Today was the third day of Ars UNITE, our virtual conference, and the topic of the day was the advent of the self-driving car.

Our self-driving car feature this morning looked at the technological solutions that will soon allow our cars to drive themselves under certain circumstances, assuming the regulations and other policy issues are in place. That piece has seen a lively discussion covering a number of different areas. Ars reader mexaly suggested that “[t]o succeed, robots need only drive better than average humans. That’s not a high bar.”

Some were skeptical that self-driving cars would be safer. caldron writes, “I think it is a big leap to assume a self-drive is better than a human at driving. Sure in certain conditions and in terms of reaction time, but no computers have been able to reach our level of decision making and ability to react in abstract and unpredictable situations, and there is none in the foreseeable future. We make constant micro-decisions all the time. When there is a grey-area situation that requires deduction I am not so sure a computer will be able to react properly.”