Tesla's Autopilot engineers now start each workday by sitting in a dimly lit conference room, staring intently at various objects while attempting to "process visual data like a biological neural network." The mandatory 6 AM sessions, introduced after recent autonomous driving setbacks, are part of CEO Elon Musk's new initiative to make engineers "truly understand human vision."
The program begins during the morning commute, where engineers must wear blindfolds on company shuttles to "build empathy with the sensors." Upon arrival, they conduct their morning standup meetings with their eyes closed to "better understand computer vision from the inside."
"Yesterday we spent two hours looking at a stop sign," said senior engineer Dave Patterson, blinking repeatedly. "When Marcus called it an 'eight-sided attention structure,' he got promoted to team lead. Meanwhile, I got written up for wearing my glasses. Apparently, it's 'sensor cheating.'"
The daily workshops include a new "embodied driving experience" where engineers must parallel park while narrating their "ocular process" in real-time. "Keep describing your cone cell activation patterns!" the instructor reportedly shouts through a megaphone. Last week, junior developer Rachel Martinez received a surprise promotion after claiming she could "taste different wavelengths of light" during a particularly challenging three-point turn.
"Last week, we had to write poetry about how our retinas process light," reported another engineer who asked to remain anonymous. "Mine was about photoreceptors. I got a written warning for 'being too technical' and 'not embracing the pure visual experience.'"
The company's HR department defended the program, noting that attendance has been "technically perfect" since they installed facial recognition cameras that everyone must maintain unblinking eye contact with for the duration of each session.
At press time, three engineers were reportedly in disciplinary meetings after suggesting that human eyes actually work in tandem with a complex neural processing system, rather than operating as independent vision units that "just figure it out somehow."
