IF ANYTHING HAS changed between today and the halcyon days of 2016, it’s that those building and marketing self-driving tech are now less… promise-y. The robots are still coming, the software developers and hardware mavens and balance sheet-wielding CEOs insist. But more and more, they emphasize that this work is hard, the problems varied, the risks manifold, the regulations slow in coming. Even Waymo, the putative leader in the industry flush with Alphabet funding, which plans to launch a commercial service this quarter, is having trouble teaching computers to be competent drivers.
