I was driving across North Dallas yesterday with a SaaS founder friend when I experienced something very different–Shalin Jain kept looking at me when he was talking. But he was driving.
Those car-ride conversations are usually two people facing forward and having a chat.
But he kept looking over at me when he was talking–for a few seconds at a time.
I didn’t notice at first, but then I felt a creeping unease about it. What’s going on?
We were in his Tesla Cybertruck with autonomous driving.
He has been driving default hands-off for many years.
Paying attention. Watching traffic and obstacles. Ready for interesting situations that rarely happen these days.
But almost never touching the steering wheel.
It was my first time driving an autonomous vehicle for 30 minutes, including 15 miles of highway driving.
That’s full self-driving. FSD,
I didn’t trust it yet. I kept my eyes on the road!
But he has been driving like this for almost 10 years.
It feels very unnatural for him to drive without autonomous control.
So he kept looking over at me when he was talking.
It felt crazy unnatural to me. But it’s very normal to him.
My old Tesla isn’t as smart. Definitely not autonomous.
The future is here, but it’s not evenly distributed, as they say.
