Godfather of AI Says Elon Musk Is Lying About Self-Driving Teslas

"I don't hate Elon. I hate his lies."

Car Wars

One of the pioneers of artificial intelligence is throwing major shade on Elon Musk's years of broken promises about self-driving Teslas.

Yann LeCun, the so-called "Godfather of AI" who currently serves as Meta's AI czar, accused the billionaire of lying "again and again" about when fully-automated Teslas would arrive.

"Elon: 'I've kept lying to you again and again about Tesla's 'Full Self Driving' capabilities for the last 8 years," the AI aficionado wrote, "'but you should believe everything I say about politics and everything else.'"

Haterade

While this criticism is always trenchant given that Musk has in fact been claiming for nearly a decade that self-driving cars would arrive "next year," LeCun's comments came in response to a separate and more extensive critique.

In the long-form post, software CEO and notorious Tesla hater Dan O'Dowd accused Musk of being a "snake oil salesman" for continuing to hype autonomous driving tech that's nowhere near fruition.

The meticulously detailed post, which we should note was penned by a guy who owns five Teslas and is now really mad about it, tracks Musk's more recent claims RE: Full Self-Driving (FSD), breaking them down bit-by-bit in the process.

"Elon claimed in June that [FSD] v12 would finally see the introduction of 'Actually Smart Summon (ASS)', enabling consumers to summon their car with computer vision with [no one] in the driver’s seat in 'a month or two,'" O'Dowd noted, "before stating in July that the feature would be available 'next month.'"

"ASS is not even legally allowed to operate on public roads," he continued, oblivious or uncaring about how hilarious that sentence sounds. "Elon had yet again made a promise which Tesla is still to this day unable to deliver."

LeCun ended up responding to a Tesla fan who informed him that he'd let down a new follower with his Musk "hating."

"I don't hate Elon. I hate his lies," the AI scientist wrote. "I like his cars, rockets, and satellite network."

That's honestly a far kinder statement than many would make — and it makes a lot of sense coming from someone who's urging responsible thinking and usage of AI.

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