Elon Musk thinks Tesla has 'the best real-world AI,' but an ex-worker raised concerns about how it's powering the Autopilot feature
Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images
- Elon Musk believes that Tesla has the "best real-world AI," which powers its self-driving tech.
- Whistleblower Lukasz Krupski told BBC News that the Autopilot feature wasn't ready for public use.
- The ex-technician leaked confidential Tesla files in May to German newspaper The Handelsblatt.
Elon Musk thinks "Tesla has by far the best real-world AI."
The billionaire shared his belief in an X post Saturday, but a former employee doesn't seem to agree.
Former Tesla service technician Lukasz Krupski said in an interview with BBC News that he worried about how AI was being used for its Autopilot feature.
He also said he didn't think the EV maker's self-driving technology was ready to be used in Tesla vehicles.
"It affects all of us because we are essentially experiments in public roads," he told BBC News.
Krupski is a whistleblower who leaked 100 gigabytes of confidential Tesla data to German newspaper The Handelsblatt in May. The data reportedly included about 4,000 recorded customer complaints on its driver assistance program.
A lawyer representing Tesla told the newspaper that Krupski was a "disgruntled former employee," and said he abused his position to release the material.
Some documents leaked to The Handelsblatt had recorded accidents that occurred when using Tesla's Autopilot feature, first released in 2015.
Autopilot is an advanced driver-assistance system that uses cameras to "see" surrounding traffic and take over some driving tasks. However, it still requires full human supervision.
Tesla also received thousands of customer complaints of their cars "phantom braking" and suddenly accelerating, per The Handelsblatt. The newspaper said it spent months investigating the data, which included more than 23,000 files spanning from 2015 to 2022.
It said it reviewed at least 2,400 recorded customer complaints of Teslas suddenly accelerating and 1,500 complaints about emergency braking because of a defective collision warning signal. In addition, there were 1,000 logged reports of crashes, per the report.
Kruspki told The New York Times in November that after he raised safety concerns in Oslo, Norway, he was harassed and subsequently fired.
Since he'd leaked the files, the past few months had been terrifying and he could barely sleep at night, the ex-technician told BBC News.
Contact details for Kruspki were not immediately available to Business Insider. Tesla didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from BI, made outside of normal working hours.