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In China, delivery robots now ride the subway to restock 7-Eleven stores (www.scmp.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 27 points 1 year ago (5 children)

If the bots are required to have paid transit passes and if they're confined to off-peak hours when the subways aren't full anyway, this could actually be a net win for mass transit: they're putting money into the system while consuming relatively few resources, so the bots can fund improvements that benefit humans.

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  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Yeah. Just need to make sure that sensible restrictions are in place to prevent the creep into turning a public service into primarily a commercial one. Starts out only running during off hours, then running during active hours at a reduced rate, then it's got dedicated cars for the robots, then it overflows into passenger cars... you see where it's going. Best to set up guard rails before it's a problem.

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  • [–] -3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    This is China, not the US. They're not as greedy and disgusting.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    Just because it's the US doesn't mean it's not bigoted to generalize people, especially with such insulting and hateful generalizations. And Chinese companies are as motivated by profit as any company is, which means they would be interested in maximizing cost efficiency by scaling up services like this. Putting policies in place to protect other priorities for the public good is sensible no matter where you are.

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