A crowd destroyed a driverless Waymo car in San Francisco
theverge.com
A crowd destroyed a driverless Waymo car in San Francisco::A Waymo car was destroyed in San Francisco as a crowd began vandalizing it and ultimately set the car on fire. Nobody was in the vehicle at the time.
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The article states that there was no known motive, but it also states that automated cars in SF have been attacking people and emergency vehicles, in addition to blocking traffic for human drivers.
It's pretty clear that this is the beginning of the anti-robot revolution.
Watched one of these block traffic once by putting on its blinker to turn down a street with a police barricade up. The street had been closed and the police weren’t going to lift the barricade. Nonetheless, the car put its blinker on and sat there blocking traffic indefinitely.
I saw a human driver get into a traffic accident because he was mad that the guy ahead of him gave someone space to turn out of a parking lot, they ended up arguing and their cars just sat there further blocking traffic for half an hour until the cops came.
Why are you acting like robot drivers are the only fallible ones?
wait till you hear about trains, subways, buses, and bicycles
Oh please do go ahead and tell me how my 93 year old grandmother is going to bicycle home.
Oh shit I only mentioned bicycles like some idiot shilling for driverless cars, my b
So in your world, planes, trains, and buses pick you up and drop you off at your doorstop? How cute.
Nah. Unless you live literally at the station, which happens but is rare, doorsteps are the domain of collect taxis.
Which btw are the most economical option in rural areas as you don't have to drive empty buses around all the time. In cities they should be limited to people actually needing them, also open bicycle paths for microcars for people with mobility issues, not everyone wants or needs a powered wheelchair.
This is what I mean, you'll never get rid of enclosed motorized vehicles for a variety of reasons, and if we're going to have them around, it would be better if they were self driving and killed fewer people than human drivers.
These are not the kind of enclosed motorised vehicles you're thinking of.
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These are not the kind of enclosed motorised vehicles you're thinking of
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Those are great but how are you going to deliver goods to people's homes? Transport furniture? Home Reno materials? Kids + their sports equipment?
How are you going to get the last mile to a home down a country road in winter with rain, sleet, and snow?
Yes, we can minimize our usage of cars, but as you scale up the capabilities of a cargo bike you just reinvent the car.
With trucks, minivans, cargo bikes, and backpacks and hand carts. The first two are commercial vehicles, the last two private, the one in the middle either.
With your tractor? Rather pointless to buy a car just for that distance and if you don't own a tractor what are you doing out there.
Cool, regardless of whether they're commercial or or private, it would still be better if they killed fewer people than they do today.
I don't think you've spent much time in the country, most people don't own tractors. It's not just farmers as far as the eye can see, they still require a huge community / support system of electricians, mechanics, plumbers, shops and suppliers, entertainment, etc.
planes don't pick you up from your doorstep? since when? but they can fly?
That sounds like a very difficult scenario for AI to resolve. This requires nearly AGI to understand the situation.
if big orange barrier then reroute
Big brain programming
The motive was that the car drove down a crowded Chinatown street during Chinese New Year. I imagine something similar might happen if a human driver tried to do the same thing. Not saying the vandals were right to wreck the car, but you don't just creep a car down a busy street during a festival and expect nothing bad to happen to it when crowd mentality/anonymity takes over. Especially when there's no driver so no immediate consequences/accountability. I think it was quite fortunate that it was not transporting a passenger at the time.
Not unless that human driver was blindly following their navigation app like a total idiot. A person would have said, "oh shit, I want to get out of here."
Anyway, I believe under it all we've got a tension between generally two different worldviews: those who believe Star Trek is utopia, and those who would rather life was more Hobbittish.
Personally, The Shire sounds like a nice place to live. Can we choose that please? You can still have computers, let's just chill on the whole racing to meet our cyberpunk future.
There is a small group concern taking the law into their own hands, yes.
Oh. Are you telling me the anti-robot revolution hasn't actually begun? Well, that's disappointing. Thanks for taking the time to straighten me out.
Wait ... That's exactly what a ROBOT would say!
Oh, well THANK GOD, no human driver has ever been known to block traffic or hold up emergency vehicles!
What saints you all are for protecting the right of people to work thankless taxi jobs, and have the number one cause of preventable death be traffic fatalities. Nothing could be more noble than preserving the status quo!
One thing human taxi drivers have over robotic ones is accountability.
Lol, no they don't.
Do you know how many cab drivers execute illegal u-turns, park illegally, cut off cyclists, speed etc.? They literally never get caught or ticketed for anything unless they actually kill someone with their car.
So, which waze executive is going to prison after their car dragged a pedestrian down the street?
What percentage of drivers go to prison for getting in accidents?
That percentage is non zero. The percentage of Waze executives going to prison for it is zero.
The percentage of drivers who would be in prison with that record is precisely 0.
Hey, I’m all for upending the status quo. But that “thankless job” is one people rely on. My dad included. This isn’t some noble act by a company to end meaningless, menial work. It’s a ploy by a company to cut those pesky “workers” out of the money. There’s no backup plan for the people who rely on driving for money—more people than ever, by the way. This is literally a profit boosting “evolution” in the continued unlivability crisis. This isn’t Star Trek. It’s seasons 3-4 of Mr. Robot.
I mean, yeah. That's why basically any corporation does anything, it's a core function of how capitalism is supposed to work and continue to enrich society. Should we have not invented computers because it shuttered 4/5 of the paper mills in my dad's home town?
Yeah, but that's a problem with government safety nets and supports, not with a company engineering a new technology.
I would argue that it's almost exactly Star Trek.
I’d argue the opposite. Capitalism doesn’t enrich society. It enriches capitalism. Any “benefit” to society is purely for selfish reasons. Its motives being corrupt, its actions are not noble.
Capitalism ruined this too. Lobbyists, special interest “donations” (read: bribes), are all done by companies just like this one. They’ll lobby for harmful laws, under the guise of “but driverless cars are for the people’s safety!” All the while, evading taxes and lobbying against closing those tax loopholes or raising taxes to help the workers who now have no job.
These things don’t exist in a vacuum. Especially in today’s late stage of capitalism, there is no moral behavior from these companies, because they are wading into a world where their very existence offers them and seemingly implores them to do harm for their bottom line. There is no “church and state” separation between capital and governance. They are a rat king, further entangled by every new company making their way into this utterly corrupt marketplace of crookery and exploitation. We can’t ignore what’s happened over and over and over and over again because this time the benefit will surely outweigh the harm done to achieve profitability!
So you think that because the American government is corrupted by capital, destroying a Waymo car will lead to better regulation?
Or an overthrow of capitalism to be replaced with which system of governance that isn't also entangled with capital?
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it's almost exactly Star Trek
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I want as few cars as possible, mixed zoning, and walkable cities.I don't believe in a technocentris utopia. I want more quality relationships, and technology in our lives to be more restrained. I am in no way an advocate for the status quo (which by all accounts is AI and robot cars). Robot cars are a step in the wrong direction.
agreed.
You've made no argument as to why, or why the alternative of human drivers killing millions is better?