Capitalized profits, socialized losses

The image of firefighters rescuing robotaxis is perfect. We build these systems to be fully autonomous but then the whole time there are humans on standby, paid to bail out when the AI hesitates.

Self-driving is like the rest of modern tech. We sell it as magic, then quietly patch the gaps with human labor. But at least this is honest about it. The companies know who is really keeping these things moving.

That’s fine, 'cause they’re paying a fee for it, right?

Right?!

But this was not an isolated incident. Waymo has relied on taxpayer-funded first responders to navigate its vehicles when they encounter issues, despite the existence of the company’s own roadside assistance team. In at least six instances identified by TechCrunch, first responders have had to take control of Waymo vehicles and move them out of traffic during emergency situations, including one in which an officer was in the middle of responding to a mass shooting.

When this automation fad showed up, many people pointed out that there would be plenty of cases where the training data just didn’t cover edge-cases. Problem is, life is FULL of edge-cases. This is where humans are uniquely good at improvising and adapting in real-time, when faced with previously unknown situations.

In fact, you can argue humans are really, really good at handling exceptions to the rule. Pretty much the textbook definition of “creativity.”

Now tell me how many times a cop or firefighter had to move a normal car out of the way in an emergency situation.

Impound them.

I thought Waymo was the one using overseas drivers to help when needed?

I’m looking forward to the schadenfreude when all this stupid “AI” shit finally blows up.

So…pay for a tow truck if your car is misbehaving.

Yet another case of the poor funneling their money to the 1%.

The working class pays local taxes to fund the police and the fire department. The 1% make money by operating on a business model that relies on these taxpayer funded services to unfuck their product out of fucked situations. Thus the taxpayers unwillingly subsidize the 1% with their tax money. As such, the taxpayer funded services degrade because the fire department/police department have to babysit a private company’s products instead of attending to business they’re actually paid to do.

They see themselves as infrastructure, so then this makes sense. They want to install themselves into our life.