Asleep at the Wheel

Imagine you are behind the wheel, driving down a busy highway at 100 kilometres an hour, surrounded by cars and transport trucks, and deciding it’s a good time for a nap.

Nobody in their right mind would do that.

But that’s apparently what happened recently on Highway 417 in Ottawa, where police encountered a woman travelling in a self-driving Tesla while seemingly asleep behind the wheel.

The vehicle was equipped with Tesla’s Full Self-Driving technology, commonly known as FSD. According to reports, the driver had her eyes closed and her hands off the steering wheel. The car continued travelling down the highway without incident, which you could argue was the saving grace.

Nobody was hurt. There was no collision. The Tesla managed to keep itself safely in its lane.

Nevertheless, the driver was charged with careless driving.

Now, here’s an interesting question.

If the car was driving itself successfully, what exactly did the driver do wrong?

The answer is straightforward under today’s rules. Tesla’s FSD is a supervised driving system. The human behind the wheel must remain attentive and ready to intervene.

But that answer opens the door to a much larger conversation, one that extends well beyond automobiles. And if you own a business, it’s a conversation worth having.

Who’s Driving This Thing, Anyway?

Full disclosure: I’ve ordered a Tesla Model Y equipped with Full Self-Driving, and I’m expecting delivery in December. In fact, the self-driving capability was one of the biggest reasons I chose the vehicle. The prospect of having a car handle much of the driving while I supervise is enormously appealing. I spend plenty of time on the road, and I’d welcome the opportunity to make those journeys less demanding.

But there’s an important distinction between a car that assists with driving and one that assumes complete responsibility for it. Tesla’s consumer FSD system currently requires supervision. You’re still the driver, even when the car is handling the steering, acceleration, and braking.

Meanwhile, companies such as Waymo are already operating genuinely driverless taxis in selected American cities. Tesla is also developing and deploying robotaxi technology, including its purpose-built Cybercab concept, which is built without a steering wheel or pedals. These systems aren’t all equivalent. They operate under different technical limitations, safety arrangements, and regulatory frameworks.

But they point toward a future in which climbing into a vehicle, telling it where you want to go, and settling down for a nap may become perfectly acceptable. Think about that.

Today, sleeping behind the wheel can get you arrested.

Tomorrow, sleeping while your vehicle takes you to your destination might be one of the principal reasons you bought it. No different in principle from having a chauffeur.

The difference isn’t whether your eyes are open or closed.

The difference is who, or what, has accepted responsibility for driving.

Your Business Is Becoming a Self-Driving Vehicle

Now, let’s leave the highway and head into the office. Suppose you own a small business.

You’ve installed an AI receptionist that answers your telephone, schedules appointments, and responds to customer questions. An AI sales assistant follows up with prospects, prepares proposals, and keeps your customer relationship management system up to date.

Your bookkeeping software uses AI to categorize transactions, identify discrepancies, and prepare financial reports. Another system helps manage employee schedules, review job applications, and coordinate routine administrative work.

Your marketing campaigns are increasingly automated. Your website responds intelligently to visitors. Your inventory system anticipates demand.

None of this requires imagining some distant science-fiction future. Versions of these capabilities already exist, although their reliability, independence, and need for human oversight vary considerably. Now imagine connecting these systems so they can communicate and coordinate.

One AI receives a customer inquiry. Another prepares an estimate. A third schedules the work. A fourth sends the invoice and follows up on payment. Your company begins operating with considerably less direct human intervention.

I’m not speculating here. It’s how I run New Phase. An AI voice agent answers my phone, my AI bookkeeper keeps the books, and a team of AI agents handles everything from hosting to search rankings. But I’ve kept my hands on the wheel. Nothing gets published, posted or sent to a client until I say go. That’s supervised autonomy, and for now, it’s exactly where I want to be.

Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? But here’s a question.

Are you still running your business, or is your business running itself?

And perhaps more importantly, does the distinction matter?

Supervised Autonomy Versus Full Autonomy

This is where the Tesla story becomes especially relevant. There are two very different propositions hiding behind the word automation.

