Technology
Would you ride in Waymo’s new Ojai robotaxi?
Empty Waymo vehicles swarm Atlanta neighborhood
Atlanta residents captured alarming video of dozens of Waymo driverless cars continually circling their quiet neighborhood for hours. Tech expert Kurt Knutsson warns this ‘AI takeover’ raises significant safety concerns, especially for children, highlighting a critical lack of human intervention and company accountability from Waymo regarding these autonomous vehicles and potential glitches.
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Getting into a car with no one behind the wheel can be a little weird the first time. You know the car is supposed to drive itself, but part of you no doubt may still feel uneasy.
Waymo is trying to make that moment feel less anxious with its new Ojai robotaxi. It has more room to stretch out, bigger screens to control the ride and a cabin built for passengers from the very start.
That could make a real difference. If driverless rides are going to become something you actually use, they need to feel safe, simple and comfortable once the doors close.
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Waymo’s new Ojai robotaxi is designed around passengers, with more legroom, bigger screens and accessibility features. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Waymo Ojai robotaxi rides will start with select riders
Waymo says the first public Ojai rides will begin in the coming weeks. Select riders in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Phoenix will get the first chance to try it. The rides will be free for a limited time while Waymo gathers feedback and refines the experience. Access will then expand gradually to more riders and more cities.
Waymo also says Denver, Las Vegas and San Diego are on its expansion list before the company opens the doors wider later this year. For now, interested riders can use the Waymo app and sign up as a Trusted Tester.
Waymo’s new driverless vehicle puts riders first
The Ojai looks like Waymo’s attempt to rethink what a robotaxi should feel like from the inside. Instead of feeling like a regular car with self-driving tech added in, the Ojai was built around the rider experience. Waymo describes it as a more expansive cabin with extra legroom, a flat floor and a low step-in height. That could help when you are carrying groceries, traveling with luggage or getting in and out with less mobility.
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Inside the Waymo Ojai robotaxi cabin
The Ojai cabin gives riders three large adaptive screens. You can use them to adjust parts of the ride, including the temperature and music.
Waymo also added charging ports and cupholders. Those may sound like small touches, but they are the things you notice once you are actually sitting in the back seat.
Waymo says the Ojai cabin includes a flat floor, low step-in height, Braille, grab bars and screen-reader compatibility. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Waymo Ojai accessibility features could help more riders
Waymo also says the Ojai was designed with accessibility in mind from the start. The vehicle has a flat floor, a low step-in height, Braille, grab bars and screen-reader compatibility.
Those details can make a ride easier for someone who needs a little more support getting in or out. They can also help older riders, passengers with disabilities or anyone juggling bags, groceries or a tired kid after a long day.
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Waymo’s 6th-generation Driver debuts in the Ojai
The Ojai will be the first vehicle to use Waymo’s sixth-generation Waymo Driver. That is the company’s autonomous driving technology.
Waymo says this new generation will help it operate in snowier cities and bring fully autonomous rides to more communities. Snow, slush and messy weather can challenge autonomous vehicles in ways sunny streets cannot. If Waymo can handle those conditions safely, it could expand far beyond the warmer markets where robotaxis have had an easier start.
Waymo’s Arizona factory could help robotaxis expand
Waymo says its Mesa, Arizona, factory is getting ready to build tens of thousands of vehicles each year. The Ojai will come first, followed by the Hyundai IONIQ 5. That matters because robotaxi services need vehicles. Lots of them.
The Ojai also includes practical changes that could help Waymo keep a larger fleet on the road. Waymo points to easier-to-clean interiors, faster charging, increased battery capacity and a more modular design for maintenance and repairs.
Those details may not sound exciting, but they matter if robotaxis are going to move beyond a handful of cities. The easier these vehicles are to charge, clean and repair, the easier it may be for Waymo to bring them to more riders.
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The Waymo Ojai debuts the company’s sixth-generation autonomous driving system as it looks to expand robotaxi service. (Jason Henry/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
What this means to you
If you already ride with Waymo, the Ojai could make your next trip feel more comfortable. The bigger difference may be how normal the ride feels once you are inside. If you have never taken a driverless ride, the Ojai may become your first real temptation. The extra space and rider-friendly features could make the idea easier to try.
But there is still a comfort gap for many riders. You are stepping into a vehicle with no human driver. That makes comfort important, but safety still drives the whole decision. That question feels especially timely. Waymo recently paused freeway rides in several U.S. cities while it works on software updates tied to construction zones and flooded roads. Surface-street service has continued, but the pause is a reminder that even advanced robotaxis still face many challenges out there on the road.
Waymo says riders have taken more than 20 million fully autonomous trips across 11-plus cities. The Ojai now gives the company another chance to prove that driverless rides can feel safe, useful and normal for more of us.
Kurt’s key takeaways
Waymo’s new Ojai robotaxi shows where driverless rides are heading next. The car still has to get you from point A to point B safely, but now Waymo is also trying to make the ride feel easier, roomier and more comfortable once you get inside. I like that Waymo is thinking about the rider experience, not only the driving technology. The extra space, accessibility features and rider controls could help those who have been curious but hesitant. Still, trust is a huge hurdle. A nicer cabin may make the ride more comfortable, but Waymo still has to prove that a car with no driver can handle the messy, unpredictable roads we all deal with every day.
