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Chapter 1: What incident involving a Waymo vehicle occurred in Phoenix?
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Welcome to The Last Show. I'm David Cooper. Autonomous vehicles, are they the future? But what happens when they go off the rails? Or in this case, in Phoenix, Arizona, on the rails? I'm joined by Tony Five, foreign correspondent and autonomous vehicle expert, probably to discuss an odd situation that went down in Arizona. Tony, welcome to the show.
Hello, dear boy. How are we?
Chapter 2: How do autonomous vehicles operate without a driver?
I am doing well. How are you, dear boy?
I'm doing good. I mean, off the cuff of the CES show, which is the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where there was all things robotic, AI, all these wonderful things. And a report caught my eye in Phoenix, one of these Waymo vehicles. So it's like an autonomous or self-driving vehicle.
was caught driving on these light rail tracks he took this poor passenger who must have been freaking out completely um in front of a i guess they call them we call them trams here in the uk so it's not like a heavy a heavy train but one of the light rails that go through towns and cities and stuff like tram yeah like a trolley a street car that kind of thing yeah it put this poor guy on this light rail track and he had to jump out
He jumped out. Yeah, there's video of him escaping the car, running through traffic to be like, oh, there's going to be an accident. A train did not smash into the Waymo.
Chapter 3: What are the risks associated with self-driving cars?
And I guess I'm glad it didn't because people would have gotten hurt. But I do hate those cars. Have you ever been driving on a street with autonomous vehicles?
No, because we don't have them here in the UK. So weirdly, they are being trialed on some of the major roads. And I know in the States, I know in Canada, I know in China, they use them as well. But I can't imagine what they're like. So explain to them how it works. Explain to me how it works. Is it literally a car with no driver in the seat and then people just get in and out?
Chapter 4: How do Waymo vehicles handle unexpected situations on the road?
Is that how it works?
That's exactly right. And my friends who live in San Francisco, because I used to live there where Waymo is allowed, love it. In fact, I was in the car the other day with my old neighbor. He was visiting New York and he was talking about how he loved it. And me and the Uber driver that we were in an Uber were ganging up against him saying this would never work in New York.
And then he finally tried to convince us that it would work in New York. But then I said, but then you would never get into an argument with your Uber driver, which was currently happening. And the Uber driver just starts laughing. He's like, yeah, you got no one to argue with.
Chapter 5: What are the challenges of implementing autonomous vehicles in urban areas?
And he started arguing with my friend as a joke. And it was just a fun scene. But yeah, you hail them, you get in, they take you to your destination. They're just way too cautious. And if they get in any kind of situation with danger, they slow down and they stop, which I guess is a good thing, but it's annoying.
Well, how does it deal with, I know it must have cameras, it must have lots of sensors. But when I came to New York, people have no respect to the highway code. So they will just run in front of cars, run in front of bikes. I nearly got hit by like the line bikes, maybe 30, 40 times. I nearly got hit by taxi drivers.
Chapter 6: How do sensors and cameras help autonomous vehicles navigate?
I nearly got hit by like police cars there who pay no attention to road sense. So in something as sort of tightly lipped as like New York City, I can't imagine it working. But I also can't imagine just being a passenger in that. It's like driving blindfolded, right?
I've never been in one. I almost don't want to get in one as a point of pride because I think they're stupid and I would feel like a hypocrite. But to your point about New York, yeah, a red light just means look both ways before you cross and a green light means cross. Like the pedestrians do whatever they want here.
Yes, absolutely. Is there a rule against jaywalking?
Chapter 7: What are the implications of AI on future transportation systems?
I feel that America has a jaywalking rule, but I don't know how well it's imposed.
Yeah. I think it varies place to place. Some places you'll get the cops will see you. They'll write you a ticket. They'll say, what are you doing here? The cops. I've never seen it. I've never seen or heard of anyone getting a jaywalking ticket. But I think theoretically you can if you like cause an accident or something.
Chapter 8: What are the concerns about the safety of AI-driven flights?
I am not a lawyer. I am not your lawyer. And this is not legal advice.
Well, I just think, well, if it's going to start with that, then do you reckon at one stage there'll be like planes and helicopters that are going to be sort of like robotically autonomous? That would be amazing. Can you imagine just getting on a plane and it just picks up, takes you off to wherever you want to go and lands without any sort of interaction?
I think that is the future, but I do worry. Like I almost would rather be in a less safe mode of transportation knowing I can trust a human than being in a statistically safer mode of transportation where there's still a risk. It's safer, but I got no one to blame. I got no one to like put my faith in like a pilot.
I would feel more comfortable even if you told me there's a hundred times greater chance of a pilot flight getting into an accident than an AI flight. I still might prefer the pilot flight, I gotta say.
I guess that there's that technological aspect of it that like, you know, tech people can see it and understand it and that danger imposed. But there's also sort of a human aspect where people are going to lose their jobs. Like you said, your Uber driver, he's being sort of replaced by a computer.
And it's quite like it's very like there was a lot of talk before when in supermarkets and stuff where the till people, you know, people, the checkout staff were replaced by by automatic stuff. And I guess this is just another iteration of that. Right.
It is, but at a grocery store, if your machine starts beeping and it stops working and you're like, what is going on? You're having trouble or you scan something where you need to prove that you're of age. For example, I buy nicotine gum. This is not an advertisement. Don't chew it. It's bad for you. The machine goes beep, beep, beep, and then they got to – there's somebody there to help.
If I'm on a plane being autonomously flown, I want that same person. If, you know, the cockpit crashes and they've got to go to manual control, you know, and by crash I mean the computer program crashes, I want that clerk, in this case a pilot, to be there to take over control. So I hope the future is like – and that's already the case with – with the autopilot and stuff.
But I hope the future is that there's a pilot in there that the flight is just more AI assisted or something like that.
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