[judge2020]

That doesn't nullify their argument, though. If Lidar were free, it doesn't mean you need to have Lidar to achieve the same level of performance as humans, and having Lidar doesn't mean the data is so clean that the decision-making aspect of self-driving becomes solvable in a weekend.

[makeitdouble]

There's still two sailiant there:

- why would the goal be "the same level or performance as humans" ?

For context, some towns are actively removing cars from whole areas not just for pollution impact but also for pedestrian safety. Moral issues aside, the status quo is just not enough, it needs to be way better.

- achieving the same level as humans being possible in theory doesn't mean we'll get there in practice.

Having enough hardware to realize something doesn't help if the software is not up to the task. And assuming they "just" solve the software issue could be like assuming 18th century people would "just" discover relativity.

Software becoming as good as human in video processing just feels like a "general AI is around the corner" kind of expectation.

[judge2020]

> Having enough hardware to realize something doesn't help if the software is not up to the task. And assuming they "just" solve the software issue could be like assuming 18th century people would "just" discover relativity.

This is what I mean with the last part of my argument. Lidar is supposedly an extremely thorough 3d depth map hopefully capturing at hundreds or thousands of FPS. But even if you have this data, the actual bulk of the problem with current self-driving isn't solved, that being the "business logic" for how to navigate the world smoothly and efficiently and to 'communicate' with other road users.

[cma]

One tech is currently driving passengers around commercially without drivers and the other isn't.