The kneejerk response [to two people being arrested in California for having an AR in a Waymo] — “This is the surveillance industrial complex run amok” — misses that these youths would have had the same result whether it was a human or an AI driving their taxi. Waving a gun around in the back seat of someone else’s car has always been a fast way to get the driver to end the trip.
Where this gets more interesting is that as they become ubiquitous, self-driving cars will blur the line between a car being yours or someone else’s. Today, self-driving mode on a Tesla that you own still does whatever you want. But how about a car that you only own a share of? Or a Waymo in a world where 80% of cars on the road are Waymos and the like? Waving a gun around in the back seat is always going to catch the “driver’s” attention, but how about loading a bunch of guns into the trunk for a trip to the range? Or saving some time by loading mags on the road? Any YouTuber with a gun channel can tell you how little they trust Google, Waymo’s parent company, to exercise good judgment on how to serve lawful gun owners.
— Open Source Defense in Surveillance and gun ownership are getting waymo complicated