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.

214 points

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.

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98 points

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.

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-17 points

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?

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21 points

wait till you hear about trains, subways, buses, and bicycles

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-22 points

That sounds like a very difficult scenario for AI to resolve. This requires nearly AGI to understand the situation.

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35 points

if big orange barrier then reroute

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9 points

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.

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3 points

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.

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7 points

There is a small group concern taking the law into their own hands, yes.

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2 points

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!

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-6 points
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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!

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22 points

One thing human taxi drivers have over robotic ones is accountability.

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-8 points

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.

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11 points

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.

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1 point

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.

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?

There’s no backup plan for the people who rely on driving for money—more people than ever, by the way.

Yeah, but that’s a problem with government safety nets and supports, not with a company engineering a new technology.

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 would argue that it’s almost exactly Star Trek.

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-1 points

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.

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1 point

I want as few cars as possible, mixed zoning, and walkable cities

agreed.

Robot cars are a step in the wrong direction.

You’ve made no argument as to why, or why the alternative of human drivers killing millions is better?

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145 points

It may be spontaneous.

It may be destructive.

But goddammit, it’s collective action and I’m thrilled to fucking see it.

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22 points

Now do ivory towers

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-15 points
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Deleted by creator
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44 points

If you’re going to reply wishing for my death at the hands of a mob, don’t be such a pussy and delete it after a few downvotes.

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-10 points

Yeah, sorry. It was a bit too much. You’re comment still pisses me off, but I’ve crossed the line.

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-26 points

This is dumb as fuck. Human drivers are literally the number one cause of preventable fatalities.

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21 points

Humans are literally responsible for all preventable things in society. This take is also “dumb as fuck”

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-3 points

Humans are literally responsible for all preventable things in society.

Did I says “humans” or did I say “human drivers”? We’re not talking about liquidating all humans, we’re talking about replacing them at the task of driving.

Totally no other spots in society where machines have replaced formerly human done tasks to make work safer, what a crazy idea that is right! /s

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15 points

Individual transportation is the number one cause of preventable road fatalities, human or machine doesn’t matter.

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-5 points
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Individual transportation is the number one cause of preventable road fatalities,

Even in an ideally car-free society, you will literally never be able to get rid of taxis, deliveries, moving large furniture / household items, etc. without some form of enclosed motorized transportation (a car for the purposes of this discussion).

human or machine doesn’t matter

If we make machines that are safer than humans than yeah, it will.

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8 points

The fact that a thing most people do and some for hours daily has a large effect shouldn’t be surprising

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-9 points
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The fact that a thing most people do and some for hours daily has a large effect shouldn’t be surprising

Oh wow, what good reasoning!

Let’s all take up smoking cigarettes indoors all day, it’s incredibly dangerous and is killing mass numbers of people on a literal daily basis, but that’s fine because everyone’s doing it, so the effect shouldn’t be surprising, so that makes it ok and not worth addressing!

/s

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8 points

Great, so anything that humans do that can potentially harm another human, should be given to the algorithms instead?

Sure, they’re private for-profit blackbox algorithms, but it’s obviously better then letting humans do things.

Don’t worry, I’m sure once the tech oligarchs have secured just another 25% control over our daily lives, they’ll start the giving back and bettering humanity parts of their business plans.

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-8 points

Great, so anything that humans do that can potentially harm another human, should be given to the algorithms instead?

Uh yeah, once it’s proven safer why wouldn’t you?

Because you’re scared of the word algorithm?

Don’t worry, I’m sure once the tech oligarchs have secured just another 25% control over our daily lives, they’ll start the giving back and bettering humanity parts of their business plans.

You seem to have an issue with wealth distribution, not autonomous vehicles.

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3 points

I wouldn’t hang my hat on that statistic until after autonomous cars make up a significant portion of cars on the road.

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-1 points
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Fair point, but the difference is that human drivers are already at roughly their limit for how good they can drive, but self driving cars have the potential to exceed us.

It’s similar to one of the biggest arguments in electric vs gas cars. Even if electric cars today are just as environmentally unfriendly as gas cars (they’re not) the difference is that gas technology is super mature and there’s very little improvements to be made by spending more money on it, electric battery technology on the other hand, is still in it’s relative infancy and has huge potential to improve in numerous ways, but that can only happen if more people buy electric so more R&D money can be spent on it.

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1 point
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Ultron, is that you?

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42 points

Detroit: Become Human - The Prequel

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39 points

Just in time for the Bell Riots 👀

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9 points

Yep.

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1 point

Haha I love it!

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31 points

“Driverless car has an average Monday in Paris”

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