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Birgitte Rasine's avatar

On self-driving cars... having autopilot in my car (not the full self-driving feature, I like driving too much to give it up to an algorithm) is nice, and I use it when I feel like taking it a little easier, but I never take my eyes off the road, or my hands off the wheel. First, I don't trust the system as much as I trust myself (being a total car girl, who drove a manual transmission Honda Prelude for 18 years. Especially love curvy mountain roads).

Second, and this is the key in this discussion: paying attention to a car that's driving itself, whether on partial autopilot or FSD, is more stressful than doing the driving yourself. Why? Because a part of your brain is having to anticipate possible errors which could lead to potential accidents or just plain discomfort (for example if the car misreads a shadow and breaks hard). It really is like teaching your teenager to drive. You know that they know the basics of driving, but it's the practice and real world road experience they lack. With AI software, there is no "lived experience." It's just software, which is still not as good as your human eyes, still not as good as your human instinct, still not as good as your human driving experience.

Bottom line: if I'm driving, which at this point is second nature to me, it's a (mostly) enjoyable experience. If I have to watch someone (something) else drive and make sure they don't kill me or anyone else, that gets stressful and exhausting real fast.

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Charlie Pownall's avatar

There may of course be another explanation for why the CNET AI articles were barely touched by an editor: he/she deliberately left them as they were to try and kill the project.

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