Google’s A.I. Bonanza and Driverless Car Talk With Cruise C.E.O. Kyle Vogt

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At its biggest event of the year, Google announced an avalanche of A.I. product releases: A.I. in search, A.I. that writes emails and A.I. that generates slides. Is Google pulling ahead in the A.I. arms race?

And, after years of hype, self-driving cars are finally hitting the streets of American cities. Kevin and Casey take a ride through San Francisco in Banana Slug — an autonomous vehicle from the self-driving car company Cruise. After their ride, they sit down with Cruise’s chief executive, Kyle Vogt, to discuss the role he thinks self-driving cars will play in the future of transportation.

On today’s episode:

• Kyle Vogt is the chief executive of Cruise, a self-driving car company.

Additional reading:

• At their annual conference, Google announced dozens of A.I. products and features

• In a leaked memo, a Google researcher argued that the company did not have a strong A.I. moat because of open-source A.I. companies.

• Self-driving cars are expanding their footprint.

Credits

“Hard Fork” is hosted by Kevin Roose and Casey Newton and produced by Davis Land and Rachel Cohn. The show is edited by Jen Poyant. Engineering by Alyssa Moxley and original music by Dan Powell, Elisheba Ittoop, Marion Lozano, Sophia Lanman and Rowan Niemisto. Fact-checking by Caitlin Love.

Special thanks to Paula Szuchman, Pui-Wing Tam, Nell Gallogly, Kate LoPresti and Jeffrey Miranda.