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 interview with Dwarkesh Patel:

Dwarkesh Patel 01:42:55

You’ve talked about how you were at Tesla leading self-driving from 2017 to 2022. And you firsthand saw this progress from cool demos to now thousands of cars out there actually autonomously doing drives. Why did that take a decade? What was happening through that time?

Andrej Karpathy 01:43:11

One thing I will almost instantly push back on is that this is not even near done, in a bunch of ways that I’m going to get to. Self-driving is very interesting because it's definitely where [...]

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Outline:

(08:08) Do self-driving car companies believe self-driving cars are a solved problem?

(20:18) The major caveats to Waymo's success

(26:29) Broader implications

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First published:

Source:

Linkpost URL:
https://strangecosmos.substack.com/p/self-driving-cars-arent-nearly-a

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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