Pouring Resources Into AI — Does It End Well? Will Diminishing Returns On FSD Sink Tesla?

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I wrote an article the opposite day titled “Tesla Proved Many People Wrong For Years — Is This Time The Same, Or Different?” The core factors of the article have been these:

1. Many individuals mentioned Tesla couldn’t do what it ended up doing at many phases of the corporate’s growth.
2. I believed Tesla may do these issues.
3. Now, I’m having a tough time believing in Tesla’s method to robotaxis and its plan to roll them out inside just a few years (although I argued the alternative a decade in the past, and even as much as 5 years in the past).
4. So, I’m questioning, have I turn out to be the skeptic who can be confirmed incorrect, or am I proper to suppose it’s completely different this time and Tesla gained’t obtain its robotaxi targets (once more)?

Down within the feedback, a reader, Doug Sanden, wrote the next:

“FSD coaching — log linear?

• • rising quantity of information wanted for linear progress, or lowering progress for linear increses in information:
    video ‘Has Generative AI Already Peaked?’ – Computerphile
  • diminishing returns?
  • he’s describing the outcomes from this paper:
  • ‘No “Zero-Shot” Without Exponential Data: Pretraining Concept Frequency Determines Multimodal Model Performance’, Udandarao et al, 2024
  • inefficient log-linear scaling pattern
  • exponential want for coaching information”

I seemed up that video and watched it. Right here it’s, and I extremely advocate giving it a watch:

Once more, don’t skip the video, however I’ll attempt to summarize the important thing factors once more right here:

• Generative AI is wonderful and doing nice issues.
• Due to what it could actually do, it looks like magic to many and in addition offers individuals the idea that including increasingly information, or constructing greater and greater fashions — or doing each — will make determining virtually something doable and can allow increasingly wonderful technological options.
• Nevertheless, in easy phrases, there are diminishing returns when the specified output or desired product will get extra difficult, extra nuanced.
• Additionally, as you try to attain these rather more tough objectives, you find yourself pouring an infinite amount of cash into information assortment and mannequin processing, and you may find yourself down a deep cash pit basically chasing unicorns and butterfly farts.

Because it pertains to Tesla as an organization and Tesla Full Self Driving (FSD) as a product, that is mainly only a higher clarification of one thing I’ve been involved about for some time. I do suppose Tesla dangers chasing unicorns diminishing returns with its method to FSD, which I feel may burn an infinite amount of money with out Tesla having the ability to roll out robotaxis. I additionally suppose this pertains to the “seesaw problem” I’ve mentioned just a few instances — that’s simply the impact of making an attempt to unravel very nuanced, difficult issues with the {hardware} and software program method Tesla is utilizing.

Perhaps I’m incorrect, as I famous in that article linked on the prime. However I find yourself similar to this man on the finish of his video, the place he signifies that he expects generative AI to observe the crimson line on the graph relatively than the yellow one — however that it could be thrilling if it did find yourself following the yellow one:

We’ll see. We’re nonetheless far-off from Tesla robotaxis, however let’s see how the tech progresses.