Re: "...dozens & dozens of odd situations..."
I think you are saying that programming a car to drive using a 'laundry list' of rules is inadequate to deal with the vast 'problem space'. I think you, I and Tesla agree on this.
However I think your conclusion is wrong. You think we should just wait for the arrival of AGI and not try to advance the state of the art at all? I'm sure many things are currently handled by the laundry list of IFs (piles of leaves in the road is one example) but today many things are handled by much more general, fuzzy AI routines and this percentage will only shift over time.
But you have to start somewhere, I for one celebrate any person or company who pushes ahead, best they can, in the name of progress instead of sitting in their cave waiting for the perfect sabre-tooth tiger defence mechanism. People will say that Tesla killed this guy (and the next because there will be a next) but most sensible people realise that every year Tesla (or others) bring closer a car which is truly better than a human at driving will be saving hundreds of thousands of lives in the long run
Biting the hand that feeds IT
