September 10th: Cross Country Practice and Tesla Bias

Today was alright. Though I was very tired, I got through the day.

After school, there was XC Practice. We did sprints. We created two teams and we raced each other, with the losing team having to run a lap around the field. In the first race, the team I was part of won! But in the second one, I lost our large lead by fumbling the jumps we had to do prior to the sprint.

I think Tesla Full Self Driving vehicles probably perform better in higher income areas. Since Teslas are expensive, it is rarer that those living in lower income areas purchase them. As a result, when these Teslas record the data to feed into their neural network, it is biased towards understanding the situations in higher income areas. I won't disagree and say that Teslas aren't adaptable; They certainly are, as with other neural networks that aren't overfitted or overgeneralized.

It is important to consider how Full Self Driving is developed nowadays. Now, instead of programming instructions (AI), it utilizes a neural network and deep learning to understand a camera feed and to respond to situations according to what it learns to the camera feed it learns from. Since most people submitting these videos are probably from higher income areas, it is biased towards understanding higher income areas. As such, the performance might suffer in poorer road conditions. There's been some evidence that FSD can understand dirt or grass roads, as evident in an older Tesla event, where it was on grass. Afterwards, the Teslas drove out using FSD on the grass.

What may lower income areas be? This can include poorer road conditions (potholes, crappy roads) or run down buildings that FSD has never seen before. Neural Networks adapt really well, but it's unknown what it may do.

Anyways, just a thought. I might be wrong. The popularity of Teslas are growing a lot, so I wouldn't be surprised if I'm wrong. I go to a Title I school, yet there are kids being dropped off by lots of Teslas. I got inspired after watching Tesla's FSD trailer video. It's important to develop applications in this tech driven world with equitability, bias, perspectives, and experience in mind. What's the impact? Maybe the latest technology being less available than it already is to those living in lower income areas.

Thanks for reading,
Issac