A Los Angeles-based expert in artificial intelligence (AI) encountered some unsettling issues with technology when his driverless Waymo ride to the airport nearly caused him to miss his flight. The vehicle began to circle aimlessly, which delayed him significantly.
Mike Johns, described as a “futurist” on his website and an expert in areas like “AI assistants that enhance human tasks” and “human-robot symbiosis,” faced a malfunction with his autonomous taxi in Scottsdale, Arizona last week. The incident highlighted some troubling flaws in the technology he works with professionally.
In a video he posted online, Johns shows the steering wheel of the Waymo car spinning uncontrollably while the car drives in circles around a parking lot instead of heading toward the airport as planned. The video captures his frustration: “My Monday was fine till I got into one of Waymo’s ‘humanless’ cars,” Johns shared on LinkedIn. “I get in, buckle up (safety first) and the saga begins. This autonomous vehicle said to heck with GPS, the car just went around in circles, eight circles at that.”
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As the car continued to circle, Johns frantically tried to contact customer support by phone. “It’s circling around a parking lot. I’ve got my seatbelt on, I can’t get out of the car. Has this been hacked? What’s going on?” Johns can be heard saying in the video, expressing his discomfort and dizziness as the situation unfolded.
After several distressing minutes in the backseat, the representative finally managed to stop the vehicle, allowing Johns to reach the airport just in time for his flight to Los Angeles, according to CBS News. However, Johns was left uncertain whether he was speaking to an actual person or a bot.
“Where’s the empathy? Where’s the human connection to this?” Johns said to CBS. “It’s just, again, a case of today’s digital world. A half-baked product and nobody meeting the customer, the consumers, in the middle.”
Waymo, the autonomous vehicle company involved, currently operates in the Phoenix-Scottsdale region, as well as in San Francisco and Los Angeles. The company is owned by Alphabet, the parent company of Google.
The technology has garnered mixed feedback, with some passengers — particularly women — expressing concerns about harassment and safety issues. According to Breitbart News, one such incident occurred in San Francisco when a female passenger named Amina filmed two men blocking her Waymo vehicle, demanding her phone number while the car could not move around them.
“No… go, go, go!” Amina can be heard shouting in her video as the men stood in front of her vehicle, which had stopped for a red light. One of the men, wearing a hat and glasses, is seen repeatedly making a “call me” gesture and refusing to move.
“I love Waymo but this was scary,” Amina posted on X in September 2024. “2 men stopped in front of my car and demanded that I give my number. It left me stuck as the car was stalled in the street.”
“Thankfully, it only lasted a few minutes… Ladies please be aware of this,” she added.
{Matzav.com}