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George Hotz is the founder of Comma.ai, a machine learning based vehicle automation company. He is an outspoken personality in the field of AI and technology in general. He first gained recognition for being the first person to carrier-unlock an iPhone, and since then has done quite a few interesting things at the intersection of hardware and software.

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not be doing comma AI today if it was not for those conversations with Elon, and if it were not for him saying, like, I think he said, like, well, obviously, we're not going to use LIDAR.

What are your thoughts on his provocative statement that LiDAR is a crutch?

See, sometimes he'll say dumb things, like the driver monitoring thing.

But sometimes he'll say absolutely, completely, 100% obviously true things.

Oh, they're using it for localization, which isn't good in the first place.

If you have to localize your car to centimeters in order to drive,

Currently, not doing much machine learning on top of LIDAR data, meaning like to help you in the task of general task of perception.

The main goal of those LIDARs on those cars, I think is actually localization more than perception, or at least that's what they use

If you want to localize to centimeters, you can't use GPS.

The fanciest GPS in the world can't do it, especially if you're under tree cover and stuff.

So you really, they're not taking on, I mean in some research they're using it for perception, but, and they're certainly not, which is sad, they're not fusing it well with vision.

I'm not saying they don't use it for perception, but the thing that, they have vision-based and radar-based perception systems as well.

You could remove the LIDAR and keep around a lot of the dynamic object perception.


Speaker 0: Elon's the iOS.

Speaker 1: By the way, he paved the

Speaker 0: way for all of us.

Speaker 2: I would

Speaker 0: not be doing comma AI today if it was not for those conversations with Elon, and if it were not for him saying, like, I think he said, like, well, obviously, we're not going to use LIDAR. We use cameras. Humans use cameras.

Speaker 2: So what do you think about that? How important is LIDAR? Everybody else on L5 is using LiDAR. What are your thoughts on his provocative statement that LiDAR is a crutch?

Speaker 1: See, sometimes he'll say dumb things, like the driver monitoring thing. But sometimes he'll say absolutely, completely, 100% obviously true things. Of course LiDAR is a crutch.

Speaker 0: It's not even a good crutch.

Speaker 1: You're not even using it. Oh, they're using it for localization, which isn't good in the first place. If you have to localize your car to centimeters in order to drive,

Speaker 0: that's not driving.

Speaker 2: Currently, not doing much machine learning on top of LIDAR data, meaning like to help you in the task of general task of perception.

Speaker 0: The main goal of those LIDARs on those cars, I think is actually localization more than perception, or at least that's what they use

Speaker 2: them for. Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 0: If you want to localize to centimeters, you can't use GPS. The fanciest GPS in the world can't do it, especially if you're under tree cover and stuff.

Speaker 1: The LiDAR you can do this pretty easily.

Speaker 2: So you really, they're not taking on, I mean in some research they're using it for perception, but, and they're certainly not, which is sad, they're not fusing it well with vision.

Speaker 0: They do use it for perception. I'm not saying they don't use it for perception, but the thing that, they have vision-based and radar-based perception systems as well. You could remove the LIDAR and keep around a lot of the dynamic object perception.

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George Hotz: Elon is the iOS | AI Podcast Clips