In this case, does it matter? Both are supposed to follow a vehicle at a safe distance

I think it does matter, while both are supposed to follow at safe distances, the FSD stack is doing it in a completely different way. They haven’t really been making any major updates to AP for many years now, all focus has been on FSD.

AP is looking at the world frame by frame, each individual camera on it’s own, while FSD is taking the input of all cameras, turning into 3d vector space, and then driving based off that. Doing that on city streets and highways is only a pretty recent development. Updates for doing it this way on highway and streets only went out to all cars in the past few months. For along time it was on city streets only.

I’d be more interested in how it changes over time, as new software is pushed.

I think that’s why it’s important to make a real distinction between AP and FSD today (and specifically which FSD versions)

They’re wholly different systems, one that gets older every day, and one that keeps getting better every few months. Making an article like this that groups them together muddies the water on what / if any progress has been made.