The more Tesla vehicles people buy the more glitches are being found in its autopilot system. Though glitches are fairly common when it comes to Artificial Intelligence and machine learning. But in a sensitive system like autopilot, it may have deadly consequences. Just like this Tesla kept slamming the brakes even though there was no stop sign.
This Tesla owner, Andy Weedman, recently tweeted that he found that his Tesla Model 3 was glitching out on the same road again and again. The car kept using the brakes even though there was no stop sign. This happened for a while but Andy persevered and eventually found that the car was reading a billboard with ‘stop’ written on it as a stop sign. A very weird but believable false negative.
To make sure Tesla becomes aware of this problem, Weedman took it upon himself to make a video of the bizarre glitch as well. In the video, upon seeing the stop sign, his Tesla just stopped in the middle of the road. Going from a 35 mph cruise to a full stop. Cases like these are often called edge cases meaning situations that the artificial intelligence is not really trained for.
You can view the video below.
Now cases like these are one in a million but it does happen. In Weedman’s case, the road was fairly empty so there were no chances of accidents but accidents can happen. It is up to Tesla to iron out all these glitches but it is next to impossible to predict every situation and variable when it comes to the real world. This is exactly why Tesla warns its drivers to never leave the steering wheel unattended.
Fixing this glitch will take a lot more than just a simple software update and patches but it is doable. Still don’t rely too much on autopilot folks.