The article infers, not unreasonably IMO, that the support for this push comes neither from citizens nor fellow lawmakers but from labor unions with whom the lawmaker (Councilmember Hug Soto-Martínez) is closely aligned.
> "This has everything to do with making sure that the streets of Los Angeles are safe ... It’s also about making sure that we protect jobs"
> "During the Q&A that followed, TechCrunch asked if any constituents had raised specific concerns about robotaxis. Soto-Martínez replied that he “would have to check,”
> "Just two LA lawmakers were present at the conference on Wednesday"
That sounds a bit short-sighted TBH. I am all for protecting "licensed" taxis from Uber et al, but the (long-shot) goal of robotaxis is providing a level of service that can't be provided with human drivers because it would be too expensive. If using robotaxis becomes cheaper than owning a car, that would get rid of most of the cars parked 95% of the time that are clogging up streets all over the world.
It’s not clear to me that reliable autonomous driving wouldn’t instead clog up the streets with continuously roving robot taxis or parked autonomous vehicles that came from an even longer commute distance (because it’s easy to work or sleep during the robot drives).
It's very simple: Lots of people have those jobs, and they either like those jobs or have no confidence that having to find new jobs won't end up as a net loss for them.
The problem isn't that tools make jobs easier, it's that when jobs get easier the benefits accrue to the owners of capital - by erasing jobs - instead of to the people doing the jobs - by allowing them to create the same amount of value for customers/society in less time, improving their standard of living.
Luddites weren't against automation. They were just against automation being used against them by others, rather than for them, by them.
Because people need to eat. If you make their jobs disappear, they need to find news jobs, and that's not necessarily an easy transition. In the short term, and people's lives are short, it can be painful. That, at least, is the understandable motivation.
> Any tools goal is to reduce work.
I'm not sure that's entirely true. Yes, a dishwasher reduces the work you have to do washing dishes. That is true. But is also creates an entire economic ecosystem to support the existence of that dishwasher. You have the entire supply chain, the manufacturer, the repairmen, etc, etc, etc; the dependencies are vast. Technology is always thoroughly embedded in a living culture. It is a product of that culture and an instrument of that culture. It is just a dead and empty husk without a culture to breathe life into it and make it what it is, like a severed finger. A 21st century smartphone beamed to 5th century Arabia would be worthless.
That's also why all sorts of initiatives in places like Africa have often been boneheaded. Someone from an NGO decides that farmers in Africa need tractors, or a water pump, or whatever. So they bring these things to a remote rural village somewhere, thinking that with this tractor, they'll increase agriculture yields and free up children from having to work the fields so they can go to school, and with this water pump, they'll relieve these people of drought. They show the villagers how to drive the tractor, how to turn the water pump on, and so on. So they use these things for a couple months. Something breaks. Nobody knows how to repair the tractor. Nobody has the parts needed to repair the tractor. Nobody has the tools to repair the tractor. Things go back to the way they were and the tractor is left to rust behind a shed somewhere. You need an economic ecosystem (and economies are a part of culture and a reflection of culture) that supports the existence and usefulness of the tractor and that water pump.
But transitioning to that ecosystem can be uncomfortable, even painful, especially when done too rapidly.
There was a big kerfuffle in the D&D community the other day about an artist using AI art tools to augment his drawing in one of the new books. Guy had his whole process documented and just used AI as a final postprocess step. I can’t help but notice how bland the art in D&D books looks vs what I’m seeing daily on AI art groups.
I’ll be glad when the dust settles as it’s really limiting what’s possible since Steam is also outright banning AI art tooling.
The reason AI-generated art looks better to you is because it is cribbing from better (human) artists. Maybe D&D should just hire better artists directly?
Honestly, there are so many places where art absolutely is terrible. If AI generation can make higher quality art more accessible to more areas then it is a huge win.
Our little Dungeons and Dragons campaign has absolutely exploded in quality and storytelling because our DM has been utilizing Midjourney for character tokens for the bad guys. I spent an hour or two on each person in the game’s character portrait with astounding results. It has been like night and day.
There is a 0% chance I’d pay the price this would have been a couple years ago. I can’t even fathom how much this quality of art would cost, probably tens of thousands of dollars.
