The human-assisted aspect of AI development in general seems to be getting a lot more (well-deserved) attention recently. Google along with everyone else has depended on cheap human labor for data labeling for many years. The fact that Cruise is also relying on human labor to deal with the 2-3% of edge cases the AI can't handle is not surprising. I agree there may be a concern about how it's being represented, and the consequent implications for public perception. It's also true that the cars are operating themselves a significant portion of the time. In my book there is a lot of "self-driving" happening here, just not 100%. But that seems like an unsurprising stage in this process. I have my doubts about whether we will ever get to 100% autonomy, i.e. no human intervention ever, but whether that is a viable goal will be up to the company implementing it to decide... is it more cost-effective to provide their service with mostly-autonomous cars that require occasional human intervention? or is it cheaper just to rely on human drivers in the first place?