I'd call that quote a perfectly adequate summary of certification. Can you rephrase what point you're making to the GP more clearly? It's not obvious to me how certification wouldn't be an answer here?

It is in the quote. Certified safe (this car isn't completely safe since no car is, but it meets our metrics so we certify it) is different from third-party verifiable safe (we have a proof of safety!).

I think you're getting hung up on semantics. It's perfectly fine to call certified products "safe" in a casual sense, and the process of certification is proving that status to a third party.

Again, I wouldn't find these objectionable statements in casual conversation, even as someone who participates in the mess that is certification.

This is such a inane semantic quibble. I was saying that Tesla must be able to prove (i.e. in the legal sense of meeting a standard of evidence) to a third party (i.e. a unaffiliated entity who does not have a conflict of interest, probably a regulatory agency or certification body), in a way that is verifiable by the third party (i.e. they do not require information from Tesla or they do use information from Tesla that can be reasonably believed to be accurate despite the conflict of interest), that it is safe (i.e. it meets a standard of safety generally agreed upon as acceptable for the problem domain). So yes, I was talking about safety certification.

Then go and just say that and don't go and use language that is much more strict in our own field (assuming HN average readers). As you say, you could have just rewritten your comment as:

"It is up to Tesla to get safety certification (that doesn't exist yet)."

That is obviously nowhere near what you wrote:

> As FSD is a safety-critical product, the burden of proof is on Tesla to prove in a verifiable way to third partys that it is safe. Absent that, it is assumed to be unsafe.

How does that in any way relate to safety certification?

I did not do so because I did not think anybody would misinterpret my statement as you did. I instead expected them to interpret it as the first person who replied to you did who found it obvious what I was talking about. It is in fact shocking to me that literally anybody would assume that I was declaring that they must prove that it is absolutely perfectly safe in a mathematically provable manner as that would mean that the reader thought I was such a blithering idiot that I can not even propose a minimally coherent argument.

I used extra words because I was expressing the core principle of certification which is to demonstrate to a third party that you achieve some set of agreed upon requirements. I did this because there is no current specific safety certification for autonomous vehicles, so I must appeal to the general principle underlying all safety certifications which is that you must demonstrate "safety" whatever that happens to be and that a product is not assumed "safe" by default.

Not to take away from the rest of it, but there is a very new process for L2-3 certification in Europe. As far as I know, only Mercedes has completed it and released a product (with TUV Rheinland), but TUV Sud is also offering homologation services for European type certification. The L4+ process for Europe is still in working group, with standards expected to be released next year (and 2025 for the UK).

Manufacturers are all pursuing self-certification in the US because regulators have been unwilling to answer petitions either way or commit to firm guidelines.

Again, certification (a matter of judgement) is a much lower standard than verification (a matter of truth). There is a lot of literature on the difference between the two words, and I assumed you chose to use the word verification intentionally. If that wasn’t the case, then it is better to choose certification when you mean that rather than verification in the future.