This particular situation, at face value at least, sounds like a good outcome. Kids had a gun, someone noticed, called police, situation handled without escalation or violence or something tragic happening.
But this doesn't generalize. Another incident described in the article was when some kids were drinking in the car and shooting toy guns. What if they hadn't been drinking? What if they were just holding toy guns, innocently going from one kid's house to another? What if Waymo thought the guns were real, called the cops, and the cops screwed up and shot one of the kids? These sorts of escalations aren't imaginary; they happen, and they end in tragedy.
The article is also a little cagey on how this "detection" happened. Was it a human spot checking cameras in vehicles? I doubt it. Most likely it was some sort of computer vision algorithm that flagged something. Perhaps a human was in the loop to verify and be the one to call the cops, but humans seem to be increasingly shutting off their brains and trusting the machine. (I recall a recent incident where someone was wrongfully arrested because one of the companies that run the license-plate reader machines flagged their car as stolen. The machine screwed up the image recognition, but the cops blindly trusted it and arrested the guy.)
What happens when cops are allowed real-time access to Waymo's in-car video footage? Maybe they even have it already. This is just more pervasive, always-on surveillance, and this will only get worse as autonomous vehicles become more popular in the taxi scene.
Imagine the alternative headline saying the murderers used Waymo for their drive-by assassination. There is only one option for Waymo here, and the idiocy of the US police is not within their power to solve.
The 90s were lit
Nah you're right tho let's imagine the worst case scenario. What if that person in the waymo had a nuclear bomb in their suitcase? There's only one option
People do definitely use regular taxis to transport both drugs and weapons sometimes
My wife and I like watching real-life police detective shows. Sometimes we discuss mistakes the killer made, and how we’d avoid them. “I wouldn’t kill anyone, but if I did, I wouldn’t cheap out and keep the clothes I wore to do it instead of tossing them into a river.” Of course we’re not going to do that, but it’s a puzzle to solve, so we try to solve it. We would not have those conversations around a taxi driver or a crowded subway, lest someone overhear and get the wrong idea. On an empty subway or Waymo? Yeah, sure. And if BART or my cab reported us for planning a murder, I’d be livid enough to plan how to murder the computer that made the decision to rat me out.
Given how much money Google gives to electoral campaigns, I'd argue that it is in their power but that's the least of their problems when they interfere with the democratic process. They are too busy voting for less taxes and regulations on their business.
I take this seriously, but I think this a problem with the cops. Even regular people hesitate to report problems if they think the police might overreact.
I can’t think of any instance I would call the police except to satisfy the requirements of an insurance claim. I was in a car accident in an Uber last year and left before the cops came.
Yea, what's disturbing about this article isn't what happened in the article--it's what will happen in the future.
Today, a corporation transmits to the police "user in possession of what appears to be a gun." Tomorrow, what will that message contain?
I think there's a middle ground between those that's possible that you might not be considering.
A while back I was in a Waymo and someone I was with dropped one of their Airpods and it went under the seat. They took off their seatbelt to dig under the seat and the car started beeping since we were driving. After about a minute of that someone came over the speaker and asked what was going on and told him he needed to get up and put the seatbelt back on or Waymo would end the ride right there.
I'm sure these cars are full of other sensor based triggers like seat belts being taken off, doors being opened, people messing with the steering wheel, etc that alert a human to come take a look. I know that the cars have cameras and microphones and it wouldn't surprise me if they are or are planning to use that for monitoring the cars, but I also wouldn't be surprised if the people in the car just triggered some other unrelated sensor and then the human stepped in to review and noticed the gun.
The article says they violated the TOS relating to the firearm, but that doesn't mean that Waymo initially started looking at the car because of that. It's possible that they were looking at the vehicle for something much more inane initially, discovered the firearm by chance, and are now using that to ban them since it's the most obvious TOS violation.
you dont need a Waymo for that :(
Wayno picked a difficult market.
