I think one of the key factors to consider is whether the people pushing these new technologies are communicating clearly and acting in good faith. Many of these self driving technologies are pushed using very confusing and misleading names.

Beyond that, Elon has a history of making claims and promises which don't pan out, without ever taking accountability. In 2016 Elon claimed that you'd be able to summon a Tesla from New York to Los Angeles autonomously by 2018. Let's give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he really believed that claim in 2016; at what point between 2016 and 2018 do you think he realized it wasn't going to happen and why didn't he speak up at that point? It would've been as simple as tweeting: "wow, we really underestimated the challenges, my previous claim was wrong and this problem will take longer to resolve".

It's fine to have ambitious deadlines and talk about what timelines you're hoping to hit. But this should be tempered by taking accountability and providing updates when new information becomes available. Nobody expects perfection, just the bare minimum of transparency and honesty.

The accountability and lack-of-transparency problems persists to this day. Elon has made tons of claims over the years and he rarely provides any updates or follows up. A recent example: he talked up how Twitter would open source the recommendation algorithm, but instead we got a one-time source snapshot which never got updated.