As this article (https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/05/27/1052826/ai-reinforcement-learning-self-driving-cars-autonomous-vehicles-wayve-waabi-cruise/) describes, first generation self-driving companies like Waymo and Cruise have (seemingly) doubled down on having the interface between perception, planning, and control be modular and are continuing to use HD maps combined with LIDAR for driving. On the other hand, companies like Wayve and comma.ai are shooting for an end-to-end learned approach where perception translates directly to control using RL or something similar. Tesla falls somewhere in the middle but currently seems to be in the former category.

This question will resolve to "Yes" if a company clearly using the latter approach is the first to deploy self-driving cars in 50 cities. It will also resolve to "Yes" if one of the companies in the former group pivots approaches and uses mostly or entirely end-to-end approaches in their deployed production systems. It resolves to "No" if a member of the former category reaches 50 cities without changing their approach. There's also a large space of scenarios in which the resolution is uncertain in which case it will resolve to probability whenever the first self-driving company reaches 50 cities. I'll use my own discretion combined with helpful comments to determine the resolution.

I've set the resolution date to 2035 but that's mostly just far enough out that I'll be able to change it if it still hasn't happened by then.