Before the DM would just hunt and peck around for online images that sorta matched what he was going for, mostly rudimentary pencil drawings with some color fills.
To me the dream is saying “Elmo is king of a Mad Max style castle, please write a story and generate art assets” and in front of you on the tabletop your Apple Vision Pro tiles out a whole dungeon, does voices, you can go in and inspect and interrogate the pieces and make tweaks to get it just right.
> our DM has been utilizing Midjourney for character tokens for the bad guys
I don't think, in all my years of role playing, I've _ever_ seen an image of one of the NPCs in our stories; at least outside of the rare store-bought adventures. Or, at least that I can recall, an image of _anything_ in our campaigns. Everything was verbally described.
I wasn't even aware people generated pictures for home-grown adventures/campaigns.
> I never understood the longterm logic of protecting jobs by not using tools.
Ever read thelastpsychiatrist? The website is dead now (and he may be too, for all I know), but he was on the money when talking about why a specific amount is paid by the state to the unemployed - it's the exact amount of money that would stop the idle masses from burning down the city.
You don't understand it now, but you will if we had a transition to completely automated driving in a short period - those millions of unemployed drivers, that are now never going to be employed, are a risk to the city.
> it's the exact amount of money that would stop the idle masses from burning down the city.
That seems awfully pessimistic. There's a couple different reasons
- To stop the masses from uprising (as noted)
- Because the health of the society as a whole depends on the health of the people in the society. And sometimes you need safety nets for the people in that society, because people can't always do for themselves. Fire departments, unemployment, health care, education; these all fall into that category in one way or another. Some places provide all of these, some provide none, and most provide somewhere in the middle. In the end, we provide for those that can't because it's better for the society that we live in if we do. And we are all served by a better healthier society.
...which works out to roughly 3-7 million people. Unless you want to pay them UBI, you're going to have to help them find and transition to other categories of jobs.
I used to drive a taxi. Now I write code. I paid for my own training. I'd expect to find that self-help is the most usual way to transition into other jobs.
That's 1-2% against the interests of almost everyone else that would benefit from driverless cars. Their plights matter, but at they same time they shouldn't have veto power over transformative technologies just because they'll be put out of a job.
Wait, aren't huge trucks slated to be the first ones to be replaced by autonomous equivalents? Making a self-driving long-distance truck is a simpler, more constrained, and easier to solve incrementally problem than making a self-driving passenger car.
This is the equivalent of saying, we need strong protections on the Internet, because child pornography exists
It’s not an actual argument because it doesn’t have specific measurable distinctions between deaths related to driverless vehicles versus driver vehicles
We don’t have these types of measurable capabilities because we don’t actually have the data that shows what is the fatality rate per million miles at the scale of integration that an entire fleet they have supplanted the taxi industry would do.
You’re better off actually evaluating what is the death rate of taxis compared to individual drivers because the individual drivers are not going to be replaced at the same rate as taxi drivers and so the taxi drivers is the first more important number to evaluate with respect to traffic fatalities
Unless you’ve done that specific math, and walk the dog out, including the Wayno reports, some of the cruise reports, and some of the reports from Tesla (which killed a guy if you recall) then you might have an argument
As it stands, all I see with driverless cars is we’re trying to replace humans in an entire labor category, and we have nothing for those people to do
I suspect that is actually a much bigger problem than the theoretical reduction in fatalities on roads
> This is the equivalent of saying, we need strong protections on the Internet, because child pornography exists
It's not remotely like saying this, and going straight to child pornography in is like going straight to the Nazis - the sign of an unserious argument.
> It’s not an actual argument because it doesn’t have specific measurable distinctions between deaths related to driverless vehicles versus driver vehicles
You're just not understanding the definition of the word argument if you think this is true. Also, these things are being measured, so we're getting to this understanding. If your argument is that we shouldn't put robotaxis on the road because we don't know if they're safer means that we can't measure if robotaxis are safer and thus regardless of their relative safety, we must ban them because we don't have measurements yet.
> I suspect that is actually a much bigger problem than the theoretical reduction in fatalities on roads
But that's not an actual argument because it doesn't have specific, measurable distinctions, no?
