Zoox: it's not a word.

Look, I'm not anti-robot, I'm just anti-pointless robot. Or more precisely anti-robot where the point is to eliminate a human's job so that the shareholders or whoever can buy another yacht or a bit coin or whatever else it is bajillioniares are into.

"Human suffering. We're mostly into human suffering."

-bajillionaires

As long as nothing ever collides
with it ever, you should be fine.

Which brings us to Zoox. What's a zoox, you might reasonably ask? Well, first of all, it's Zoox, with a capital "Z." It's a nonsense word invented solely so they'd have a name they could trademark. Secondly, "it's not a car," according to the website. "It's a robo-taxi designed around you." But it is a car. It's 100% a car. Or at least a golf cart. Again, this is about the marketing, and not about providing a useful description. So, to be clear, of it's definitely, albeit one that looks like a box on wheels. A fragile, mostly plastic box on wheels, with no driver.

"Well, I got bathroom breaks."

-Jeff "Dick Rocket" Bezos

No human driver, that is. Instead it's an autonomous vehicle. You know, those things that are mowing down pedestrians, and clogging up city streets? Unlike Waymos, these things don't resemble cars (although they're totally cars). Instead they remind me more of twenty-first century horse drawn-carriage, but without the horse, or charm. A horseless carriage if you will (again: car). Oh, and it's owned by an online retailer called Amazon. You might remember them as the company that made its employees poop in bags rather than give them bathroom breaks. 

Even charmless manosphere
homunculi can drive electric vehicles.

Admittedly this was some years ago, and I should probably let it go, but I mean: poop. In bags. Anyway, more recently the company has been in the news for trying to replace their employees with robots, so I suppose this tracks. So I guess my question is, what's the justification here? In what way are autonomous taxis better than those driven by humans? Now before you say they're electric, I will remind you that humans can drive electric vehicles too. We don't have to trade cabbies for electric cars. What I'm asking is who benefits from robots-taxis?

In what way is an autonomous taxi superior to one driven by a person?

Hang on, I'm getting there.

Besides, Zoox's transverse seating creates
the social awkwardness that comes with having
to stare at your fellow passengers the whole ride.

Sure, passengers don't have to make awkward conversation with a Zoox. But I'm not sure we should be willing to trade the livelihoods of cabbies and ride-shar-ies (that's the term, right?), just to sooth out social anxiety. And to be clear, I don't love Uber and Lyft, like, as things, but at least it's still a job. A person does a thing--drives an Uber--and receives compensation for it. Job. Zoox is a product that replaces someone's job. The company's slogan suggests that it's "built around you," but it's not. Of course it's not. It's designed around and for the sole purpose of, generating revenue. 

And ok, I know, boooo, capitalism. Get me, I'm edgy, but I really do think it bears repeating that every time we hail a Zoox instead of a cab, or buy a thing off of Amazon instead of a small business, or use generative AI instead of an actual human artist we're just making the world a little bit shittier. Which, I mean, you wouldn't think that would be a needle we could even move at this point, but here we are.

This just in: unfettered capitalism might not be in the best interests of everyone.