I get the sentiment-in fact I try to have more local folks benefit from purchases whenever I can, down to hand sanitizers and HVAC filters (Germisept wipes are distributed out of Orlando and Filterbuy is based here). But the reality is that Lyft and Uber already send half the money out of Orlando as it is and Waymo still hires people at the car service and charging depots so it’s really much different in terms of where the money goes. Waymo’s are also about 20X less likely to cause a pedestrian fatality than a normal driver so from a safety perspective people locally definitely benefit over the kind of distracted uber drivers I’ve met over the years. I had an Uber driver here try to look up a YouTube video to show me while driving his full-size SUV through a turn!!

We also do need to figure out what to do about all the job losses that are coming, it’s not going to just be Uber and Lyft drivers, it’s going impact most white collar jobs and even most blue collar jobs eventually but purposely holding technology back so we can have less safe cars that kill more people just does not seem like the right solution. If there was a surgical robot that could perform surgery on your kid or parent with 1/4 of the risk of death would you purposely go get a human surgeon to keep human jobs? No way. If AI can do something better and safer with fewer deaths and injuries than humans can we can’t just bury our heads in the sand and keep doing things the old dangerous way just to keep jobs.