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> Autopilot the technology is already to the point where it's safe in the right conditions to take your eyes off the road for some number of seconds at at time.

How do you determine which seconds are actually safe to take your eyes off the road? If this can't be answered definitively, the answer is you should never have your eyes off the road. And if your answer is, 'I've done it heaps and I was fine', that's simply survival bias.

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I'm not sure I'm understanding you when you say "definitively". Do you mean if I can't be 100% sure about my answer?

The answer to your question is: the same way you determine when it's safe to cross the road on foot. When there are no cars in sight I'm 100% sure it's safe. When there are cars in sight, I'm not 100% sure but I still cross because I've developed judgement about the situation and the risks are acceptable.

I'm not sure, as a road user, how you've not encountered traffic situations that changed from perfectly normal to dangerous very rapidly. Sometimes an obscured vehicle could pull out, or a child, or some other obstacle, can pop out of nowhere even on an otherwise quite suburban street. The examples are too numerous to mention, and certainly many would be capable of confounding an AI.

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