Driverless cars racing toward us

A Waymo driverless taxi on the street in Phoenix last week.

   At the Clark gas station in Berea, Ohio, the attendant, Jack, would check the oil in our Ford station wagon, squeegee the windows, pump the gas, then thank my mother for stopping by while handing each of us kids in the back seat a stick of gum.
     As nice as that was, turns out that customers like my mother would happily fire Jack to save 5 cents a gallon. Not that we were ever asked. He just vanished. Too bad; I kinda liked Jack.
     Then again, I liked telephone operators, department store clerks — my grandmother was one, at the May Co. — elevator operators and bank tellers. That last group lingers past their sell-by date — my bank typically has one teller on duty, and I will stride past open ATMs to wait in line for the brief pleasant human interaction, trying to forestall the unavoidable day when I walk over to the window and it’ll be shuttered.
     People are expensive, and getting the heave-ho everywhere possible. When I went through the huge Amazon fulfillment center in Monee, my heart didn’t break for the human workers, eyes locked on video screens, arms flying like demented octopi to grab items from seven-foot-tall revolving robot pods to toss into passing cardboard boxes. Rather, I nodded grimly, watched the clockwork efficiency of those pods, and wondered whether the humans would be utterly gone from Amazon warehouses in 10 years — or five.
     Or, about the same time an A.I. program will spit out newspaper columns finely calibrated to the ideal comfort/outrage ratio to keep readers coming back — or would, if anyone wanted such a thing, if they weren’t all staring transfixed at an endless algorithm loop of car crashes, seductive dances and clips from “The Sopranos.”
     Until then, each new step into our brave new world feels significant. It was last Friday, visiting my son in Phoenix that, at 7th and Van Buren, I noticed a passing white car, drawn by the round apparatus on its roof topped with some kind of spinning device. I looked inside, and was not surprised by what I saw — or, rather, didn’t see: no driver.
     “That’s so weird!” I said.

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