A Los Angeles-based artificial intelligence (AI) expert experienced some alarming technical issues when he drove his driverless Waymo to the airport and almost missed his flight as it started circling. did.
Mike Johns is a “futurist” who specializes in “AI assistants that augment human tasks” and “symbiotic relationships between humans and robots.” Websitehad a bad experience with a similar piece of technology last week when a self-driving taxi in Scottsdale, Arizona, malfunctioned for an unknown reason.
A video he posted on social media from inside his Waymo car showed him spinning around without steering wheel to get back to Los Angeles, circling the parking lot instead of the airport.
“Monday was going well until I got into the Waymo 'humanless' car,” Johns wrote on LinkedIn. “Get in your car, fasten your seatbelt (safety first), and the story begins. The self-driving car used GPS to complete eight laps.”
As the car spun, Johns frantically tried to call a customer service representative for help.
“I'm circling the parking lot. I'm wearing my seatbelt and I can't get out of the car. Has this been hacked? What's going on?” Johns said in the video, “I'm feeling dizzy. I will.''
After the tech entrepreneur was trapped in the back seat and uncomfortable for several minutes, Waymo representatives were finally able to park the car and “make it to the airport in time to catch a flight back to Los Angeles,” CBS said. The news reported. reported.
But Johns didn't even know whether he was talking to a real human or an AI bot.
“Where's the empathy? Where's the human connection to this?” Johns told CBS. “This is another example of today's digital world: a product in the middle, and no one in the middle with the customer, the consumer.”
The self-driving car company currently operates in the Phoenix-Scottsdale, Arizona area, as well as San Francisco and Los Angeles, California. Waymo is owned by Alphabet, the same parent company as Google.
The technology has received mixed reviews from some passengers, especially women. complain Breitbart News reported that they faced harassment and other safety concerns en route to their destinations.
In a shocking incident in San Francisco, a woman named Amina was riding a Waymo when two men blocked her path and demanded her cell phone number, while the car was unable to avoid them. I recorded the situation.
“No… go, go, go!” Amina can be heard shouting at the men as she stood in front of a taxi stopped at a red light.
One of the men, wearing a hat and glasses, is seen refusing to move out of the way, repeating the “please call me” gesture with his hand.
“I love Waymo, but this was scary,” Amina wrote to X in September 2024. “Two men stopped in front of my car and demanded my number. My car stalled on the road and I was stranded.”
“Thankfully it only lasted a few minutes…but ladies, please be aware of this,” she added.
