>>I mean barren in the sense that it fee lifeless, due to nonexistent AI

I just don't understand that point. Many times so far I've just been walking around and admiring the place, it feels like the most realistic city I've ever been in in a video game. There's just so much stuff happening everywhere, I could probably forget the story and walk around and admire it all.

It's all set dressing, smoke and mirrors. Compare the following two clips for AI:

Cyberpunk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1coBF2_0--k

Red Dead Redemption 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cj7KnllcYzE

So you mean "realistic" in the sense that it looks nice, which is fine, but it doesn't mean "realistic" in the sense of feeling real, ie the NPCs actually react to your actions, cops don't spawn behind you, etc.

You are right, but what people are complaining about is that they can't interact with that world. You can't poke at it. If we had short loops of the game scenes displayed in a museum we would praise it, but people want videogames mostly to play and interact with things.

I'm just trying to think how much you could interact with the world in Witcher 3, which is obviously considered a masterpiece by many, and nearly all of its villages and houses were just set pieces. Villagers never actually changed their behaviours in reaction to anything, and played the same audio clip over and over again if you stood close to them.

I just don't know how much interactivity is required for it to be...good? What part of the AI is missing?

NPC's were much better placed in the Witcher 3 because you had way less NPCs, they were on more distinctive locations and they gave good side quests more often. So, each one was more meaningful. Sure, they weren't much more interactive. But the Witcher is mostly about going around clearing up the dangers of each place. Monsters were the focus, and they were far more distinctive than Cyberpunk NPC's shooting at you. So, it's not like the Witcher 3 was far more interactive or anything, but NPCs had their place and gave the world life. Cyberpunk doesn't manage to strike that balance. And you can't strike that balance by writing more for each NPC in such a densely populated world, so you need to cover for it with better AI, responses to events, emerging events, randomness... cover with more diverse content... or innovate. GTA V, to mention an example (although I'm not particularly interested in GTA games), has better NPC AI, better responses to events and decent diversity. In Cyberpunk, as a watcher it might look really beautiful, but as a participant it doesn't have as much life. I still think the writing is great and many side quests are great and there's a lot of great content, but hopefully this helps you see a bit better what people feel is off in the game (besides the bugs, of course). Like, don't compare by looking at single factors one by one, look at the world as a whole.

Stop a car in the middle of the street. There is no honking, no reaction. Turn the camera 180 degrees, then another 180 degrees. All the vehicles from the road have disappeared.

So realistic and cyberpunk, right?