This is an easy thing to bet against, so much so that I would raise the bet too. I don’t think the current technology is capable of L5 at all but obviously lot of people feel differently
Humans only have two eyes that can only look in one direction at a time, and we achieve L5. Yes, we get into crashes, but because humans do stupid things like text while driving, drive hyper-aggressively, drive drunk, or do simply careless things like change lanes without even looking first, none of which are mistakes a computer would make.
Doesn't this inevitably mean that the hardware isn't capable too with extra steps? Like in 20 years with tens of millions more lines of code, we're going to need more hardware resources to run it (in particular at near real-time) than the hardware would provide today.
I agree with you, to be clear. I am just pointing out that 20 years worth of software is going to be a monster to run at the timings that will be required. So we could hit a hardware limitation between then and now on top of the hard software problems that must be solved.
> Humans only have two eyes that can only look in one direction at a time, and we achieve L5.
Humans use parallax to perceive depth via the overlap of both eyes, which as far as I know isn't used by automated vehicles for reasons unknown (patents?). Automated vehicles using visible light cameras are mapping the world in 2D, humans perceive the world in limited 3D.
Tesla does estimate depth using structure from motion (and probably other cues). They call it virtual LIDAR in presentations.
Most automated vehicles companies using visible light cameras have them pointed straight forward, that isn't therefore using parallax like a human does.
I have no idea how close we are to level 5, but I suspect the challenge is closer to “invent a new algorithm that works fine with less data” than it is to “make new hardware”.