Or an explanation that doesn't require such giant leaps: they want to capture as much data as possible in case they ever need it and know there's nothing stopping them, so why not.
Fact 1: Tesla is attempting to develop a self-driving system that is based on machine learning.
Fact 2: Training machine learning systems requires training data. Having large amounts of real training data is highly desirable.
So a single step?
I'm sure that Tesla also benefits from being able to defend against false claims that would tarnish their image[1], but please don't be disingenuous about their machine learning goals.
The giant leap is Tesla is an AI company. Most companies gather data if they can, you wouldn't call them an AI company. A concrete example: Amazon, Walmart, and Target collect a lot of data on their respective ecommerce websites. Are they AI companies? They also and use train machine learning models.
Tesla is trying to fix left turn regressions [1] in an if statement it introduced with its latest over the air update. Working on getting an iteratively better lane / cruise control assist is something many auto companies are doing, and that also doesn't make them AI companies.
I mean in the same event that you list, Elon literally opens with: "Tesla is much more than an automotive company, and we have lots of deep AI activity..." I think it is fair to say that a company that is literally inventing its own AI training supercomputer is probably an AI company as well :)
Elon says a lot of things. Elon also brought out a person in a robot costume to dance. I stand by it takes giant leaps to think Tesla is an AI company at this stage and them collecting data doesn’t change that.
I’m not going to deny that their cars are standout and that they sell well, if you wanted to collect a lot of data you need a good and hip product to piggyback onto. But I don’t necessarily think the car is the end goal. If they manage to crack autonomous driving fully first thanks to collecting all that data it will be such a product that it makes the car irrelevant and it will genuinely change the course of history. Of course that’s just my gut feeling about it. It’s not all that unlikely if you look at the extent of what Silicon Valley is willing to go to just to show you ads, from creating the world’s most popular smart phone OS to a giant video sharing site to voice assistants to pioneering vr to creating the world’s most popular web browser and I could go on :)
