Human trapped in an AI loop

A brave tech worker trusted a robotaxi to drive them to the airport. The robotaxi got stuck in a loop on a parking lot, driving in circles, as you can see in the video below. This situation is both funny and scary and we can sense the stress and disbelief in the voice of this passenger.

I do have many questions:

Why isn’t there some kind of emergency button you can smash in case of danger? All public transportation have that since before computers were invented.

Why didn’t the passenger try to jump in the front seat and take control of the wheel? That must trigger some emergency mechanism also, I believe. Instead, they reached for their phone to call tech support and Tech support asked them to « open the app again and click on the bottom left icon». I do recognize that it needs some physical condition and guts to try this approach that maybe most people don’t have.

Why do I have the feeling that this is going to be more and more common as we automate most of our basic services with AI? We already get in AI loops with robocalls and robosupport menus when we call a service because our credit card is blocked or the dishwasher does not connect to the Wifi anymore. It’s very obvious that it’s almost impossible to prevent these automated systems to drive humans in circles or jump off a cliff when «Sorry, the situation you’re experiencing right now does not exist ».