My First Self-Driving Car Ride in San Francisco | Inside AI with Aarjay

I took my first Waymo ride in SF — no driver, no safety operator, just me and the AI. The steering wheel turned by itself through some of the most chaotic streets in America. In this episode, I share the experience and break down where autonomous vehicles stand in 2026: Waymo's dominance, Tesla FSD still at Level 2, Cruise's shutdown, and what this means for the future of AI and transportation.

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Transcript

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What's up everyone? Welcome back to Inside AI with RJ. Okay, so I have to tell you about something that happened to me last week in San Francisco that genuinely blew my mind. I took my first ride in a Waymo. A fully autonomous, no driver, no safety operator, just me and the AI self-driving car. And I need to talk about it because it changed how I think about where we are with AI right now. So picture this. I'm standing on a street corner in the mission district. I open the Waymo app, I tap request ride, and this white jaguar eyepase rolls up. And there is nobody in the front seat. Nobody. No greeting from a driver, no small talk, just a screen showing me the route, and this vehicle smoothly pulling into traffic on its own. And I'm sitting there like a kid on a roller coaster for the first time, looking around at the steering wheel turning by itself. Now here's what got me. This thing is good. We're driving through some of the most chaotic streets in America. Double parked Ubers, cyclists weaving through traffic, pedestrians jaywalking like it's a sport. And the Waymo handles all of it. Smooth lane changes, perfect stops, even let a pedestrian cross mid-block without hesitation. It drove better than most humans I've ridden with in San Francisco. And I mean that literally. And that's when it hit me. This isn't a demo anymore. This isn't a concept video at CES. This is a commercial product that hundreds of thousands of people are using right now. Waymo is doing over 250,000 paid rides per week across San Francisco, Phoenix, LA, and Austin. They just expanded to Atlanta and Miami. Google's parent company Alphabet is pumping billions into this because the data is showing something remarkable. Way more vehicles are involved in significantly fewer injury-causing crashes than human drivers. We're talking about 85% fewer injury crashes per mile compared to the human baseline, according to their latest safety report with Swiss Re. Now, what about the competition? Tesla keeps promising full self-driving is right around the corner. And look, FSD has gotten way better in 2026 with version 13. But it's still a level 2 system. You still need your hands ready, you're still the driver. Waymo is level 4. No human needed, period. That's a massive difference. And then there was Cruz, GM's self-driving unit, which shut down operations back in 2024 after that pedestrian dragging incident in San Francisco. Billions of dollars gone. So right now, Waymo basically owns this space in the US, with Zooks from Amazon still testing, but not yet commercially launched. The tech behind this is wild when you think about it. The Waymo vehicle I rode in had LiDAR sensors, radar, and cameras, creating a real-time 3D map of everything around it. The AI is processing all of that data, making thousands of decisions per second. When to brake, when to yield, when to accelerate through a yellow light. This is one of the most complex AI systems deployed in the real world. And most people don't even think of it as AI. They just think of it as a taxi with no driver. And the implications are huge. If autonomous vehicles scale, and they are scaling, you're looking at a complete transformation of rideshare, trucking, last mile delivery, even urban planning. Uber and Lyft are already partnering with Waymo. Long haul trucking companies are testing autonomous rigs on highways. The Department of Transportation just released new federal guidelines that create a clearer path for AV deployment across all 50 states. This isn't 10 years away anymore. This is happening now. But here's what I keep coming back to. I was in that car. I felt the future. And it wasn't scary, it wasn't cold, it wasn't dystopian, it was calm. It was better than a human driver. And sitting in that back seat, watching the steering wheel navigate a left turn on Market Street with zero hesitation, I thought this is what AI is supposed to do. Not just generate text or images, but move us through the physical world safely, reliably, at scale. So yeah, I'm a believer now. Not because I read a white paper or watched a keynote, because I sat in the back seat and let the machine drive. And it nailed it. That's the show for today. If this got you thinking, share it with someone who's still skeptical about self driving. Subscribe wherever you listen, drop a comment, let me know. Have you been in a Waymo yet? I want to hear your story. Until next time, I'm RJ and this is Inside AI. Peace.