A Tesla employee has been fired after they uploaded a video on YouTube that showed the company’s Full-Self Driving (FSD) software in action, as reported by CNBC.
John Bernal, now a former Tesla employee, owns and operates the AI Addict YouTube channel, with his oldest FSD video dating back to February 10th, 2021.
According to CNBC, Bernal says that he had been verbally warned by his managers about his videos in the past, and that he was breaking Tesla’s policies and his YouTube channel was a major conflict of interest.
“Tesla relies on the common sense and good judgment of its employees to engage in responsible social media activity,” reads Tesla’s employee social media policy, while not mentioning anything about employees being critical about the company’s products.
One of Bernal’s older video, titled ‘[FSD Beta 8.2] Oakland – Close Calls, Pedestrians, Bicycles!,’ uploaded on March 15th, 2021 shows, as the title suggest, close calls with pedestrians and bicycles. After the video gained traction (It has 261k views), “A manager from my Autopilot team tried to dissuade me from posting any negative or critical content in the future that involved FSD Beta. They held a video conference with me but never put anything in writing,” said Bernal in a statement given to CNBC.
The video he got in trouble for however is this one, which shows his Tesla being unable to detect a green bollard, and banging into one.
Since then, Bernal has been fired from his job. He says that his separation notice does not include the reason for him being laid off, but that he still wishes to continue posting independent research and reviews of the software. Bernal would now have to go the extra mile and borrow a friend’s Tesla since his access to beta software was revoked when he was fired.
“I still care about Tesla, vehicle safety and finding and fixing bugs,” said Bernal in his statement to CNBC.
Source: CNBC
