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Comment by danpalmer | Hacker News Reader

The thing I unexpectedly like most about using Waymo is not having a stranger inserted into your conversation.

Every time I've taken a taxi in a group, the conversation ends when we get in and the driver is suddenly a part of our conversation. It's weird to have them sit there listening to your discussion but not participating, and it would be weird for them to participate. Inevitably the conversation turns to the mundane, questions about whether it's a busy day, how often do you drive in this part of town, etc.

I got a Waymo with friends and the conversation never missed a beat as we got into the car, rode for 15 minutes, and got out.

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My last couple of human driven rideshares, I didn’t have to worry about that because the driver was engrossed in his own phone conversation the whole ride. Not sure what’s worse.

My only question on interactions like this: who the heck is on the other side of these calls, and are they on the phone 24-7?!

There was an interesting piece in the Guardian about that recently: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2026/sep/30/people-are-aski...

> For anyone of an immigrant background, the question of who they are talking to is absolutely no mystery. They are talking to us; their siblings, parents, cousins and friends. Sometimes the person on the end of the line is back home, other times they are in a western city also navigating the dislocations of immigrant life. The long phone call is a regular feature of diaspora lives, and even more so for those employed in long, solitary work such as cab driving.

It is true and accurate but such an overly romantic embellishment.

Absolutely fascinating article! So neat to have such a very specific question I Always Wanted To Ask and lo and behold someone actually did the asking and published a plausible explanation. I guess I’m not the only person witnessing and confused by this behavior!

This also makes it a lot nicer to take a call or FaceTime.

Absolutely! Or even just be alone with your thoughts.

I always felt weird alone in a taxi – having someone serve you that directly in that way, particularly if you're sitting in the back seat, just feels a little uncomfortable. But in a Waymo it's just me.

no, it's not, there's an operator watching and listening to you on a camera and with microphones. potentially redirecting your car to wherever the authorities want you, based on what you say, how you look, or whatever. you're not alone at all. it's the illusion of solitude while actually being less alone than in a taxi. the difference is only that you are not faced with interacting with the service worker. it is isolation without privacy.

and you should interact with the driver. it's good for you and cabbies are full of stories. and it's important not to forget about others labor. the labor still happens with waymo; the autonomous nature is half baked and you are absolutely still being watched, listened to, and served directly.

face your privilege directly. take a normal cab. this whole thread reeks of classism from out of touch tech workers in SF

Public transit works like this too

I want hyper personal transport.

I want high reliability driverless services we can rent for our own cars.

I want to fall asleep in the car with my family and dogs and wake up on the beach or in the mountains.

That'll be peak Americana.

Yea do what you want outside cities. Within cities, cars are extremely space inefficient.

Signed, a certified Waymo lover.

it'll just drive you to the detention center. yeah let's give Trump and Musk and their friends the ability to autonomously use facial recognition on the cameras in the vehicle to identify individuals wanted by the state and to transport political prisoners directly to prison.

maybe they'll even ban human controlled cars, because they're more dangerous after all. you don't need to control your own destination. you have nothing to hide. right?

Have you used public transit in San Francisco?

I've used it quite a bit since moving to the Bay at the start of the year. They take good care of the buses and trains, things are on time or reasonably close to it. I have no complaints.

Yes? Sometimes buses are late or full. But it goes places and it's cheap.

It's a downside of public transport too. Possibly my reason for being sensitive to this though is that I almost exclusively use public transport, getting a taxi is relatively rare for me, and I don't own a car.

Yes the "lack of a human" is a feature. That said I've learned many things from talking to Uber drivers in various parts of the world (and in the US from Uber drivers from various parts of the world) so YMMV.

They’re surely not recording your conversation. Today’s convenience is the soil of tomorrow’s turmoil.

Speak truth to the powers that be at Big Convenience!

Waymo has been ahead of the competition for a long time. It’s why Elon musk donates to GOP. He can’t win and jump through regulatory hurdles. He is and always has been so far behind the curve he is going even anything even if it’s criminal. (Which it is). Not shocking the first thing DOGE did was go after self driving regulatory bodies investigating his marketing terms and deadly crashes.

