236 points

Just the complete irony of Musk being killed by Autopilot would be too much for me.

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88 points

‘Inventors’ killed by their inventions happens way more than people probably realize. First one that comes to mind is the Segway guy. Then there’s the more recent dude who built that shitty submarine for dives to the Titanic. Anyone else care to share any incidents?

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57 points
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Not a death, but the guy who started Match.com reportedly lost his girlfriend to a guy she met on Match.com.

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13 points

That might be worse than death to be frank.

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34 points
38 points

My favourite is the guy who invented leaded petrol and poisoned us all, then invented CFCs and poisoned the atmosphere, then…

Thomas Midgley Jr. (1889–1944) was an American engineer and chemist who contracted polio at age 51, leaving him severely disabled. He devised an elaborate system of ropes and pulleys to help others lift him from bed. He became entangled in the ropes and died of strangulation at the age of 55.

Fuckin lol 😂

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30 points

Well, the segway guy, Dean Kamen, is alive. The owner of the company or something like that died though.

So having removed one, I’ll add in the guy that made leaded gas.

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12 points

A British businessman purchased Segway in 2009, and in 2010 accidentally reversed off a cliff while walking his dog by the ocean, and died.

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10 points

Nobody mentioned Marie Curie yet?

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27 points

You’re not wrong, but just to be clear: Musk did not invent the Tesla.

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24 points

There’s the French dude who tried building his own parachute, climbed to the lower level of the Eiffel Tower, and tried making a spectacle of proving how good his parachute was by jumping from it. He promptly died on impact when it didn’t, in fact, prove very good at all.

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10 points

You forgot to mention that his “parachute” looked to be a bunch of cloaks and furs tied around his neck like a cape. That’s important info lol

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23 points

Musk didn’t invent shit. He bought his way in to being the CEO using his daddy’s money. These companies are successful despite musk, not because of him

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5 points
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I think basically it’s a situation where he did manage to create the “scientific prodigy” reputation around himself, this created public buzz around whatever he was doing, and that did translate into different forms of funding. So some of the success is due to him, but basically on account of fraud. Same basic principle as Trump.

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20 points

Well, the main salesman for Skydrol (a phosphate based, non-flammable hydraulic fluid for aviation), did not invent the product; but was known to drink some of it during his pitch to “prove” that the fluid was safe. He died of stomach cancer.

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8 points
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The Chief Designer of the ‘Titanic’ Saved Everyone He Could as His Ship Went Down. Thomas Andrews died in 1912, when the ship he had designed sank, after encouraging the Titanic’s passengers to get off the ship if they could.

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21 points

Hope springs eternal, as they say

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16 points

Dean Kamen is still alive. The person you’re thinking of was the new ceo after he sold the company, not the segway’s inventor

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15 points

It would do a lot to correct the public’s understanding of irony. Ever since Alanis Morisette came out with her hit Ironic everyone’s been using it wrong

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22 points
Deleted by creator
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17 points

I had something real witty all planned out as a response to your irony comment, but before I can click the “reply” link, out of nowhere IT’S LIKE RAAAIIIIIIAAAAAIIIIINN ON YOUR WEDDING DAAY steamrolls into my head like Yoko Ono on a goddamn bullhorn and I get lost in the song and completely forget everything I was going to say. And I was so proud, too. Damn you, Alanis!

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8 points

A song named “Ironic” filled with a bunch of scenarios but not a single one is ironic is… a little bit ironic, don’t ya think?

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6 points

Yeah, I really do think

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2 points

I wonder at what point we just change the definition

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195 points

“That’s why we’ve not released this to the public yet. That’s the first intervention for the whole drive.”

Why is it on any car, even his, on public roads? Why should untested, unregulated software be controlling thousands of pounds of metal at all?

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68 points
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Because he has more money than you, which gives him more rights than you.

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8 points
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Ha! jokes on you, I don’t have any rights. Just a number of subscriptions. Oh shit forgot to renew my free speech su— [CENSORED]

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3 points

Subscription based democracy?

Only sign up for the laws you want, with a quid pro quo/golden rule stipulation?

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26 points

Looking at it another way: we’re all guinea pigs if we consider untested public policy that should work in theory.

Self-driving is not untested, but the problem is that deep down AI is just a lot of statistically derived rules and life is random and will inevitably find a loophole. Technically it’s still less likely to kill you on average, maybe even on average if you exclude drunk driving, street racing, and the like.

It’s really a philosophical question: would you take dying by your own fuck-up over dying because an AI confused a piece of cardboard for a brick wall or pedestrian?

I think the sweet spot is having the AI back up the human instead of the other way around, but that won’t sell as well as reading a book on your commute.

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16 points
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It’s really a philosophical question: would you take dying by your own fuck-up over dying because an AI confused a piece of cardboard for a brick wall or pedestrian?

It’s a “philosophical question” that implies that we must choose between manual driving and AI driving that can be confused by a piece of cardboard.

