Thread by @maxrdlb

#teslafiles #autopilot - Chapter 4: In the Long Run

"Vehicle collided with a deer on the highway while the autopilot was activated."

In August 2022, the new book by Scottish philosopher William McAskill was published: "What We Owe to the Future. The One-Million-Year View." Elon Musk endorsed it, saying, "Worth reading. This aligns quite closely with my philosophy."

McAskill is a proponent of so-called "longtermism," a school of thought popular in Silicon Valley. It teaches that each person should primarily align their decisions with how they will impact the world in the distant future.

Short-term problems, such as accumulating car accidents, can thus lose their terror. At the heart of longtermism is the assumption that many more people will live in the future than do today. This legitimizes decisions that may seem questionable in the present.

Critics consider this dangerous. Longtermists are seen as willing to accept extreme sacrifices under the guise of theoretical benefits.

A theoretical example: More than one million people die in road traffic every year worldwide. A car manufacturer claims that its autopilot could prevent 100 billion fatal accidents over the next 100,000 years.

In an extreme interpretation of longtermism, software malfunctions costing a million human lives would be a negligible problem. After all, the number of victims would only correspond to 0.001 percent of those saved.

McAskill applies this logic to minimize famines, natural disasters, and wars to minor dents in human history. Even if the Earth's population were to fall by 90 percent today, the philosopher writes, an estimated 99.5 percent of humanity would still have their lives ahead of them.

Handelsblatt asked Elon Musk whether he finds such calculations appropriate. The Tesla CEO did not respond.

Software engineer Vivek Wadhwa founded his first company in 1997, and in 1999, Forbes magazine named him a "Leader of Tomorrow." In 2013, Time Magazine named him one of the 40 most influential minds in tech. That same year, Wadhwa met Elon Musk. Musk convinced him of his cars.

Wadhwa bought a Model S. In 2016, he upgraded to the Model X to enjoy the latest version of the Autopilot. Wadhwa was thrilled—until the car drove into his garage without his input. Shortly thereafter, he wanted to demonstrate the Autopilot to a TV station.

But on live camera, the Tesla would have almost caused a rear-end collision—if Wadhwa hadn't hit the brake at the last moment.

Musk is fueling a lie with his prophecies, Wadhwa tells Handelsblatt. The company keeps promising that the problems with the Autopilot will be solved with the next update. But then nothing happens.

Wadhwa: "People are dying because of Tesla's faulty technology. And Elon is trying to get away with it."