Driverless: Waymo and the Robotaxi Race—Waymo Takes the Lead
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With artificial intelligence, creating an ethical foundation isn't just the right thing to do, is crucial to success. Join IBM of the break to hear why from federal binet eris IBM consult into global leader for trustworthy ai.

In february, a wild scene took place on the streets of 3Frances goes chinatown neighborhood。 A crowd of people surrounded an empty, way more driverless car and destroyed IT. They broke its windows and discovered the doors in gravi. Ultimately, the car was set a blaze after someone threw a firewall acker inside. The vandalism kept off a rough a few months for the driverless car industry.

Even though severances o is historically friendly to tech companies, tension over self driving technology has been building after a series of incidents involving driverless vehicles belonging to amo, which is owned by google parent company alphabet, as well as cruise, which is majority owned by general motors. As a number of driverless cars on the road increased, so too did the problems. Just recently, two wae o car stalled near the primary downtown, backing a traffic. This cruise car stall in the middle, the street and and partisan o in june was blocking a lane of traffic as emergency vehicles tried to access the scene of a mouth shooting in the mission. But ten months later, we o has come a long way.

Do about how IT shows you your initials so you know which one is your car?

Yeah okay, so we're pulling up to the way now and it's showing my initials mk. So let me know that this is indeed our car. Wall street .

journal tech reporters miles groupa and Megan barski have been covering way most efforts to build a business around a driverless cars. Please make sure your seat belt is vacant. For any questions, press the call support button to speak with the .

write the agent. Thank you. Wo.

after years of testing with human safety drivers behind the wheel, now way o has about three hundred vehicles driving around hanford. Cisco picking up anyone using a APP.

That's right.

It's like the wheel turns on its own.

Have to do that for a year. I don't feel like I go to striving. I not really thinking about who's striving. Almost feel like on public translate something .

emo is already Operating beyond the bay area. The company has about four hundred vehicles in los Angeles, s and phenix, arizona were earlier this year, the company began giving driverless rides to employees on some high speed freeways. And in october, we mo announced IT was doing one hundred and fifty thousand paid rides every week across all of its markets, up from just ten thousand in the summer of twenty twenty three.

Driverless cars are a mainstay of size. I future seen in movies like total recall and video games like cyber punk. Twenty seventy seven. And while it's still unclear whether the tech will catch on with the public at large way more is making a big bet that real life driverless cars are the future of transportation. I'm danny Lewis, and this is driverless wao and the robot taxi race, a new series from the wall street journalist. Future of everything we're looking at, how we o took the lead in the competition to build the future of driving and what IT will take for the company to stay at the top of the growing industry with rivals like gms, cruise, amazon's zooks and tesla snapping at its heals today. Episode one way more takes the leaf that's after the break.

How do you start to lay the foundation for responsible AI in your organization? Here's fator bonner's IBM consultants, global leader for trust, or the AI IT .

starts with asking the question, what is the kind of relationship that we ultimately want to have with A I? The purpose of A I is not meant to display human beings that is meant to augment intelligence. Students, you have a glimmer in your eye about how you're thinking you might want to.

U. Z. I. Then asking the questions like what would be required in order to earn people's trust in such a model.

Walk around 3Frances， go on any given day and there's a good chance you'll see way more cars driving around the city. They're easy to spot the White electric jag war S U V V O. Users have bulky rooftop equipment, L, D, screens, cameras and working sensors, and of course, no humans behind the wheel. It's all very high tech. But the dream of having the benefits of driving without pesky things like having to pay attention to the roads or traffic has existed almost since car started becoming come place in the united states .

to help us get a glimpse into the future of this unfinished world of hours that has been created for the new york rose fair. At the one thousand .

nine hundred and thirty nine world's fair in new york, general motor's exhibition included a model portraying a world of the far off year of ninety were technologically advanced highways, cars and trucks zipping along .

and out of danger. Safe distance between cars is maintained by automatic radio control, curved side assist the driver and keeping his car within the proper lane under all circumstances. The ti note of this motorway safety, safety with increased speed.

computer controlled highways, elevated sidewalks, landing dex for helicopters and auto OS. That's a small flying vehicle that's kind of like across between an airplane and the helicopter. The whole thing was about as jet age, you topping of the future as you could imagine.

because that is where we are going to spend best of our lives.

