On the one hand, they're of course correct. As with automation generally (whether cars, airplanes, or software deployment), once you get to a certain level of automation, you pretty much have to be all in because humans can't act quickly enough or with enough throughput.

On the other hand, it's easy to see why auto manufacturers and others are disinterested in an all-or-nothing goal that is likely to be decades away. Because they want incremental features they can sell in the interim.

Of course, their challenge is around what incremental approaches work given that humans will not pay attention once you reach a certain level of automation. Perhaps you enable full automation only under scenarios where it works reliably--say freeways in certain weather conditions--and is legally allowed under those circumstances. (Though I suspect the first step is that people will use "autopilots" and go ahead and play with their phones--even though they're not supposed to--given that many already do that today.)

I concur. Here's a comment I made on another thread about self-driving cars, and my experience with even rudimentary assistance features on my 2016 VW (coming from a car with no such features whatsoever):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10735434

I have some sympathy with this view, however I don't see how self-parking and collision avoidance fit in? These seem like ideal places for computer drivers to show their value without affecting most driving experiences.

I've seen discussion of this issue in the domain of pilots with commercial airlines. The suggestion was made that because so much of flying is now done by autopilot, pilots' ability to react quickly and appropriately in a real emergency when control is handed back to them has significantly declined. And that we may soon go to completely pilotless airliners which are taken over by ground control in case of emergency. (This would also have the side-benefit of significantly reducing the risk of hijacking).

AFAIK, pretty much everyone is. That's really been the big shift over the past few years that's allowed for fairly impressive autopilot levels without AIs having to "understand" and parse the world to nearly the degree people do. Presumably vehicles connected to the system will be able to contribute to updates but maintaining current, high resolution maps across a wide area will certainly be a challenge. It's not unreasonable to think that the government could play some role as well as it does for marine navigation.

I imagine if the car ran into something that significantly deviated from what it expected, it would drop out of automatic driving. But google maps is pretty remarkably good at keeping up to date.

I have a feeling they track you with your Android, and notice when no one uses a particular road, and can check if it's under construction.

My biggest worry is that Tesla's half-baked almost-self-driving-but-not-really will hurt someone and cause reactionary anti-self-driving-car laws.

Something tells me you didn't read the article:

> At the end of the shift, the entire log is sent off to an independent triage team, which runs simulations to see what would have happened had the car continued autonomously. In fact, even though Google’s cars have autonomously driven more than 1.3 million miles—routinely logging 10,000 to 15,000 more every week — they have been tested many times more in software, where it’s possible to model 3 million miles of driving in a single day.