The vehicle is designed to ultimately be a level 4 system. She effectively has the job of a test pilot of an experimental airplane. The job requires careful attention and is not easy.
There would be a different blame calculus if this were a production level 2 system like autopilot. In that case, it's not a paid test pilot, it would be the paid purchaser of a certified aircraft.
And yet she was probably paid like the test pilot for a beta web application. A test pilot for experimental aircraft doesn't even bring their phone in the vehicle with them.
Perhaps so, but there are a lot of jobs that have high responsibility but aren't very well paid. School bus driver, for example. If you're not willing to take the responsibility, don't take the job. I do think that Uber bears significant responsibility for their employee's actions as well though. They hired a convicted felon, and assuming this wasn't the first time she was watching movies on the job, didn't effectively monitor her, even though they had video cameras inside the car.
