London black cab drivers face new threat from AI robotaxis

London's black cab drivers, already under pressure from rideshare companies, may soon face another challenge: AI-powered autonomous taxis.

Many drivers believe they can offer something that AI cannot match: deep knowledge of the city's streets. To earn a cab license, drivers must pass the Knowledge, a 161-year-old test that requires memorizing 25,000 streets and thousands of landmarks and businesses. The exam also tests an aspiring driver's ability to find the shortest route between two random points and describe it on the spot.

Tom Scullion, who has driven a black cab for more than 30 years, says this knowledge makes Google Maps inferior to a black cab driver.

"It's like comparing a hot dog vendor to Gordon Ramsay," Scullion said, referring to the British celebrity chef.

Autonomous vehicles powered by AI are not yet picking up passengers in London, but several tech companies are already testing their cars on the city's streets.

Trust in cabbies dates back to 1865, when the Knowledge exam was first introduced for London's horse-drawn cabmen. Today, candidates go to the Transport for London office for a series of oral exams known as "appearances." Examiners quiz them on routes between random points and measure the distance to ensure they name the shortest one. Some hopefuls take the test dozens of times over years. Anshu Moorjani passed the Knowledge this past week after trying for five years.

The memorization required has been shown to change the structure of drivers' brains. A study from University College London found that cab drivers' posterior hippocampi, the part of the brain linked to memory, grew larger throughout their careers.

The effort is worth it to some drivers, who see themselves as an iconic part of London.

"It's hundreds of years of all of history," Moorjani said.

The black cab industry has declined in recent years. The number of drivers has fallen from 25,000 to 16,000 over the last decade, according to Transport for London statistics. Driver income has also dropped as Uber and other ride-hailing companies have taken business.

Now robotaxis are entering the picture. British startup Wayve, backed by Nvidia and Microsoft, hopes to begin operations in London later this year, as does Waymo, which is owned by Google's parent company Alphabet.

Waymo has already expanded in the United States. The company began offering rides in a Phoenix suburb in 2020. Now millions of riders across 11 major U.S. cities are driven by Waymo's robotaxis each month.

Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana said Waymo's driverless cars are five times safer than human drivers in the areas they operate. The Waymo "driver" is trained on every ride the fleet has given, which makes it "the most experienced driver in the world," according to Mawakana. The fleet travels more than 2 million miles a week, while the average person drives about 700,000 miles in a lifetime.

"So this is almost three lifetimes per week that our fleet is driving," Mawakana said.

Waymo's AI has also driven billions of miles in simulation to train for rare scenarios, such as snow on the Golden Gate Bridge or an elephant stopping traffic.

Waymo's robotaxis are equipped with 29 cameras, six radars, five microphones, and five lidar sensors. The sensors measure distances, objects, and people as far as three football fields away and allow the vehicle to see around other cars.

"And that's partly the design of the placement of the sensors. Makes it superhuman compared to what a human would be able to do," Waymo product manager Chris Ludwick said.

Despite the training and sensors, Waymo robotaxis have had problems. In Los Angeles, a Waymo drove through an active police scene. There have also been incidents of robotaxis getting in the way of emergency responders and illegally passing stopped school buses, leading to a software recall last year and a federal investigation.

In London, Waymo's robotaxis have been driving the streets to build a detailed 3D map to train its AI. Wayve's AI does not map a city before driving in it.

"We train it on millions of hours of experience driving all around the world," Wayve CEO Alex Kendall said. "So this means when it goes somewhere it's never seen before or that's never been mapped, it can understand what's in front of it and make decisions in real time."

Wayve's robotaxis are still in testing and not yet available to the public. Kendall believes his AI will adapt more easily to new environments.

Since 2019, Wayve has been testing its fleet in central London.

"There's just such a long list of things that can happen on the road," Kendall said. "I think that's the main advantage of an AI driver here, is that it can have the intelligence to deal with things that you may never expect on the roads."

It is too early to tell if robotaxis will overtake the black cab industry. Moorjani says he is worried after spending years trying to pass the Knowledge.

"Every profession is being affected by AI. I don't know what it's going to do in the near future, but it's always there on your mind that yes, you're getting into a career not knowing what the future is," he said.

Steven Fairbrass, who has been studying for the Knowledge for eight years, is less concerned.

"To me, the human brain will always be the strongest tool," Fairbrass said. "Can you imagine you're trying to hail down a vehicle with no driver in it? You're standing there in the rain, trying to get home? And that vehicle just drives straight past you because it hasn't got a sensor or a human brain or an eye to turn. So to me, human beings, drivers, always gonna be needed. Always."