Tesla owners obsessed with the steady stream of Full Self-Driving (FSD) beta updates have something huge to look forward to – “unprecedented progress” is on the horizon according to Tesla’s own AI/Autopilot lead Ashok Elluswamy.
In a X/Twitter thread bubbling with excitement, Ashok revealed that the “next set of 12.x releases” for FSD will showcase major strides thanks to the system’s revamped underpinnings.
FSD V12: The Neural Net Overhaul Unlocking “Unprecedented Progress”
You see, Tesla’s latest v12 software represented the first version of FSD to utilize neural networks in an “end-to-end” approach. Instead of hand-coding instructions based on visual data, the neural nets can now ingest raw camera footage and vehicle telemetry to directly output driving actions.
As Ashok puts it, “This is the sort of driving that’s really hard to code explicitly, but our end-to-end approach brings in almost effortlessly.”
After months of work making this neural net approach “beat the previous v11 stack developed over many years,” Tesla believes v12 has surpassed its predecessors. The floodgates are now open for compounding advances and hassle-free handling of tricky driving scenarios.
Beyond just improved performance and corner cases, Ashok also teased the imminent arrival of Tesla’s “Actually Smart Summon” – which will see FSD’s upgraded neural smarts merging with the ability to deftly reverse and extricate itself.
For long-suffering Tesla fans who have endured years of grueling incremental Autopilot progress, Ashok confident proclamations of radical self-driving leaps just around the corner must be immensely gratifying.
After all, the transition to robust full autonomy was always going to be a final, drastic evolutionary leap rather than a slow grind. If Tesla has finally cracked the neural net code, we could be stunningly close to consumer self-driving cars becoming an existence fact rather than perpetual pipe dream.
Related:
Tesla FSD v12.3 Sees Major Strides Towards ‘Human’ Self-Driving, V12.4 Big Jump in Capabilities
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