GoKawiilThe essay
The Waymo effect: how AI is quietly making research less collaborative
How frictionless technologies teach us to prefer our own company – and why research leaders should worry.
Daniel Hook Chief Scientific Officer, Holtzbrinck Group
On a recent trip to San Francisco I did the thing that every visitor to San Francisco now does: I summoned a car with no one in it.
The Waymo arrived with the serene confidence of a machine that has never once worried about where to find parking, and I climbed into the back seat, glanced instinctively at the driver’s seat to say hello, and found myself nodding politely at an empty chair. The steering wheel turned itself. I have spent a reasonable portion of my life thinking about counterintuitive aspects of physics, but that did not help me with the mild existential vertigo of watching a steering wheel moving on its own – an unseen driver responsible for my safety.
I was in San Francisco, in part, to spend time with Susan Winslow, CEO of Macmillan Learning. We are colleagues within the Holtzbrinck group, and we had come together for the most human of professional reasons: to collaborate. To sit in the same room, compare notes on how AI is reshaping our respective corners of research and education, and do the kind of thinking that is stubbornly difficult to do over video calls.
And yet, comparing notes on our Waymo experiences, we discovered we agreed on something else entirely: the rides were wonderful. As two self-confessed introverts, we had each found the driverless car to be a small oasis. No obligation to make conversation. No silent negotiation over the radio. A guilt-free space to be alone with one's thoughts, finish an email, or take a call en route without the awkwardness about conducting it in front of a stranger. The car was quiet, smooth and entirely undemanding.
It took us slightly longer to name what we had lost. Two people who had crossed continents to talk to each other were quietly delighted by a technology whose central feature is that you don’t have to talk to anyone.
Naming the Waymo effect
... continue reading