5 Things Not To Ask Your Robotaxi Driver
You didn’t care how their night was going when they were human so you don’t have to pretend to care now.
Robotaxis are rolling out across the United States and the world. In Atlanta, May Mobility has just launched its ride through the Lyft app. In Las Vegas, bleary-eyed gamblers and partygoers can now hail a free Zoox to take them back to their hotels. And, in countries like Australia, national driving authorities are greenlighting trials on busy city roads.
Australians have always had an informal (if not downright disrespectful) attitude towards taxis and their Uber successors. We don’t just see them as a transport method - we see them as a place to socialise and in a typically ridiculous fashion.
We have always taken the risk of getting too friendly with our drivers, drunkenly asking them borderline offensive questions that we stupidly perceive as just “being friendly to the bloke”.
We run the risk of doing the same to our future robotaxi drivers, but with markedly different results:
1. “Been busy tonight?”
You didn’t care when you asked your human driver this question, and so you won’t have to pretend with a robotaxi driver. You and your fear of awkward silences will no longer force you to utter the most inane of questions to your driver when said driver is a robot.
You will no longer have to brood on your social anxiety, sitting at the side of a quiet human driver until you blurt out what will surely be an automated response from a robot one (“I have conducted many trips, so yes, you could say it has been busy tonight”).
2. “Can I smoke in here?”
Just because you’re drunk and allowing yourself your weekly regression to your filthy vice it doesn’t mean your robotaxi driver should have to put up with it. Because, whilst smoking is inherently bad for your human driver’s health, it will also be bad for your robotaxi driver’s health, as cigarette smoke can damage technology, polluting the electrical atmosphere and staining the surface of a fancy new Tesla.
3. “Where are you from?”
Asking your human driver where they are from is racist. Therefore, asking your robotaxi driver where they are from will be inherently robocist (a term I am claiming to have coined regarding discrimination towards robots).
In fact, in roboethics, there are already studies being conducted regarding discrimination towards our robot cohabitants, with fears that our unfortunate human predilection towards fear of “the other” will spread towards machines.
4. “But where are you really from?”
Now you’re starting to look really robocist. It was an off-hand question the first time around, and so forcing the issue isn’t going to make the situation any better. You’re just digging a leather seat-sized hole for yourself, and one that will lead to getting a bad robotaxi rating. It doesn’t make a difference what factory your robotaxi and its driver are from, so long as they’re getting your drunken a*rse home safely.
5. “Do you want anything from Maccas?”
It’s a robot - it cannot eat. We know you’re just trying to be nice by offering your robotaxi driver something from Maccas (especially after the previous faux pas). However, your offers will fall on deaf microphones as you cannot simply force-feed a Filet-O-Fish into an onboard computer. Just get your Maccas and wait until you’re slumped nakedly across your bed before you start dropping mayonnaise-covered lettuce across the duvet.
Your human driver didn’t need any of this BS, and your robotaxi driver certainly won’t either. Be sure to maintain your five-star robotaxi rating by avoiding asking any of these offensive or ridiculous questions.