I'm always confused by how lines are drawn in scenarios like this. if calling cops makes waymo culpable, why not also blame parents buying kids guns? Toy stores selling the guns? Where does the chain of events start?
Waymo is not the one to solve your policing problem. The root issue is that your police shoot to kill first, and investigate or make stuff up to get themselves off later.
the police's job is to analyze reports and actually figure out if theyre correct or not. If theyre failing at that, the rest really doesnt matter. Theyre gonna take some other stranger's report or false report and go shoot those kids for the love of the game anyways, regardless of if waymo is involved
Possible, but probably more likely they weren't wearing their seatbelts and then a Waymo remote support person saw the gun and immediately called police.
Waymo has chosen to monitor travelers in a way that drivers of their own cars would not be monitored, while the government has chosen to ban privately owned vehicles from some spaces (like Market Street in San Francisco). This coerces individuals into sacrificing privacy and other rights.
Imagine if your phone company listened to all your calls and reported you to the police if it didn't like something you say.
And what happens when a private company like Waymo partners with a municipality to integrate into its transportation network? Is that now privately operated vehicle or part of a public space system like a sidewalk or the road itself?
Waymo is not like mass transit or even a taxi: only one group of passengers are in the vehicle at a time. Subway and bus rules don't cleanly apply. It's closer to a rental car that drives itself.
We as a society are turning to rely on or even require private companies for much of our essential infrastructure and interpersonal fabric: communications, payments (decline of cash) transportation, surveillance (Flock), places of congregation (virtual town squares), etc. Meanwhile because they are private they are not bound to privacy and other protections like the state itself.
We should rethink this direction.
Same thing that happens whenever cops get new surveillance powers. They’ll use it to stalk and harass women.
And the sick part is how many useful idiots will go to bat for all of it because "well they broke the law after all"
See this is only an issue because that is a plausible situation. The actual problem is on the police/cultural side, not the waymo side. No one should even have to think about this when calling the cops. And I can't think of 1 other western society where they do
The "ghost gun" thing refers to guns without serial numbers. For an AR-15, that usually means something assembled from an "80% lower receiver", a part which exists purely to evade US gun laws. [1] It's not quite complete; it takes some final machining. This can be done by hand with modest machine shop tools, or there's a special-purpose 3-axis CNC mill to do it for $4000, available from Ghost Gunner.[2] (They used to sell a simpler device for $1200 which was only useful for the single task of finishing "80% lower receivers", but the current $4000 unit is halfway respectable as a desktop CNC mill. It understands a subset of G-Code. Nobody seems to use it for general CNC work, though. A good desktop CNC mill for $4000 would be useful, but they'd need to get serious about cooling and chip removal.)
[1] https://gundigest.com/more/how-to/gunsmithing/building-a-gho...
> Two young people riding in an autonomous vehicle were arrested in San Francisco after authorities allegedly found them in possession of an illegal “ghost gun.”
The alternative is having a driver in the car, which is equally intrusive.
Found their rules page: "Do not carry weapons of any kind in the car"
That seems... naive? Plenty of people carry pepper spray or a knife with them. Not even ever intending to use them as a weapon.
When I go to the range, I travel with a locked case that contains my pistol, which inside has a cable lock. I couldn't take that through a waymo?
What about some kid buying a goofy mall katana they are going to put on their wall?
Like, obviously brandishing a weapon should be disallowed, but merely having anything that's a weapon? Seems fraught.
Corporate speak for "concealed means concealed"
Or a kitty keychain...
When we have evidence that Waymo is contracting its external cameras out to local governments and allowing abuse, then we can criticize them for it.
At least a human usually has some judgment and discretion situationally.
I guess the alternative "Juvenile Driveby Shooting takes place from Waymo" isn't a better headline though.
I think if anything waymo, robot taxi is doomed. Self driving ever matures to private car ownership will to car share to subsidize costs will with 1-10% utilization will basically generate more demand than non car owners will ever need - there simply isn't business model for share only fleet outside of specific low vehicle density zones. And even for private car owners, the only ones who will generate some revenue are those that work offpeak hours, i.e. they can rent their cars during surge, which will make congestion worse for all existing drivers by increasing traffic (kek). Proliferation of self driving = eventually millions of beater supply cars doing rotations for basically marginal costs killing fleet economics.