I’m not saying that’s not true. But the push to have them also doesn’t feel wholly organic. Robotaxis feel like one of those new technologies that we’re gonna have whether we like it or not, because enough very rich people want us to have them.
And I’m not saying we can or should try to delay the inevitable either. But the people who are pushing these timelines are basically the same people who just finished up spending tens (hundreds?) of billions of dollars making the food delivery industry worse, more expensive, and probably less profitable overall.
> But the people who are pushing these timelines are basically the same people who just finished up spending tens (hundreds?) of billions of dollars making the food delivery industry worse, more expensive, and probably less profitable overall.
I've stopped ordering delivered food all together. I just go pick it up now. Everything about it has gotten worse
- More expensive
- Delivery people don't work for the restaurant, so many of them just don't care at all. We had one deliver someone else's food to us, and tell us it's not their problem when we informed them of such.
- Tip must be up front, so not based on performance
> restaurant, so many of them just don't care at all
I fell like this might be a generation gap but I much prefer it this way, they're contract workers that are paid like shit and also not paid by you. They don't get paid for getting your order right, or service with a smile or whatever nonsense, they get paid to deliver a package from a -> b. You don't get mad at the taxi for taking you to the wrong place, you blame the driver, and in this case the driver is DoorDash/UberEats/Postmates.
I had an older Papa John's delivery driver once tell me "Thank you for ordering Papa John's" and meant it and after being taken aback was like dude the amount of loyalty you have for a company that wouldn't hesitate to throw you in a dumpster for a fiver is too damn high.
I agree, robotaxis do not belong in LA, at least culturally.
The collective suffering of working-class commuters ascending and descending the income gradient on packed freeways is the thing that powers LA, like children’s screams powered the city in Monsters, Inc. Robotaxis can never replace that.
I'd have thought LA was perfect for robotaxis. It is famously a driving, not walking, city. Everything is very spread out, so you have to drive to every place and park there.
It's also famous for its traffic, something automation can handle well (just follow the car in front of you). The real problems come with the unexpected, especially human beings jumping out in front of you (unarmored or in a car).
Mind you the city could really benefit from walkable neighborhoods and public transit, but that requires more planning than most lawmakers are up for.
no way, most people have some incentive to avoid murdering another, because it will likely ruin or severely interrupt their lives - a robotaxi killing someone will result in an insurance payout, the company won’t even be shut down
Drivers who kill pedestrians or cyclists don't consciously decide to murder them (at least not in 99.99% of cases), they do it out of negligence - opening a door without looking into the mirror, turning right at an intersection without looking for pedestrians or cyclists, not stopping at pedestrian crossings etc. etc.
I'll rephrase, humans have some incentive to avoid negligence despite being imperfect and occasionally being negligent anyway. Robotaxis are imperfect and have no such incentives.
At least in Chicago - if you kill some cycling and it's an accident - it's just an insurance payout. You don't even lose points on your license.
Unless you literally run someone over intentionally - you won't even lose your license. And if you do that, I bet you wouldn't even go to jail most of the time.
Can't tell you the amount of cyclists I know that have been hit by cars (and myself) and I don't know a single driver that had any real consequences (beside their insurance paying out a tiny sum that doesn't even cover half of your damages).
Not to mention, it's quite common for cyclists to get hit by cars and they hit and run (just happened to me a couple of months ago). Can't do anything if you don't have a full match on the plates. And even if you do have the plates - despite the fact that a hit & run is a pretty big deal if you hit a car - if you hit a cyclist - at least according to the police officer I filed a report with - the driver is unlikely to lose points - and almost certainly wouldn't lose their license. I could be entirely wrong - hopefully someone will correct me if so.
With Robo Taxis - no chance of that. The company will know which car was there when you got hit.
And knowing which robot hit you will somehow make you more alive? Computers are all of the mistakes borne from humanity free from any sort of ethical reasoning.
I'd trust a drunk person more than a malfunctioning computer, personally.
Despite what you might think, cyclists get hit a shocking amount and rarely die.
I'd rather there be Waymo on the road than drunks.
