2 weeks ago
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A tech entrepreneur based in Los Angeles became trapped in a malfunctioning self-driving car for several minutes last month, causing him to nearly miss a flight, he said.
Mike Johns was riding in an autonomous Waymo vehicle on his way to the airport when the vehicle began driving around a parking lot repeatedly, circling eight times as he was on the phone seeking help from a company.
“I got my seat belt on. I can’t get out of the car. Has this been 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 somebody playing a joke on me? And I got a flight to catch.”
Johns became dizzy as the vehicle continued circling the lot in a moment that he said “felt like a scene in a sci-fi thriller”. The Waymo representative advised him to open his app as she tried to stop the vehicle, but said she didn’t “have an option to control the car”.
The issue was resolved after a few minutes, Waymo said in a statement, and Johns was delayed by a little more than five minutes. He ultimately managed to arrive on time for his flight from Scottsdale, Arizona, to southern California. But he was frustrated about the experience and said he was unable to tell if the representative he spoke with was human or AI.
“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,” Johns, who describes himself as a futurist who is knowledgable about artificial intelligence, told CBS Los Angeles.
Waymo told the Guardian the “looping event” had been addressed 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 4m fully autonomous rides last year, according to Waymo. While the company’s vehicles have performed millions of rides safely, high-profile incidents, including a self-driving Waymo car that killed a dog and a collision that injured a cyclist, have fueled concerns.
