Artificial intelligence may have shown the would-be-leader of the free world who's really in charge, after rogue robo-taxis halted the motorcade of US vice-president – and Democratic Party presidential candidate – Kamala Harris.
ABC7 News Bay Area reported that as Harris's motorcade passed through San Francisco on Friday night, it encountered a Waymo self-driving taxi that failed to make a U-turn. The veep's motorcade stopped, and traffic banked up behind the stricken robot until a police officer drove it away.
The report above mentions a second confused Waymo getting in the vice-president's way and delaying her journey.
Self-driving taxis are a common sight in San Francisco. Your humble vulture recently rode one without incident.
But locals aren't always happy to see them trundle by: a mob torched a Waymo in February 2024.
Self-driving cars have been involved in numerous incidents. We've reported them hitting telephone poles and driving on the wrong side of the road. We've also covered the sad case of a car in self-driving mode – but with a human behind the wheel – causing a fatality.
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- Waymo robotaxis set to cruise past red tape into LA and beyond
- Two big computer vision papers boost prospect of safer self-driving vehicles
It is unclear if the cars that got in the way of Harris's motorcade were glitching, or if the incident signifies the beginning of a robot uprising or other AI-organized political protest.
With the US presidential election now just 36 days away, the robots appear to have left their run a little late. Few of them operate outside California, a state likely to support Harris and other Democratic party candidates resoundingly, despite the widely held belief in Silicon Valley's techno-utopian community that automation and AI will lead the world into a new golden era. ®