Meet Ashok Elluswamy, Chennai-born lead of Tesla's AI/Autopilot Team, recruited via X by Elon Musk

Indians are ruling the world! Name one industry where an Indian hasn¡¯t achieved milestones. From big tech companies to now AI, we are ruling the roost and it's a matter of immense pride.

Tech billionaire Elon Musk is a genius who is loved by many albeit his eccentricities. From Tesla, SpaceX to X, he has been inventing and innovating technology at a lightning fast pace. Artificial intelligence has taken over our lives and Musk is at the top of his game.

Interestingly, Elon Musk recently commended Ashok Elluswamy, the director of AI/autopilot software at Tesla, for his significant role in the expansion of the electric car manufacturer. Musk acknowledged Elluswamy's contribution, stating that without him and their exceptional team, Tesla would not stand out from other car companies.

Who is Ashok Elluswamy?

Ashok Elluswamy/instagram

In Elon Musk¡¯s own words, "Ashok was the first person to join the Tesla AI/Autopilot team and ultimately rose to lead all AI/Autopilot software," the tech billionaire wrote on X. "Without him and our awesome team, we would just be another car company looking for an autonomy supplier that doesn¡¯t exist."

Elluswamy, who joined the Tesla AI/autopilot team as its inaugural member approximately a decade ago, emphasized Musk's consistent encouragement to pursue ambitious goals, "even when such ideas were seemingly impossible at the time".

Ashok Elluswamy was recruited to Tesla after Elon Musk put out a tweet seeking candidates for the autopilot team, marking the beginning of his tenure with the company, which has spanned a decade. Musk highlighted this milestone in a December 29 tweet, referencing Elluswamy as the first person hired from his recruitment tweet announcing the formation of Tesla's Autopilot team.

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Tesla director Elluswamy is a robotics engineer with expertise in computer vision and perception through planning and control, as detailed on his LinkedIn profile. He holds a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Electronics and Communication from the College of Engineering, Guindy in Chennai. He pursued robotics systems development studies at Carnegie Mellon University in the US. Prior to joining Tesla, he held positions at WABCO Vehicle Control Systems and Volkswagen. He is settled in the San Francisco Bay Area, California.

Ashok Elluswamy Posted A Long Note Praising Elon Musk Ahead Of Tesla Shareholders Annual Meeting

"Elon is critical for Tesla's success in AI," Elluswamy wrote. "It is his combination of deep technical understanding, insane perseverance and relentless hard work that have positioned Tesla to be a leader in real-world AI. Elon's technical intuition to make these important decisions way before others see it is unmatched." He added that had it not been for the tech billionaire's ambition, Tesla might have dwindled to become "just another car company".

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Here's the full statement:

"Elon Musk has been the key driver of AI and autonomy at Tesla. He has always pushed us to achieve great things, even when such ideas were seemingly impossible at the time. Some examples:

Back in 2014, Autopilot started on a ridiculously tiny computer that only had ~384 KB of memory and puny compute (didn't even have native floating point arithmetic). He asked the engineering team to implement lane keeping, lane changing, longitudinal control for vehicles, curvature, etc. Many, even in the team, thought that the request was crazy. Nonetheless, he never gave up and pushed the team to achieve this very difficult goal. In 2015, beyond all odds, Tesla shipped the world's first Autopilot system. The second closest such product only came to market many years later.

In 2016, Tesla started doing all of the computer vision required for Autopilot in-house instead of depending on external vendors. Many people thought it was insane to bet the product on developing the vision system from scratch within a few months, which had taken other companies a decade or more. Yet, we achieved this target within eleven months. This was a strategically important move that started the development of a strong AI team at Tesla.

Not only did he push for strong AI software, but also for powerful AI hardware. Tesla, which others thought was just a car company, was making custom silicon to run neural networks efficiently. This hardware that was originally designed in 2017, came to production in February 2019 and remains extremely competitive with hardware coming out to date. For reference, this five year old AI computer has roughly 8x the AI inference compute as the state-of-the-art Apple M3 chip. It is still able to run the latest end-to-end neural networks built on top of the latest AI technology.

He was the one who bet on vision and AI to solve autonomy instead of relying on sensor crutches and high-definition maps. For anyone who has experienced the latest versions of FSD, it might be obvious that it can see all the important things and drive the car based on pure vision. However, back in 2020 and earlier it wasn't obvious to most. In fact, many "experts" in the field ridiculed Tesla and Elon for these choices. We have proved them wrong by shipping supervised FSD to millions of cars and shown that with good AI software, the car is able to handle the complexities of city driving such as making turns, handling intersection, yielding to pedestrians etc., just by seeing outside. In fact, we even removed the radars and ultrasonics to just really focus on the heart of the problem, which is AI. Today, it's almost paradoxical that, Teslas have the least amount of raw sensors, yet have the most autonomous capability compared to any production car. Pulling off such a contrary bet was only possible because of his extreme conviction and deep understanding of this problem.

He kickstarted the work on humanoid robots at Tesla in 2021, again before any ChatGPT or other obvious examples of the rise of AI. Just like the vehicle autonomy, Optimus is also being developed to be competent, scalable, and cost-effective in order to widely serve the world.

I could go on, but plainly, Elon is critical for Tesla's success in AI. It is his combination of deep technical understanding, insane perseverance and relentless hard work that have positioned Tesla to be a leader in real-world AI. Elon's technical intuition to make these important decisions way before others see it is unmatched. If not for Elon's ambition, Tesla might have dwindled to become just another car company. In the future, fully autonomous cars and useful household robots will be common place and the world will think that this was how it was always supposed to be. Until then, we need Elon Musk to push the frontier, because he sees it already."

Musk also thanked Elluswamy for his note in which he declared that the Tesla boss was "critical" for the company's success in AI.

Thanks Ashok!

Ashok was the first person to join the Tesla AI/Autopilot team and ultimately rose to lead all AI/Autopilot software.

Without him and our awesome team, we would just be another car company looking for an autonomy supplier that doesn¡¯t exist.

Btw, I never¡­ https://t.co/7eBfzu0Nci

¡ª Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 9, 2024

Tesla's imminent shareholders' annual meeting on June 13 will be crucial, as it involves significant decisions such as the vote on Elon Musk's $56 billion pay package and the re-election of directors, notably including Musk's brother.