Are Human Drivers Finally Obsolete?
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.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
More description
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.
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
2026-03-20
71 min
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