The first is supervised autonomy. A machine performs a task, but a human remains responsible for monitoring its performance, correcting mistakes, and intervening when necessary.

The second is full autonomy. The system operates independently within its intended conditions, without requiring a human to supervise every action.

In practice, autonomy exists along a spectrum. A system might handle one activity independently while requiring approval for another. But the distinction matters enormously.

Consider that AI receptionist. If it tells a customer your business is open on Sunday when you’re actually closed, who’s responsible?

What if your AI sales agent promises a discount you never authorized? What if your automated accounting system overlooks a serious financial discrepancy? Or what if an AI-assisted hiring system unfairly screens out qualified applicants?

You can’t necessarily shrug your shoulders and say, “Don’t blame me. The computer did it.”

The precise legal responsibility depends on the circumstances, but delegating a task doesn’t automatically eliminate your accountability. Just as the Tesla driver remains responsible for supervising FSD, a business owner may remain responsible for the decisions and actions of the systems operating on the company’s behalf.

And that raises an intriguing possibility.

What happens when AI becomes so competent that we stop feeling the need to supervise it?

The Smarter the Machine, the Sleepier the Human?

Here’s a paradox worth considering. We’re teaching machines to perform increasingly complicated tasks. At the same time, we may be teaching ourselves to perform fewer of them.

Think about GPS navigation. There was a time when drivers memorized routes, studied maps, and developed an intuitive understanding of the roads around them.

Today, many of us simply follow the blue line on a screen. We arrive at our destination without necessarily knowing how we got there.

Has GPS made us less intelligent?

Not necessarily.

But it may have weakened certain abilities we no longer exercise as frequently. Now extend that idea to business.

What happens to your financial judgment when AI handles all your accounting? What happens to your sales instincts when AI conducts most of your customer conversations? What happens to your strategic thinking when AI continually recommends what your company should do next?

And what happens to your motivation when the machines are doing virtually everything?

This isn’t an argument against automation. Technology has been relieving humans of difficult and repetitive work for centuries. It’s simply a question about the consequences.

If we stop exercising certain abilities, should we be surprised when those abilities begin to fade?

And if AI eventually becomes better than we are at exercising them, will we even care?

The Business Owner Nobody Needs

Let’s take this thought experiment a little further. Imagine you’ve spent thirty years building a successful company.

You’ve worked long hours, dealt with difficult customers, managed employees, worried about cash flow, and sacrificed countless evenings and weekends. For years, you’ve dreamed of the day when the business could operate without you.

Then AI makes that dream a reality.

Your receptionist doesn’t need you.

Your sales department doesn’t need you.

Your accounting, marketing, scheduling, and administrative systems are all functioning beautifully.

You arrive at the office one morning, pour yourself a coffee, and discover that there’s absolutely nothing you need to do today.

Congratulations. You’ve achieved the ultimate entrepreneurial dream.

Or have you?

Perhaps you’ve achieved something extraordinary: genuine freedom. You can travel, spend time with your family, pursue hobbies, start another business, or simply enjoy life.

But there’s another possibility. Perhaps you discover that much of your identity, satisfaction, and sense of purpose came from being needed.

And now you’re not.

Is that liberation or a loss of purpose? I don’t think there’s a universal answer.

What Would You Do With Ten Million Dollars?

I’ve sometimes wondered what I’d do if I suddenly had ten million dollars in the bank.

Would I retire? Would I stop working?

Would I spend my days travelling, playing guitar, exercising, and enjoying the freedom to do whatever I pleased? Probably some of that.

But I suspect I’d still want to be involved in business. Not necessarily because I needed the money, but because I enjoy the challenge.

Business can be a game. You develop ideas, solve problems, compete, experiment, and try to create something valuable.

A lot of extremely wealthy people continue working long after they’ve accumulated more money than they could reasonably spend in a lifetime. Clearly, financial necessity isn’t the only reason people work.

And perhaps the same uncertainty applies to AI. We imagine a world where machines do everything for us. But do we really know how we’ll feel when we get there?

There’s a difference between being freed from work you dislike and being deprived of work that gives your life meaning.

