You're probably right (since pessimism and cynicism are pretty successful predictors whenever anyone is trying something bold), but we have nothing like enough

You're probably right (since pessimism and cynicism are pretty successful predictors whenever anyone is trying something bold), but we have nothing like enough information to know if he's done something revolutionary or not. As the article makes clear, he doesn't want to give too much away, so of course you're stuck with a vague summary which sounds like he's just done what any smart person skilled in the art would do. General cynicism isn't really adding much to the conversation in my opinion, since almost everyone here probably knows this already, and too much cynicism can put people off starting projects and people starting projects is something we should cherish. I do think your point about emergency situations is substantive though. Perhaps he is only planning for self-driving while supervised by humans, but his idea for training as described (become an uber driver) would not at all produce the kind of dataset that would assure me that I would be safe. I think a lot of training with advanced drivers in simulators where you can have crazy life threatening situations would be the absolute minimum. I'd be worried that bad habits picked up on the thousands of uber rides would kick in during an emergency rather than the couple of situations that would be feasible to train on in real life.