AR has a lot further to go on a fundamental technology level to reach "usable without uncomfortably dim surroundings". VR already works.
E.g. the very best AR stuff you can buy right now is still moderately-bright glowing pixels on top of whatever you're currently looking towards. So if you have too much contrast in the background, or actual light sources, they show right through and ruin much of the visual clarity.
As much as I like AR as a concept, it's much further from "ready". It has all the complexities of VR, plus real-world tracking, plus visual overlay - it'll necessarily trail VR until those latter two are "good enough", and they certainly are not at the moment.
There have been some tech demos along these lines - basically an LCD filter layer that turns black where the pixels are lighting up.
Last I saw, that opaque layer's pixel density was far too coarse (so it blocked too much or too little - it needs like >10x higher density than the highest density consumer screens out now), and every tech I've seen has had a fundamental issue with focus - we can project AR pixels at comfortable focus ranges with complex enough techniques, but nothing exists to project "darkness", so it's at an entirely different visual and focal distance as the pixels, and it never looks quite right.
On top of that, you can't really use it to make semi-opaque pixels - you can only darken, and draw brighter stuff on top. So even if you solve ^ all that, you still have to accurately track the world, figure out what's being occluded, and re-draw that along with the pixel you want to draw. Without blocking vision, so the cameras to do all this can't see exactly the same thing you see.
... so every AR headset just adds a pair of literal sunglasses behind it all to dim the world so things don't look quite as bad, and that's the best we have now.
In VR with a couple cameras, you... just draw a semi-opaque pixel on top. And it looks perfect.
How do you block light away from the focal plane? There's been research headsets with incredibly long and convoluted indirect light paths so that an attenuation layer could be inserted at a separate focal plane. There's also out of focus attenuation layers which can be surprisingly effective. Neither seems sufficient for a consumer headset.
VR with pass-through might still win this because it's more practical for work scenarios. Arguably this is still AR, but subtly different than HMDs with transparent displays.
I would argue that the future of AR is VR with passthrough. AR fundamentally has issues with light passing through the display screen. VR passthrough is solvable with current tech. AR that solves the problem of not being able to selectively block out light is a breakthrough or two away.
Curious, but why not AR for productivity rather than VR? Both could work, and AR is less invasive.