People who let their cats roam outside are assholes. As well as being vulnerable to getting run over by cars, cats also kill large numbers of birds and small animals.
TLDR: cat gets hit by AI car and dies
Seen a lot of half baked arguments.
I’ve been in the area and met this cat. First off, this cat started as a stray, and found its way to the corner store that took it in and adopted it for all intents and purposes. Its lived in the same spot for many years, and had always been an exceptionally chill cat. Painting him as a typical outdoor cat is disingenuous and uninformed.
KitKat has been safe and sound for so long without any issues. There’s gotta be literally millions of cars that have driven past in his residency on 16th in the Mission district of SF. And the only time he gets hit is by a waymo? All these human drivers, so many of them absolute shit, and never an occurrence? This cat isn’t sprinting the neighborhood, crossing streets, or hunting for prey; its docile, loves pets, and knows there’s endless food at the liquor store that provides all his needs. He wasn’t your typical outdoor cat that runs from everyone and twitches at unknown sounds; this was an urban dwelling cat that’s been prospering for years.
Waymo promotes and brags to riders how many cameras are inside and out of the car. But it so easily hit something that could fuck the car up if it wasn’t soft squishy flesh. Were animals and small children not in any of its test scenarios? Is it infeasble to install cameras where a typical driver couldn’t usually see?
Not to mention the absolutely rude response waymo has had to this event. Instead of apologizing and pledging improvements and retribution to killing a valued community member; they victim-blamed the dead cat, said they didn’t do anything wrong, and said nothing of mitigating future scenarios.
There’s more I can say about the company and its typical ownership, but I want to keep this to the slaughter at hand and their complete lack of consciousness. Waymo doesn’t care about you or anything that it kills. Once again, its about the bottom line and whatever it can do to turn profit.
Obviously accidents happen, but its the reaction that can truly matter in those cases. They’ve shown that causing great harm in a community means nothing to them. And this is in obvious and outspoken situations. What about the less obvious ways? Whether that be job loss, economic factors, environmental concerns, or blatant safety on our streets. If they’re forced, they’ll make a bullshit apology (aka recognition of events) and then focus on moving forward without addressing people’s grief and anger.
Fuck waymo, fuck their response especially, and fuck anyone saying this cat deserved it by being a lazy sidewalk-laying pillar of joy in the neighborhood.
Rest in Peace KitKat. The community will always love you and remember you for always brightening our days in this endlessly threatening world. The only thing that killed you was the ruthless drive for profit. Your memory will live on in the hearts of many. And as a focal point that citizens must stop allowing corporations from plowing down their neighbors, their voice, and their sunshine in a day’s walk to the store.
3:
What I’ve learned working at a startup in stealth mode and having larger projects in the back lot behind the building, is that those cars also do not respect ‘no trespassing’ signs and waymo will wait until it gets to the litigious point to bother to fix their routing.
when the LA riots happened a few months ago and they were torching waymo cars i was confused why they would do that, now im ok with thoese cars being torched. fuck waymo, RIP kitkat
Waymo/Google has aligned itself with Trump and there are a lot of cameras on those cars. I suspect that was a reason back then. Now there’s more.
I had a cat who went outside every day, never once got hit by a human driver until it happened.
My neighbor has had three cats killed by cars, they even ran over their own cat in the driveway.
I had a cat that was killed three times by cars. When it died, it only had six lives left… or maybe I should say five.
nonsense, that your cat was missed by millions of drivers every day that drive down your streets, to think it would be hit by a human boggles the mind. and you don’t even seem to be broken up about the slaughter!
Don’t want your cat to get hit by a car keep it inside.
That wasn’t anyone’s cat, though. It was a denizen of the neighborhood with no owner. The point you’re trying to make has no target.
reader beware.
lots of muskrats and thielologists shitting in this post.
Before anyone starts to think there’s a good guy in this story:
some have taken upon themselves to honor KitKat in distinctly Silicon Valley-style ways. Zeidan (part of cats family) has released a memecoin honoring KitKat’s legacy, and also said that he was disappointed to see others launch their own imitation tokens in an attempt to profit off KitKat’s death.
He says he’s going to use the money to support local vets, but why don’t you just share some links to spca to donate directly, you’re providing nothing but a way for you to grift by taking the money through meme coins.
Yes, this is the extra cherry on top that makes San Francisco look like a parody of itself here lol
It’s not just a memecoin, it’s a movement!
Or even better: Be the “good guy” by giving your cat a happy, healthy, secure, and longer life by keeping them indoors. People hate to be told what to do, and some cats love it outside, but guess what? My dog would love to eat 10lbs of chocolate. We have to look out for their best interests. This obviously doesn’t mean don’t ever take them outside leashed or supervised, but the fact remains: indoor cats have a better, less stressful life, and don’t decimate local bird populations…
I always ask people how they would think about my Dog coming into their garden unsupervised, shitting and pissing all over the place, digging out flowers and fighting with other Dogs. I’m sure they would be less than thrilled and yet the same is okay for cats.
