flâneur

Self-driving cars aren’t nearly a solved problem

substack.com · 5,034 words · saved by 1 readers

Contrary to popular belief, Waymos aren't actually fully autonomous, and the problem is harder than it may seem

Self-driving cars are not a solved problem, nor are they close to getting solved. I will explain further, but since this is a case where the messenger matters more than the message, first listen to Andrej Karpathy tell you the same thing. Karpathy is as credentialed as it comes: he was the lead AI researcher responsible for the development of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software from 2017 to 2022. (Karpathy also did two stints as a researcher at OpenAI, taught a deep learning course at Stanford, and coined the term “vibe coding”.) Here’s a long quote from Karpathy’s October 17, 2025…

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