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When Waymo kills someone, it'll be ok [1]

['Jason Weisberger']

Date: 2025-10-28  

Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana says we should all just relax when the first robotaxi kills someone. It will be fine, they promise, because math will make it moral. The future of transportation apparently comes with a body count, but don't worry, the algorithm has feelings about it.

The most interesting part of the interview arrived when Korosec brought on a thought experiment. What if self-driving vehicles like Waymo and others reduce the number of traffic fatalities in the United States, but a self-driving vehicle does eventually cause a fatal crash, Korosec pondered. Or as she put it to the executive: "Will society accept that? Will society accept a death potentially caused by a robot?"

"I think that society will," Mawakana answered, slowly, before positioning the question as an industrywide issue. "I think the challenge for us is making sure that society has a high enough bar on safety that companies are held to."

She said that companies should be transparent about their records by publishing data about how many crashes they're involved in, and she pointed to the "hub" of safety information on Waymo's website. Self-driving cars will dramatically reduce crashes, Mawakana said, but not by 100%: "We have to be in this open and honest dialogue about the fact that we know it's not perfection."

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[1] Url: https://boingboing.net/2025/10/28/when-waymo-kills-someone-itll-be-ok.html

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