Calling it a religion makes about as much sense as calling efforts to cure AIDS or vaccinate Polio prior to the success of Salk a religion. There is a clear and obvious good to achieve, one which is theoretically implementatable and has predecessors for success. Reality can only disagree if it is outright proven impossible due to something - say in this counterfactual Polio has a 5% of turning any unique adjacent molecule it into more polio. otherwise they are literally Just like how taking the spit of a polio patient and putting it in saline with a sprig of mint will spread instead of vaccinating but it doesn't prove a polio vaccine is impossible because "we tried and people got sick".
It is clearly a goal and a realistic one within even a few decades pessimisitcally given that its ability is creeping upwards.
There is zero proof that autonomous vehicles can be safer than human drivers.
There’s lots of proof that autonomous vehicles are technically possible, but the leap to “definitely better than humans” is a very big one and it’s really being taken on faith right now.
In contrast, treating disease directly affect the incidence of that disease.
There's "proof" that computers can be safer than humans. Faster reaction times, don't get tired, don't lose focus, can perform computations much faster than humans.
All that goes to show that a computer can make mistakes much faster than humans. You didn’t say anything about how that guarantees the computer only makes safe decisions.
But that's kinda the whole point of AI, isn't it? It's a circular argument, computers currently can't make safe decisions, therefore they will never make safe decisions.
Auto breaking technology deployed in japan has already started affecting insurance because so many vehicles have it that the accident rate has fallen significantly. This is one facet of autonomous decision making.
It is clearly a goal and a realistic one within even a few decades pessimisitcally given that its ability is creeping upwards.