Liability is a serious issue in these cases.

"If you view autonomous cars like an elevator in a building, does Otis take responsibility for all elevators around the world? No it doesn't.

This is flat out bullshit. If there is a manufactures defect, from cars to elevators, there are mass recalls and lawsuits.

And this is the entire problem. How do we know if was the code, or just an accident?

If a Microsoft Email server goes down there is a lot of legal langue in the software agreement to prevent you from suing MS. However if you are a company providing email services to another company and the servers go down + you promised a certain uptime, you are in deep shit. Same is ISP and promised uptimes, specifically in the case of T lines and OC lines that have legislation in place to protect the reliability.

"What really matters here at the end of the day is 'what is the absolute safety'."

No, what matters here is a legal framework for dealing with the liability and a degree of transparency from the manufacture regarding the code that is responsible for life and death decisions.

Maybe you make this code a public thing, and let a government agency control it. Maybe you make it private but have a government agency test it.

What I don't want is a AI making life and death choices where I have to trust a guy like Musk telling me it's safer. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but I want more accountability than that.