[penjelly]

the problem is, even if you solve 80% of cases 100% of the time, those 20% of outliers are not easy to get 100%. How should a autonomous car behave when it sees a basketball bounce across the road near a playground? Any human would assume: "there might be kids, I should slow down even if the ball isn't obstructing my path" a car isn't going to be able to make those decisions.

[fragmede]

It depends on what you define success. Only Waymo has actual real, live robotaxis right now; Tesla's FSD very much isn't that, despite promises that it'll be here next year for the past 9 years. But in terms of "how much does it suck to drive 2 hours in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the freeway", we've made leaps and bounds of progress since the original Darpa Grand Challenge, 20 years ago in 2004. Yeah I'd love to own a Tesla and rent it out as a robotaxi and have it earn money while I'm not using it. I'd also like a flying car. And a pony. To say that we "don't have anything even remotely close" when we have actually made progress, just because some pie-in-the-sky goal hasn't been meet, is where I take issue with. I don't know how much that last 20% will take, but if we've only made it 80% of the way, that's still not "don't have anything even remotely close" territory.