US tech has many such stories throughout the ages. but there is still a "cultural significance" to the novel ones like FSD imho. the vision marketing helped fue

US tech has many such stories throughout the ages. but there is still a "cultural significance" to the novel ones like FSD imho. the vision marketing helped fuel the eventual development to make it a reality, whether we are there yet or not. another place where this is in play (also in the ai space) is the openai mumbo-jumbo. while there is plenty of discussions on hn about the real efficacies of genai, we have to agree that it has motivated companies to drop bucket loads of resources into its advancements. same way, the auto industry and researchers got a reason to fund designing the cars of the future. a smaller example where this worked out was the macbook air and ultrabooks space. while everybody was captivated by the original fitting inside a large envelope, it was an overheating, slow (even for its time) mess for many years. but by creating a clear market demand for the vision, we finally have devices that meet the original vision. while i cannot stand behind the current driver of FSD tech (or ai for that matter), i respect their role as a catalyst in research.