Are you too young to have never been in a yellow cab? A strange take... engage, don't, the driver is just making a living, they'd rather be left alone ... put your AirPods on.

I'm not sure you read my comment, certainly your comment doesn't seem to rebut the point I was making. Cabs are black in my country, but I specifically said "taxi" because this is not about Uber or modern ride-sharing, I've had the same experience with Ubers, black cabs, minicabs, booked taxis, and private drivers.

Hey, of course I read your comment. You prefer robots, that was my takeaway, and I prefer people.

Oh no you've completely misunderstood my point. I prefer people, and that's exactly why I want to continue talking to my friends.

Perhaps you're more comfortable chatting to strangers, perhaps this is a cultural thing. An analogy, if I was sitting in a restaurant with friends having a good time and a random additional person got seated at our table that would end the conversation, stop the socialising, and at best we'll have a boring, shallow conversation with the new person about who they are.

Understood. Other people bother me little, but If it happens, I’ll sit elsewhere, no big deal. It is certainly cultural but my 35 years in the US, I’ve seen most everything … I’m pretty immune.

Yeah, now some future LLM from Google is a partner in your conversation, lol. "This call may be monitored or recorded for quality assurance and training purposes, and for future llm training"

They make it quite clear in Waymos that nothing/no one is listening until you call them or they have a safety need to interrupt. I've never experienced that, but from those I've spoken to that have, apparently it's very immediately obvious, as it should be, and rare.

Just wait until someone installs a listening device somewhere in the cab. Doesn’t need to be Waymo doing the listening. Target Waymos that operate around financially important areas like tech and finance companies and profit.

That can be done in any cab. Heck a driver would have a much easier time covertly recording you.

The driver might object to a passenger bugging their car, though.

True. But less likely to be able to deploy at scale. Waymo cleaners I’m guessing will be far less likely than drivers to care about keeping their cab super clean and noticing these things.

Plus as per this article, the rider is way less likely to talk important business in front of the driver - hence Waymo being ideal.

They do record video though, so you'd have to figure out a way to install it such that you aren't suspected of installing it. Plus how do you get it back? You could put in something with a cell modem, but then how do you power it more. There are USB ports tho, so you could ride in the front seat and make it look like a charging cable or battery that you just forgot, but really it's a listening device with a cell modem. For all that effort, you'd want some serious ROI and youd want to do some math on the chances you get something actionable that isn't going to get you investigated by the SEC anyway, and then further, you can't do it a bunch of times because that's really how you get caught. Nah, better to actually get employed by a company, and the higher up you go, the bigger the crimes you can commit!

Sounds like something out of Billions.

They also made it quite clear that their AI speaker thingy’s microphone was physically disconnected when the switch was off. Turned out the switch only physically disconnected the ‘mic active’ LED.

It’s not clear the circumstances that they do record and monitor, but they definitely do monitor sometimes. They’ve reported crimes that happen in the Waymos, like this incident where they reported some teenagers that had an illegal firearm: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49672549

That same story mentions another instance where some kids had alcohol and toy guns. So maybe there is AI that detects firearms? And then a human intervenes? Its not very clear.

They always have video, but audio until theres some kind of emergency situation and they call you.

The conversation was about audio recording (conversation). That was determinable by video, not audio.

recording conversations can be eavesdropping very easily in all party consent states but there aren't generally laws against secretly video recording people (besides in specific intimate situations like bathrooms).

no they have a call center like setup where workers monitor the cars and make adjustments when the cars make stupid decisions, but they're monitoring inside the cars all the time. I could tell you how I know but then I'd have to.. you know

Yes...given the spotless record of these sorts of companies in zealously guarding our privacy it would be unthinkable that Waymos is listening in to our conversations. /s

Seriously.. how are people so gullible? This is how it always starts…

Considering the rate I'm being downvoted, gullible seems too kind.

If you be extra polite fire to this, does that makes it Google’s Basilisk?

Then again I recently told a friend of mine to stop saying mean things about China because it might offend my car, soooo…

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