Robotaxis 'do not belong in the city of Los Angeles,' lawmaker says
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
> "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"
Any tools goal is to reduce work.
“Driver” happens to be the most popular job in the United States
What exactly is hard to understand here?
...which still only work out to 1-2%
It might be possible for some minority that has a particular penchant for this type of work, but neither the jobs nor the training exist at such scale that would be able to absorb the entirety of the driver workforce into the “write software for automated driving“ job.
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
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?
Why not ban personal car to make the demand for driver even higher?
Luddites weren't against automation. They were just against automation being used against them by others, rather than for them, by them.
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.
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.
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.
Art is nice. Customized art is nicer. Also, it's interesting that (as you note) it's far from universal. My group would likely have enjoyed using AI art for our campaigns, but my girlfriend's groups have completely rejected it.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
https://www.tiktok.com/@morningbrew/video/723752513284188087...
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.
If a robotaxi runs someone over, there's no one at the wheel to be held accountable... and the company has many incentives and resources to lie.
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.
I'd trust a drunk person more than a malfunctioning computer, personally.
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.
Waymo isn't magic, it's just making driving a series of decisions made by programmers.
- public transit
- walking
- biking
They really really want you to waste your life in traffic
LA could use robotaxis in some hot spots
I could see independently governed cities like West Hollywood or Glendale getting robotaxis
I propose we ban human taxi drivers in Los Angeles until Unions can prove they are safe for our roads.
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!
And broadly speaking, with more varied training data you can achieve better out of sample results.
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.
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.
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.
You're correct when you say
>we have numerous companies testing autonomous vehicles in the states
The article we are responding is is about increasing political pressure against that practice.