![]() Suddenly, Peaches came to a halt right in the middle of the street. Peaches, they told me apologetically, seemed to be malfunctioning. Toad’s Wild Ride at Disneyland than riding in an artificially intelligent car, I contacted Cruise’s call center. ![]() Then it started doing the old same thing again, making me wonder whether Peaches might like me a little too much to let me go. Indeed, the car did seem to be headed back to where I requested. The Cruise representative confirmed that Peaches had gotten confused, apologized and assured me the robotaxi had been reprogrammed to get me to my original destination. And the technology to pull it off is advancing steadily, just like other artificial intelligence applications such as chatbots that can write college-level essays and produce impressive pieces of art within seconds. The theory fueling the ambition is that driverless cars will be safer than vehicles operated by frequently distracted and occasionally intoxicated humans - and, in the case of robotaxis, be less expensive and more convenient to ride in than automobiles that require a human behind the wheel. It was all going so smoothly that I was starting to buy into the vision of Cruise and Waymo, a self-driving car pioneer spun off from a Google project that is also trying launch a ride-hailing service in San Francisco. Peaches and I were getting along great for most of our time together, as the car deftly navigated through hilly San Francisco streets similar to those Steve McQueen careened through during the famous chase scene in the 1968 film “Bullitt.” Unlike McQueen, Peaches never exceeded 30 mph (48 kph) because of restrictions imposed by state regulators on a ride-hailing service operated by Cruise, a General Motors subsidiary, since it won approval to transport fare-paying passengers last year. Then an unexpected twist made me worry that the encounter had turned into a mistake I would regret. Our ensuing half-hour ride together produced, at first, a titillating display of technology’s promise. ![]() It happened one night last September when a Chevy Bolt named Peaches picked me up outside a San Francisco bar. SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - I won’t forget the first time I took a ride in a car without anyone sitting in the driver’s seat. ![]()
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