But would a human even suffer consequences in this case? Else in the article mentions:
>The city does not track how many animals are killed by cars each year, but the number is in the hundreds, according to Deb Campbell, a spokeswoman for Animal Care and Control in San Francisco.
and
>Waymo does not dispute that one of its cars killed Kit Kat. The company released a statement saying that when one of its vehicles was picking up passengers, a cat “darted under our vehicle as it was pulling away.”
In other words, it could have easily happened to a human driver, and all the uproar in this case is only because people are being selectively angry against Waymo for... other reasons:
>Still, Kit Kat’s death has given new fuel to detractors. They argue that robot taxis steal riders from public transit, eliminate jobs for people, enrich Silicon Valley executives — and are just plain creepy.
>...
>Ms. Fielder has strong ties to labor unions, including the Teamsters, which has fought for more regulation of autonomous vehicles, largely out of concern for members who could eventually lose their own driving jobs in other sectors.
Never. In the US you can drive drunk and speeding and kill a person and walk away with basically an "oopsie".
Criminally, no. Civil liability, probably only up to the price of a cat, and that's if you can prove it wasn't the cat's or its owner's fault.
But I don't think that's what they're talking about. A human can feel bad, genuinely apologize, etc. And by extension, if they cause more serious harm, they are personally liable and might see the inside of a jail cell. A corporation has no feelings and no one is ever going to prison even if a Waymo car runs over a child.
This might be the first time we're putting autonomous tech that's likely to cause a fair number of deaths in plain view, so I think there are legitimate questions around how we want to handle that. Does the corporate liability model need to change? If it doesn't, how long before the first ex-spouse of a Waymo engineer gets "accidentally" ran over by an autonomous car?
For this particular case, I don't see this as anything other than performative. Yes, it might make people feel better because someone is sorry, but it's not going to change anything. No taxi driver is going to look under their car after picking up a passenger, on the off chance there's a cat under.
>And by extension, if they cause more serious harm, they are personally liable and might see the inside of a jail cell. A corporation has no feelings and no one is ever going to prison even if a Waymo car runs over a child.
All of this assumes that Waymo is actually at fault, which isn't the case for this accident. It's certainly something worth considering, but using this accident as a rallying cry is massively disingenuous. It's like having a rape happen and then going on a rant about immigrants being rapists, but when it turned out the suspect wasn't actually an immigrant, falling back to "well the potential of immigrants to be rapists is still a serious problem!".
> how long before the first ex-spouse of a Waymo engineer gets "accidentally" ran over by an autonomous car?
This is even more unhinged, and goes from supposing that Waymo might negligent to straight up murder (ie. intentional killing).
If this had anything to do with safety, this so-called “Progressive” supervisor Jackie Fielder would be investigating what safety features would be feasible on Waymos: emergency stop switches or stop commands, under car cameras, questioning whether the Waymo detected the cat and then just forgot about it when it walked under the car, etc.
Instead, she is using this to secure territory for obviously less safe Uber and Lyft drivers who are represented by the Teamsters. Such a cynical politician.
Perhaps you need another way of thinking about these things.
We saw this play out with Uber. The "progressive" side wants things to be more regulated and frames it in terms of protecting vulnerable people from unchecked corporate power. The "conservative" side does wants less regulation and more competition to keep things from stagnating economically.
The same thing is happening with AI, and with self driving cars.
It's sort of counterintuitive that on the surface, at least in this case, the "conservative" side is the one welcoming change and the "progressive" side rejects it.
You see this federally in the US. The "conservatives" want to tear down all the institutions, but they'll frame it as a return to traditional values like self sufficiency and freedom. The "progressives" want a return to the Biden era, in the name of people depending on these programs.
To the rest of the world (right or wrong) you are culturally pretty much the same as Americans.
Yes. I know. Your political scene is wildly different.
It would childish not to come to terms with that.
We've grown numb to it, but 40,000 US traffic fatalities is an obvious need.
I agree. In the US trains and buses deliver slow, unreliable, inflexible, expensive, dirty, and dangerous service at high cost.
It will be great to see the safe, clean, flexible, and affordable transportation that will be possible with self-driving cars.
Cars are noisy, take a lot of space, are crazy expensive, dirty (even electric ones leave tire particles in the air) and are involved in 99% of road incidents. Them being self-driving wouldn't fix any of these issues. Maybe they'd be a little safer? But even that is doubtful.
