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Tesla's auto-driving has more human input than you might think.
And by the big man himself: CEO Elon Musk.
The electric vehicle manufacturer uses human 'annotators' to help identify objects like construction cones or pedestrians crossing a road in recorded footage from the company's vehicles.
And the driving they're watching is of their boss.
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That's right, according to Business Insider reports, the driving is done by Elon Musk himself, alongside several other 'VIP' drivers.
These human annotators review camera footage from Tesla vehicles on the road to improve the company's 'self-driving' software.
They regularly update Tesla's global database to make sure the cars follow traffic rules and adapt to changing conditions, i.e. in the event of a hazard.
But Musk's driving data reportedly gets top priority, with eight workers recalling labelling data from his car.
Other workers recalled working on routes around Tesla's factories in Texas and California.
Some former employees even said to BI they were told to be extra careful and spend more time annotating clips from Musk's car.
Of course, this extra attention skewed the results compared to other factories.
'It seemed like we were deliberately making his car better to make the autopilot seem different than it was. It didn’t seem fair,' one ex-employee said.
'It seems pretty clear that Elon's experience would be better than anyone else's,' another former employee stated. 'He was seeing the software at its best.'
It's a pretty unforgiving job too.
One annotator was allegedly fired after failing to properly label a highway exit sign in a clip believed to be from Musk's car.
It's not just Musk getting this VIP treatment though, YouTube celebrities and other influencers are also having their driving data prioritised.
'We would annotate every area that car regularly drove in,' another former Tesla worker added. 'We'd home in on where they lived and label everything we could along that route.'
Meanwhile, Tesla has faced a lot of controversy over its driver assistance software.
The so-called 'Full Self-Driving'' and 'Autopilot' features are under investigation by several government bodies after several collisions and deaths. Not to mention, the numerous claims that Tesla customers are reporting.
