Are Human Drivers Finally Obsolete?
2026-03-20 · 71 min · 8 entities
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evidence rules-v4
Feed category: Society & Culture
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Feed author/publisher: Freakonomics Radio + Stitcher
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evidence rules-v4
Feed category: Documentary
Entities found in this episode
concepts 4
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evidence rules-v4
Feed category: Society & Culture
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evidence rules-v4
Feed category: Documentary
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evidence rules-v4
Feed category: Society & Culture
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evidence rules-v4
Feed category: Documentary
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author of Understanding AI newsletter
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author of Driven
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evidence rules-v4
Feed author/publisher: Freakonomics Radio + Stitcher
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evidence rules-v4
Feed author/publisher: Freakonomics Radio + Stitcher
Episode description as stored
How a secret project at Google led to driverless cars on American roads.
Freakonomics Radio shares a story from our friends at Search Engine. (Part one of a two-part series .)
SOURCES:
Alex Davies , author of Driven: The Race To Create the Autonomous Car .
Chris Urmson , co-founder and C.E.O. of Aurora.
Don Burnette , founder and C.E.O. of Kodiak AI.
PJ Vogt , reporter, writer, and host of the Search Engine podcast.
Sebastian Thrun , roboticist, C.E.O. of Sage AI Labs, adjunct faculty at Stanford University.
Timothy B. Lee , author of Understanding AI newsletter.
RESOURCES:
" Very few of Waymo’s most serious crashes were Waymo’s fault ," by Kai Williams (Understand AI, 2025).
Driven: The Race to Create the Autonomous Car , by Alex Davies (2021).
" An Oral History of the Darpa Grand Challenge, the Grueling Robot Race That Launched the Self-Driving Car ," by Alex Davies (WIRED, 2017).
Understanding AI , newsletter on Substack.
Waymo Safety Dashboard .
EXTRAS:
" The Fascinatingly Mundane Secrets of the World’s Most Exclusive Nightclub ," by Freakonomics Radio (2024).
Search Engine , podcast by PJ Vogt.
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