It's been more than eighty years since then. But wait, most technology has advanced beyond what the makers of gms future rama imagined. But before we get into how way more came to lead the race to build a driverless car, we need to talk about how they work.

Many of the driverless cars currently on the road have been retrofitted to move and navigate without a person behind the wheel. That's thanks to the spinning sensors we mentioned earlier and the roof right equipment that looks kind of like a modern tech version of the spinning emergency lights from all the ambuLances or police cars. The sweet sensors include radar as well as light AR, which is a laser based system gral to a lot of self driving car technology. And the picture they provide, whats going on around the car, coupled with feeds from cameras installed all over its body, is fed into the machine learning software.

Driving the car thirty years ago, when we were doing sof driving cars, that the baby version, there are kind of three big lessons. In retrospect.

phil cope man is an associate professor at carnegy melon university, and he's been working on self driving cars and how to make them safe for decades.

One was that dedicated lanes for highways doesn't work because the interchanges we're going to cost like a billion dollars. It's going to have to be mixed traffic. Another one was that people cannot pay attention to cars that almost drive themselves if you're move daring, daring the drop out. The third thing we learned is the technology wasn't really ready. What's change is machine learning.

That's a branch of artificial intelligence that uses pattern recognition and a lot of data to teach computer how to do a specific task, like identifying whether something on a camera is a tree or a person because .

you wearing Brown pants, but of them have long, vertical Brown things on the bottom, right, right? And you're a Green sure, which is IT machine learning comes along and you show IT a bunch of examples of people and trees and IT figures out some statistical bute so that you can decide is that a person's .

at a tree IT might be obvious to a human driver, but not to the software driving. The car programmer need to teach the machines the difference, and that can take serious computing power to put together into an image.

So you take the cameras and you take the lights, and you take the radars and you take the else. Did you feed all of that into a machine learning system? And IT tells you, yes, that's a pedestrian and and he's, anyway, you need to to slow down.

This is the basic tech that most of the big players in the driverless car world are using, aside from tesla, which is trying to develop self driving cars only using A I and cameras. But that's a bit of a different story, will get to more in the next episode. In any case, we o cruise and amazon's zoo s use a combination of sensors to give their cars and understanding of the world around them and how to respond to situations as they arise of .

all of these companies. Wao has been working on this for the longest.

while street journal reporter crupp a covers alphabet, the parent of companies including google, wee and youtube .

IT started as something called the google self driving car project, and theyve been method ally, improving this self driving technology over many years since .

two thousand nine, to be precise, which shows up in how its tech is developed as well as how its cars handle real world traffic.

My partner loves to talk about how easy IT is to take advantage of waves on the road.

because they tend to follow the rules of the road to a tea, kind of like how someone learning to drive might be extra cautious in differential to other cars on the road. W, S, J, tech reporter meghan brusk has also done a lot of reporting on driverless cars and says he's seen that same behavior.

You know some of those drivers who don't let you into their lane way most, like come on in, like you know, is will almost delay their ride. Someone wants to come into their .

if you talk to people in the industry, the general consensus is that way has been slower and more cautious than some .

of the other players. Coe o to kidwa a spoke about this in september at the all in summit, a conference run by tech business leaders and venture capital alist.

We are pushing to make sure people who put autonomous vehicles on the road have to demonstrate their safety case. We think the worst thing that could happen is introducing a new technology that doesn't actually improve this problem.

tell the whole industry .

because it'll kill the .

whole industry. At the same time, he said, companies making driverless cars also have to manage the public expectations for the technology.

