Bootstrap wrote: ↑Fri Jul 24, 2026 8:43 pm
1. In an accident, who is liable? My wife and I rented a Mach-E for a week because it wasn't much more and we thought it would be fun. We saw the parallel parking feature, and it probably could park better than I can, but I had never used it, and what if something went wrong? Currently, the "driver" of the vehicle is liable pretty much everywhere, unless there's a clear defect in their software, so I would have an accident on my record. I think that's the way it should be, some human needs to bear the responsibility if something goes wrong. Some people suggest the AI should be a legal entity, like corporations are. That idea terrifies me, especially when you think of the scale of disasters that AI could cause, leaving all humans off the hook.
That seems like a bad idea to me, too. Of course, in the case of a Waymo, there's no person operating it - so the owner of the vehicle is liable. Companies can own vehicles, but then they have to maintain insurance and otherwise pay for problems they cause.
2. People don't flourish if they are passive recipients of everything. We need to drive, to steer, to think, to create, to do these things together in fellowship. I do NOT mean to say that everyone should be literally driving - seniors do need to give up the keys sometimes, some people are simply unsafe drivers or have drug problems or alcohol problems or whatever - but we need to have some areas in our life where we are in control, useful, creative.
I would agree and also disagree - specifically, I don't think driving cars is something humans are really all that good at, nor that it was something they were designed to do. Computers are much better at driving cars than people are. (If we look at something that is very, very safe, like air travel, it is that way due to an immense amount of training required of human operators, and a massive amount of computer-based assistance to reduce human error.)
AI companies talk a lot about "human flourishing", where they say they want to give the right answers that lead to people living well. But if there is no place for humans to be the humans, then humans will not flourish. Sometimes they talk about creating a guaranteed minimum income with all the wealth they claim AI will create. So far, they show no eagerness to even pay taxes, but beyond that, I don't think that would be a fulfilling life. What would we do all day to have meaningful lives?
I am waiting for any of the predictions of AI to actually happen. We don't even have better software yet, although I think that may be on the horizon - but for now, software is just getting worse and worse.