Tesla insiders claim that the company has optimized Full Self-Driving routes for Elon Musk personally. Also, the creators of FSD itself have the best experience of self-driving. Drivers in other regions of the United States have not such good impressions.
Elon Musk for many years praised Tesla’s efforts regarding autonomous driving, the Full Self-Driving system. He is often quoted to encourage people to try the system. Third-party drivers with extensive FSD experience often dispute these boasts. In particular, they find discrepancies between the videos of Tesla officials, mainly from California, Musk’s statements about the effectiveness of FSD Beta and what happens in reality for ordinary drivers from other regions of the United States and Canada. Their suspicion is that Tesla mostly trained the neural networks on West Coast roads, but customization for Musk seems to explain the difference as well.
Current and former Tesla employees claim that the company optimized the neural networks specifically for the routes used by CEO Elon Musk and the Tesla influencers who create the FSD system. They say that images and videos from Musk’s Tesla have been thoroughly vetted, and data from high-ranking drivers have been prioritized in solving problems with the Full Self-Driving software. The result is that the autopilot is better able to follow the routes of Musk and other VIPs.
Employees who watch clips of Tesla cars to help train its autonomous neural networks have been tasked with focusing on two categories: «Tesla CEO Elon Musk and a selected set of «VIPs» drivers». Several annotators confirmed that they were tasked with working on routes around Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter, and a house previously owned by Musk. They say this will undoubtedly lead to Musk having a better experience with Tesla FSD than the average Tesla driver.
«It seemed like we were deliberately making his car better to make the autopilot seem different than it was. It didn’t seem fair».
The company has created a system to prioritize data from drivers who are most likely to share their experiences online. According to employees, these drivers are internally referred to as «VIP users», and their data is sometimes placed in VIP queues.
Some employees argued that FSD content creators push the system to its limits, and so it makes sense to train neural networks to handle such situations, but it also leads to them having a better experience than the average driver.
Elon Musk often comments complaints about Full Self-Driving and recommends that people watch these videos, and use them to sell FSD. The fact of optimization for the most active testers and drivers is understandable, but given the difference in optimization, such advice can be considered misleading advertising.
Sources: Business Insider, Electrek