
Elon Musk: You Are Liable for My Malfunctioning Code - johnnyb_61820
https://mindmatters.ai/2019/07/elon-musk-you-are-liable-for-my-malfunctioning-code/
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olliej
This is the standard tech industry mantra, the only difference is that this is
software designed specifically to control devices that _by design_ are able to
cause significant harm.

At some point you have to ask: is selling a product for a specific purpose ok,
if you are also including a license that says it may not actually be able to
be safely used for that purpose?

~~~
Fjolsvith
Only if the jury says so.

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jmpman
The author seems quite spun up on this topic. I believe Elon is stating that
the liability may land on the car owner’s insurance. During the presentation,
Elon didn’t seem locked down on the specifics. Just as my own automobile
insurance doesn’t apply when I’m driving for Uber or Lyft, I expect Tesla will
need to provide insurance directly during the robotaxi usage. When I’m the
occupant of the vehicle, I expect my own insurance will cover.

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johnnyb_61820
"I believe Elon is stating that the liability may land on the car owner’s
insurance"

There is never liability on insurance. Insurance is just a method of payment.
It is possible that insurance will cover this, but that's irrelevant to the
point.

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jmpman
Maybe I don’t understand your point on “never liability on insurance”, but I
have automobile liability insurance.

[https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/automobile-liability-
in...](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/automobile-liability-
insurance.asp)

If your point is that someone is going to die by these autonomous cars, and
someone should be jailed for it... that’s another discussion. In theory you’d
want society to say that if the autonomous cars kill fewer people than a human
driver would, then... oops for the autonomous car. In reality, it’s going to
be an absolute cluster of lawyers trying to convince jurys that yet another
corner case was so simple that the autonomous car shouldn’t have run over that
3 year old running after a ball in the fog (and if Tesla had only used a
certain type of lidar, this poor child would still be alive) Yes, legal
frameworks/limitations will need to be established to keep every run over
child from demanding a multi billion dollar settlement. Yes, it’s going to be
dirty on both sides.

I personally don’t believe Tesla’s “autonomous cars are 2x safer than human
driven cars” sound bite spewed by Elon. I believe that for the primarily
highway miles driven autonomously by Tesla, an equivalent unimpaired human
driver on the same roads is an order (or many more) of magnitude safer, but
Tesla is likely comparing against all drivers for all miles driven.

