The idea of "safety driver" might be inherently flawed. When you drive a normal car, your attention is fixed on the traffic and surroundings. When the car does the driving, how are you supposed to sustain your attention for more than a few minutes? Boredom and attention lapses may be inevitable. If the safety driver is told ahead of time that attention lapses have severe penalties, they might struggle to remain alert for a while longer, but it might be a fact of human nature, that avoiding distractions is an uphill battle.

What about personal responsibility ?

What about social responsibility? If you're bent on disrupting the lives of bystanders, help them plan a way forward, instead of throwing them off the dock and seeing if they can swim. Otherwise what you're doing is profiting on the externalized cost of other people's hardship. If that means nothing to you, be careful: you may be a sociopath.

Uber no longer needs to pay its drivers well to build its base; that's done, and the rates came tumbling down.

The pay is the smallest it can get away with before drivers leave in droves, in order to compete with cabs and other services. The only upside to Uber driving is the ability to set your own hours. Otherwise, there's no reason not to work at fast food.

In brief, the manuscript says, "Dear World, this is my esoteric theory of the nature of the universe. I wrote it because I am very very smart, and you should pay attention to me, and shower me with honors. Because it is esoteric and holds the key to all metaphysical knowledge, I have written it such that only the most intelligent and worthy may know its secrets. However, if no one decodes it, I will die happy because it proves I was the smartest person alive. Sincerely, Yaddayadda."

problem-solving skills are the most-sought by employers, more than language proficiency, debugging, and system design.

Yeah. Try getting your resume past HR if you've had 15 years of problem-solving experience in a dozen different languages but not the one their shop uses.

The first pilot is a young dude named Speed Racer, and he calls his dad "Pops."

Playing God with the procreation process is usually a civilization destroying process.

You're kidding, right? Nevermind modern birth control, synthetic hormones, IVF etc, non-procreative sex has been around since before primates waddled around upright. No civilizations destroyed.

The news that California has adopted this as an official position is a bit disturbing, especially in a state that's home to so many great universities. This could only mean that lawmakers don't have much STEM education if any. I hope this remains isolated to the one state. In the current culture of ignorance, it could spread like California wildfire.

Hasn't it occurred to them, that, with billions of cellphones in use around the world for decades, if there were any problem, it'd be obvious?

The tech companies need to ask the feds if they want a modern internet with secure banking and communications. Cause if they DO, the whole "backdoor" nonsense is a nonstarter. If you compromise a mathematically-proven and trusted system, guess what? No one can trust it anymore. On the other hand, if the feds really don't care if there's secure online communications or not, then hey, no problem.

What we seem to have are people who keep asking for the impossible without understanding what's really at stake.

I didn't think the state & local laws were anywhere near prime-time ready for anything but prototypes or "autopilot" mode with driver.

Please see: tropostats here and here.

For robots to "take over," don't AIs first need intention? ie. goals and a motive?
As far as I know, software's still just a tool with no more self-motivation than a screwdriver.
Given that, it's all about who owns the tools.

"Capital" == assets. "Capitol" == seat of government.

Yeah, but there's only 72 videos...

"A sad day in Hollywood... We say goodbye to one of the greats..." -OR- "Identify these celebrities... Only 7% Know the Answer..."