Audio By Carbonatix

Imagine a crowd of hooligans surrounding a robot in a narrow alleyway. They know it’s programmed not to harm people and just by standing in its path, they can prevent its escape. They begin to throw things at it. Someone jumps on top of it and smashes its optical sensors so it can’t see. The crowd cheers. Then out comes the spray paint and they cover int in graffiti. Finally, they toss fireworks at it until it lights on fire. The crowd finally wanders away as the disabled robot burns to a crisp in the street.

No, this isn’t a scene from the latest dystopian cyberpunk SciFi movie. This is an actual crime that occurred last February in San Francisco’s Chinatown. A group of vandals destroyed a self-driving taxi, a Jaguar I-Pace operated by the Waymo company.

happening NOW in SF. Waymo car vandalized & lit on fire ?@sfchronicle pic.twitter.com/OEZYFiy6mv

— Michael Vandi (@michael_vandi) February 11, 2024

Waymo immediately announced that there were no passengers inside the self-driving taxi–and obviously no driver–who the mob was targeting. They just seemed to have it out for the innocent car. And while authorities passed the act off as kids being kids, there may have been more going on here. In fact, you might call this the first hate crime committed against a robot in the planet’s history.

Humans vs. the machines

Hollywood loves to fill the big screen with images of an epic war between humans and “the machines.” We’ve seen the saga play out in movies as diverse as The Terminator, Bladerunner, and of course The Matrix. So if the Chinatown fireworks attack was the first shots fired, why did those people target a robot?

Several months before that February night, a self-driving taxi hit a woman in downtown San Francisco. She was trapped underneath the driverless car, which dragged her for 20 feet before stopping.

The truth of the story is complicated: She was jaywalking and another car hit her first, knocking her in front of the taxi. But of course it was still a PR nightmare that put the city on edge. General Motors pulled funding from its self-driving subsidiary, which had been operating the taxi.

As graphic as the pedestrian accident was, it may have just been the spark that lit years of tinder. When the government voted to allow self driving taxi companies to begin operation, protestors picketed the proceedings. Insurify recently polled Gen Zers on self-driving cars, with shocking results.

This youngest and most tech-savvy generation isn’t all about self driving cars. Only a quarter of respondents said they would currently buy a self-driving car, while many felt the technology isn’t ready. One third said they’ll never ever buy a self-driving car.

One respondent put it bluntly: “I have a phobia of driving, but I’ll be damned if I let a machine do that.”

Insurance companies also aren’t sold on on all forms of Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems, and charge 37.6% more per year for cars equipped with it. The NHTSA also is investigating the system after multiple Teslas using these systems struck first responders parked by the roadside.

Can humans and robots get along?

Obviously, some people aren’t thrilled about new technology. Whether or not self-driving taxis were ready for their rollout in 2023, some members of the public weren’t sold. And in Chinatown, we saw what that can lead to.

Companies like to tell investors how rich fully self-driving cars will make them. They talk about cars that can go to work for Uber while their owners are at work. And they talk go on about how much money can be saved cutting out human drivers, the most popular job in the country. They have even alluded to making money on advertisements and software subscriptions from the captive audience completing their commute. But if they want buy-in from the rest of us, they need to make a case for investing in this technology to improve all of our lives.