I actually believe Level 2, where you have to take over in a second's notice, is pretty dangerous, gives a false sense of safety.
But if people want to pay a 5-figure fee to beta test, with no guarantee that it will ever be more than L2, more power to them.
You're entitled to your opinion, but I think you really need to try it and live with it for awhile before your opinion is truly an informed one.
For me, I mostly like driving, but it is extremely good on highways and in stop-and-go traffic, so it makes the worst part of driving tolerable..
But even if it didn't bring any value to my driving, I would still buy FSD (I bought it two-and-a-half times already). Because for me, this is a rare sneak-peak at one piece of the AI revolution that is unfolding right now. Most people don't fully realize what is happening or maybe they kind of do, but have no idea how impactful it is going to be. I am lucky that I work at an AI startup and get glimpses of what is happening in the industry. Before ChatGPT made its splash last year, more people would be even more oblivious... Tesla's AI progress is basically available for us to preview for the cost of the vehicle itself plus FSD option. They have been making small breakthroughs and to be able to witness it and experience it first-hand is just an incredible opportunity that you and I, as outsiders, probably only get once every few generations (if even that). If Tesla didn't offer this access, we'd basically have none of it until it's "proven" many years from now and then it's a new, working product -- that may be fine for you as a consumer, but it's horrible to me to have missed out on witnessing the development of groundbreaking technology. These new AI models, neural networks, large language models, and the hardware that train them and run them (inference) are fascinating and we are constantly surprised by their new capabilities every few months. We are starting to see multi-modal models that can do things deemed "impossible" just months ago. It's 100% mind-blowing. Like watching sci-fi movie special effects level of un-believable. And it's just getting started. If you thought the Internet revolution changed our lives, it'll be nothing compared to the changes AI will bring. I'm not sure if my excitement is coming through my typing here, but I'm excited and curious and the industry's recent progress is breathtaking. For Tesla specifically, the progress is slower because they have virtually-unlimited variability of inputs and real-world limitations to work with. Unlike ChatGPT for example, which is run entirely on remote servers in a datacenter that can operate with high-latency, Tesla's models must have real-time responses and must run on fixed hardware (current FSD3 inference processor is like 4 years old) with a limited, fixed power envelope. Ever wonder why you've never seen the trunk of a Waymo or Cruise or whatever autonomous vehicles? Because they have power-hungry compute on-board consuming hundreds (if not > 1,000) watts, which requires large power supplies and cooling. I think Waymo's recent generation of compute has been reduced enough to give back much of the trunk space where it previously took up the entire space. Tesla's 14nm FSD3 chip runs on 72 watts each (there are two of them onboard for redundancy) - it's extremely, extremely, extremely optimized. This means they have limitations on how large of a model they can fit in it, so they have to be strategic in developing their model and can't just throw huge, inefficient models on there to brute force certain things.