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Robot Cars Are Causing 911 False Alarms in San Francisco

Robot Cars Are Causing 911 False Alarms in San Francisco

For some residents of San Francisco, the robotic future of driving is just a tap away. Ride-hailing services from GM subsidiary Cruise and Alphabet company Waymo allow them to summon a driverless ride with an app. But some riders have become perhaps too comfortable with the technology.

In a letter filed with a California regulator yesterday, city agencies complained that on three separate occasions since December, Cruise staff called 911 after a passenger in one of its driverless vehicles became “unresponsive” to the two-way voice link installed in each car. Each time, police and firefighters rushed to the scene but found the same thing: a passenger who had fallen asleep in their robot ride.

The agencies’ letter complains that the incidents wasted public money and potentially diverted resources from people truly in need. “Taxpayer funded emergency response resources used for nonemergencies undermine their availability to members of the public in true nee[d],” wrote the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, the San Francisco County Transportation Authority, and the Mayor’s Office on Disability.

The letter was one of a series sent to the California Public Utilities Commission this week by transportation officials in San Francisco and Los Angeles seeking to pump the brakes on Cruise and Waymo’s requests to expand their paid robotaxi services in both cities. The cities say they’re worried the technology isn’t ready. And they want the companies to be required to share more data about the performance of their cars, and meet specific benchmarks, before service can be expanded.

The San Francisco agencies cite a number of unsettling and previously unreported incidents, including the false alarms over snoozing riders and two incidents in which self-driving vehicles from Cruise appear to have impeded firefighters from doing their jobs. 

One incident occurred in June of last year, a few days after the state gave Cruise permission to pick up paying passengers in the city. One of the company’s robotaxis ran over a fire hose in use at an active fire scene, the agencies’ letter says, an action that “can seriously injure firefighters.”

In the second incident, just last week, the city says firefighters attending a major fire in the Western Addition neighborhood saw a driverless Cruise vehicle approaching. They “made efforts to prevent the Cruise AV from driving over their hoses and were not able to do so until they shattered a front window of the Cruise AV,” the San Francisco agencies wrote in their letter. 

San Francisco Fire Department spokesperson Jonathan Baxter confirmed that the two incidents occurred. He says that in the most recent it took approximately two minutes for the autonomous vehicle to stop, and that the department is in touch with Cruise about both encounters with firefighters. Cruise spokesperson Hannah Lindow says the vehicle was stationary by the time a firefighter broke its glass. WIRED previously reported that a Cruise vehicle blocked one of the department’s fire engines on the way to a major blaze for roughly 25 seconds last spring.

Lindow says that some data Cruise provides to regulators must be kept private for customer safety, and to protect “proprietary information.” She wrote in a statement that the company has “driven millions of miles in an extremely complex urban environment with zero life-threatening injuries or fatalities.”

The Earth Is Begging You to Accept Smaller EV Batteries

The Earth Is Begging You to Accept Smaller EV Batteries

Humanity may not exactly be winning its battle to avert climate change, but the electrification of cars has begun to look like a success story. Ten percent of new passenger vehicles sold around the world last year were electric, powered by batteries instead of gasoline—the extraction of which costs the world not only in noxious carbon emissions, but in local environmental damage to the communities on the front lines. 

Still, that revolution has its own dirty side. If the goal is to electrify everything we have now, ASAP—including millions of new trucks and SUVs with ranges similar to gas-powered models—there will be a massive increase in demand for minerals used in batteries like lithium, nickel, and cobalt. That means a lot more holes in the ground—nearly 400 new mines by 2035, according to one estimate from Benchmark Minerals—and a lot more pollution and ecological destruction along with them. It’s why a new study published today by researchers associated with UC Davis tries to map out a different path, one where decarbonization can be achieved with less harm, and perhaps faster. It starts with fewer cars.