Why not? They can already take an uber. It's questionable which is safer
I understand the appeal. Parents I've spoken to feel safer putting their kid in a Waymo than and Uber. And I guess the time savings of not driving them around yourself are too compelling.
https://support.google.com/waymo/answer/16389431?sjid=166657...
You think “owning” the vehicle will matter in the near future? That’s cute
By continuing, you agree to our Terms of Service, which include arbitration and a class action waiver, and our Privacy Policy. You agree that we and our third-party vendors may collect and use your information, including through cookies, pixels and similar technologies, for the purposes set forth in our Privacy Policy such as personalizing your experience and ads.
Is there an alternate source available?
Well now my biggest fear of riding a Waymo is not how it drives but getting my Google account banned because it misdetected something.
However, kobalsky is alluding to frequent past reports of Google misdetecting things that are not ghost guns, followed by banning people's accounts. For example:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/technology/google-surveil... #news from 02022 of Google flagging Mark [anonymous]’s Google account for child porn when he sent a photo of his toddler son’s infected penis to the doctor and reported him to the police. The police decided no abuse had happened but he never got his account back. #privacy #human-rights #USA #politics
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36443747 Very disturbing accounts of people getting banned from Google for searching for the board game "Ethnos", from credit cards for not using them, from Amazon for having a racist doorbell recording, etc.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47115805 seems like people are getting banned from their #Google accounts for using #OpenClaw for #AI with #Gemini
https://discuss.ai.google.dev/t/account-restricted-without-w... more on people getting banned from their #Google accounts for using #OpenClaw for #AI with #Gemini:
Aminreza Khoshbahar: “I’m seeking assistance regarding a sudden restriction on my Google AI Ultra account that has persisted for three days. I received no prior warnings or notifications regarding a potential violation.
“The only recent change in my workflow was connecting Gemini models via OpenClaw OAuth. If third-party integrations are the issue, I would expect the platform to block the integration rather than restrict a paid account ($249/mo) without communication.”
Waymo reports teen riders for bad behavior and delivers them to the police
The steelman -against- what waymo did is:
Guns are generally legal, even in California. This is America, not the EU. Nobody was harmed, nobody was threatened. This is like calling the cops on someone open carrying because you don't like open carry.
That is what a lot of pro-2A libertarians would argue.
The steelman -pro- what waymo did is:
Private conveyance. Even though the occupants thought they were "alone", there was someone/something else present, which felt threatened (or thought the passengers represented a potential threat to others) and called police, as most cabbies or uber drivers probably would.
I don't think there's a right or wrong answer. This is a grey area, and I think it'll likely resolve in favor of waymo, and it won't really bother anyone except the staunch libertarians. If the gun hadn't been illegally possessed, likely nothing would've happened after the cops were called.
Guns are generally legal in the EU, too.
I have a suggestion. Perhaps if you enter an autonomous vehicle, it has a display with your name and will not drive until you buckle your seatbelt and click the button acknowledging?
How can someone have an expectation of privacy if they take pictures of a gun in a waymo, and upload them to google drive... but no expectation of privacy against waymo calling the cops when they see the same thing with their own cameras?
I wouldn’t be surprised if the cars are already capturing and storing license plates, tracking pedestrian activity.
It’s all being prepared for the sale to governments and intelligence communities. Or maybe to serve the privatized shit hole known as 'network states' coined by the pathetic parasite, Peter Thiel.
Orwellian dystopia is here folks. It just took a detour/roundabout way (9/11, patriot act, greedy capitalists, social media …) to get us there.
yeah fuck that. also fucks self-checkout. are we so poverty stricken as a society now that we can't afford to pay cashiers?
