The recruiter was a chipper woman with a master's degree in English. Previously she had worked as an independent bookseller. "Your experience as an English grad student is ideal for this role," she told me. The position was at a company that made artificial intelligence for real estate. They had developed a product called Brenda, a conversational AI that could answer questions about apartment listings. Brenda had been acquired by a larger company that made software for property managers, and now thousands of properties across the country had put her to work. Brenda, the recruiter told me, was a sophisticated conversationalist, so fluent that most people who encountered her took her to be human. But like all conversational AIs, she had some shortcomings. She struggled with idioms and didn't fare well with questions beyond the scope of real estate. To compensate for these flaws, the company was recruiting a team of employees they called the operators. The operators kept vigil over Brenda 24 hours a day. When Brenda went off-script, an operator took over and emulated Brenda's voice. Ideally, the customer on the other end would not realise the conversation had changed hands, or that they had even been chatting with a bot in the first place. Because Brenda used machine learning to improve her responses, she would pick up on the operators' language patterns and gradually adopt them as her own. It was the spring of 2019.

I buckle my seatbelt, and then double check it, after I climb into the back of a white, black, and orange Toyota Prius V wagon. I'm tense, but the two engineers, one in back with me, the other riding shotgun, seem reassuringly relaxed. We roll forward, turning right out of the parking lot at the Hard Rock Hotel, and head into the streets of Las Vegas--with nobody in the driver's seat. Soon, the car is merging into traffic at 40 mph, the steering wheel spinning and the turn signals flicking on and off on their own. I've witnessed plenty of self-driving demonstrations, some of them here in Vegas, but never one without a human holding their hands over the controls, poised to brake, or swerve, if the computer struggles.

DETROIT – A self-driving car company created by Google is pulling the human backup driver from behind the steering wheel and will test vehicles on public roads with only an employee in the back seat. The move by Waymo, which started Oct. 19 with an automated Chrysler Pacifica minivan in the Phoenix suburb of Chandler, Arizona, is a major step toward vehicles driving themselves without human backups on public roads. Waymo, which is owned by Google's parent company, Alphabet, is in a race with other companies such as Delphi, General Motors, Intel, Uber, Apple and Lyft to bring autonomous vehicles to the public. The companies say the robot cars are safer than human drivers because they don't get drowsy, distracted or drunk. Google has long stated its intent to skip driver-assist systems and go directly to fully autonomous driving.

Autonomous vehicles with no human backup will be put to the test on publicly traveled French roads as early as next year in what may be the first attempt at unassisted autonomous piloting. Automotive electronics and parts maker Delphi and French transport company Transdev plan to use autonomous taxis and a shuttle van to carry passengers on roadways in France. The companies on Wednesday said they plan to combine Delphi's self-driving technology with Transdev's knowledge of mobility operations. This is where the issue often occurs, as the rules aren't clear as to who is responsible if a crash occurs. Despite this, insurers such as RSA have accepted applications from some driverless car companies.

FILE - In this March 22, 2006, file photo, Delphi's World Headquarters is shown in Troy, Mich. Automotive electronics and parts maker Delphi and French transport company Transdev have plans to use autonomous taxis and a shuttle van to carry passengers on roadways in France without a human behind the wheel as early as 2018. The companies announced the partnership Wednesday, June 7, 2017, and said it could be the first deployment of autonomous taxis and vans on real roads without human backup pilots. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio, File) The Associated Press