Not to mention the literally billions of birds that are killed every year by cats in the US.
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Cat
I’m not sure I trust the kind of person who was perfectly fine with robotaxi’s until an animal was killed. Seems they don’t’ really have a good grasp on the problems of a car-centric society of which road-kill is a very minor one.
Yet another reason to despise AI. Animals deserve to be safe too. We’ve already taken so much from them as it is.
as the comment chain below highlights, autonomous driving AI is completely different from LLMs. Computer vision and control theory have made big improvements because of machine learning, do you despise this too?
It is a bit frustrating how these different technologies are bunched under the same inaccurate moniker.
Ai has a proven track record of causing less accidents, and killing far fewer animals per km traveled than the average driver.
92% fewer accidents involving animals than the average human.
Ai doesn’t drink, get distracted, or smoke meth like the ml mods.
Public transportation does this too and isn’t controlled by some company trying to make graphs go up
Don’t worry. A lot of places are also trying to privatize their public transportation.
There are also a lot of people out there that will intentionally swerve to hit an animal. Mark Rober made a video a long time ago where 6% of drivers went out of their way to hit animals that were just chilling on the shoulder.
fucked up that people do that.
here you dropped this
per capita
your figures (though I doubt them) don’t include the skew of driver vs driverless vehicles. of course driverless cars are 92% less likely to have an accident involving animals. that’s because driverless cars account for less than 1% of the entire vehicle population.
Ai doesn’t drink, get distracted, or smoke meth like the ml mods.
but it does randomly hallucinate.
the AI in cars is not the same as the AI in LLMs, it’s not programmed to guess its way to a conclusion.
that being said, it’s still far from perfect, and shouldn’t be on the road yet.
teslas make some pretty crazy assumptions (hallucinations).
ever see the one where it sees pedestrians in a cemetery?
or how about the accidents where they veer off the road because the lines were missing.
link from the article https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-05-16/woman-gets-millions-after-getting-dragged-by-self-driving-taxi-in-san-francisco
People get jail time, what do we do with machines?
People get jail time, what do we do with machines?
Hold the manufacturers and operators (specifically for company operated) accountable?
The machine is the product, not the operator. We don’t jail classic cars either. We hold their operators accountable. The one in control. Self driving has a shift of who is in control - now “indirectly”.
Hold the manufacturers and operators (specifically for company operated) accountable?
if only that were the truth.
these companies will attempt to settle for bottom dollar or drag it out so long you’ll have to go homeless to pay the legal fees.
there is no justice left in the legal system. justice isn’t just blind anymore, she’s been decapitated.
So in conclusion, it’s not AI that’s the problem it’s the legal system?
why not both?
Accountable for what killing a stray cat? Come on if you don’t want your cat to be hit keep it inside. I don’t get how people think it’s ok for a cat to wander. Even though it’s probably illegal.
The comment I replied to expands from a cat death to a person being dragged. It expands to general accountability.
And have a nice habit of being turned off before the accident so the AI didn’t cause the accident. Numbers are bullshit.
I believe these cars drive on the same roads all day, whereas people are likely to be driving in and out of areas these systems are not familiar with. I suppose a good comparison would be of a taxi driver that only operates in the same area as the driverless cars, if that exists.
Then keep the car inside. Outdoor cats are not safe and get killed by cars animals.
Yes, keep the car inside.
Please, keep your car in their car bedroom at all times.
“While our vehicle was stopped to pick up passengers, a nearby cat darted under our vehicle as it was pulling away,” a company spokesperson said.
I’m not super keen on robo-cars, because they’re being rushed out by corporations that want to start raking in the money while using the public to beta test their platform. but let’s be honest here, if the car was driven by a human, they almost certainly would have run over that cat too.
Mmmm. You’re taking “company spokesperson” at face value there.
Let’s be real though, a meeting of highly paid, highly skilled people came up with that response then it was sanitised through three more filters before reaching our eyes.
And for all that it doesn’t even make sense. Was the car stopped or was it pulling away?
Cripty is a classic bootlicker.
listen, it doesn’t matter how obsessed you are with me, I’m not going to sleep with you. I’m out of your league.
Says the guy who is here to defend corporations again.
The only league you are in is the bootlicker competition.
the irony of a liberal calling anyone a bootlicker. since you love landlords so much, you should start charging me rent for all the space I take up in your mind.
A bootlicking Anarchist!? You should be ashamed to be on that instance.
Go defend some more corps simp.
lol says the .worlder. you fit right into that instance. now go hide in the corner and obsess about me some more, you weirdo.
I would have stopped, because I’m not full of shit.
