Los Angeles tech entrepreneur almost misses flight after getting stuck in robotaxi | Autonomous cars

A Los Angeles-based technology entrepreneur got stuck in a malfunctioning self-driving car for several minutes last month, almost causing him to miss a flight, he said.

Mike Johns was riding in a Waymo self-driving car en route to Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport when the vehicle began driving around a parking lot several times, circling eight times while he was on the phone asking for help. ‘business.

“I put my seat belt on. I can’t get out of the car. Was this hacked? What’s going on?” he can be heard telling a Waymo representative in a video he posted to LinkedIn three weeks ago. “I feel like I’m in the movies .Is someone playing a joke on me? And I have a flight to catch.

Johns initially thought it was a prank, he told the Guardian. “Having a lot of smart friends working in tech… (I thought) maybe he was my friend,” he said. But as the vehicle continued to circle an island in the parking lot, he knew there was a real problem. “This car has a problem.”

He felt dizzy as the object continued to circle the field at a time that he said “felt like a scene in a science fiction thriller.” The Waymo representative advised her to open her app as she attempted to stop the vehicle, but said in the video that she had “no ability to control the car.”

The issue was resolved after a few minutes, Waymo said in a statement. He eventually managed to catch his flight from Arizona to Southern California, which he said was fortunately delayed. But he was frustrated by the experience and said he was unable to tell whether the representative he spoke with was human or AI.

“This is yet another example of today’s digital world. A half-baked product and no one meets the customer, the consumers, in the middle,” Johns, who describes himself as a futurist well-versed in artificial intelligence, told CBS Los Angeles.

The experience was overwhelming, Johns said. “I was stunned. It just reminded me of the ghost in the machine. You’ll hear people refer to autonomous vehicles or driverless cars – I’ll call them “cars without humans.” He had used Waymo once before and said his recent experience wouldn’t deter him from using driverless cars in the future, but there were still things that needed to be worked out.

“As a futurist, I feel like this is where everything is going, so we might as well get there first,” Johns said. “It’s just that we have some issues that need stitches.”

Waymo told the Guardian that the “loop event” had been resolved by a regularly scheduled software update. Johns was not charged for the trip, the company said.

The company offers autonomous ride services in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Austin, and provided more than 4 million fully autonomous rides last year, according to Waymo. While the company’s vehicles have made millions of trips safely, high-profile incidents, including a Waymo self-driving car that killed a dog and a collision that injured a cyclist, have fueled concerns.

For Johns, the experience provided him with useful information for a book he is writing on the impact of artificial intelligence on employment. “I became my own case study,” he said.