> the maker of the self-driving car is liable for the death in this situation.

Maybe. There will be an investigation looking at things like. Did the user modify the car? Was the car modified by an unauthorized 3rd party? Was the car hacked?

Right now in AI things are relatively clear because it takes just massive amounts of power and compute to make anything remotely complicated. This barrier will fall as all other barriers in compute have fallen. Either via algorithm or hardware.

In our lifetime (unless you're rather old) we will see the relatively easy creation of self directing agents by actors with few resources. This breaks the standard concepts of liability where a single human actor rarely has the ability to create massive amounts of damages far beyond their means. The closest thing I can think of is an arsonist causing billions in damages, only in this case the fire has a will of it's own and can hide and spread around dark places on the internet.