Adams is a cop elected on fearmongering and lies. That’s all you need to know.
“This technology is coming whether we like it or not, so we’re going to make sure that we get it right,” Adams said in a statement.
??? Who is “we” here. Is the technology going to be developed by aliens who beam it down to earth? Is a rogue AI developing self-driving cars for the purposes of annoying humanity into submission? Are they springing forth from the head of Zeus?
Seriously, can we go back to the days when tech boosters at least pretended technology was being developed by people to improve other people’s lives? Now it seems like they just go “sucks to suck, idiots! this is the future now, get with it, grandpa!” and skateboard away into the sunset leaving everyone else to clean up their mess…
well, not from his head
He’s not wrong though. Tech isn’t being developed to improve people’s lives. It’s being developed to deepen pockets. There is a very low chance of a future in which NY becomes some “old school holdout championing people’s rights against the tyranny of self driving cars,” so better to work on regulation, adoption, and putting systems in place now to provide the best public benefit rather than either banning it outright until market forces overwhelm that, or ignoring regulation and letting market forces dictate what rules would be in place there (hint: none). Hate capitalism, not the Mayor that is trying to plan ahead for the city
I mean, you say this as though Banning Self Driving Cars is some controversial policy action, rather than just literally the current state of the law in most areas. The point is that it’s weird to legalize them when they’re not ready for prime time just because you figure “the future is coming,” because usually we make laws around technology based on how the technology works in the real world, not how we figure it’ll probably work in the hypothetical inevitable magic techno-future.
This technology is coming whether we like it or not
Ignores that laws and regulations exist.
Sure. It’s a tough question, though; morally, yes, cars are physical objects and typically well-regulated, but self-driving cars are enabled by software, which tends to flout legal demands. I hope in this case that the sheer physical presence of cars will enable regulators to ban unsafe vehicles from public roads, but it’s not as clear-cut as we’d like.
Software doesn’t flout legal demands; companies and people who make it choose to obey or ignore laws and regulations, and lawmakers choose to enforce the law or not. As the FTC just said in the US last month: “Price fixing by algorithm is still price fixing”. The roads are heavily regulated public spaces.
https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2024/03/price-fixing-algorithm-still-price-fixing
That is high praise indeed, but I believe the good mayor has yet to make clear to everyone that, as an acausal manifestation of the godhead, self-driving cars serve to remind us to spend at least an hour a day in silent contemplation over how to bring ASI into existence, lest one should incure the Serpent’s eternal wrath in the Simulation.
