[23556] in Privacy_Forum
[ PRIVACY Forum ] Script of my national radio report yesterday on
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Lauren Weinstein)
Tue May 5 11:21:07 2026
Date: Tue, 5 May 2026 08:13:34 -0700
From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>
To: privacy-dist@vortex.com
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This is the script of my national network radio report yesterday on
increasing problems with robotaxis interfering with emergency first
responders. As always there may have been minor wording variations
from this script as I presented this report live on air.
- - -
Well we've talked before about the concerns that the public in general
and emergency first responders in particular have about robotaxis. And
we've talked about the various stories of them freezing up, blocking
intersections, invading law enforcement activities, slowing ambulances
and paramedics from reaching injured persons, blowing past street stop
signs and school bus stop signals and more. And the 800 pound robotaxi
gorilla is Alphabet's Waymo. Alphabet as we know is also the parent
company of Google.
Waymo is rapidly expanding into more and more cities. You might think
that with these kinds of incidents and others, like Waymo depots
keeping residents up all night with loud noises from robotaxis coming
in and out, and many other Waymo-related problems, that Waymo would be
bending over backwards to be good citizens in the communities that
they want to serve.
But it's more apparent than ever now that at least when it come to
Waymo, they've inherited the "move fast and break things" arrogance
that was a hallmark of Google in its early days, before they grew up a
bit and actually entered the period where they became world class when
it came to user privacy and security. But it seems that we've now come
full circle, and hubris is indeed the word for Alphabet and Waymo.
Some of this is undoubtedly being driven -- no pun intended of
course -- by the related AI-hype. And AI-hype is being supercharged by the
federal government pressing for "AI Everywhere". Massive, electricity
and water hungry, often polluting data centers being pushed into
unspoiled rural areas, federal pressure being exerted on states to try
force them not to implement their own common-sense AI regulations.
Those could help protect their citizens against AI Slop, deepfakes,
and AI-powered spams, scams, and malware. And we know why this is the
case, politicians in both parties know which side of their bread the
butter is on, and Big Tech knows where to make campaign contributions.
Some states have begun to fight back a bit against the rampant risks
from robotaxis. California for example has just declared some rules
about giving emergency responders the ability to have some control
over where robocars can go and when they have to immediately leave an
area. And they've set a short time limit on how long Waymo robotaxi
remote operators have to respond to calls from emergency responders.
But really this is only scratching the surface of what's needed.
Because Waymo now clearly has no real interest in what the public
thinks about the sometimes dangerous mess their robotaxis are
creating. They're now actually refusing to attend scheduled public
meetings to discuss these problems with the public, saying that
they've already said all that they have to say. Total, absolute
arrogance. They're Alphabet, they're Google, they're Waymo. They're
going to do what they want to do. And they feel that nobody can stop
them.
That's the view of Big Tech generally these days. And maybe they're
right that nobody can stop them on their relentless march to further
enrich their billionaire CEOs. Because so far, regulators and
politicians by and large -- with a handful of exceptions -- have been
letting them run wild over our communities when it comes to robocars,
robotaxis, and AI more generally. It's clear that there seems to be a
widespread feeling among these firms and their supporters that AI is
at the top and ordinary people are at the bottom.
So we see what the reality looks like. It's not the AI systems
themselves that we have to fear -- it's not evil machines plotting
against us. They are, after all, just machines. It's the AI firms and
the managements of these firms who need to be held responsible for
what the AI push is doing, and it's up to us to care enough to elect
leaders who can hopefully find ways to make that actually happen.
- - -
L
- - -
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren@vortex.com (https://www.vortex.com/lauren)
Lauren's Blog: https://lauren.vortex.com
Mastodon: https://mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/@lauren
Signal: By request on need to know basis
Founder: Network Neutrality Squad: https://www.nnsquad.org
PRIVACY Forum: https://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility
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