Precisely because our society is rich, and reasonably meritocratic (and has a lot of immigrants from poor, non-English-speaking parts of the world), people who are reasonably smart and conscientious don't last long in low-pay, low-status jobs like cashiering - they get promoted or quit to do something more lucrative. This is Patrick McKenzie's concept of The Sort (https://x.com/patio11/status/1818781344702644311). And it means that my experience of interacting with a cashier is likely to involve interacting with a menial laborer who is difficult to communicate with; meaning I'd rather avoid that interaction altogether and just press buttons on a machine.
Not to mention the mass surveillance this sort of stuff continues to help enable.
Going to shoot up a place? Take your guns on a waymo. It won't complain. Guy wants to take an obviously distressed and co-erced girl to an abandoned lot? No complaints. Person with obvious head injury and slurring speech wants to go home instead of the hospital? Sure. Person has heart attack and passes out in back? We'll just drive your limp body 45 minutes in traffic to your destination.
These are just a few situations any human driver would obviously react to. And a modicum of detection and human review could solve in an autonomous vehicle.
When people know they're being watched and there will be immediate consequences if they do something bad, their behavior changes. If they don't, they're awful. We've seen this for decades (arguably millennia, as we know Pompeii had graffiti too)
That's what happened here. A private company saw a gun inside their property and called the police.
Waymo called the cops. It’s not clear if it was the vehicle, or a human in the company. I suspect the latter.
Bizarrely, I think it comes out backwards. In this article, the comments are surprised that Waymo's gun detection led to someone contacting authorities - it's not over guns, but that it was "young people" with guns, which means they can't use generalizations, there have to be bespoke solutions unique to every individual, calling the police to assess on potential threats is too broad.
The gun crowd would neither use taxis broadly to carry weapons, nor do so in the manner of the "juveniles" found in the article. Generalizing, they're well-versed in the minutiae of gun transport laws and more or less anticipate law enforcement contact, whether inadvertent or from Karens.
People with money have others shop for them, or ship to their house. The checkouts are for those who labor in that system who must now submit to the panopticon.
If you stumble into a big retailer like Walmart or Home Depot now yourself, it's like you crossed a zero-trust boundary. Security guards, motion-activated cameras that play sounds and nag you to remind you you're surveilled, manned turnstiles to stop door crashes with loaded carts -- all these adversarial controls suggest you're now in the wrong customer channel.
Yeah, I'm appalled how poor as a society we've become, now that we can't afford door men (outside of luxury condos in Manhattan), elevator operators, and bank tellers.
As a shopper, I don't want to be one of those people either. Ideally, I want lower friction and to be able to pay on my phone instead of dealing with the kiosk.
Nerf guns are the modern equivalent of our dart guns and kids run around with them today all the time. They are pretty unmistakeable, I'm sure by design.
I think the answer is that other than in organized events realistic replicas should be subject to the same restrictions on actions that real guns are.
You can repeal a law. The courts can strike it down. The same cannot be said about cops abusing women, which is statistically well established.
Fixing that stuff by enforcing the existing rules against it wouldn't make these systems fine. The fundamental point of these systems is to let the government screw the people.
Every uber driver I’ve been ive been in has an inside dashcam to protect themselves and their property. I would do the same thing if I were them.
Waymo has every right to monitor their property and if someone does something illegal in their car why would they not report? An Uber driver would do the same, as would I. Otherwise you are an accomplice.
This comparison to Flock is bunk. Flock cameras are in public places and paid for with public dollars. I don’t want that.
But in a surveillance state, every private citizen should be keeping their own footage. Nobody is going to share theirs with you.
Other countries already have highway cameras track speed and automatically issue citations. I am happy for Americans to petition their government against implementing that, but I won't pretend it's anything other than a desire to break the law for personal gratification.
The problem with Flock is that they let police hop on and look at whatever they want whenever they want. Completely different operating modes and intentions.
Also, Google and Waymo are different companies under the same parent. Google's policies are irrelevant.