The analysis focuses on lithium, an element found in almost every design of electric car batteries. The metal is abundant on Earth, but mining has been concentrated in a few places, such as Australia, Chile, and China. And like other forms of mining, lithium extraction is a messy business. Thea Riofrancos, a political scientist at Providence College who worked on the research project, knows what hundreds of new mines would look like on the ground. She has seen what a falling water table near a lithium mine does to drought conditions in the Atacama desert and how indigenous groups have been left out of the benefits of extraction while being put in the way of its harms. 

Riofrancos and the team looked at paths to sunset gas-powered cars, but in a way that replaces them with fewer EVs, using smaller batteries. A future with millions of long-range, hefty eSUVs isn’t the default. Still, “the goal isn’t to say, ‘No new mining, ever,” says Alissa Kendall, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Davis who coauthored the research. Instead, she says the researchers found that “we can do this better” if people become less reliant on cars to get around.

The team mapped out five paths for the US, each focusing on different scenarios for lithium demand. In the first, the world keeps on the path it has laid out for itself: Cars become electric, Americans sustain their love affair with big trucks and SUVs, and the number of cars per person stays the same. Few people take public transit because, frankly, the majority of systems continue to suck. 

The other scenarios model worlds with progressively better public transit and walking and biking infrastructure. In the greenest of them, changes in housing and land use policy allow everything—homes, shops, jobs, schools—to get closer together, shrinking commutes and other routine journeys. Trains replace buses, and the share of people who own a car at all drops dramatically. In this world, fewer new electric vehicles are sold in 2050 than were sold in 2021, and those that do roll off the lot have smaller electric batteries, made up of mostly recycled materials, so every new one doesn’t need more mining to support it.

Meta Eyes a Moderation Partner With ‘Traumatizing’ Working Conditions

Meta Eyes a Moderation Partner With ‘Traumatizing’ Working Conditions

Meta has cut ties with a subcontractor that provided moderators for its African markets, just weeks before the tech giant is due to appear in a Kenyan court to face allegations of human trafficking and union busting.

The company has ended a contract with outsourcing company Sama, which former employee Daniel Motaung accused last year of imposing “unreasonable working conditions,” including irregular pay, inadequate mental health support, and violations of workers’ privacy. 

But conditions at the company that is poised to take on the Meta contract appear to be equally bad, if not worse. Meta has not confirmed which company will take up the new contract, but the Financial Times reported on January 10 that it would likely be Majorel, a Luxembourg-based outsourcing company that already has content moderation contracts with Meta in Morocco, and offices across the world. 

“The job is traumatizing, and we are being given peanuts,” one Majorel employee in Nairobi, who works as a content moderator for TikTok, told WIRED. They described long hours watching graphic content of beheadings, mutilations, and suicides for a monthly salary of less than 35,000 Kenya shillings, or around $281. “We cannot even sustain our normal lives.” 

The employee’s description of conditions at Majorel was confirmed by other moderators working at the company and by messages in private social media groups, seen by WIRED.

Both TikTok and Meta moderators that worked with Majorel described viewing hundreds of potentially traumatic images a day, with little support from counsellors. TikTok moderators in Nairobi say that while performance-based bonuses are possible, they are difficult to get and those who complained about working conditions felt they were denied promotions and received poor reviews. Moderators in the Nairobi offices also complained of not getting monthly payslips to confirm their pay, instead being routed to an online portal that was last updated in October.

Neither Meta nor Majorel responded to requests for comment.

Majorel employees, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation, told WIRED that Meta executives visited the Majorel office in Nairobi in mid-January and said staff were told that the company would be taking on a Meta contract. 

Job advertisements on Fuzu.com, a platform for job postings in Africa, show that Majorel is currently hiring content moderators who speak Kirundi, Tigrinya, Oromo, Luganda, Kinyarwanda, Tswana, Afrikaans, Zulu, Amharic, and Somali. Sama provided Meta’s moderation in most of these languages. 

While working conditions at Sama, which is certified as a social enterprise, have been heavily criticized, the company paid moderators more than Majorel is offering new employees, according to an individual who worked on a Meta contract and spoke to WIRED on condition of anonymity. Sama moderators were paid around 60,000 Kenyan shillings ($483) a month, which still made them among the poorest-compensated workers in Meta’s moderation networks. 

