[GenghisSean]

> Everyone who's ever sat in traffic. It's a miserable experience and it is indeed a fundamentally better thing to be able to use that time in a more productive or entertaining fashion. Few people care if the steering wheel is entirely absent, so long as it's not needed and it's not in the way.

I'm sure many car enthusiasts care whether the steering wheel is entirely absent. Some people enjoy driving, albeit usually in times/places without much traffic. If someone who found driving therapeutic instead spends their commute time staring at a social media feed on their phone because that's their default action when they aren't sure what to do, would that be fundamentally better for them?

> Who is defining progress that way? Everyone I know who wants a self-driving car wants it to go where they tell it to.

Of course everyone wants self-driving cars to go where they tell it, but that is different from having control over where the car goes. What if the AI that controls the self-driving car takes 99% of people to their destination, but rounds up a few political dissidents and whisks them away to an unknown location. Most everyone would get what they want, but none of the passengers are able to control where the AI takes them. Like Stallman says, "Either the users control the program or the program controls the users."

[dpark]

> I'm sure many car enthusiasts care whether the steering wheel is entirely absent....

Perhaps I was ambiguous. You're reading my intent backwards. Few people specifically want the steering wheel to be gone. They generally just want to not care about it.

> If someone who found driving therapeutic instead spends their commute time staring at a social media feed on their phone because that's their default action when they aren't sure what to do, would that be fundamentally better for them?

The car enthusiasts I know still don't like sitting in traffic. It's not the fun sort of driving.

> Of course everyone wants self-driving cars to go where they tell it, but that is different from having control over where the car goes. What if the AI that controls the self-driving car takes 99% of people to their destination, but rounds up a few political dissidents and whisks them away to an unknown location. Most everyone would get what they want, but none of the passengers are able to control where the AI takes them. Like Stallman says, "Either the users control the program or the program controls the users."

I don't know what to say in response to this. This feels over the top absurd to me. If your government is this fundamentally evil and amoral, I don't think driving your own car is going to protect you. There are already lots of ways to get rid of political dissidents.

[lostconfused]

You got trapped in the car driving mode of thinking. Commuting and traffic is a necessary burden to most people. Most see automation as a way to reduce that burden by letting them spend the cognitive resources necessary for driving on something else.

The core problem is not the car, or who is driving it, but the fact that people need to spend a not insignificant amount of time traveling to and from the location or their employment.