‘They’re living in fantasy land’: Uber to trial self-driving taxis in London next spring
Tech firms have transformed how the public takes taxis, but echoes remain from the minicab controllers of old: not least the promise that a long-awaited vehicle is – really, this time – just around the corner.Now Uber has announced that self-driving taxis will appear on roads in London next year, after the UK government confirmed that trials of fully autonomous vehicles would be brought forward to spring 2026.For the first time in Europe, companies will be allowed to run pilots of small-scale taxi or “bus-like” services for public use without any human safety driver onboard or in the driving seat.Uber will work with the UK tech firm Wayve to launch trials of taxis bookable via its app in the capital, its largest European market.A fuller rollout of self-driving taxis, or robotaxis, will come after the Automated Vehicles Act fully takes effect in late 2027.
The UK has sped up the process now that driverless taxis have become established in San Francisco in the US and numerous cities in China.Uber rolled out its first driverless taxis with the US firm Waymo in Austin, Texas, in March, where Tesla is planning to launch a rival autonomous service this month.The Department for Transport (DfT) said the technology would make UK roads safer and that it could create 38,000 jobs and an industry worth £42bn by 2035.The transport secretary, Heidi Alexander, said: “The future of transport is arriving.Self-driving cars could bring jobs, investment, and the opportunity for the UK to be among the world leaders in new technology.
”The DfT said self-driving vehicles could improve transport for millions of people, adding new public transport options in rural areas and improving accessibility for those unable to drive.Trials of self-driving vehicles have been taking place in the UK for more than a decade, using technology from Wayve and fellow British company Oxa (formerly Oxbotica).However, so far all road tests of cars or buses have needed a safety driver in the vehicle ready to take over the controls.The Automated Vehicles Act will require self-driving cars to be approved after tests to demonstrate “a level of safety at least as high as competent and careful human drivers”, the department said.Previous pledges to bring robotaxis to London, including a 2018 deal between Oxbotica and Addison Lee, did not come to fruition.
The first driverless bus service, launched in Edinburgh in 2023, stopped operating for lack of passengers.Autonomous taxi services have, however, operated hundreds of thousands of paid trips in the US.It has not been all plain sailing.General Motors abandoned its plans for an autonomous service after a number of incidents, including one where a taxi dragged and severely injured a pedestrian.But early reports suggest self-driving taxis are safer and some customers, especially women, prefer hiring a driverless taxi.
Sign up to Business TodayGet set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morningafter newsletter promotionAlex Kendall, a co-founder and the chief executive of Wayve, said the accelerated trials would put the UK in a leading position for fully autonomous cars, adding: “These early pilots will help build public trust and unlock new jobs, services and markets.”Gavin Jackson, Oxa’s CEO, said the announcement “shows that Britain is ready for this technology”.What it means for the rest of London’s taxi and Uber drivers is unclear.Labour’s transport spokesperson in the London assembly, Elly Baker, said it was cause for concern.“Although jobs might be created building and managing driverless cars, existing taxi and private hire drivers shouldn’t risk being left behind,” she said.
Black-cab drivers, who have long been threatened by the rise of Uber, appeared unruffled.The general secretary of the Licensed Taxi Drivers’ Association, Steve McNamara, said: “They are living in fantasy land.We’re probably going to have flying taxis before we have autonomous ones in London.“Most people haven’t got a robot hoover or a robot lawnmower even though they are absolutely fantastic.Are people who don’t trust a robot to cut their grass or clean their house going to trust one to take their kids to school or drive their elderly mum around?”McNamara said autonomous taxis were struggling even in San Francisco’s grid layout.
“I’m genuinely not worried.Come back to me in 2040,” he said.