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Would you climb into Waymo’s new Ojai robotaxi for a free ride, or do driverless cars still have more to prove before you would trust one? Let us know by writing to us at CyberGuy.com.
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Public pushback against data centers has emphasized their water and energy consumption, and now Nvidia is highlighting its claim that the Rubin generation reference design for a fully liquid-cooled data center has “eliminated massive amounts of power usage and pretty much all water usage.” Still, it doesn’t address all of the concerns around AI data centers, including during their construction, and for the power generation requirements of the massive facilities. Also, as Gizmodo points out, Nvidia’s blog post doesn’t mention the cost of building this style of data center vs. one using less efficient air cooling, but claims that “every cloud provider and data center operator building for [Rubin] is making the transition.”
The efficiency gains are partly due to running AI servers hotter, as high as 113 degrees Fahrenheit (45 degrees Celsius). In a recent report, Amazon similarly touted higher heat tolerances as part of making its mostly air-cooled data centers more efficient.
With Nvidia’s system, “heat is captured directly at the chip and transported through liquid loops operating at much higher temperatures, allowing outdoor dry coolers to reject heat efficiently for much of the year,” with much more flexibility when it comes to the ambient air temperature.
According to Nvidia’s head of sustainability, Josh Parker, the reference design takes water use “from roughly 2.6 million gallons per megawatt per year for conventional cooling-tower-based systems to near zero — up to a 100 percent reduction.”
Google’s DeepMind AI lab is teaming up with A24 to develop new movie production technologies that aim to help future filmmakers “expand their storytelling possibilities.” As part of this new research and development collaboration, The Wall Street Journal reports that Google is investing “around $75 million” into A24, marking the first time the search giant has taken a stake in a film studio.
“The collaboration pairs a world-leading research lab with the industry’s most filmmaker-forward studio to help artists develop new workflows and techniques,” Google said in its announcement blog. “This ensures the tools of the future are shaped by the creators who use them.”
The partnership is expected to span across “multiple projects over time” according to Google, though the announcement doesn’t mention any specific movies that Google will be involved with. WSJ reports that Google and A24 are aiming to create new tools for movie production and distribution, something that Google alluded to in its own announcement, saying the “initial focus is on bridging the gap between cutting-edge technology and next generation entertainment.”
The multiyear deal is non-exclusive, according to WSJ, and doesn’t allow Google to access A24’s film and television library data. Still, the partnership is likely to raise some eyebrows in the film industry, given that Google’s AI models are trained on publicly available internet data, and how ferociously other movie studios like Disney, Universal, and Warner Bros have fought AI companies for alleged copyright violations.
WSJ also reports that Google and A24 are hoping to include the movie studio’s existing roster of artists in the deal, such as YouTube creator and Backrooms director, Kane Parsons. In an interview with The Australian earlier this month, Parsons said that “generative AI feels less like innovation than a symptom of a broader cultural and economic rot,” and that he gets “no enjoyment” out of using the technology on any project.
According to Scott Belsky — an A24 partner who was previously Adobe’s chief strategy officer — the tools that Google and A24 are developing “won’t look anything like the prompted generation type of AI that people feel uncomfortable with.” In his statement to WSJ, Belsky said “there are better uses that preserve creative control and support risk-taking.”
Cold Court is a brother-sister duo from Philly that seems to love nothing more than shoving all of their influences together in a messy soup that at least superficially resembles the hyperpop you’ve come to expect from acts like 100 Gecs. But, where songs like “Dumbest Girl Alive” goofily wink at pop punk and emo, Cold Court are a bit more self-serious, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
The opening track on the band’s debut EP (^_^) / (aka Hands Up), “Nina”, starts off sounding not unlike the dance punk bands that stormed the scene in the mid aughts like Franz Ferdinand or Test Icicles. But that all starts to change about a minute in, when the skuzzy riff gets chopped up and fed through a beat repeater. Another minute later, there’s a mellow proggy bridge that calls to mind Mars Volta. Then the whole thing ends on a barrage of glitches and digital chaos.
The record largely continues in this fashion. The songs on Hands Up clearly started life on drums and guitar. But then Mini and Jojo fed their creations to a computer, added layers, rearranged the pieces, and piled on the effects. Single “Burn” is perhaps the best example of all the parts coming together. It features big rock riffs, Daft Punk-esque synths, dubstep chops, autotuned vocals, and even a rapped bridge. Yet the whole thing feels like a cohesive, seething whole as they shout, “I just want to see it burn, give a fuck about your word.”
They’re not the deepest lyrics, but it works.
While Cold Court is clearly an exercise in maximalism, not every song goes quite as big as “Burn.” “Cola” moves more slowly, strips back some of the layers, but doesn’t turn the volume down. “Glass” almost becomes math rock as its guitars get chopped up and spit back out, and the EP’s closer “Light” is blown-out, sparkly prog.
Over the course of a full album, the relentless barrage might grow exhausting. But at just 21 minutes, Hands Up doesn’t overstay its welcome, and it will be interesting to see how the band evolves as the young duo grow.
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