"So this guy says a machine can outplay chess with just a CPU, some memory and a bit of code. He neglects to mention that humans have a brain capable of general intelligence".
Year later, computer beats human in chess.
"So this guy says you can teach a computer to play Go just by unsupervised training of neural networks. He neglects to mention that humans have a brain capable of general intelligence".
Year later, computer beats human in Go.
"So this guys says you can program neural network to play computer games competitively using vision and deep learning. He neglects to mention that humans have a brain capable of general intelligence".
We don't need AGI for self driving.
The difficulty of self driving is probably less than a dog walking on the street.
No, a dog doesn't steer a car, because he doesn't have hands, but he's performing the same vision and planning tasks like a human (or AI) driving a car.
He knows where he is, he knows where he wants to go and he uses vision and his non-AGI brain to plan a path to get there while also avoiding dynamic, unexpected obstacles.
It seems like maybe not the best reasoning to say “humans, do it this way, so that’s how my robot should do it.”
Musk's argument is more that cameras should be sufficient because humans can drive using only two eyes to perceive the driving environment. He always neglects to mention that humans do this with a combination of sight and a brain capable of general intelligence. I'm sure it's true that if Tesla invents AGI, self-driving with just cameras will become tractable. But "real hard problem to solve" doesn't begin to capture the difficulty.
In reality, since no one has yet invented a self-driving computer, it's impossible to say what components are necessary or even whether there may be more than one way to skin the cat. But one source we should probably take with a grain of salt on this issue is those (like Musk) with an intense commercial interest in one perspective.