Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) has been making headlines in recent weeks, as the company expands the software program in preparation for both its upcoming robotaxi launch and its launch outside of North America. This week, however, CEO Elon Musk has commented on how few of the miles driven with the system engaged are actually useful for training the neural net-based model, emphasizing the need for as many training miles as possible.
In response to an investor discussion about FSD shared on X on Tuesday, Musk wrote that only one out of every 10,000 miles of distance driven is actually useful for training the FSD neural network, which may come as surprisingly low to some. He also notes that Tesla and FSD are no longer AI training compute-constrained, but rather, that validation of driving circumstances is now the system’s most significant limiting factor.
You can see Musk’s post below, along with the original 30-minute discussion he was responding to.
Accurate analysis.
Only about 1/10,000 of distance driven is useful for training.
The limiting factor for FSD progress was AI training compute, but now it is validation, as the interventions are so rare. https://t.co/SL0FEZ6zqk
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 7, 2024
With Tesla’s shift to end-to-end neural network vehicle control in FSD v12, the need for increased validation makes sense, given that the model is now being trained on millions of clips of video from real-world human driving scenarios—rather than on human-written code and “rules-based” processing.
As Musk highlights, interventions are also becoming rarer as the software improves from this camera- and video-based training, predicating the need for increased validation, especially to handle unique road scenarios. Tesla has been on an all-out offensive with FSD, recently dropping the beta moniker as v12 has been rolling out to the public, and instead replacing it with the term “Supervised.”
The company has also set a date for the reveal of its robotaxi platform, slated for August, and it has gained its first approval for the software outside of North America. In addition, the company has been rolling out one-month free trials and FSD demo drives for new vehicle buyers, substantially increasing FSD miles driven in recent months.
Just weeks after Tesla’s FSD surpassed 1 billion miles driven cumulatively, and after Tesla launched FSD demo drives and free trials:
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