There’s nothing saying that Tesla’s full self driving is something we have to accept. Musk himself artificially limited the solution by disallowing lidar (amongst other bullshit decisions).

We’re not at the point of philosophical questions yet IMO, and we shouldn’t get locked into the false dichotomy of manual or musk’s version of automatic driving when there are other, much safer and more reasonable solutions both inside automobiles, as well as alternatives such as expanding public transit.

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2 points

The process of it becoming good enough will be more gradual, with corporate interests lobbying for whatever is most marketable at the time. There will be no singular convention on driving where the philosophical question at the root of policy gets resolved - research will show new drivers benefit most, so at first first-time drivers might be obliged to have some AI backup then there will be some incremental movement as the political climate is favorable.

Not to go off on a tangent, but I think gun control is a useful example of what I’m talking about: it’s so easy to make people fight bitterly over minutia while ignoring the core philosophical questions entirely (government monopoly on violence, civilian relationship to government, civilian disarmament), an earnest discussion of which would likely be more disruptive to either overarching agenda than losing any court case (by calling other policy into question - like militarized police who do not even see themselves as civilians anymore).

So nVidia releases a better self driving AI than Tesla, and everyone is comfortable with letting it drive on the highway for you. Each step will be fairly uncontroversial until at some point we’re all comfortable with the thing and someone only wants to make it mandatory for some small segment of drivers, which itself will not draw much controversy because classic non-AI cars with manual transmissions and such will only be in the realm of enthusiasts and collectors.

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8 points

Don’t forget dying because of someone else’s fuck up

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4 points
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Yes good point. Ends-means arguments are basically that people trust some rigid system more than the humans around them, even if it means them losing control and being helpless themselves.

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20 points

As someone who works on AV SW for a living, it’s really not a big deal, assuming you’ve got certain limits already in place.

However, unlike Tesla, we’re not just handing this out to random people who clicked “I agree” on the screen. We’ve got tons of dedicated training and have to demonstrate we can react to stuff and take over under worst-case conditions, and take incidents like this really seriously.

It’s funny that he says “Oh, this is why it’s not released to the public”, as I did some driving with a Model 3 on the latest version of FSD within the last few weeks, and in a 1 hour drive had plenty of “Oh shit” moments like this. So yeah, they’ll totally release garbage like this to the public, no doubt about it

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6 points

Simulations show people will get out of your way 95% of the time, and it avoids nasty traffic jams.

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2 points

Sure, and we do hundreds of thousands of miles of simulation on each SW build before it’ll be okayed for even driving on site, then it has to pass additional tests before it’s allowed on public roads with a test driver.

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2 points

The software is probably better tested than a good percentage of human drivers on the road in America, and definitely a better driver than some subset of that group. Good 'nuff, right?

(But seriously, get this crap off the streets along with the people who shouldn’t have licenses.)

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135 points

2016,… “I really would consider autonomous driving to be basically a solved problem,” Musk said. “I think we’re basically less than two years away from complete autonomy.”

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34 points

One year away since 2014.

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11 points

2016 was when we were supposed to be driving fusion powered self driving cars

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5 points

Self flying car*

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3 points

It’s the future, now and forever!

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1 point

I’m almost 50, but I remember when I was a kid, my mom told me that by the time I turned 16, cars would drive themselves. Just tell it where to go and it would do it.

That timeline would have been the early 90s. Oops.

After driving a modern car with all of the current safety features, I’ve come to the conclusion that self-driving cars were even farther away than I thought. It frequently misinterprets the situation and screeches its irritating alarm noise.

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65 points

The video link requires a Xwitter account, of which I do not have. 😒

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50 points
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21 points

Jesus Christ. Just calmly saying, “because the car should be going straight” after it happens as if it were a normal occurrence that just has to be avoided at times.

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11 points

How many times did he have to intervene on the test stack to get that nonchalant about it – 200, 300?

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3 points

I guess I world have done the same thing if the light turned green.

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5 points

try in nitter

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45 points

“LEMME SHOW YA SOMTHIN!!”

–Fire Marshall Elon

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Let’s say you’re just minding your own business, you stop to have a cup of tea and a croissant at a nice street side cafe. UH OH! A PSYCHOTIC, 2-TON MURDEROUS AUTOMATON ON FOUR WHEELS COMES BARRELING DOWN THE SIDEWALK!

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7 points

That’s what we call, children, a BAT-tery OUT OF HELL!

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2 points
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Deleted by creator
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2 points

Hey cool I sat in that thing when I was about 6 years old. Still remember the little 4" tv’s 35 years later…

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Enough Musk Spam

!enoughmuskspam@lemmy.world

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Opinions from all sides of the political spectrum are welcome here. However, we kindly ask that off-topic political discussion be kept to a minimum, so as to focus on the goal of this sub. This community is minimally moderated, so discussion and the power of upvotes/downvotes are allowed, provided lemmy.world rules are not broken.

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