I’m against robotaxis but in this particular case the taxi was stopped and the cat darted under it as it started to move. A human driver would have likely hit it too.
cats don’t dart under moving vehicles. i reckon the statement is partially bullshit
Human drivers have probably killed dozens of cats since this singular incident and not a peep. People are so fuckin stupid
People who keep their kids inside but let their pets play in traffic are psychopaths.
I know what I said.
Who told you that cat was someone’s pet?
The linked article, like the person claimed.
“We send our deepest sympathies to the cat’s owner and the community who knew and loved him"
Picture of cat shows a collar, tag, and bell. It’s a pet.
The linked Article doesn’t say anything about any pets. The quote you used is from Waymo, who didn’t know anything about the cat besides the fact that their robot car ran it over.
The tag in the picture is a rabies tag, not an ownership tag. The collar is to hold the rabies tag, and the bell is attached to the collar.
The article has quotes from several community members grieving the loss of the cat, yet not from any supposed owner and doesn’t even mention any owner. The cat is very obviously a local stray.
My quote is from the linked article.
Doubling down and re-stating your claims again as fact won’t make reality change.
Nowhere in that article does it say anything about the cat being a pet, nor does it state that the cat has an owner. It references an outside statement from Waymo where they, like you, appear to assume the cat has an owner without anything to indicate that, but nobody who spoke to The Guardian for that article said a single thing about the cat being a pet or having an owner.
The cat was very obviously a local stray. Doubling down and insisting there’s an owner without any proof of an owner existing in that article will not make reality change. Unless you can find in that article where it says the cat was a pet, or identifies an owner, you’re just making things up.
It references Waymo’s public statement in the article. The article is the webpage that is linked by OP. You can read it if you click the link, and you can see the quote for yourself.
Ah yes, local strays get tagged and collared and have bells. They also have their ‘family’ members who run the bodega they live out of get upset when other people start memecoins to exploit the situation when they are not family. Stray is mentioned nowhere in the article - and yet if fits your narrative so you try to jam the square peg in the round hole.
I’m done talking to this particular brick wall. 🚫
Lmao bringing up what Waymo said in their public statement a third time will not help your case like it’s a magical incantation. Nowhere does it say Waymo was able to identify or reach out to an owner, nor does the article speak of an owner who was reached out to by Waymo. Some canned text on a public statement is not an authoritative source of information on an individual animal you donut.
Unless you can find the part in this article where somebody calls the cat a pet, or identifies literally anybody as an owner, you’re just hallucinating what isn’t there. Are you an AI? It would explain the emoji.
Ah yes, local strays get tagged and collared and have bells.
Correct. Neighborhoods cats with no owner often have people take them to vets and get vaccinated/spayed. This keeps the cat from having its ears clipped, being dumped in a different neighborhood, or even being put down. They would want any animal control to know they’ve done this, so they need to display the tag. For this they buy a collar, as tags can’t be suspend in midair by magic. The fact that the collar they bought has a bell on it is unremarkable, many cat collars have little bells in them.
They also have their ‘family’ members who run the bodega they live out of get upset when other people start memecoins to exploit the situation when they are not family
The cat doesn’t live out of the bodega, it lives on the street. It visits the bodega. More hallucinations from you. Did you even read the article? Or just Waymo’s public statement. Do you work for Waymo?
I’m very glad you’re done trying to pin the fault of this tragedy on innocent people. We can revisit it if any information comes out that supports your assertion.
There is probably an elevated risk of killing cats in any electric vehicle because there are fewer signs that the car is “on” and about to drive.
Idk, I find that at low speeds electric cars are louder than modern internal combustion. They have that SciFi drone sound.
Not when parked. A cat would thi k it was a parked car.
there are those newfangled ICE cars that turn off instead of idle. i don’t quite know how i feel.
It’s not really all that newfangled. It was part of the eurozone’s requirements for cars and was put in other places as well. I think that it’s approaching a decade now. My neighbor’s 2017 has it.
the pandemic really fucked with my sense of time. the last week has taken a decade and the last decade feels present.
So glad I live far away from the tech bros. Must be so annoying living in the bay area.
It’s not, but everyone has their preferences so live where you wanna live
Used to go to SF for work events.
It felt like a town that once had culture that still wants to peek out, but it almost entirely covered with silicon valley monotony and misanthropic policies. It feels like a city where the people living there are the after thought, and the tablet where you order your coffee while you sit around a room where nobody makes eye contact or speaks to you is the product.
I’m sure there’s a part of the city where humanity still thrives, but it should be a cultural warning to those who are adopting silicon valley cures as anything other than snake oil.
You were probably downtown for a work event. The culture is in the neighborhoods
I’ve been to San Francisco and they live like sardines.
It’s not as bad as LA, but they’re trying.