How prepared is the public to accept that this isn't going to be a panacea and it's not going to be perfect?

But even though we most paid rides skyrocketed in the last year, IT has a skeeter ticals public to win. Over a twenty twenty one survey by the pew research center found that only about a quarter of americans say the widespread use of driver less cars would be a good thing, compared to forty four percent who say that would be bad, and a twenty twenty four survey by the american automobile association found that the public has become more sceptical of the technology in recent years, with sixty six percent of people saying they're afraid of driverless cars. The safety of the technology is a big concern, which mile says was highlighted in an incident in late twenty twenty three involving waye s biggest competitor.

the incident that we saw with cruel last year.

So let's rewind a little bit to late twenty, twenty three driverless car companies had just won a big Victory in california at August after the state's public utilities commission allowed them to start charging customers for rights.

That was a really big watershed moment because all of the sudden these companies are basically like to arming businesses. They were going to be able to start charging people for the service and that sort of signal. I think this is getting really serious again.

At the time, wao had been working on its driverless car technology for fourteen years. And finally, after all that time and money and effort putting regulators and potential customers at ease over this tech, IT was time to put the business side to the test. But just a couple months later, in october, an incident involving a vehicle belonging to gms creese through the industry into a crisis.

Here's Megan. This woman is in the street. A human driven car hit her SHE falls into the path of cruise.

The driver list car also hit the pedestrian, and he ended up pinned beneath the vehicle.

IT knows a collision has occurred, and so IT tries to pull over to the side of the road, not knowing that the woman is .

under the car. The car drag the woman twenty feet before coming to a stop. SHE survived, though he was severely injured.

And so this happens. There's some back and fourth between cruise and the state regulators, and they pull their driverless permit. Crude can still do rides with drivers in the car, but that is essential ood because they're trying to build a driverless car business and they took away the permits that allow them to run .

their business. At the time, the california department of motor vehicles said cruise vehicles aren't safe for public Operation and that the company misrepresented information related to the safety of its technology. In last month, the U.

S. Justice department said crews admitted to submitting a false report on the incident. IT paid a five hundred thousand dollar criminal fine. In a statement, cruise president craig glidden said the company will comply with the agreement requirements and is committed to transparency with regulators.

But that moment was a point where things really changed because wild ruiz was no longer able to Operate driverless cars on the streets of 3。 Francesco wao was now the only company allowed to Operate an actual driverless car business in the city, and that's when the company appears to have shifted from slow and steady to pressing on the accelerator. What happened next? That's after the break.

For the last year when IT comes to ridership, way mail has been on a hot streak in the summer of twenty twenty three when I was still competing with creese for passengers. The company was doing about ten thousand paid rides a week across all of the cities that Operates m. And then those numbers started to go up fast by may of twenty, twenty four. IT was doing fifty thousand in August that doubled to one hundred thousand. And then in late october, ride numbers went up again.

Now each week, we were driving more than one million fully autonomous miles and serves over one hundred and fifty thousand paid rights.

That's alphabet and google CEO soon our purchase. Speaking during the company's october earnings call. And despite alphabet pouring billions of dollars into way over the years, even pitch, I seemed caught off guard at the company's sudden success.

You know surprised us on the positive in terms of how much consumers are loving the experience from a safety standpoint, privacy standpoint, real habit standpoint. It's a so I think all of that uh, has been on the a positive side and a and you obviously, the product will uh, continue to continue to improve way more.

Is now on the precipice of a new phase, expanding to new cities and new customers.

We interviewed to kidron, moa, cona, coc, E O V O.

W S S, miles, ccu, pa.

SHE used the word accelerate a few times, and IT does sort of feel like wao is starting to accelerate th Epace a t w hich i s b ringing c ars t o t he m arket a nd t hinking a b it m ore a bout w hat t he b usiness m odel m ight l ook l ike i n a f ew y ears.

which even at the beginning of this year was a very different situation than what we o was grappling with. Remember the way most smashing crowd we talked about earlier? Even in tech friendly and Francisco, driverless cars face chAllenges.

