Waymo is a robotaxi service. There are others as well.
not sure about all robotaxi services but at least with the one I worked on you are no more "locked in a car" than with a regular taxi or uber or whatever
yes, "code" is operating the car
network connectivity is not really required per se, all of the autonomous capability is within the car itself. There are computers (and redundant computers) within the car doing all of the driving. However, the cars do use GPS (just as you do... to determine the best route etc) and have cellular connectivity so that they can come and pick you up (just like uber) as well as to connect with remote operators who can assist passengers, take over and operate the car if needed. So if suddenly all cellular networks went down and all GPS went down too the cars would choose a safe spot and pull over.

In AI we call these scenarios "the long tail" i.e. there are situations which happen to you all the time (approaching an intersection with a red light) and then situations which are rare to the extreme (airplane emergency lands in your lane on the highway).

One of the cool things about the current state of autonomous vehicles is that everything that happens with them (i.e. every bit of data coming from the hardware sensors) is recorded, meaning you can essentially replay and/or simulate anything that has ever happened to one of your vehicles. So if one of your fleet of autonomous vehicles encounters an escaped elephant running down the sidewalk of a major city, that is going to be flagged for "long tail" situations. Or, if the outcome of a driving situation is not ideal (for example the vehicle had to make an evasive maneuver which exceeded the parameters of what most passengers would find comfortable like a hard braking) that too can be replayed/simulated. As a result, the AI models can use these situations to continuously improve their capabilities and decision making. Then, even though only one car in the fleet ever encountered an escaped elephant, every car in the fleet gets better at dealing with that situation in the future. In the same vein, "what if" situations which have never been encountered "in the wild" can be simulated and tested.

Now consider this: you and I as human drivers may drive 1,000,000 miles in our lifetimes. Hopefully we get better as we get more experienced (putting aside for a moment that we will degrade in our old age) but that experience is just our own from those 1,000,000 miles. But autonomous vehicles learn how to be better drivers based not only on the experience of one car but rather from the experience of all of the cars. Two years ago the company I was working for was the leader in the USA for autonomous driving, and we announced a major milestone of 1 million miles of autonomous driving in a single month. Now in 2025, Waymo is the leader and they are going to drive over 100 Million fully autonomous miles in San Francisco alone. The exponential curve is going to continue to climb, and with it the number of "things that have never happened before" and the cars being able to deal smoothly with those situations.

That makes total sense to me grant. I’m on the periphery of some AI projects and understand the concept of the large language model, and feeding your AI more data to make it “smarter”. Great explanation.

One thing we haven’t discussed here is that autonomous driving would be far safer if we removed the biggest variable on the road - us. I can see a not too distant future where certain heavily urban areas could ban people operating vehicles and make all transportation autonomous. In that scenario you could even network the cars such that they are communicating and coordinating all movements and operating in concert with each other. Almost like a drone swarm on wheels.

When I was younger and thinking about this, my thought was that the cars would be networked so they would operate as a group rather than singly. That seems like the next step past autonomous. When I was thinking about it, there was also some information exchange about/for the road itself as well. That may not be as useful or cost effective.

I picture flawless zipper merging, pot hole/detritus avoidance, and possibly even higher speeds.

Almost every major network system has been hacked: Banks, Target, Google, Amazon, Governments all the time.
Lining up to be the best crash dummy..?

Just sayin

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There is a really simple solution to your fears, don’t ride in one.

Thank you Grant ... I'll be back later to read again ;)...

I "get it", but am a T-Rex computer science/networking/high tech guy who yells at clouds now ....

Good stuff...

Oh yeah ... AI is just the new buzz words.... "self learning/defining" systems, automation & robotics .... a techie's playground .... I played a bit :D

I think I would be comfortable with it in an urban setting. Going 80 mph (the speed limit on some highways) on the freeway - not sure yet. So many of Gen Z are already very comfortable with these types of systems and would have no qualms about jumping into a robo taxi.

Something else to consider - autonomous flying taxis. Joby and Archer are working on eVTOLs to whisk people around the city or get you to the airport - above the congested masses and freeways. These will be piloted at first with a human at the controls but ultimately the goal is for pilotless vehicles. Would you get in one?

As the owner of several Teslas and someone who has used full self-driving, there is no way I am getting in a robotaxi. They do not have everything worked out.

When flying cars or robo-aircraft are common, we will have to have a rider on our homeowners and automobile insurance policies to cove us for aircraft crashes into our houses. Hoping the limits on the aircraft policies are enough will not be a good thing.

Yes, we are a very long way away from autonomous flying aircraft. It took the FAA something like 10 years to create certification guidance for manned electric VTOL (eVTOL) aircraft, it was just issued last month. Autonomous anything, even unmanned, is still massively restricted.

A bit off topic but right around the corner and coming to your neighborhood very soon will be beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) delivery drones. These will be large - up to 600kg (1320 lbs - about the size of a Robinson R22 helicopter). Amazon and other delivery companies want to expand this by the tens of thousands. Thousands of large drones crisscrossing the skies.

'I would not get in a Tesla robo-taxi' and 'I would not get in a robo-taxi' are very different statements.

There are real 'full self driving' vehicles out there, complete with LIDAR.

https://x.com/wienerdogwifi/status/1956001900924391735
San Carlos, Bay Area — Brand new 2024 Ford Mustang Mach-E suffers terrifying malfunction: steering wheel locks, accelerator pegged, car veers toward wall before smashing into another vehicle.

Driver says no way to stop — Ford now faces potential multi-million-dollar lawsuit.

That will happen some day, but likely not right around the corner. The technology will be there before the FAA catches up, right now there’s no path to certify a BLOS or autonomous aircraft. Until then, there are substantial constraints on where and how you can operate. They certainly won’t be whizzing over metro areas anytime soon.

I saw that video, pretty much what everyone’s worried about with autonomous vehicles. It will also be a good legal test, because if in fact the vehicle took over and the driver was unable to control, now Ford is liable. I think llegal liability will be a big sticking point if the manufacturers start getting sued for every accident.

And there's no reason to think that it wasn't the car, but at the same time, "audi unintended acceleration". I think that was solidly debunked as driver error, right?

I wonder, emergency/parking brake, gear selector (does the mach-e have a trans?), turn car off, etc... Was the driver praying? Why was his hand up in front of him like that. I'd certainly have both hands on the wheel in that situation.

This is when he wished he had a key instead of a push-button...

Yeah, crossed my mind as well. Supposedly he was praying, I would have been mashing every button on the dash if it were me.