On reading the negative commentary here on Rodney Brooks's post, I'm realizing that besides being a rambling article, it also assumes too much background from the reader. It isn't really understandable without knowing something about the author and about the business of robots.
Disclaimer: I worked for years building robots, several of these years with Rod. I assure you, when it comes to robotics and AI, he knows what he's talking about.
Here's my perspective. Also, he wrote his original predictions six years ago in a blog post [1], which is the basis for this latest post. If you don't have the time to read the old post, I provide a short summary from it about autonomous driving below, too.
1. Rod is not just an MIT professor emeritus and a past director of CSAIL. He has co-founded multiple robotics companies, one of which, iRobot, made loads of money selling tens of millions of consumer-grade autonomous robots cleaning floors in people's homes.
Making money selling autonomous robots is a very, very difficult thing. Roomba was a true milestone. Before then, the only civilian, commercially successful mass-produced robots were the programmable industrial arms that are still used in auto manufacturing. If the author sounds self-important, maybe that's why.
Yeah, he can get a little snarky sometimes when self-important CEOs run around with VC money in their pockets making tall claims and never being held accountable. That's just his style. Try to look beyond it. You might learn a thing or two.
2. The entire purpose of his annual "predictions" posts starting with [1] was to counter the hype and salesmanship about AI and robotics that's wasting billions of investment dollars and polluting the media landscape.
About autonomous cars, he believes that the core technology has been demonstrated in the 1980s, but that instead of using it, we have squandered the decades since then. For autonomous robots, the interaction with their surroundings is critical to success. We could have enhanced our road and communications infrastructure to enable autonomous cars. Instead, we have chosen to give money to slick salesmen to chase the mirage of placing "intelligent" cars on existing roads, continuing to neglect our civil infrastructure.
[1] https://rodneybrooks.com/my-dated-predictions/