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Rodney Brooks

What Rodney Brooks thinks about self-driving cars

@rodney-brooks · 9 positions · 1 change of mind

Robotics researcher, emeritus professor at MIT and former director of its Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, co-founder of iRobot and Rethink Robotics, now at Robust.AI. Since January 2018 he has published dated predictions about self-driving cars, robotics and human spaceflight and scored them in public every New Year's Day, a commitment he made through 2050.

Rodney Brooks did not write this page.

We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.

6 dated positions, 2018 to 2026, in their own words. Our reading of what Rodney Brooks has said — not written or endorsed by them.

  1. Our readingTesla's robotaxi service is a facade rather than a real driverless service, and it is not on a path to becoming one.

    Their wordsTesla (owned by Tesla) has put on a facade of being operational, but it is not operational in the sense of the other two services, and faces regulatory headwinds that both Waymo and Zoox have long been able to satisfy. They are not on a path to becoming a real service.

    ↗Predictions Scorecard, 2026 January 01rodneybrooks.com 1st of 3 in this piece

  3. Our readingA robotaxi that still needs remote human help loses the cost advantage that motivated it, which pushes out when it can scale.

    Their wordsSystems which do require remote operations assistance to get full reliability cut into that economic advantage and have a higher burden on their ROI calculations to make a business case for their adoption and therefore their time horizon to scaling across geographies.

    ↗Predictions Scorecard, 2026 January 01rodneybrooks.com 3rd of 3 in this piece

  4. 12 months earlier

  5. Our readingActual self-driving turned out to be far harder than almost everyone believed it would be.

    Their wordsActual self-driving is now generally accepted to be much harder than every one believed.

    ↗Predictions Scorecard, 2025 January 01rodneybrooks.com 1st of 4 in this piece

  7. Our reading · no longer heldCars people own will double as driverless taxis when the owner is not using them, in ten major US cities, some time from the mid-2020s.

    No longer holdsThis is unlikely to happen in the first half of this century.

    SaidI got suckered by his hype.

    ↗Predictions Scorecard, 2025 January 01rodneybrooks.com 2nd of 4 in this piece

  9. Our readingThe driverless taxi services that exist arrived years earlier than expected but are not what was promised: remote humans are in the loop.

    Their wordsWaymo now has a service that looks and feels like this in San Francisco, 8 years earlier than I predicted. But it is not what every one was expecting. There are humans in the loop.

    ↗Predictions Scorecard, 2025 January 01rodneybrooks.com 3rd of 4 in this piece

  10. 7 years earlier

  11. Our readingCars people own will double as driverless taxis when the owner is not using them, in ten major US cities, some time from the mid-2020s.

    Their wordsSuch "taxi" services where the cars are also used with drivers at other times and with extended geography, in 10 major US cities NET 2025

    ↗My Dated Predictionsrodneybrooks.com