Cool. Can I take one without my identity and travel patterns being tracked? Like, suppose I want to get picked up from work and dropped off at my girlfriend's house in San Mateo. Something I might not want my soon-to-be-ex's lawyer to be able to subpoena. There's one of those machines onboard that are all over the place in supermarkets where I can feed bills right?
Or maybe not. Okay then, Luxor Cab it is. Cheaper, better conversation, more aggressive about squeezing through traffic, and doesn't violate my privacy.
I'm not against automated taxi services in principle. I'm just not interested if it's a package deal where I have to surrender my physical comings and goings to a scummy data broker like Google.
interestingly the NYC yellow cabs were recording all this data for a while and released it in an "anonymized" dataset, which turned out to be pretty easy to deanonymize because people tend to be picked up or dropped off near their homes or workplaces.
"Waymo may disclose user personal information to third parties to tailor advertising and offers to your interests. Such disclosures may be considered “sales” or “sharing” of personal information under the California Consumer Privacy Act."
It is rather surprising that so many here downvote the obvious, which even non-technical Guardian journalists have found out.
The phrasing here is due to the CPRA which specifically requires that the link be titled "Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information" even for ad targeting.
As far as I understand the advertising model is the same as with Google Ads - Google builds profiles and lets advertisers target users based on profiles. They do not sell user data, and I'm not personally aware of a case where Google has even been alleged to be selling user data.
I can't imagine a self-driving car request via an app could be accomplished without _someone_ knowing / tracking your travel patterns. You can't do cash transactions because that would be rife for smash-n-grabs from others.
With a regular taxi I just call from a phone in a hotel lobby and ask to be picked up a block or so from my location. No reason there can't be a dispatch service you can call for self-driving taxis too.
Crime happens, but that's why there's insurance. It's not like cab drivers don't get robbed too. It doesn't (and shouldn't) stop cash commerce.
Obviously you do surrender all of your travel privacy to the data broker. That's why they are making self-driving cars in the first place. But you're already doing all of that by carrying an Android phone.
You can tell this is an academic fight because it contains the phrase "disproportionately harm marginalised groups", which is the San Francisco version of pounding the table when they don't have an actual argument.
More importantly it doesn't mention making money off it.
Or maybe not. Okay then, Luxor Cab it is. Cheaper, better conversation, more aggressive about squeezing through traffic, and doesn't violate my privacy.
I'm not against automated taxi services in principle. I'm just not interested if it's a package deal where I have to surrender my physical comings and goings to a scummy data broker like Google.