They are an existence proof that the original claim that we seem further than ever before is just wrong.
And level 4 is where Waymo is, and is staying. Their strategy is to to use tiny geofenced areas with a massive amount of preprocessing, mapping out every single part of an area, not just in terms of roads but also every single meta indicator - sign, signals, cross walks, lanes, and so on. And it creates a highly competent, but also highly rigid system. If road conditions change in any meaningful way, the most likely outcome with this strategy is simply that the network gets turned off until the preprocessing can be carried and reuploaded again. That's completely viable in small geofenced areas, but doesn't generalize at all.
So the presence of Waymo doesn't say much of anything about the presence of level 5 autonomy. If anything it suggests Waymo believes that level 5 autonomy is simply out of reach, because the overwhelming majority of tech that they're researching and developing would have no role whatsoever in level 5 automation. Tesla is still pushing for L5 automation, but if they don't achieve this then they'll probably just end up getting left behind by companies that double down on L4. And this does indeed seem to be the most likely scenario for the foreseeable future.
I don't think we have nearly as much visibility on what Waymo seems to believe about this tech as you seem to imply, nor do I think that their beliefs are necessarily authoritative. You seem disheartened that we haven't been able to solve self-driving in a couple of decades, and I'm of the opinion that geez, we basically have self-driving now and we started trying only a couple of decades ago.
How long after the invention of the transistor did we get personal computers? Maybe you just have unrealistic expectations of technological progress.
Another piece of evidence also comes from last year when Google scaled back Waymo with layoffs as well as "pausing" its efforts at developing self driving truck technology. [1] That technology would require something closer to L5 autonomy, because again - massive preprocessing is quite brittle and doesn't scale well at all. Other companies that were heavily investing in self-driving tech have done similarly. For instance Uber sold off its entire self-driving division in 2021. I'm certainly happy to hear any sort of counter-argument, but you need some logic instead of ironically being the one trying to mindread me or Waymo!
[1] - https://www.theverge.com/2023/7/26/23809237/waymo-via-autono...
