BereaOnline.com Name Logo, Blue Letters

When AI Drives, Who’s Actually Responsible?

Written by

Chad Hembree

BEREA, Ky. — There’s a snarky headline making the rounds about a Chinese startup building a self-driving system trained on footage from drones, robots—and yes, even vacuum cleaners. Engineers reportedly admit they don’t fully understand how the system actually makes its decisions.

And sure, it’s easy to laugh at that. We’re putting our lives in the hands of an AI that might’ve learned a few tricks from a Roomba. What could go wrong?

But underneath the joke is a much more serious question: When AI is driving, who’s actually responsible?

I was thinking about this recently because of something Arkansas attorney John Collins said. Collins, a defense lawyer who has built a following online breaking down legal scenarios in plain English, explained the current legal reality like this:

If you get into a self-driving car—say, something equipped with Tesla Autopilot—and tell it to take you home, that’s one thing. But if you’re under the influence, you can still be held responsible for a DUI.

Why? Because you can physically take control of the vehicle. Even if you never touch the wheel, the law still sees you as the driver. You had the ability—and the obligation—to intervene.

Now compare that to a true robo-taxi—something like the autonomous vehicles being deployed by Waymo. No steering wheel. No pedals. No physical control mechanisms whatsoever.

In that situation, you’re not the driver anymore. You are strictly a passenger. And that legal distinction matters more than most people realize.

The Awkward Middle Phase We’re In

Right now, we are stuck between two very different worlds.

On one side: Fully human-driven vehicles.

On the other: Fully autonomous systems with zero human control.

But most of what’s actually on the road today sits somewhere in the messy middle:

  • AI does a significant amount of the physical driving.
  • Humans are expected to supervise the system constantly.
  • Responsibility still falls entirely on the person sitting in the driver’s seat.

That’s a strange, highly precarious place to be. We are being sold on the idea that we can trust the system, but we are also told we must be ready to override it at a fraction of a second’s notice. And if something goes wrong, the liability snaps right back to us.

“We Don’t Know What It’s Thinking”

That quote from the engineers—whether slightly exaggerated for headlines or not—points to a very real issue in modern computing. Modern AI systems, particularly neural networks, don’t “think” in a linear way that we can easily trace.

Even the people building these models can’t always definitively explain:

  • Why a specific split-second decision was made.
  • What environmental factors mattered most.
  • How the vehicle will behave in bizarre edge cases.

That isn’t just one startup’s problem. It is a fundamental reality of how this technology works right now. In my decades working with IT and complex networks, I’ve watched systems evolve from simple, predictable code into massive, unexplainable black boxes. When a server goes down, you can trace the logs. When an AI makes a driving error, tracing the exact “why” is significantly harder.

A Berea Perspective

This might feel like a Silicon Valley problem happening somewhere else—but it’s coming here, too.

As more vehicles adopt these autonomous features, people in Berea will inevitably run into the exact same questions: Can you rely on the car? Are you still the driver? What happens when a sensor gets confused by a sudden Kentucky downpour?

For a town that sees heavy regular traffic from visitors coming in for festivals, college events, and performances at places like The Spotlight Playhouse, transportation isn’t an abstract concept—it’s a daily, physical reality of our local economy. The idea of autonomous cars navigating the narrow streets around Old Town or the college square isn’t sci-fi anymore.

The Joke—and the Reality

Yes, it’s funny to say an AI learned to drive from a vacuum cleaner. But the real takeaway is this: AI systems are trained on massive, mixed data pools, and we don’t always fully understand how they apply that data in the unpredictable real world.

Sometimes that leads to incredible, life-saving results. Sometimes it leads to outcomes we never expected.

The Bottom Line

We are not fully handing over control to AI. Not yet.

Right now, we are living in a transition phase where the machine is driving, the human is supervising, and the human remains legally responsible. Until the steering wheels actually disappear, the most important question isn’t how advanced the technology is.

It’s simple: If something goes wrong, who does it fall on?

About the Author Dr. Chad Hembree is a certified network engineer with 30 years of experience in IT and networking. He hosted the nationally syndicated radio show Tech Talk with Chad Hembree throughout the 1990s and into the early 2000s, and previously served as CEO of DataStar. Today, he writes on local tech and culture for BereaOnline.com while serving as the Executive Director of The Spotlight Playhouse—proof that some careers don’t pivot, they evolve.

📌 Upcoming Events in Berea & Beyond

🎨 Community, Arts & Civic

🎭 Theater & Performance at The Spotlight Playhouse

🎟 Tickets and info:https://www.thespotlightplayhouse.com/

  • 🌟 Annie KIDS (Spotlight Acting School), May 29 to June 7
  • 🗽 Creative Arts Camp (“New York, New York”), June 8 to 12
  • ⚔️ Macbeth (The Bluegrass Players), June 19 to 28
  • 🎬 Film Acting Camp (Rising 6th to Age 18), June 29 to July 3

More posts

BereaOnline.com: Covering Berea, KY News and Events Since 1995