It may be an assumption, but I think of it as akin to the assumption that Wilbur and Orville Wright had that heavier than air flying craft could become practical. Unproven, but one would be a fool to bet money against it happening on the OP’s “eventually” timeline.

> but one would be a fool to bet money against it happening on the OP’s “eventually” timeline.

Well, I mean, duh. You’d be a fool to bet against seeing a unicorn on an “eventually” timeline. Try to collect and I say it’s not eventually yet.

and yet…

I don't get why people think this is theoretical. We have autonomous vehicles driving on the road _today_. They've logged millions of miles. The question is one of fidelity. Can they drive "safe enough?" Can they drive in a blizzard? These are important questions and are needed to answer a question like, are autonomous vehicles "sufficiently advanced" enough to fully replace human drivers in most scenarios? But even if they never advanced beyond what we have today, they still would have use cases that demand clear regulation.

I think that the autonomous vehicles on the road today are the equivalent of duct taping a traffic cone to a horse’s forehead and saying, “See, I told you unicorns aren’t theoretical.”

Agreed! My point is not so much as whether it's possible, it's as whether the analogy holds, which I think it doesn't, since no companies are trying to create unicorns.