Elon Musk makes clear his stance on self-driving cars, AI oversight, and his 'ad for Mars'

In an interview with Mathias Döpfner, the CEO of Axel Springer, Business Insider's parent company, Elon Musk revealed his thoughts on self-driving cars, oversight of artificial intelligence, and reasons behind his quest to be buried on Mars. Musk, who had announced in October Tesla's release of a beta version of its long-awaited "full self-driving" software, clarified that he is "definitely not trying to take anyone's steering wheel away from them." "I'm just saying what will most likely occur, and I am certain about this, is that self-driving will become much safer than a human driver. Probably by a factor of 10," he told Döpfner, adding that the bar for whether a person will be able to drive or not will be much more "stringent" in the future when autonomous driving is "10 times safer." But as Business Insider's Graham Rapier reported, the top US safety regulator, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, has repeated that "no vehicle available for purchase today is capable of driving itself." "The most advanced vehicle technologies available for purchase today provide driver assistance and require a fully attentive human driver at all times performing the driving task and monitoring the surrounding environment. Abusing these technologies is, at a minimum, distracted driving. Every State in the Nation holds the driver responsible for the safe operation of the vehicle," the agency said.