Perhaps the ideal isn’t a business that no longer needs its owner.

Perhaps it’s a business that no longer demands its owner.

That would leave us free to participate because we want to, rather than because we have to.

Rage Against the Machine, or Embrace It?

Not everyone shares the same vision of a technologically automated future. Some people are deeply uncomfortable with the prospect of machines assuming more responsibility for human activities. They worry about lost jobs, diminished independence, weakened skills, and a society increasingly controlled by technologies that few people fully understand.

They’d prefer a simpler existence. Grow some tomatoes. Spend time outdoors. Reconnect with nature. Keep the human beings firmly in charge.

Others see almost limitless possibilities. They imagine a future where AI and robotics eliminate much of the drudgery of everyday life, dramatically increase productivity, and give people unprecedented freedom.

Let the machines handle the boring stuff. We’ll enjoy the benefits.

And, of course, there’s an enormous range of opinions between those two positions. I don’t think we can confidently declare which vision is correct.

Technology creates opportunities and problems, often simultaneously. The automobile gave us extraordinary mobility, along with traffic congestion, accidents, and pollution. The internet gave us instant access to information, along with misinformation, distraction, and new forms of fraud.

AI will almost certainly bring its own combination of benefits and unintended consequences.

The challenge isn’t simply deciding whether machines are good or bad. It’s deciding how we want to live and work alongside them.

Who Will Be Running Your Business in 2030?

Let’s bring this back to something practical. If you’re a business owner, I think you should be asking yourself some serious questions about the next five to ten years.

Not just what AI can do for you today, at the end of 2026. But what your company might look like in 2030 or 2035.

Imagine three possible futures.

The human-led business. Your company continues to rely primarily on people, using AI as a supporting tool. Human relationships, experience, judgment, and personal service remain central to your operation.

The hybrid business. Humans and AI work together. Machines handle much of the routine execution, while people provide direction, oversight, creativity, and judgment.

The substantially autonomous business. AI systems manage most day-to-day operations, with humans concentrating on ownership, strategic decisions, exceptional situations, and whatever activities they choose to retain.

These aren’t rigid categories, and they aren’t mutually exclusive. Your business might use different approaches in different departments. Nor is any one of them automatically superior.

A family restaurant, a law firm, a construction company, and an online retailer may have very different requirements. Your customers may have strong preferences about dealing with humans versus machines. Your employees may welcome certain technologies and resist others.

Regulators, insurers, and professional standards may determine how much autonomy is permissible. And your competitors may influence how quickly you need to adapt.

The point is that these decisions deserve deliberate consideration.

What responsibilities are you comfortable delegating to AI? Which decisions should always require human approval?

How will you know when an automated system is making mistakes? Who will be accountable when something goes wrong?

And if your company eventually becomes capable of operating almost entirely without you, what role would you actually want to play?

Those aren’t questions a software vendor can answer for you. They’re questions about the kind of enterprise you want to build. And ultimately, the kind of life you want to live.

Keep Your Eyes on the Road

Let’s return to that Tesla travelling along Highway 417. The woman behind the wheel apparently trusted the vehicle enough to close her eyes. The police and the law had a different perspective.

Perhaps one day that same journey could take place in a genuinely autonomous vehicle, with its passenger sleeping peacefully all the way to the destination. The technology, the rules, and the expectations will have changed.

And something similar may happen in business.

Tasks that require constant human supervision today may eventually operate independently. Responsibilities that seem impossible to delegate may become routine assignments for AI.

Or perhaps we’ll discover that certain aspects of business are simply too important, too personal, or too unpredictable to surrender completely.

I don’t know exactly where that road leads. And I don’t think anyone else does, either.

But I do think every business owner should be looking down that road and considering the possibilities. Five or ten years from now, your company may operate very differently from the way it does today.

How much of it will be run by people? How much by machines?

How much responsibility will you be willing, or legally permitted, to surrender?

And what role will you choose for yourself?

Those are questions worth thinking about now, while you still have plenty of road ahead.

Because the worst time to decide where you’re going is after you’ve fallen asleep at the wheel.