They were Lyft drivers. Now they're cleaning Waymos.

Chauncey Thompson (foreground) inspects a Waymo at the company's Nashville depot.

Lyft Former Lyft drivers are ceding the roads to robots, and helping the machines get five-star ratings.

In Nashville, Lyft's Flexdrive subsidiary plans to open its largest vehicle cleaning and maintenance depot yet in October — to service Waymo robotaxis .

The 80,000-square-foot facility will employ about 70 full-time workers, about half of whom formerly drove for Lyft.

The situation offers an early glimpse at what AI may mean for millions of workers : eliminating some jobs while creating new work around the machines taking over.

Jonathan Baines drove for Lyft for about a decade to help support himself while pursuing a career as a pop and soul singer-songwriter.

Now, as a fleet operations lead at Waymo's existing Nashville depot — which Lyft took over in June — he helps direct robotaxi traffic through the facility and determine whether the cars are ready to return to passengers.

"The general idea is to keep cars rolling through," Baines says.

For him, the best part of the job is that it gives him experience in an industry he expects to be part of the future.

"It's new.

It's innovative," Baines says.

"This is going to give me opportunities within the AV industry, here within Lyft and Flexdrive, that I wouldn't otherwise have." Similarly, Chauncey Thompson, who played college basketball and later spent about a decade working in the rental-car industry before driving for Lyft, says he strongly prefers being a fleet operations associate to being a driver.

He cites the opportunity to work with new technology, consistent hours, and the camaraderie of working on a team. (Lyft arranged the interviews with Thompson and Baines.) Thompson says servicing Waymos is more hidden and repetitive than when he was driving for Lyft, but he finds the job more future-proof.

Lyft Flexdrive's internal tech tracks diagnostics and maintenance, alerting the company when cars need service, but workers are still responsible for visually inspecting the vehicles, cleaning and charging them, and flagging anything that needs extra attention.