There are currently no AI systems that can teach themselves to drive a car in about 20 hours of practice, as a 17-year-old can.

Judged as of 14 March 2024. 'Drive a car' means general driving competence comparable to a newly licensed teenager on real roads, not a narrow subtask. TRUE: no documented AI system had, by that date, learned general real-world driving from roughly 20 hours (order of tens of hours) of its own practice; existing autonomous-driving systems relied on far more data or engineering. MOSTLY TRUE: the claim holds for general driving, but some system had learned a narrow driving task (e.g., lane-following) in that much practice. MOSTLY FALSE: a system had learned near-general road driving from somewhat more practice, or with substantial pre-training that is debatable as 'teaching itself'. FALSE: a documented system had by then taught itself general real-world driving in about 20 hours of practice.

Set before the research began.

1. E1 After just 20 hours of training, Wayve's fast-learning AI car is already driving itself on unfamiliar roads New Atlas · 4 April 2019

   “British startup Wayve taught a car to teach itself to drive, and using only some cameras, a sat-nav and 20 hours' worth of experience, it's already driving itself short distances on unfamiliar UK roads.”

2. E2 Learning to drive like a human Wayve · 3 April 2019

   “What is more remarkable, is that this model learned this driving behaviour with only 20 hours of training data.”

3. E3 Learning to drive like a human Wayve · 3 April 2019

   “At all times, trained safety drivers ensure the AI system obeys the road code safely.”

4. E4 Learned urban driving Wayve · 2 December 2019

   “As a result of this additional learning signal, we were able to learn a useful driving policy for simple urban driving with 30 hours of labelled control data.”

E1 and E2 report that Wayve's 2019 system learned to drive itself short distances on unfamiliar UK roads from 20 hours of training data. That is the scale the claim names, but it is limited driving, not general competence like a newly licensed teenager. E3 notes that trained safety drivers ensured the system obeyed the road code at all times, and E4 describes only "simple urban driving" learned from 30 hours of labelled control data. Under the criteria, a system that learned a narrow or limited driving task in tens of hours, with general real-world driving still not achieved, makes the claim mostly true.