So "nerds" designed a machine to do nothing for 10 years, then land on a rock with absolutely nothing else around to hit, but that rock.
That machine then crashed into that rock, and humans had to intervene to move said machine so it would work. Even that intervention only lasted for a matter of hours before said machine ran out of power and died.
While not wanting to take away from the complexity and success of that mission, its hardly a ringing endorsement of computer automation.
Tourist, while undoubtedly fully autonomous airliners are possible at some point in the future, it's not going to be anytime soon. No matter how much you jump up and down about it. It seems most of the experts agree we are a long, long way from achieving that level of automation.
As for the Google car, they are squaring the circle of who are you going to sue when it all goes wrong and someone gets killed. In this case, it's now Google. Hardly a huge technological sptep forward.