"While companies like Waymo insist they require search warrants for footage, based on probable cause and judicial approval, the legal framework for accessing autonomous vehicle data remains unsettled. A 2022 analysis by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (“EFF”) noted that few states have specific laws governing law enforcement access to such data, leaving gaps in oversight. In Arizona, where Waymo operates extensively, police must typically obtain a search warrant to access footage, as required by state law for electronic records and consistent with Fourth Amendment protections. "
We need to (be able to) trust the police to not escalate irresponsibly and to deal with situations with nuance. Declining to escalate to authorities because we're scared of what they may do is not great.
It's that way because real guns weren't available in Japan but real-ism wasn't defined, so Japanese toy gun brands just turned that volume up to 1100 without allowing toy guns take pressure bearing gun parts. And then those toy guns got exported and copied, leading to the present status.
And it’s also not easy to tell toys from real guns. Many cities illegalized toy guns on public transit because people were putting orange tips on real guns to make them look like toys. 3D-printed guns rarely look like they can actually fire, even though they can.
And I'm not even convinced that human drivers would be more discerning or rational about it. They could easily overstate the issue to police and create a more biased situation.
Any gun shooting projectiles out of a moving vehicle is dangerous. Pellet guns and paintball guns are less dangerous than “regular” guns, but they’re not really toys.
Unless it's against the terms of service of the private corporation
So waymos means less busses/trains, which means a bunch of people stuck in the middle - they would prefer to take a bus or a train but the service is poorly maintained so they are forced to take a waymo.
Public infrastructure has been run by private companies for a long time.
That has changed. Networked cameras and AI means that cameras can be constantly monitored: license plates logged and mapped in realtime, faces scanned and profiled, symbols and objects detected.
I have no problem with calling the cops on someone with a gun. But that same kind of tech can (and has already been) seamlessly be turned on protestors, journalists, political opponents, union organizers, and ex girlfriends.
This is why public restrooms in the US are vandalized, why there are low effort graffiti tags all over, litter in parks, and more.
People believing that something is watching - a human or machine with the autonomy to enact consequences - preserves the commons for the rest of us.
People just dont vadalize stuff - there are reasons for that that need to be fixed, not adding even more spying.
https://medium.com/luminasticity/the-illuminati-ganga-automa...
Would you rather have one random stranger see you naked, or have a video of you naked passed around to every cop in your city?
Unless you feel the same about those two scenarios, it seems like a driver and a camera are not equally intrusive.
Half the ubers I've been now has a "you're being recorded" notice. Public transit is far worse.
Your uber driver is using the video to protect their in-app reputation (also dystopian, but unrelated), and in case a crime is committed against them or they are accused of one.
A networked ai monitored camera system is a panopticon. It will be (or already has been) turned against journalists, protesters, political opponents, ex girlfriends, union organizers, etc.
Everyone who got out of that decade alive and with at most minimal brain damage thinks that we're too obsessed with safety today.
;-)
There must be a word for this, but the issue today is the normalization of zero-risk.
Did some kids likely die because of the shenanigans free range kids were allowed in the 70s - 90s?
Sure!
Were those kids as cohorts on the whole better off because of the freedom they were allowed at formative years?
I'd be hard pressed to argue against that...
Sometimes it takes a few broken eggs (or children) to make an omelette (a responsible and creative adult).
Maximize the good to each individual, but only up until it begins impacting the good of the many.
I also grew up in the 90s and did things like throw eggs out of cars. We wouldn't have done it from a taxi or Uber. Your comment really makes no sense.
Networked cameras with ai monitoring is begging for totalitarian oppression. A cabby calling the cops because I did something shitty in their cab is not.
In general, I think you kinda need to fix people rather than make the environment basically so hostile to everyone, to prevent a small group of people from breaking it. Not saying its easy, but in my the only correct way.
Private surveillance that immediately sends any and all crimes to law enforcement is indistinguishable from government surveillance and should treated the same way.
Don’t use Snapchat then…
https://www.gadgetreview.com/student-teacher-sent-a-private-...
