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My Job Is to Train Tesla's Cars to Drive Themselves

I work on Tesla's Autopilot team. I watch hours of customers' driving videos every day and am monitored constantly.

https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-autopilot-data-annotation-specialist-job-experience-buffalo-2024-9

A worker on Tesla's Autopilot team described what it's like labeling the influx of driver videos.

I work on Tesla's Autopilot team. I watch hours of customers' driving videos every day and am monitored constantly.

Some quotes from the article:

There is something very strange about having this very intimate view into someone's life. It feels odd to see someone's daily drive, but it's also an important part of correcting and refining the program.

We review about five and a half to six hours of footage per day. It can be very hard to focus. You can get in this kind of fog when you're just watching clip after clip and it can be difficult to keep yourself sane.

Anytime you're not clicking around in the software program, it tracks you as if you aren't working and it basically sets off an alarm to your superiors.

These jobs sound very dystopian to me, and a bit psychopathic as well. All the movies I watched growing up about dystopian societies is reflected in what this guy says about his job.

38 comments

Buffalox

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These jobs sound very dystopian to me,

Absolutely, this too from the article:

"Why didn't you make any changes to the software program for 15 minutes?" You could basically get fired for spending too long in the bathroom.

This is absolutely a hell hole of a job, they 100% need a union.
Also this actively undermines quality in what they do, a requirement to make changes, may make people make changes that aren't needed, and even possibly changes that can be detrimental to the function.

dinckelman

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That definitely sounds like an Elon thing to say. The same dude, who demanded people print out a week worth of their commits on paper.

These people have just about zero idea about how the engineering process works, and it shows.

boonhet

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I'm lucky enough that both of the shareholders of my company are software engineers; one has transitioned to sales and project management, the other is still an engineer, he's also the CTO.

Was discussing office chairs with our team lead/office supplies person (it's a really small company, some people have multiple roles) and when I mentioned that my chair gets really creaky when leaning back but otherwise it works so it really just needs some lubrication, she asked why I would even lean so far back in my chair and the CTO told her "There's two sitting positions for programming. The writing position and the thinking position"

TL;DR: Takes an engineer to know how engineering works. Turns out that you have to spend a lot of time just thinking

Murvel

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These people have just about zero idea about how the engineering process works, and it shows.

Well, now that's obviously not true. They wouldn't have drivable cars if they had no idea how to engineer one..

Venat0r

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I once paid an electrician to do some electrical work in my house, therefor I am an electrician, otherwise, how would I have working power in my house?

Murvel

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Would you claim the company he worked for has zero understanding of how to do electrical work?

Venat0r

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I would claim you have near zero understanding of how to comprehend anything that you're reading...

Murvel

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Maybe, but I'm more thinking you're too dumb to understand an analogy.

Voyajer

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He's referring to Elon himself, and I presume whomever else instantiated their productivity metrics.

Murvel

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Ok, so another of Elons companies sends rockets to space, so again, they clearly now engineering...

TimeSquirrel

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The engineers who work for him know engineering. Elon fancies himself an engineer, but he comes across as someone who knows about as much about aerospace as any kid after a few rounds of Kerbal Space Program. I've listened to his technical interviews on the Raptor engine and other stuff, he just spews pseudointellectual boilerplate you can get from any generic sci/space YouTuber.

Murvel

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I'm not talking about Elon engineering fricking rockets by himself, I'm talking about the dude in the comment thinking that Elons companies doesn't have an engineering culture that can deliver, which is plain just not true.

I mean hate on the man, I don't give a damn but don't be dishonest is all I'm saying

Voyajer

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So you're talking about something different from Dinckel.

Murvel

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No? He claimed they have 'zero ideas of how to engineer' I disagree. I don't even know what gives me the energy to go against the incessant Elon hate cirkle jerk, but it is so tiresome

VirtualOdour

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If it helps i can explain how lemmy thinks,

Elon does nothing at his companies and is lazy and stupid, also Elon is intricately responsible for everything which happens at his companies and so everything they do is bad.

They will believe any 'Elon bad' story because they're desperate to, largely because he said some bad things on Twitter and is bad at memes. They will also assume any Elon related thing is bad because to them reality is a team sport and if someone has differing political opinions they must be not only ontological evil but stupid and bad in every way.

Plopp

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Also this actively undermines quality in what they do, a requirement to make changes, may make people make changes that aren't needed, and even possibly changes that can be detrimental to the function.

Indeed, but not only that. Having employees that have as their only task to spend that much time on such a mind numbing task is pretty much in itself a guarantee for poor quality work. Such work should be divided up among people who do other things as well, so that they can break the video watching up in smaller pieces to be able to remain focused and do a better job.

snooggums

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Any change just for the sake of change will be detrimental to the functionality. Constant change means there is never a point in time where the overall functionality can be reviewed for stability.

espentan

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Holy shit. I sometimes forget just how grateful I am to not live where it's possible/legal to treat people like this.