They freeze up in busy streets and intersections. Vice president, commonly, Harris is here, but her trip tonight, san franco might have had an obsta or two ark spotted a way more vehicle that had to be driven away from the motorcade route by police. They interfere with emergency situations, but been confused by .

emergency playing into locking firetrucks.

There was the midnight hawking, when we most trying to park in designated lots overnight would endlessly be bad. Each other neighbor shared videos of driverless way more cars filing into the lot and backing into spots, which appears to trigger honking from the other way. Most and recently wame of passengers have reported other people interfering with their right.

The cars became a mobilized in traffic, with writers inside tigers attack three cars. And then in another incident, two men harassed a female writer inside a car. The company is still facing chAllenges as IT seems some success.

Wao is facing an investigation by federal regulators over its vehicles colliding with parked cars and driving the wrong way in traffic. And at one point a way, mail killed a dog in a collision the company called unavoidable. In spite of this, the company is forging ahead with its expansions, plans and winning over writers.

There is greater level of adoption among consumers in the areas and geography that they have launched where initially there was some hesitation.

Swett kader ia, is an analyst at the equity research firm wolf research. SHE follows internet companies. Those include alphabet and by extension, way mo, as well as ride hAiling companies like uber and lift.

There is that word of mouth that is helping them get more and more rides. And part of IT is within each of the markets, they are making more guards available.

Caja ii says there are a few reasons for wealth current push to expand its reach, but a big one is that when gms cruz was taken off the road in california, we o hit the accelerator.

There really isn't any other competitor in a dynamic as is what else are consumers today gone to be dusting? There isn't anything else. And so that also allows me more than the first mover advantage.

Over the last year, we amo blanket the bay area in billboards, IT put ads on social media and even ran an ad campaign with fortune cookies. You'd crack open the cookie and find a little slip of paper with the way mo logo, a picture of one of their jaguar AR I pace cars A Q R code and the phrase the future is here, W. J. Reporter miles cruise, as those efforts seem to be paying off, at least in seven from disco.

Just a year ago, we were writing stories saying that the city isn't in love with way o and getting all this push back from local officials and getting that right is really the most crucial paper.

No, especially as IT plans to expand its service to new cities this summer, we will announced a new partnership with a former rival, uber. Starting in twenty twenty five, the right haling giant will add way more vehicles to its fleet in Austin, texas ended lante, georgia. But even though wyo.

Is in the lead at the moment, there's a lot that could change in this fast moving industry. Can we o win over a public sceptical about the safety of its technology? How can I hold its lead over self driving rivals like cruise, zoo s and tesla? And what might the future look like for the driver was car industry.

Next week, we'll be looking at way most competition and the future of its business. See them. The future of everything is a production of the wall street journal. Stephanie algan fits is the editorial director of the future of everything. This episode was produced by me, dani Lewis, special thanks to miles group a and the Megan burb oski, our fact checker is a partner name, Michael level and Justin fenton, our our sound designers and rode our theme music.

Cathern mills hop is our supervising producer we had held from sexy editor dig ma island, I should all muslims m is our development producer Scott sale way and Chris since ley are the deputy editors, and philonous patterson is the head of news audio for the wall street journal. Like the show, tell your friends and leave us a five star review on your favorite platform. Thanks for listening.

Earlier, we discuss what responsible AI looks like in practice. Here's fatal boy to dear us from IBM consulting again on why that begins with data.

My favorite definition, the word date up. It's an effect of the human experience. A I is like a mirror that reflects our biases back towards us, but have to be brave enough and introspection cable enough to look into the mirror and decide, does this reflection actually alive to my organization? Values, if IT aligns, be trees current about, why did you pick the data that you did? If IT doesn't align that when you know you need to change your entire approach.

learn more about IBM artificial intelligence consulting services and IBM dot com splash consulting.