Policymakers who think AI can help rescue flagging UK economy should take heed | Heather Stewart
From helping consultants diagnose cancer, to aiding teachers in drawing up lesson plans – and flooding social media with derivative slop – generative artificial intelligence is being adopted across the economy at breakneck speed.Yet a growing number of voices are starting to question how much of an asset the technology can be to the UK’s sluggish economy. Not least because there is no escaping a persistent flaw: large language models (LLMs) remain prone to casually making things up.It’s a phenomenon known as “hallucination”. In a recent blogpost, the barrister Tahir Khan cited three cases in which lawyers had used large language models to formulate legal filings or arguments – only to find they slipped in fictitious supreme court cases, and made up regulations, or nonexistent laws
‘We’re being attacked all the time’: how UK banks stop hackers
It is every bank boss’s worst nightmare: a panicked phone call informs them a cyber-attack has crippled the IT system, rapidly unleashing chaos across the entire UK financial industry.As household names in other industries, including Marks & Spencer, grapple with the fallout from such hacks, banking executives will be acutely aware that, for them, the stakes are even higher.Within hours of a successful bank hack, millions of direct debits could fail, leaving rents, mortgages and wages unpaid. Online banking may be blocked, cash machine withdrawals denied, and commuters left in limbo as buses and petrol stations reject payments. News of the attack could spark panic, leading to a run on rival lenders, as customers pull money from their accounts amid fear the disruption could spread
UK government rollout of Humphrey AI tool raises fears about reliance on big tech
The government’s artificial intelligence (AI) tool known as Humphrey is based on models from OpenAI, Anthropic and Google, it can be revealed, raising questions about Whitehall’s increasing reliance on big tech.Ministers have staked the future of civil service reform on rolling out AI across the public sector to improve efficiency, with all officials in England and Wales to receive training in the toolkit.However, it is understood the government does not have overarching commercial agreements with the big tech companies on AI and uses a pay-as-you-go model through its existing cloud contracts, allowing it to swap through tools as they improve and become competitive.Critics are concerned about the speed and scale of embedding AI from big tech into the heart of government, especially when there is huge public debate about the technology’s use of copyrighted material.Ministers have been locked in a battle with critics in the House of Lords over whether AI is unfairly being trained on creative material without credit of compensation
Hey AI! Can ChatGPT help you to manage your money?
Artificial intelligence seems to have touched every part of our lives. But can it help us manage our money? We put some common personal finance questions to the free version of ChatGPT, one of the most well-known AI chatbots, and asked for its help.Then we gave the answers to some – human – experts and asked them what they thought.We asked: I am 35 years old and want to ensure I have a comfortable retirement. I earn about £35,000 a year and have a workplace pension, in which I have saved £20,000
Bath’s treble win blends yesteryear charm with the recently unthinkable | Michael Aylwin
At the 29th time of asking, Bath are champions of England once more. At five to five on a sunny afternoon here, Ben Spencer passed to Finn Russell – the married couple, as their coach, Johann van Graan, likes to call them – and Russell kicked it somewhere, anywhere but on the pitch to put an end to decades of pain out west.In 1996, when titles were won the old-fashioned way, the notion it would take so long for Bath, who had just won their sixth in eight years – their 10th cup in 13, and their fourth double – to become champions of England again would have seemed absurd. Only a little more absurd than the notion they would win it might have seemed three years ago, when they finished bottom of the table, spared the indignity of relegation only by the very different way English rugby is organised these days.The most telling difference, though, is that thing about paying players
Bavuma’s brave team make giant leap for South African Test cricket | Andy Bull
South Africa lost their shot at winning this World Test Championship in 2022, when their board announced the team were going to play 28 games in the next four years. They lost it for a second time during the spring of last year, when they packed their reserve team off to play a series against New Zealand because their centrally contracted players had to stay back and play in a franchise tournament.They lost it a third time when the team were bowled out for 138 on Thursday morning and they lost it a fourth when they let Australia’s tail put on 134 runs for the last four wickets, leaving them needing 282 to win. Finally, after they had just about run out of ways to lose, they won.The last runs came hard and the winning ones seemed to be the most difficult of all
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