Waymo, the US driverless car firm, said it hopes to be operating a robotaxi service in London as soon as September this year. The UK government has said it plans to change regulations in the second half of 2026 to enable driverless taxis to operate in the city but has not given a specific date. Waymo said a pilot service will launch in April and Local Transport Minister Lilian Greenwood said: We're supporting Waymo and other operators through our passenger pilots, and pro-innovation regulations to make self-driving cars a reality on British roads. The firm, which is owned by Google-parent Alphabet, showed off a fleet of cars it bought to the UK at London's Transport Museum on Wednesday. Waymo's vehicles are currently being operated by a safety driver, mapping the streets.

Research from the ride-hail aggregator Obi finds Waymo is starting to edge up on Uber and Lyft in San Francisco. Tesla, which operates a ride-hail service with human drivers, is winning the price wars. In San Francisco, people wanting to get from point A to point B have a few fairly unique options. Then, starting last fall, Bay Area denizens also got access to electric automaker Tesla's ride-hail service, which operates as a "robotaxi" in Texas but as a more traditional service, with drivers behind the wheel, in California. For months, the new and futuristic "robotaxi" services felt like a novelty .

Chinese robotaxis could be set to hit UK roads in 2026 as ride-sharing apps Uber and Lyft announce partnerships with Baidu to trial the tech. The two companies are hoping to obtain approval from regulators to test the autonomous vehicles in London. Baidu's Apollo Go driverless taxi service already operates in dozens of cities, mostly in China, and has accrued millions of rides without a human behind the wheel. Transport secretary Heidi Alexander said the news was another vote of confidence in our plans for self-driving vehicles - but many remain sceptical about their safety. We're planning for self-driving cars to carry passengers for the first time from spring, under our pilot scheme - harnessing this technology safely and responsibly to transform travel, Ms Alexander said in a post on X .

Finals season looks different this year. Across college campuses, students are slogging their way through exams with all-nighters and lots of caffeine, just as they always have. Through the end of May, OpenAI is offering students two months of free access to ChatGPT Plus, which normally costs 20 a month. It's a compelling deal for students who want help cramming--or cheating--their way through finals: Rather than firing up the free version of ChatGPT to outsource essay writing or work through a practice chemistry exam, students are now able to access the company's most advanced models, as well as its "deep research" tool, which can quickly synthesize hundreds of digital sources into analytical reports. The OpenAI deal is just one of many such AI promotions going around campuses.

Benjamin Valdez, a rideshare driver with Uber and Lyft in the Los Angeles area, used to drive seven days a week when the gig was more lucrative--but he says he makes far less per ride these days. When Valdez started driving, around nine years ago, he told me that he could earn anywhere from 60 to 85 to drive from West Hollywood to downtown Los Angeles at peak surge, a roughly 6-to-10-mile trip depending on the specific route. Now, if "the stars align," he can earn between 25 and 35 for the same trip. "It's gotten harder and harder to make money," he said. In recent years, rideshare drivers like Valdez have experienced shrinking incomes as the companies continue to increase their cut from each ride.

On Tuesday, Alphabet's self-driving vehicle developer Waymo said it would begin operating all-day, curbside pickups and drop-offs at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport in Arizona. The announcement came with little fanfare--a post on X. But it signals that after years of delay, self-driving vehicles might be (literally) moving in the right direction. The new curbside airport service sends a good signal about Waymo's business, says Mike Ramsey, an automotive analyst with Gartner. "The airport is the primary destination and departure point for any sort of mobility service, whether it's a cab, shuttle bus--or an autonomous robocab," he says.

When Sebastian Thrun was starting Google's self-driving car project in 2009, commercialising the technology was not on anyone's mind. "We focused on the technology more than anything else, not the go-to-market plan," he says. "That might sound bizarre, but we all knew that if we could solve this problem, then you could do what you want." Back then, it made sense that autonomous driving was just a research project. Eleven years on, however, the industry still has little idea what to do with the technology, despite some big advances over the past decade.

A new report suggests Uber and Lyft are bias. Researchers analyzed data from millions of trips in Chicago, uncovering those traveling to and from low-income and non-white areas were overcharged per mile. However, the prejudice does not stem from the drive, but derives from the decision-making algorithms used to determine pricing. Aylin Caliskan, with George Washington University, said: 'Given a type of data, AI algorithms learn the patterns in that data--so if you give an algorithm data from the social domain, they end up learning the patterns of society.' 'Since our society is biased, these models end up learning these biases as well.' 'Then, when they're used in the social context to make decisions about human beings, they use that biased data to make decisions that not only perpetuates societal biases but even amplifies them.' Researchers created a map showing that some areas were charged as much as $5.10 per mile, compared to just 85 cents.

Anyone who has recently driven on any portion of Highway 101 between San Jose and San Francisco knows that our roads are increasingly crowded, largely because of the enormous number of people working for Silicon Valley tech companies. Apple, Google, Facebook and Cisco account for about 80,000 local workers, according to Silicon Valley Business Journal, and that doesn't count the thousands more people who work at Microsoft, Tesla, Linked-In, Oracle and other large companies plus the many local startups. And, with a significant number of tech workers choosing to live in San Francisco and the South Bay, traffic flows in both directions. Plus, the Bay Area's staggering home prices have forced many workers, especially those who don't earn six-figure salaries, to live in outlying communities as far away as Modesto where 7.3 percent of workers travel at least 3 hours a day to get to and from work – many to Silicon Valley. Stockton is even higher at 10 percent, according to a 2019 Apartment List study.

Uber and Lyft are probably the most visible examples of algorithms for managing people. These companies use various algorithms to efficiently find the closest drivers, the best routes, and the most effective methods of transportation for their customers. This is with minimal human intervention. Uber drivers don't ever really need to interact with their human bosses. Instead, their livelihoods are dictated by a model far off in a server somewhere telling them they need to go to 4th Street in rush hour to pick up Jamie who needs to go the airport.