Would You Buy A Self-Driving System From This Man('s Data)?

TheEmporer'sNewSilkRoad

ClothesVille


Well, well, well.

Would'a thunk it.

It turns out that there are grunts in the machine.

Tesla's machine learning machine that is:

Tesla's self-driving cars seem like a marvel of machine learning.

But in reality, the company relies on a small army of human "data annotators" who continuously improve how the cars drive by reviewing camera footage from thousands of Tesla drivers and teaching the vehicle how to behave like a human driver, like deciding when it's appropriate to use a blinker or identifying a construction cone.

Business Insider has learned that those annotators focus their efforts on two high-profile categories of drivers: Tesla CEO Elon Musk and a select set of "VIP" drivers...

So, there you have it.

If you buy a car from the good Mr. Musk and you take your hands off the wheel you just might drive like him.

But is that really the goal of the fine folks at Tesla who control the grunts/annotators?

Perhaps not:

...(Business Insider) spoke with over a dozen current and former Tesla employees, all but one who spoke on condition of anonymity, who said images and video clips from Musk's Teslas received meticulous scrutiny, while data from high-profile drivers like YouTubers received "VIP" treatment in identifying and addressing issues with the Full Self-Driving software. 

The result is that Tesla's Autopilot and FSD software may better navigate routes taken by Musk and other high-profile drivers, making their rides smoother and more straightforward...

Hmmmmm...

Could it be that the grunts have actually been told to very carefully input data into the machine that will give their boss and his friends super smooth hands- and mind-free rides on their most used routes that the peons laying out the moola for his vehicles will never get?

And if that were the case would it be a surprise?

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Awhile back we had a super sharp post-doc in the group who developed a machine learning-based pipeline to 'predict' the functional importance of gene variants found in the population based on the levels and sub-cellular location of the protein product of said gene. The analysis itself was quite straightforward but it was amazing how important the original calls by the grunts/annotators looking down the barrel of the microscope were in helping to 'train' the machine (being a grunt with discerning eyeballs was actually my job in the project)...This labour-intensive front end of such projects, I think, is not that well appreciated.


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