I'm not a fan of expanding surveillance but the alternative of unmonitored transit seems worse.

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.

This is a problem that autonomous vehicles created. Why should we not complain that its solution is worse than non-autonomous travel, given it carries risk that doesn't exist today? Does Waymo benefit society enough to carry the tradeoffs?

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?

Maybe we shouldn't put the whole burden of world justice on Waymo, this allowing it a complete invasion of the privacy of both the people who use it and those who don't? Guy takes a drugged up girl on the train, should we hold the train responsible for the outcome also?

Those are bad examples of things where a computer should make a judgement call.

> 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.

But it's a reduction of privacy compared to private vehicles. If the goal is to convert all transportation infrastructure into surveilled transportation then that is a loss in privacy for the general public.

> Person with obvious head injury and slurring speech wants to go home instead of the hospital? Sure.

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?

Those are made up problems because 90% of the time people drive their own vehicle or are with a willing participant. We don't have cameras watching us in normal cars.

That's a good yardstick. Would a reasonable human driver call (or want to call) the cops? If yes, it's reasonable for Waymo to do the same

> alternative of unmonitored transit seems worse

Almost all private cars are unmonitored (in this respect).

"Unmonitored transit" like the way almost every human being in the history of the world has moved from one place to another? Please.