I think of it like: The only reason humans still drive cars is we have yet to find a good enough way of replacing ourselves with something more effective. It's merely an implementation detail of "getting from A to B" that would be disrupted if a true autonomous solution was discovered. Many would want to optimize away drunk drivers and road rage if it were possible in some faraway future. So something like a steering wheel could be seen like a compromise of sorts, until the next big thing makes them obsolete.
That, and the state of missing a technology in a period of time is irreplaceable once it's been discovered. Nobody can live in an era without social media anymore, barring a global-scale catastrophic reset. So I believe it's important to consider what technology is not yet totally pervasive, for example by realizing there is still a steering wheel for you to grip in your car.
And in my mind, the sinister feeling stems from the fact that all it takes to irreversibly shift society like that is enough smart people with honest intentions but little foresight of what will happen in a few decades as a result of proliferating all this. The problems that result stop being in anyone's control, "throwing it over the wall" so to speak, and instead become yet another fact of life that could weigh us down (mostly I think of the ubiquity of social media and how it has changed human interaction). And it all stems from just a few engineering type people getting overexcited about cool possibilities they can grasp at, not considering there are billions of people unlike them who may have other ideas.
That, and the state of missing a technology in a period of time is irreplaceable once it's been discovered. Nobody can live in an era without social media anymore, barring a global-scale catastrophic reset. So I believe it's important to consider what technology is not yet totally pervasive, for example by realizing there is still a steering wheel for you to grip in your car.
And in my mind, the sinister feeling stems from the fact that all it takes to irreversibly shift society like that is enough smart people with honest intentions but little foresight of what will happen in a few decades as a result of proliferating all this. The problems that result stop being in anyone's control, "throwing it over the wall" so to speak, and instead become yet another fact of life that could weigh us down (mostly I think of the ubiquity of social media and how it has changed human interaction). And it all stems from just a few engineering type people getting overexcited about cool possibilities they can grasp at, not considering there are billions of people unlike them who may have other ideas.