I hated the idea of robotaxis, but they actually rule

TURN SIGNAL Confessions of a (former) robotaxi hater I hated the idea of robotaxis, but they actually rule San Franciscans have gotten used to seeing cars without drivers crisscrossing their city. It will be the reality for the rest of us soon. The first time you see a car glide through a San Francisco intersection with no one behind the wheel, you hold your breath. Wait there long enough, however, and the sight becomes mundane. It’s not uncommon to see half a dozen Alphabet Waymos, Amazon Zooxes, and Tesla Robotaxis at the same light. They pause for pedestrians, ease into turns, and merge with the flow of traffic — just another participant in the choreography of the streets. Before long, what once felt uncanny starts to feel routine. And that’s when behavior starts to shift: when you stop treating a technology as a novelty and start reorganizing your life around it. Then you start to wonder what’s next. Some are comparing the trajectory and potential impact of physical AI, including autonomous vehicles, to another technology that had some of its earliest followers in the Bay Area. The internet first took hold among a relatively small group of academics, engineers, and hobbyists who were a little early and a little obsessed. They emailed instead of called. They built websites before there was much to browse. They imagined a future in a digital world that, to most people, barely existed. Then, gradually and all at once, everyone else joined them. Now something similar is playing out on the roads. Driverless cars are quietly logging millions of miles in some of the same cities where the early internet took shape. They are opening up new possibilities for transportation and labor, and introducing frictions no one had to think about before. Like the internet