And it's honestly shocking the ignorance on here these days that so many people refuse to look at stats with overwhelming evidence Waymo is safer than average drivers significantly, and would blow drunks out of the water by a massive margin.
We know from decades of safety research that threatening to ruin people's lives doesn't prevent accidents. All it does is make people lie about why the accident happened.
If you're not familiar with the concept of Vetocracy, now's a good time to read up on it. While most of us are aware of NIMBYs blocking housing, small businesses, bike lanes, etc, the concept is very far-reaching and we're watching it develop here in real-time with respect to autonomous vehicles.
Living in California all my life and seeing local municipalities essentially pretend they're still in the 1970s and adhere to car orientation and single family homes for their land use really makes me wish these jurisdictions would lose local control with policies like the Builder's Remedy.
A significant % of the workforce can work from home or "office hubs", instead of moving ppl from A to B. Technologies like Vision Pro are a better solution.
Wasn't the story, human driver hits pedestrian. Pedestrian flung in front of robotaxi. Robotaxi comes to a complete stop. Robotaxi pulls over, running over the pedestrian in the process. Robotaxi owner shows a video to the DMV that ends before the car runs over the pedestrian.
I know this sounds terrible, so please understand I don't agree with this approach, but.
I've had the thought that third world countries will end up being the testing ground for autonomous vehicles. Peoples' safety isn't taken as seriously in developing countries, and the local authorities are easier to bribe.
The cost for actually functioning autonomous vehicles will be some mistakes. It's up to society to decide whether the ultimate value is worth those accidents. The modern world has a history of offloading certain types of hazards (such as hazardous waste, dangerous factory conditions, etc) to the third world and I see this as another use case for that pattern.
Edit: damn, guess people don't like unpleasant truths. Downvotes aren't supposed to be a disagreement button!
I fear it will end up more like nuclear energy: a clearly better, objectively safer technology that nevertheless is very easy to fear-monger against. Development won’t be pushed to the Third World, but rather those political systems less susceptible to being swayed by nonsense public pressure like that.
I feel like nuclear energy is a bad example, because when it goes wrong it's "one big scary thing" as opposed to the papercuts that would add up with dangerous robotaxis. Also the benchmark for car danger is already so incredible low. You can see in this thread the argument that "cars are already killing people, so we as a society just have to decide how many it's ok to have die while we figure out to make them work."
As far as "objectively safer" - not sure how that works (or matters). Since when has safety actually mattered in terms of public opinion? If safety mattered we wouldn't have cars on city streets at all, all last mile would be slow & public and we'd have built our towns & cities to support that.
The road conditions are not ideal though, poor road markings, road conditions, other drivers not following the rules of the road. Hardly a place to test cars.
I agree. The hard part of autonomous driving is when people and things behave unpredictably and there aren't many context clues.
However, as someone who regularly visits and drives in a 3rd world country, there's a "vibe" to it if you will, and once you learn the vibe it becomes natural. (It seems to be that people respect the laws of physics over the laws of the land, if you will) If you train the cars on a 3rd world country's driving patterns, further refinement will be necessary to fit in better in a more developed country. But early on it will deal with stuff like driving on a road with no lines at the edges or between lanes, one lane bridges, sharing the road with pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists, and animals, etc.
Not really, hectic traffic and nonexistent roads aren't a superset of organized traffic and good roads. If you take a human driver from a country with hectic traffic and put them in one with organized traffic they'll struggle and vice versa, the same would hold here. Being skilled in one doesn't really help you out in the other.
I think the parent is right. Every country has different traffic laws anyway - but driving in a developing country is often fundamentally different.
In Vietnam the effective priority of vehicles is "biggest first". A neural net trained in that environment won't be very useful in the UK, where priority is defined by road markings and street signs.
I'm not sure this holds up to scrutiny. So far we have numerous companies testing autonomous vehicles in the states and personally I don't know any that test in developing countries.
> "This has everything to do with making sure that the streets of Los Angeles are safe ... It’s also about making sure that we protect jobs"
> "During the Q&A that followed, TechCrunch asked if any constituents had raised specific concerns about robotaxis. Soto-Martínez replied that he “would have to check,”
> "Just two LA lawmakers were present at the conference on Wednesday"