I understand US transportation is in a dire state right now. This shouldn't be a reason to make it worse, quite the contrary IMHO.
the main argument i can see in favor of autonomous vehicles is that they don’t get tired, ill, or drunk, but would they outperform on other kinds of situations across a larger uncontrolled ecosystem? is it worth the expense to develop?
the main reason to develop them is to make military capabilities more mature, which i don’t support. the military would love to have unmanned convoys that are guarded by drones.
that way they can have an easier time doing invasions of sovereign countries
It is of course such an emotional vs rational argument, so extreme, so ridiculous, what can you do but grab a picket sign and say to ban all cars and combustion engines for the sake of poor kit kat. A very easy sell since combustion engines are already viewed as the devil
At least in America, the need for autonomous vehicles is much, MUCH more obvious than for aviation actually unless you're a 20 year old exclusively city person. In most of the country by area, and at least a good hundred million-ish people by population, being able to have [arbitrary point to point mechanized transportation] is a necessity for normal adult life & work. Right now that equates exclusively to having and being able to drive your own vehicle. There are no other options of any kind unless you are extremely wealthy to the point you can employee an exclusive human brain & body not your own for that role. There are no buses. There are no trains. There are no human driven taxis for that matter. Normal family, friends and neighbors can fill in on an occasional/emergency basis and that's a safety net, but you will be heavily restricted. And tens of millions of people, indeed eventually almost all of us, do not have the ability to safely drive themselves. They are either too young, too old, have some sort of disability preventing it, or have made some poor life choices that nonetheless are compounded upon by this.
Right now it can't be helped, it is what it is, our mechanical technological capability ran ahead of our information processing capability so the human brain and body was called upon to fill in and here we are. The law also reflects that, with far more generosity given to poor and dangerous driving because it's by necessity a quasi-right however much it's called a "privilege". But fully public road autonomous vehicles would change all that. Driving yourself would truly become a hobby practice, not a requirement. Major training could be demanded. If someone has any DUI infractions or the like boom, no more driving privilege. You could be 90 with failing eyesight and reflexes and physically incapable even during the day. And it'd all be ok with everyone still having near identical mobility because they could just fall back on having the car itself take them where they need or want to go on their schedule, same as someone driving today.
That'd be just wildly huge and will only get bigger as America follows the rest of the developed world in terms of aging demographics. This is putting aside all sorts of massive improvements in productivity, lives saved, urban/suburban/rural development, electrification, and probably more we haven't considered. Certainly there are pitfalls to be avoided but it blows my mind anyone could possibly not see all this. The car is one of the most important things in American society and consumes EONS of human time. Literally. An eon is a span of one billion years. Hundreds of millions of people have absolute spent a year or more of their lives behind a steering wheel. It adds up. Anything that shifts that is by definition enormous.
There are planes that are certified to fly over populated areas, and those that are not.
Boeing management had been described as Boy Scouts, whereas the McDonnell Douglas managers were Hunter-Killer Assassins...
https://newrepublic.com/article/154944/boeing-737-max-invest...
Most cats that spent some time outdoors will want to be outdoors. In many settings, it's nearly impossible to keep them in because they will try to sneak out every time they get a chance. Package delivery, you coming back with groceries, etc.
And most of the anti-outdoor-cat stats are more or less bullsh-t. The average lifespan of feral cats might be five years. The average lifespan of a cat that has a home but gets to go out is probably pretty close to an indoor cat. And while outdoor cats can kill birds for sport, they're not causing extinction events in most places. They mostly interact with abundant, trash-feeding urban birds. You might not like the killing, but it's an artificial ecosystem we created and that can handle the predation just fine.
Not taking a side, but your argument is...weak.
Is this the stat you have issue with? Or is the contention that a pet on a city street at 11:40 PM is not highly at risk of being run over by a human driver?
I’ve also known people whose cats got hit by cars. Even driveway accidents.
Is there some reason we don’t want a smarter car that avoids pets and wildlife?
Just pointing out the obvious steelman people seem to be missing.
I'm sad for the cat, but this story is still borderline satire.
Letting your cat roam outdoors is cruelty.
They wish so clearly to roam, to hunt, to mark territory and to meet other cats. A full life excels a maximally long one, no?
Once you've committed that root cruelty, it is more cruel to imprison it in safety or allow it to roam in an environment with known dangers?
Later after the show, they boy returns and witnesses the magician dump a dead bird into the dumpster.
As zizek claims in his new book, progress is not magic. It is always relative to a system and always requires us to ignore dead birds.
I don't think the Japanese revere pigeons anywhere as much as we seem to revere cats.
Absurd as it may seem, Waymos should consider cats in their safety program.
And GOOG has been smart in their PR unlike Cruise so I'd think they can appreciate that killing cats offends the imagination.
Justice for KitKat and let's hope Waymo takes cat safety to heart.
readthenotes1•2mo ago