I'm sorry but I find it incredibly absurd the number of people walking away from autonomous driving basically saying "The hard work is done, the problem is solved, it's time for me to move on to something else".

Bullshit. In the last 5 years we've gone from optimists saying "Hey these new ML models are really smart we might be able to solve self-driving with this", to "We've totally solved self-driving, sure you can't, you know, let it drive, and in fact we've had to install cameras that monitor you to make sure you don't try and let it drive, but we've totally solved it trust me". Yeah sure buddy, you solved it, good job.

It turns out the guys making grandiose claims five years ago, are still willing to make the grandiose claims today, and it doesn't matter that over the last 5 years their credibility slowly shrank to zero.

Self-driving is more than throwing an ML model in a car.