@Edent Reminds me of when I used to work in railway safety. Once upon a time we used to inspect track by a bunch of people in high-viz walking along sections eyeballing (and hitting it). Now it's done by trains that constantly travel the network, without closing it, constantly measureing all sorts of factors.

I wouldn't be surprised if there was a bunch of neural nets at the heart of some of that tech.

I do find it funny that potholes are one of the problems that people claim will be solved by whatever the current hype is. But that's because they are one of those problems that are way more complicated and difficult to tackle than the vast majority of us realise. People (I'm sure including me) have a terrible tendency to assume that things we don't have day-to-day experience of must be as simple as they appear. Most people assume that other people's jobs are easier then theirs.