In an extreme example I expect that's precisely what would happen. Consider what's currently unfolding around the 737 Max. In the automotive space there's a long history of serious flaws that resulted in loss of life, ranging from faulty airbag deployment systems to flawed designs for ignition systems.

We have precedent for how we qualify and evaluate things for safety: test them across a variety of conditions, accumulate driver-miles or operator-hours and incident frequencies. Then, using that data establish a bar for what constitutes an acceptable level of risk given the utility something provides. If we wanted to ensure nobody ever died in a car accident, we would ensure there were no cars, but collectively we've made a different choice.

> When the AI malfunctions, are we going to shut down

> entire classes of vehicles until the problem is confirmed fixed?

Yes, a malfunction AI would have to be grounded, just like for example the Boeing 737 MAX is now.

> are we going to shut down entire classes of vehicles until the problem is confirmed fixed?

Yes of course we will. What is the problem with that approach? That is the exactly logical thing to do and will be done.

At least the software is fixable. Other humans are not.

I have to have insurance now, even though a lot of the functions of my car are controlled by their software.

Remember when the Toyota had that problem of the accelerator "getting stuck" because the software didn't disengage? Initially the owners' insurances were paying out, until it happened enough that they were able to prove it was Toyota's fault, and then Toyota had to pay them back.

I imagine in a self driving world it would work the same way. You get insurance, the car has a crash, your insurance and the manufacturer fight out whose fault it is.

Sometimes it seems that critics of something like self-driving cars want so badly for the project to fail that they themselves fail to see obvious solutions.

The insurance will work much better than it does today, because insurance in it's core is about spreading the risks and calculating exact costs of those risks, it's about calculating statistics of negative events and predicting total costs of such events for the entire fleets.

ALL parts of that equation are just better calculated if all cars were automatic, - you can better calculate number of accidents, you can see details of all accidents because there is blackbox data including videos, you can compare cars to each other because a Tesla with same hardware drives in exactly the same way as another one (which cannot be said for human drivers), they don't have to calculate for weird human risk activities such as drinking or being tired, they can run simulations of the same situation on the same software etc. etc.

Insurance is not going to have any problems, insurance is going to love it and make a lot of money on the self-driving cars, they are a perfect fit for each other. Insurance companies don't even care for whom do they have to pay to, they just care that the statistic of the number of failures is correctly represented and that manufacturers don't lie about those statistics - that is all they care about, they calculate a simple equation, that's all insurance is about...

Insurance would be a nightmare for a manufacturer. Every accident will initially be pegged to the auto maker (as it should be.. it’s their code!). The auto maker will always try to weasel out and blame the passenger-owners of the car (they didn’t maintain it, the paint was dirty and messed with the sensors, the tire pressure was 2 PSI lower than average).

And if you go with the “nobody will own cars, you’ll just summon one” model... well the fleet owner will just sue the manufacturer instead.

Seems like it would mostly be the manufacturers that would have to insure the cars, at least for the expensive part (liability)

For me? I'm a self-driving skeptic, but... if the manufacturer was willing to properly insure it, (I mean, a reasonable amount of insurance, at least a statistical life worth) I'd ride in the thing. I think that's an honest signal.