[colinmorelli]

This feels a lot like "moving the goalposts." First, it was complete science fiction to have technology in the car. Then, it was in the car, but it could only do navigation and music, it can't operate the car the way humans can. Then, it can prevent you from weaving out of your lane, and it can stop the car if you're about to crash into something, but it can't help you with your commute. Then, it can speed up, slow down, and steer on the highway, but it can't take you door to door. Now, it can take you door to door, but only in certain environments, it can't do it everywhere.

All of the above happened over the last ~20 year or so. The progression clearly seems to point to this being more than hype, even if it takes us longer to realize than originally anticipated.

[thesuitonym]

It's not really moving the goalposts, though. The idea of a self driving car has always been "I can get in my car, tell it where I want to go, and then it goes there while I read a book."

Having navigation and music, and lane assist, and adaptive cruise control, and some cars that can operate autonomously in some environments is great, but it's not what we meant when we said self driving cars.

[colinmorelli]

The point is not that those things were meant when we said self driving cars. It's that, at every step along the way, there were a group of people who doubted that cars could do that thing, and then they did that thing. And then the thing we said they can't do changed to something else.

Today, you absolutely can "get in a car, tell it where you want to go, and it goes there while you read a book" - it's literally what Waymo is and has been doing. And now we're saying it can't do it in Mumbai, so it's still not self-driving.

At some point, the distinction seems pointless. We are undeniably continuing to make progress on the road to autonomous driving, and it does work in certain scenarios today. To suggest things are slowing down because we haven't met the most reason interpretation of the words is neither helpful nor correct.

[zahlman]

> It's that, at every step along the way, there were a group of people who doubted that cars could do that thing

...Can you cite that?

> And then the thing we said they can't do changed to something else.

...And they were the same people?

> We are undeniably continuing to make progress

Where did anyone deny this?

> To suggest things are slowing down

Where did anyone make this argument?

The quote from TFA:

> but the hype has promised completely autonomous cars reliably zipping about in rush hour traffic.

The author did not restrict that to SF, and is presumably referring to "hype" that "promised" this globally.

[colinmorelli]

You conveniently left out the first part of the sentence you quoted:

> Currently available software may very well make human drivers both more comfortable and safe...

Which is objectively not what Waymo does, and whether intentional or not, invalidates the progress that has been made.

Also, immediately preceding that:

> Driverless vehicles in closed systems have been in use for a long time.

Which is also not what current frontier self driving technology is.

> Where did anyone make this argument?

The title of the article is quite literally "Is Winter Coming?"

[gilleain]

Not so much moving the goalposts as pointing out that playing American football is not like playing soccer (football - that is, driving in Rome) or even cricket (Mumbai).

In fact, cricket doesn't even _have_ goalposts, it has wickets. Driving in cities outside North America is very different.

[colinmorelli]

I'm not sure I get your analogy here. If you're suggesting that it's not "moving the goalposts" because it's pointing out that driving in Rome or Mumbai is different than driving in North America, then that is exactly what is meant by moving the goalposts.

10 years ago the claim was that "cars can't drive autonomously," Waymo quietly chips away to the point that they absolutely can drive autonomously, even in an unpredictable environment (with evidently drastically lower-than-human accident rates, for example), and the reaction of those original people is to say "yeah but it can't drive in [even more complex place]"

Sure, that's not exactly surprising. We generally don't design technology to do the most complex version of the task it's supposed to do first. We generally start with a simpler scenario it can accomplish and progressively enhance it as we learn more. Cars have been doing that for decades.

So perhaps the tech doesn't work in Mumbai or Rome yet. Maybe we'll advance the tech to do that thing, or maybe we'll come up with a different solution to autonomous driving in these places if we find out it'll be more expensive to advance this technology than it will be to do something else instead. But either way, it's already doing the thing that many, many people claimed it can't do, and those people are now claiming there's something else it can't do. That is the very definition of moving the goalposts.

[RetroTechie]

> Waymo quietly chips away (..)

Perfect example of the saying: "if you have a big problem, first solve the smaller problems. Then your bigger problem may turn out to be not so big after all".

Current AI is much like that: one 'little' problem after another being solved (or at least, progressing).

[xnx]

> Driving in cities outside North America is very different.

Waymo is testing in Japan: https://waymo.com/blog/2025/04/new-beginnings-in-japan