What would a world of self-driven cars look like? How would it change shopping, transportation, and life, more broadly?

A decade ago, many people were asking these questions, as it looked like a boom in autonomous vehicles was imminent. But in the last few years, other technologies—crypto, the metaverse, AI—have stolen the spotlight.

Meanwhile, self-driving cars have quietly become a huge deal in the U.S. Waymo One, a commercial ride-hailing service that spun off from Google, has been rolled out in San Francisco, Phoenix, Los Angeles, and Austin. Every week, Waymo makes 150,000 autonomous rides. Tesla is also competing to build a robo-taxi service and to develop self-driving capabilities.

There are two reasons why I’ve always been fascinated by self-driving cars: The first is safety. There are roughly 40,000 vehicular deaths in America every year and 6 million accidents. It’s appropriate to be concerned about the safety of computer-driven vehicles. But what about the safety of human-driven vehicles? A technology with the potential to save thousands of lives and prevent millions of accidents is a huge deal.

Second, the automobile was arguably the most important technology of the 20th century. The invention of the internal combustion engine transformed agriculture, personal transportation, and supply chains. It made the suburbs possible. It changed the spatial geometry of the city. It expanded demand for fossil fuels and created some of the most valuable companies in the world. The reinvention of last century’s most important technology is a massive, massive story. And the truth is, I’m not sure that today’s news media—a category in which I include myself—has done an adequate job representing just how game-changing self-driving technology at scale could be.

Today’s guest is Timothy Lee, author of the Substack publication Understanding AI. Today I asked him to help me understand self-driving cars—their technology, their industry, their possibility, and their implications.

If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at [email protected].

Host: Derek Thompson

Guest: Timothy Lee

Producer: Devon Baroldi

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