The discussion around self-driving cars often feels like shifting goalposts: each time one feature is achieved, a new requirement is added, perpetually delaying the "final" answer.
Self-driving cars are "here"... until someone adds another requirement.
I mean by your logic self driving cars were invented back when we put a steam engine on some tracks in the 1800s. Of course the goalposts shift when the hypesters are trying to sell you on an idea like "AI will be able to do literally everything next week".
Yes, Waymo can today drive around extremely dense car-friendly cities that are scanned and mapped in great detail weekly... They also still have to have remote human intervention all the time, and are freaked out by traffic cones being placed on the hood. I grew up in Indonesia and that's where I learned to drive, and trust me, if Waymo is ever able to navigate 100 meters on any road in Jakarta I'll happily concede and consider self-driving to be a solved problem.
No, that is not my logic. It completely misrepresents my logic. My comment was not equating hype with reality, it was about the constantly moving goalposts in discussions about _autonomous vehicles_.
In fact, I am not arguing that self-driving cars are perfect or global. I am pointing out how people keep changing the definition of "solved" which makes it look like the finish line keeps moving.
We do have what parent said, it is a reality. It is also the reality that it is not perfect, but somehow the latter is made to minimize or completely dismiss the former.
There are no moving goalposts, though there is a certain lack of precision in the discussion, on both ends. There is a commonly accepted scale of self-driving car autonomy. By some accounts Waymo can be considered to be level 4, by others they are only level 3. By no account are they level 5, nor is anyone else.
Those are the goalposts and they've been in the same spot for quite a while now.
So have they stopped having the >1 average remote drivers for each self driving vehicle as well?
The problem with these statements is language has so much context implicit in it. "driving around on their own" to me means with zero active oversight. "driving around" to me means not just in a small set of city streets, but as a replacement for human driving (eg anywhere a vehicle can physically fit). Obviously to you it means other things, but it's what makes these conversations and statements of fact challenging.
I understand the point you're making, but I think it's not a good one.
The failure mode for getting a self-driving car right is grave. The failure mode for rendering game graphics imperfectly is to require a bit of suspension of disbelief (it's not a linear spectrum given the famous uncanney valley, etc., I'm aware). Games already have plenty of abstract graphics, invisible walls, and other cludges that require buy-in from users. It's a lot easier to scale that wall.
The statement was one of capability. There are some things that the tech is flatly not capable of, and that it will take time to develop the capability of. Even if there were no safety concerns at all and we lived in a cotton candy bubble world, self driving cars still have hard failure modes. The tech is not capable, and will not develop the capability next week, either.
The point being made is that the tech is moving fast, at least according to the marketing, but a revolution is not happening ever week. "This is the worst it'll ever be" is an increasingly tired refrain when things seem to be stagnating more than ever. The mentioned behavior will take longer a good amount of time, it's silly to wait around for it when it is not unlikely it may never come.
So full self driving vecicles will be finally ready next week then? Great to hear, though to be honest, I remain sceptical.