DudeDudenson

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I don't know where you live but there's probably a bunch of call centers in your country with similar policies that are 100% compliant with the law

espentan

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I'm Norway, and yeah, I'm sure there are places that don't abide by the law. But, I'm quite certain the kind of monitoring Tesla appears to be doing would be national news in a hurry, and something that would be cracked down on.

1984

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Same in Sweden. Tesla even tried to bypass Swedish laws here and failed badly.

ASDraptor

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They are probably not compliant at all, they just never get checked by authorities.

sunzu2

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Which for purposes of the "law" are the same thing lol

Ain't it grand?

ironhydroxide

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And then when they do get checked out, the punishment is only a tiny fraction of the profits they stole.

Buffalox

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I don't know where you live to think that, and all the people who upvote you??? For sure these work conditions would not be neither legal nor accepted in Scandinavian countries, and I'm pretty sure they aren't legal in EU.

Both the surveillance and bathroom conditions would be reason for blockades of the company.

AFAIK Tesla is still under boycott by the Swedish unions, and that was supported by unions in Denmark too.
It's very expensive for companies to behave like that in Scandinavian countries, and doubtless also other EU countries.

lunarul

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It baffles me that these types of jobs exist in the same area as mine. My company doesn't care what hours I work as long as I get things done, has gone fully remote and never going back, encourages people to not burn themselves out and take time off, we have actual unlimited PTO (i.e. nobody coming after me for using too much), etc. I always thought that's just the Silicon Valley mentality, but I keep seeing news of big tech companies doing all kinds of crazy backwards things and I don't get it. All the perks I get are not because my company is run by angels, it's because they understand we're actually more productive that way.

1984

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It's even stranger that employees choose to work in these conditions. I understand that people who work at the packaging floor at Amazon may not have better options, but surely if you are starting to doubt your sanity when going to work, you would find another one?

I guess I've never been that desperate myself for a specific job so I don't get it.

Quicky

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This job sounds like it could be replaced by AI

zepplenzap

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The job is to create training data FOR AI

Quicky

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My comment was satirical

fubarx

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When this whole 'training' trend started a few years ago, there were companies offering image and video labelling services.

It turned out they were mostly sweatshops in low-income countries, where people sat in front of monitors and just dragged boumding boxes around sections of images and picked from an icon menu. Here's a car, here's a person, here's an apple. That sort of thing. You didn't even need to know how to read or write.

Of course, the quality was questionable, so they needed a second layer of supervisors verifying the choices. But even with that, the cost was way lower than having an engineer or QA person do it. IIRC, there was a bit of hue and cry when stories came out of big tech companies supporting sweatshop conditions.

Sounds like it's still ongoing.

itsathursday

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The real future of “AI”.

Nomad

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Link without paywall https://archive.is/JcJ7F

slacktoid

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Tech is in a weird place. It's ubiquitous, it's life changing and the employees are glorified serfs. They need to unionize but they perceive themselves to be better.

GrammarPolice

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I initially thought the title read, "My Job Is To Train Tesla Drivers to Drive Themselves"

Zerlyna

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I’m having Clockwork Orange flashbacks.

VirtualOdour

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It's hilarious to me when people complain about jobs like this training AI, oh you watch videos and it's hard to concentrate after a while? Welcome to actual driving jobs and factory work!

Before automation people stood at machines doing the same repetitive task for 8 hours a day or longer and if they lose concentration they could lose a limb.

Automation and computation has made what would have been absolute plum luxury jobs less than a hundred years ago seem burdensome and 'dystopian' to our modern sensibilities, I have no doubt that we will likewise see the mental and physical effort of driving as well as the danger of it become as unconscionable as threshing or machine operator work is to us now.

baru

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oh you watch videos and it's hard to concentrate after a while? Welcome to actual driving jobs

Watching videos is comparable to e.g. ATC work. I don't see driving as comparable. In one you're actively doing something. In the others you're only checking for stuff that might go wrong but usually goes ok.

There's a significant difference in ATC vs the training AI: in ATC work people are swapped out after a few hours and they have regular breaks. While here for that AI the company is pretending it can be done for an 8 hour shift.

I have no doubt that we will likewise see the mental and physical effort of driving as well as the danger of it become as unconscionable as threshing or machine operator work is to us now.

Meh, that's been said for ages. Currently the reliability of automated driving is often crazily overestimated. Human driving is pretty reliable, especially on highways.

Change for the better is good. But just because there's a computer involved doesn't mean it's already better or that'll be foolproof.