Serve Robotics, which delivers food for Uber Eats, provided footage filmed by at least one of its robots to the LAPD as evidence in a criminal case. The emails show the robots, which are a constant sight in the city, can be used for surveillance.
The specific incident in question was a grand larceny case where two men tried (and failed) to steal a robot owned and operated by Serve Robotics, which ultimately wants to deploy βup to 2,000 robotsβ to deliver food for UberEats in Los Angeles. The suspects were arrested and convicted.
So it wasn't like some incidental crime that happened to be filmed by the robot, they were literally trying to steal the robot. I mean... of course the victims provided the police with the evidence they had to help catch and convict the people who tried to rob them? This is like a hit-and-run victim giving the police their dash cam footage.
The videos of people breaking them, riding them, humping them, stealing food out of them, is so fucking on point about how some of our behavior. Why would any company trust that these things would not get fucked with?
With emergent tech you ALWAYS have to look at who's interested.
I don't have facts, but I'd like to think it's more the low and middle class who use services like Doordash and UberEats.
I can imagine them soon introducing a way to "verify" the correct customer by doing a facial scan.
Suddenly cops are allowed to use the scanning and live feeds from these robots on the streets to keep an eye on persons of interest, and suddenly there are patrolling robots on the streets, that can grass people up without them even realising.
You absolutely won't see the upper class communities with these patrolling robots around (saying it's too oppressive!), so it becomes a tool to spy on lower socio-economic communities. And of course, any attempt to damage them is met with a fine, or arrest.
Amazon's Ring cameras have already been used to provide recordings to cops. Those were private devices so the cops can't just tap into them whenever they want. But a Doordash robot is fully exempt of that limitation.
It's the same as some random-ass human walking down the street with their phone recording something. If you're in public you have zero expectation of privacy, especially in the era of everyone having a handheld video recording device within reach of them at all times. Any one of those humans could share video with the LAPD and no one could really say a thing.
Cameras being used for surveillance? Who the heck would have thought that would be possible...
Just wait till these things take photos inside your house then automatically file a report and get you arrested because they saw weed or some shit in the background.
A food delivery robot company that delivers for Uber Eats in Los Angeles provided video filmed by one of its robots to the Los Angeles Police Department as part of a criminal investigation, 404 Media has learned. The incident highlights the fact that delivery robots that are being deployed to sidewalks all around the country are essentially always filming, and that their footage can and has been used as evidence in criminal trials. Emails obtained by 404 Media also show that the robot food delivery company wanted to work more closely with the LAPD, which jumped at the opportunity.
Again, no shit. And wait until these robots start filming inside your house bla blah blah bla.
I'd be less concerned if it was merely a private security company and not the LAPD, since it would be more likely to only be used to prevent theft and vandalism of the robots themselves.