I’ve spent more than a decade working in AI. I’ve built teams around it, led products powered by it, and spent more hours than I can count thinking about where it creates value and where it doesn’t. I’m not a skeptic. I’ve seen what the technology can do when it’s applied well.

I’m also the father of a son with epilepsy. He is sixteen, and he will probably never drive. Autonomous vehicles have been part of how I think about his future for a while now — not as a certainty, just as a possibility worth holding onto. So when I came across a Freakonomics podcast about what a driverless world might mean for people who can’t drive, I expected something that confirmed what I’d been quietly hoping. Instead it pulled in two directions at once.

That tension is what this post is about.