The computer scientist who coined 'vibe coding' says self-driving cars will 'terraform' outdoor spaces (www.businessinsider.com)

Andrej Karpathy, the former head of Tesla Autopilot and an OpenAI cofounder who coined the term "vibe-coding," posted that robotaxis won’t arrive overnight but will ultimately “terraform” urban life—reducing parked cars and parking lots, cutting noise pollution, improving safety, and freeing up people’s time and “attention capital” from lane-following. He predicts cheaper, faster delivery of physical goods and more public space reclaimed for humans as autonomous fleets scale, echoing Tesla’s vision shown in last year’s Cybercab renders. The prediction matters because it frames self-driving vehicles as an urban-infrastructure technology, not just a mobility feature, with wide downstream effects on city planning, traffic safety, and logistics economics. Practical rollout remains incremental: Tesla runs limited services with safety monitors and monitored FSD ride-hailing, Waymo operates driverless ride-hailing in five cities, and both are testing nationwide. Major technical and regulatory hurdles remain—vehicle reliability, safety validation, and a patchwork of state-level rules—so the timeline is uncertain even as the potential for visible, physical change to cities grows clearer.