times, it got stuck beside the median in the middle of the turn its rear bumper jutting into the oncoming traffic. 15. Soon, Musk noticed the videos and vowed to solve what Tesla enthusiasts began calling "Chuck's turn." In the weeks that followed, Tesla equipped several test cars with a new version of its self- driving technology and sent them to Cook's neighborhood, where they spent several weeks testing the new software and gathering data to improve it. 16. Not long after that day in Jacksonville, Tesla released a new version of its software to Cook and other beta testers. The car's display now showed a blue overlay that indicated what was a safe zone in the median ASUS 16 17 D f89/ 19 F10 F12/A In more than 1 Journey to the Bearded Pig 5. On the way to lunch, after navigating heavy traffic on a four-lane road, taking an unexpected turn and quickly remapping its route to the restaurant, the car took a right turn onto a short street beside a small motel. But as the Tesla struggled to make sense of its environment, veering from the road into a motel parking lot, Cook had to retake control. 6. After driving around the motel, the car almost immediately made the same mistake, jerking into the lot this time. It was sobering to see how close we came to hitting a parked car after we rolled over a low curb separating the parking lot from the road. Even the car's internal display suggested that the car was struggling to distinguish the curb. 7. Tesla is constantly modifying the technology, working to fix its shortcomings. Since the day we drove around Jacksonville, the company has twice released new versions of the technology that show signs of improvement. But the moment in the motel parking lot showed why it may be a long time before cars can safely drive anywhere on their own. 8. The experiences of beta testers like Cook are a window into the enormously ambitious and expensive bet that Tesla is making on self-driving technology. Several companies are investing billions into researching and developing autonomous vehicles -taxis that can ferry us around town, trucks that will deliver our online orders and maybe even one day cars that will take our children to soccer practice. 9. Tesla's technology can work remarkably well. It changes lanes on its own, recognizes green lights, and is able to make ordinary turns against oncoming traffic. But every so often, it makes a mistake, forcing testers like Chuck to intervene. 10. "That moment shows that the car tan only know what it is trained to know," Cook said of the sudden turn into the parking lot. "The world is a big place, and there are many corner cases that Tesla may not have trained it for." Experts say no system could possibly have the sophistication needed to handle every possible scenario on any road. This would require technology that mimics human reasoning -technology that we humans do not yet know how to build. ASUS In more than 1 Journey to the Bearded Pig 5. On the way to lunch, after navigating heavy traffic on a four-lane road, taking an unexpected turn and quickly remapping its route to the restaurant, the car took a right turn onto a short street beside a small motel. But as the Tesla struggled to make sense of its environment, veering from the road into a motel parking lot, Cook had to retake control. 6. After driving around the motel, the car almost immediately made the same mistake, jerking into the lot this time. It was sobering to see how close we came to hitting a parked car after we rolled over a low curb separating the parking lot from the road. Even the car's internal display suggested that the car was struggling to distinguish the curb. 7. Tesla is constantly modifying the technology, working to fix its shortcomings. Since the day we drove around Jacksonville, the company has twice released new versions of the technology that show signs of improvement. But the moment in the motel parking lot showed why it may be a long time before cars can safely drive anywhere on their own. 8. The experiences of beta testers like Cook are a window into the enormously ambitious and expensive bet that Tesla is making on self-driving technology. Several companies are investing billions into researching and developing autonomous vehicles -taxis that can ferry us around town, trucks that will deliver our online orders and maybe even one day cars that will take our children to soccer practice. 9. Tesla's technology can work remarkably well. It changes lanes on its own, recognizes green lights, and is able to make ordinary turns against oncoming traffic. But every so often, it makes a mistake, forcing testers like Chuck to intervene. 10. "That moment shows that the car can only know what it is trained to know," Cook said of the sudden turn into the parking lot. "The world is a big place, and there are many corner cases that Tesla may not have trained it for." Experts say no system could possibly have the sophistication needed to handle every possible scenario on any road. This would require technology that mimics human reasoning -technology that we humans do not yet know how to build. ASUS