Elon Musk live-streamed a demo of FSD v12 beta. He drove to random places in Palo Alto California. It is published on X (formerly Twitter) on August 25, 2023.
With FSD V12, the C++ code that implement rules on driving are replaced with an AI trained model to mimic good human driving. There is no specific recognition of traffic lights or lane lines. Humans review the video to pick videos of good human driving for training the AI. The resulting AI is one that behaves similar to a good human driver.
For the most part, it worked flawlessly. The AI drove smoothly, made left turn, stopped at red lights and stop signs, stayed within lane line and kept good follow distance. Given choices for lanes, the AI selected the lane with fewer cars. It also pulled over and parks at the randomly selected destination. There was one intervention around 19:54 mark. Elon’s car was at the front of the intersection with controlled left turn lane that has separate traffic lights for left turn and going straight. The straight traffic was red and his car was waiting. Then the left turn lights changed to green and a white car on the opposite side started moving to make left turn, the AI started moving too and Elon stopped the car and disengaged AI. Elon explained that to fix that problem, his team will request video of similar situation and retrain the AI and the problem will be addressed. Given more time and more training video, FSD V12 will improve further and get ready for public release.