I agree with you. Real self driving is impossible, IMO. Current "AI" tech will never get us there. And even if we cracked real AGI, I don't see a reason to expect the computer intelligence to be a better driver than a human. AGI does not mean the absence of emotions, distractions, or miscalculations.
We as a society should be realistic about the advantages and limitations of self driving technology. On a highway with well marked lanes and no construction, pedestrians, etc, self driving is awesome. That is the use case that should be optimized and encouraged by states. Everything else should realistically be banned.
You're assuming an AGI would have all the characteristics of a machine algorithm and enough intelligence to do exactly what a human would/should (or better) in all driving situations.
And yet there is no evidence that self-driving systems are any safer than human drivers, or that they'll ever even be as safe as human drivers, let alone safer than them.
What do you mean "no evidence"? The companies testing self-driving cars now have hundreds of millions of miles driven and I haven't seen any reliable report showing they have higher kill rates than human drivers.
It would seem entirely possible that large amounts of highway driving can be handled by self-driving cars with slightly lower rates of accidents (tired and drunk people kill a lot of people!)
Well we haven't invented AGI yet, and so we don't even know if it will be possible to control them with an objective function. So your opinion is entirely speculative and not based on any science.
It's still vaporware for now, but next year GM is supposedly going to start selling a system that will allow true hands-off self driving on highways. It will be interesting to see if they really deliver. The claims seem to be well beyond what Tesla currently sells.
> General Motors is adding another tier to its hands-free driving technology with its new Ultra Cruise system that it claims will work in 95 percent of driving situations.
This seems to be exactly what I mean. They admit that their system can't handle the 5% of edge cases, and market it appropriately. This is not a full self driving car.
We as a society should be realistic about the advantages and limitations of self driving technology. On a highway with well marked lanes and no construction, pedestrians, etc, self driving is awesome. That is the use case that should be optimized and encouraged by states. Everything else should realistically be banned.