Some people foresee a future where self-driving cars are the norm. The big prize being fewer deaths on the road (about 40k people per year in the USA) which is a pretty big prize.
If today's self-driving cars are heavy on the AI surveillance of passengers, and you foresee self-driving cars doing 90% of journeys within your lifetime, that's a pretty ominous situation.
Especially if you interpret it in light of EU driver-facing-camera mandates.
We should try to separate "self driving" from "owned and operated by someone else." One is good and one is very bad.
Other people’s footage will only be used against you.
It is a real big shame that Meta is the only one pushing personal video capture right now. It has tainted the idea of personal surveillance as a counter to all this madness.
And what surveillance or other risks does this introduce outside of the cabin, and why should society allow that? What is the definition of modicum of detection, and who is drawing that line?
It absolutely does 1000x. You can also just not use it.
Citation needed. Assaults and abuse against public transit and taxi drivers is a common workplace hazard. Why are we subjecting humans to that? Why are we ok expecting them to decide if a gun is fake or not and call the police?
>Does Waymo benefit society enough to carry the tradeoffs?
Absolutely.
>Absolutely.
Citation needed.
Why stop at Waymo? The entirety of your digital activity happens on private property. You should have no expectation of privacy, and your attempts at privacy should mark you as a higher risk subject. We should algorithmically police your digital life in case you start showing signs of anti-social behavior. I don't want to wait until you get your gun into a Waymo to have the cops handle you. I want you to be caught much earlier. This will make the world much safer.
There are other ways to solve safety issues, but they are harder and more expensive - civic education and a government invested in incentivizing a productive life, better law enforcement training, freely available mental health services etc.
How about things taking place outside the car?
Can Waymo mount a robotic machine gun next to the LIDAR and snipe suspected terrorists? Release tear gas? Self destruct, killing several nuns to protect s CEO?
Btw ghost guns are not all instantly illegal.
I am not against monitoring for safety - I am against deploying a sophisticated network of automated monitoring that covers all digital and soon physical aspects of my life for my "safety" by for profit companies.
Unfortunately taking someone somewhere to rob or assault them doesn’t look that different from taking a drunk friend to a safe place.
No expectation of privacy in public does not mean we should eliminate privacy from public areas or allow our government to engage in mass surveillance.
> Going to shoot up a place? Take your guns on a waymo. It won't complain.
I take my kid to go skeet shooting. You’d call the police on us for having legal guns? What about my pocket knife?
> Guy wants to take an obviously distressed and co-erced girl to an abandoned lot? No complaints.
My wife is scared by someone on the sidewalk. We’re riding to where we parked our car for the evening. There’s a scared woman with me as we commute to our vehicle. BART wouldn’t call the cops on me.
> Person with obvious head injury and slurring speech wants to go home instead of the hospital? Sure.
What’s “obvious” here? I have drinks with friends and bump my head on a cabinet, and now I’m bleeding like a stuck pig. I’m not remotely about to die. Dammit, Waymo, I just want to go home and shower and let me wife laugh at me while she tapes me up.
> Person has heart attack and passes out in back? We'll just drive your limp body 45 minutes in traffic to your destination.
Person’s exhausted after work and wants to nap on the way home. They look identical to the dead guy. BART lets you nap.
If we had ubiquitous taxi and subway police, maybe they’d spent 5 seconds assessing each situation and move on. In no other real-life situation do we expect empty subways or taxi drivers to call the cops and investigate every possible bad scenario, nor should we.
Only the few who can afford luxury deserve privacy.
It looks quite foolish to me to never plan ahead and predict undesirable future events and then trying to prevent them ahead of time.
"Sorry, we can't fulfill your request for transportation to the protest for private ownership, but we can offer a free ride to the Colosseum" ;)
When I was a teenager working in a taxi office some guy came in slurring and covered in blood. I phoned him an ambulance and after 15 minutes of waiting he got up and walked out despite my protests. How should I have reacted?
Almost all private cars are unmonitored (in this respect).
