Elon Musk, on Sunday, expressed gratitude in direction of Indian-origin Ashok Elluswamy – the primary individual employed for Tesla’s autopilot staff.

The tech billionaire has credited Mr Ashok for Tesla’s “success in AI” and autopilot software program. 

Quote-tweeting Mr Ashok’s word on X (previously Twitter), Elon Musk mentioned, “Thanks Ashok! Ashok was the primary individual to hitch the Tesla AI/Autopilot staff and in the end rose to guide all AI/Autopilot software program. With out him and our superior staff, we might simply be one other automotive firm on the lookout for an autonomy provider that does not exist. BTW, I by no means recommended that he say something and I had no concept he wrote this till I noticed it 10 minutes in the past!”

Thanks Ashok!

Ashok was the primary individual to hitch the Tesla AI/Autopilot staff and in the end rose to guide all AI/Autopilot software program.

With out him and our superior staff, we might simply be one other automotive firm on the lookout for an autonomy provider that does not exist.

Btw, I by no means… https://t.co/7eBfzu0Nci

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 9, 2024

Ashok Elluswamy, in his detailed word, mentioned, “Elon Musk has been the important thing driver of AI and autonomy at Tesla. He has all the time pushed us to realize nice issues, even when such concepts have been seemingly unimaginable on the time.”

Mr Ashok additionally talked about an occasion that goes again to 2014, when “autopilot began on a ridiculously tiny pc”.

He wrote, “Again in 2014, Autopilot began on a ridiculously tiny pc that solely had ~384 KB of reminiscence and puny compute (did not even have native floating-point arithmetic). He [Elon Musk] requested the engineering staff to implement lane protecting, lane altering, longitudinal management for automobiles, curvature, and so on. Many, even within the staff, thought that the request was loopy. Nonetheless, he by no means gave up and pushed the staff to realize this very troublesome objective. In 2015, past all odds, Tesla shipped the world’s first Autopilot system. The second closest such product solely got here to market a few years later.”

Mr Ashok continued, “In 2016, Tesla began doing the entire pc imaginative and prescient required for Autopilot in-house as a substitute of relying on exterior distributors. Many individuals thought it was insane to guess the product on growing the imaginative and prescient system from scratch inside a couple of months, which had taken different corporations a decade or extra. But, we achieved this goal inside eleven months. This was a strategically essential transfer that began the event of a powerful AI staff at Tesla.”

Lauding Elon Musk, he added, “Not solely did he push for robust AI software program, but in addition for highly effective AI {hardware}. Tesla, which others thought was only a automotive firm, was making customized silicon to run neural networks effectively. This {hardware} that was initially designed in 2017, got here to manufacturing in February 2019 and stays extraordinarily aggressive with {hardware} popping out to this point.”

He mentioned, “He [Elon Musk] was the one who guess on imaginative and prescient and AI to unravel autonomy as a substitute of counting on sensor crutches and high-definition maps.” Mr Ashok famous that by transport thousands and thousands of Teslas the corporate has proved all of them fallacious, who used to ridicule Elon Musk and the corporate.

Mr Ashok continued, “Nevertheless, again in 2020 and earlier it wasn’t apparent to most. Actually, many “consultants” within the subject ridiculed Tesla and Elon for these decisions. We now have proved them fallacious by transport supervised FSD to thousands and thousands of automobiles and proven that with good AI software program, the automotive is ready to deal with the complexities of metropolis driving resembling making turns, dealing with intersections, yielding to pedestrians and so on., simply by seeing outdoors. Actually, we even eliminated the radars and ultrasonics to simply actually concentrate on the center of the issue, which is AI.”

He famous, “He [Elon Musk] kickstarted the work on humanoid robots at Tesla in 2021, once more earlier than any ChatGPT or different apparent examples of the rise of AI.”

Mr Ashok concluded by saying, “I might go on, however plainly, Elon is crucial for Tesla’s success in AI. It’s his mixture of deep technical understanding, insane perseverance and relentless exhausting work which have positioned Tesla to be a pacesetter in real-world AI. Elon’s technical instinct to make these essential selections approach earlier than others see it’s unmatched. If not for Elon’s ambition, Tesla may need dwindled to turn out to be simply one other automotive firm. Sooner or later, absolutely autonomous automobiles and helpful family robots will probably be commonplace and the world will suppose that this was the way it was all the time imagined to be. Till then, we’d like Elon Musk to push the frontier, as a result of he sees it already.”

Learn his full put up right here:

https://t.co/yUqvdS7JOf

— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) June 9, 2024

Again in 2021, Elon Musk introduced that Indian-origin Ashok Elluswamy was the primary worker to be employed for his electrical automobile firm’s Autopilot staff.