This is just my personal belief: but I really don't think an AI advanced enough to actually do self-driving will have trouble getting all the information it nee

This is just my personal belief: but I really don't think an AI advanced enough to actually do self-driving will have trouble getting all the information it needs from cameras. It seems to me that accurately determining signs, construction work, pedestrians, bikes, and even the intention/direction of these, is way harder than just reconstructing a 3D space from the cameras. I think the neural nets will have to do this internally anyway to be able to predict the direction a pedestrian is about to walk. So I think LIDAR may be a benefit for limited self-driving in the short term. If it's a benefit in the long term remains to be seen, but there's good arguments that Teslas gamble will pay off, as they're allowed to use all their focus on the part of the AI that's most important for daily driving.