> We have limited problem solving resources, which means we need to be smart about how we use those resources to solve the problems that legitimately have the biggest impact on human suffering.

Sounds great in principle, but how do self-driving cars fit into that picture?

It fits because humans are objectively shit drives who cause massive amounts of death, suffering, and property damage through car crashes all the time.

Unless there's hard data that FSD is worse than the status quo, attempts to curtail it's use is not only a waste of time, but potentially actively contributing to unnecessary suffering if in fact it's contributing to fewer accidents.

Whatever Tesla is offering, it's not even remotely full self driving. It can't handle much beyond a highway on a sunny day, and even then, they have an unfortunate habit of crashing into stopped emergency vehicles.

Reduction of total cars on the road, in favor of competent mass transit, would do much more to actually reduce suffering. But Musk wants money, not improved quality of life for those who can't afford Teslas. This isn't some rinkydink charity, it's a fat slice of a trillion dollar industry.

Why should the burden of proof be on the critics? Carmakers shouldn't be able to unleash experimental technology that jeopardizes the lives of pedestrians without credible evidence that it is at least as safe as human drivers

>It fits because humans are objectively shit drives who cause massive amounts of death,

Why not maybe don't allow bad drivers to drive at all? Like don't give a license without 40 hours of driving school with a professor, have a test with traffic rules, then have a final test with an official. Have the drivers provide medical proof they are capable, Each time a driver does something dangerous like speeding remove his driving license for a few months, etc. Btw don't give driving licenses to kids could also work.

It is not like we the ONLY solution is AI driven cars, there are a lot of more cheaper solutions, even tech ones like identifying drunk drivers, speed limiting cars to match the road limits etc.

The trouble is it's still quite hard to model who will have a collision next, because collisions each year are still far fewer than the number of drivers. Although from a social standpoint they are too frequent, from a purely statistical point of view they are rare - in the sense of being the sort of event you might model with a poisson distribution. Sure, driving history can give an indication, but ultimately anyone could have one.

This is why when I had over 15 years of perfect driving record I still had to pay £350 in insurance. And the following year I caused a collision (fortunately without injuries). We are all human and fallible.

Sure but statistics show some things, like drunk driving is bad so is AI the ONLY solution to drunk driving? Speeding is also aproblem is AI the ONLy solution to speeding? Texting or losing focus is a problem is Ai driving the ONLY solution?

No, there is more then 1 solution , tech can be used to help with preventing drunk driving, speeding and losing focus. Tech could be used for drive assist to help on tricky situation. Reducing the mass of cars could also help,

IMO the idea that AI driving is the only solution and we shouyld

1 do nothing else and wait for AI

2 rush the AI deployment be

is really bad because

1 we should implement other solutions too

2 we should not rush AI deployment , Tesla fanboys will hate it when some non-Tesla would beta test on their roads and keep the stats secret.

Ah right, I think we're kind of on the same page. Full AI control of driving is likely 20 years away, and we should plan to have human drivers on the roads still for 30+ years. Anything we can do in the interim to improve our societal safety/utility tradeoff is good.

Cars are the primary cause of death for certain age groups! Technologies that meaningfully change the fatality rate (up or down) are of extreme importance to reducing human suffering