A Tesla employee who posted a video of his experience with the Full Self-Driving (FSD) beta has been fired. His dismissal came just after he shared a video of the first confirmed crash (albeit a minor one) on FSD Beta.
Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving Beta” (FSD Beta) is an early version of the self-driving software currently being tested by a group of Tesla owners selected by the company and passing its “safety test”.
The software allows the vehicle to autonomously navigate to a destination entered into the vehicle’s navigation system, but the driver must remain alert and ready to take control at any time.
Since the responsibility lies with the driver and not the Tesla system, it is still considered a level 2 driver assistance system despite its name, but Tesla hopes to eventually remove the driver from controllers through future software updates.
In keeping up with the progress made in the beta program, we often reviewed and shared videos of early beta testers such as AI Addict on YouTube who often posted driving experiences in the FSD beta.
What we didn’t know was that AI Addict, now known as John Bernal, was a Tesla employee when he made these videos.
We now learn that Bernal was fired by Tesla late last month (via CNBC):
“Tesla fired a former Autopilot employee named Jon Bernal after he shared candid video reviews on his AI Addict YouTube channel showing how the company’s beta version of Full Self Driving worked in various places in Silicon Valley.”
Although Tesla did not disclose the reason for his dismissal, Bernal was warned about his YouTube channel prior to his dismissal and was advised by his manager not to share things that make the system look bad.
The timing of the firing is also interesting, as Bernal posted the FSD beta video for over a year and exposed the Tesla channel, but he was fired just a few weeks after posting a video showing a Tesla Full Self-Driving Beta crashing into a pole. , which may be the first FSD crash to be caught on video.
Electrek and several other sources shared this video, and it got almost 200,000 views – 10 times more than most of his previous videos.
Bernal was fired soon after. He spent over a year as a data annotation specialist at Tesla before recently being promoted to the role of “Advanced Driver Assistance Systems Test Operator”, which he mostly did on his Youtube channel – a possible conflict of interest.
The former Tesla employee said he never shared anything about the FSD or Tesla beta unless it was already in the public domain and in the hands of customers.
Interestingly, Tesla also revoked Bernal’s access to FSD Beta on his personal Model 3. Tesla used to only do this for people who received “security strikes,” but Bernal didn’t have any – not even after last month’s crash.
It’s not clear if Tesla has the right to do so, but the situation is complicated by the fact that Bernal bought his Model 3 as a Tesla employee when the automaker was running a promotion by providing an FSD package that cost $8,000 at the time. employees who want to test the beta for free.
Tesla has previously come under scrutiny for encouraging FSD beta testers not to share information that could be used against the company in an NDA.
CEO Elon Musk, who calls himself a “free speech absolutist,” said that Tesla should not enter into non-disclosure agreements under the FSD beta program, and testers “are not following them” anyway.
However, at the time, there was talk of employees sharing the FSD Beta video on social media.
Electrek’s view
It’s a strange situation, because common sense would tell me that the guy was asking for this, for lack of better words. Typically, you don’t start an entire YouTube channel posting dozens of videos of your experience with a product made by your employer.
It just doesn’t seem like a good idea.
On the other hand, what’s wrong with that? Sounds like a bad idea because of the optics, but as far as I can tell, it wasn’t done with malicious intent.
And now the optics are bad for Tesla as it fired the man right after he posted a video of what could be the first crash on the FSD Beta.
But of course, we only get one part of the story here, as Tesla does not comment on the situation.
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