Tesla employee was fired after sharing video of accident on full self-driving beta

A Tesla employee who posted videos of his experience with full self-driving (FSD) beta has been fired. His firing took place right after he shared a video of the first confirmed crash (albeit a minor one) on the FSD beta.

Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving Beta” (FSD Beta) is an early version of its self-driving software that is currently being tested by a fleet of Tesla owners selected by the company and through its “Safety Test Score” .

The software enables the vehicle to drive autonomously to the destination entered in the car’s navigation system, but requires the driver to be alert and ready to take control at all times.

Since the responsibility rests with the driver and not Tesla’s system, it is still considered a level two driver-assistance system despite its name, but Tesla is expected to remove the driver as supervisor through a future software update. are supposed to.

Following the progress made with the beta program, we often watched and shared videos of early beta testers, such as AI Addict on YouTube, who often posted driving experiences on the FSD beta.

What we didn’t know was that the AI ​​addict, now known as John Bernal, was a Tesla employee when making those videos.

We now learn that Bernal was fired by Tesla late last month (via CNBC):

“Tesla has fired a former Autopilot employee named John Bernal after sharing a candid video review on its YouTube channel, AI Addict, showing that the company’s full self-driving beta system is operating in various locations around Silicon Valley. How does it work.”

While Tesla did not disclose the reason for his firing, Bernal was warned about the firing on his YouTube channel and a manager suggested he not share things that cast the system in a bad light. Huh.

The timing of the firing is also interesting as Bernal has been posting FSD beta videos for over a year and revealed the channel to Tesla, but was fired just weeks after posting a video in which Tesla was fully self-contained. -Driving Beta was shown running into a pole. In what could be the first FSD crash caught on video.

Electrek and several other outlets shared the video, and it has garnered nearly 200,000 views – 10 times more than their previous video.

Bernal was soon terminated. He spent more than a year at Tesla as a data annotation specialist before recently moving into a role as “Advanced Driver Assistance System Testing Operator,” which is basically what he was doing on his YouTube channel – A potential conflict of interest.

The former Tesla employee said he never shared the FSD beta or anything about Tesla that was not already public and was in the hands of customers.

Interestingly, Tesla also revoked Bernal’s access to the FSD beta on its Personal Model 3. Previously, Tesla only did this for people receiving a “security attack,” but Bernal still had none after the crash last month.

It’s unclear whether Tesla is within its rights to do so, but one thing that complicates the situation is that Bernal bought his Model 3 as a Tesla employee when the automaker was running a promotion to offer an FSD package. which was worth $8,000 at the time. Employees are willing to test the beta for free.

Tesla has previously been under scrutiny for encouraging FSD beta testers not to share things that could be used against the company in an NDA.

CEO Elon Musk, who calls himself a “free speech autocrat,” said Tesla shouldn’t have an NDA as part of the FSD beta program and that testers “are not following them” anyway.

However, at that time the question was about employees sharing videos of FSD beta on social media.

Electrek’s Tech

It’s an odd situation because common sense would tell me that guy was asking, for lack of better words. As a general rule, you don’t start an entire YouTube channel posting dozens of videos about 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? This sounds like a bad idea because of the optics, but as far as I can tell, it was not done with the wrong intentions.

And now the optics are bad for Tesla because it fired the man shortly after posting a video of what may have been the first crash on the FSD beta.

But of course, we only get part of the story here because Tesla isn’t commenting on the situation.

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