> Piloting an aircraft with an autopilot requires a MINIMUM of 1500 hours of instruction and experience as well as multiple levels of certification (VFR, IFR, multi-engine, and specific type certification).
What? A full private pilot license only requires 35 or 40 hours of flight time (depending on school type); a sport license only requires 20 hours. Airplanes flyable by new pilots of either type very often have autopilots today.
OK
And exactly ZERO of those licenses allow you to get anywhere near an autopilot system. Those licenses are for Visual Flight Rules only. You are not even allowed to fly in conditions that require you to use instruments.
To get to use an autopilot, at MINIMUM is required an instrument rating which is 10+ hours past Private Pilot AND a Commercial Pilot License which is 250 hours minimum, assuming you can find a plane with an autopilot that requires that minimum and included that in your learning program (so hours counted towards both commercial and type certification). Then, you need to be rated on the particular autopilot system.
On top of that, you need to follow RULES about when the autopilot can be engaged, e.g., not below certain altitudes, conditions, etc.
The point stands that the training required just to be able to understand an aircraft autopilot sufficiently to be allowed to use it is a level of serious specialized expertise not encountered in ordinary civilian life.
Taking technical terms of art from areas of specialized expertise and abusing common misunderstandings to apply them to broad marketing and then relying on legal technicalities to try to say "we told you so" when you did no such thing it is just an advanced form of lying. Musk is fooling you too.