A 2019 report from the Verge found that content moderators in the US made $15 per hour. By contrast, Sama employees were paid between $1.46 and $2.20 per hour. Previous reporting found that moderators in India made close to $2 per hour.

A Damning US Report Lays Bare Amazon’s Worker Injury Crisis

A Damning US Report Lays Bare Amazon’s Worker Injury Crisis

Amazon was hit with an unusually forceful safety citation by federal investigators in the US today. The findings appear to back up what some workers at the company have long alleged: that the online retail giant’s warehouse and fulfillment facilities are designed for speed over safety, causing lower-back injuries and other musculoskeletal disorders at high rates.

The citation released by the Occupational Health and Safety Administration today concluded that Amazon was “failing to keep workers safe.” The company did not properly protect them from hazards likely to cause “serious physical harm,” the agency claims. Despite years of allegations from workers and state-level investigations into Amazon’s injury rates, today’s action brought the first federal fines imposed on Amazon for worker musculoskeletal injuries.

“The citations are actually very substantive,” says Debbie Berkowitz, a former senior adviser for OSHA and a worker safety fellow at Georgetown University. The investigation was unusually large for OSHA, and it is the agency’s first to require that Amazon implement basic ergonomic principles to prevent injury, she says. The same investigation led OSHA in December to cite Amazon for failing to record and report work injuries and illness.

Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel says the company intends to appeal the agency’s findings. “We’ve cooperated fully, and the government’s allegations don’t reflect the reality of safety at our sites,” she says. “The vast majority of our employees tell us they feel our workplace is safe.” The federal government doesn’t provide specific ergonomics guidance, and Amazon has invested significant time and money in lowering musculoskeletal risk, Nantel says, citing Amazon data that shows injury rates falling almost 15 percent between 2019 and 2021.

OSHA’s findings today echo research from a coalition of labor unions based on past injury data from the agency that concluded Amazon’s warehouse injury rates are often at least double that of Walmart, its nearest competitor in size and scope. During the 2022 holiday season, warehouse workers described to WIRED their personal battles with exhaustion from overwork, wrist injuries, loud noise, and high-speed productivity expectations. 

The severity of the condemnation in the new federal citation was not matched by the penalty. If Amazon loses its planned appeal, it will have to pay a proposed fine of $60,269—a trifling amount relative to its nearly $1 trillion market capitalization.

OSHA fines for very specific, repeated, and drastic violations can increase to millions of dollars. The oil company BP has faced multiple fines amounting to over $10 million for spills and refinery accident-related violations. But the cap on fines for the types of safety violations that can cause back injuries, fractures, or sprains is much lower, creating little financial incentive for companies to change. “OSHA’s fines have historically been incredibly low, but the company got the highest fines possible, I believe, for every violation cited,” Berkowitz of Georgetown says.

OSHA generally tries to persuade companies like Amazon to prevent future injuries through detailed letters of inspection that include suggestions to improve processes causing injury. Those “hazard” letters were sent on January 17 to three Amazon facilities that OSHA inspected during the course of this investigation, in Deltona, Florida; Waukegan, Illinois; and New Windsor, New York.

One letter sent to the Waukegan facility describes more than 20 sprains, fractures, bruises, and lacerations to feet, arms, faces, and other body parts caused by workers losing control of packages weighing over 50 pounds.

Right-to-Repair Advocates Question John Deere’s New Promises

Right-to-Repair Advocates Question John Deere’s New Promises

Deere’s new agreement states that it will ensure that farmers and independent repair shops can subscribe to or buy tools, software, and documentation from the company or its authorized repair facilities “on fair and reasonable terms.” The tractor giant also says it will ensure that any farmer, independent technician, or independent repair facility will have electronic access to Deere’s Customer Service Advisor, a digital database of operator and technical manuals that’s available for a fee.

The memorandum also promises to give farmers the option to “reset equipment that has been immobilized”—something that can happen when a security feature is inadvertently triggered. Farmers could previously only reset their equipment by going to a John Deere dealer or having a John Deere-authorized technician come to them. “That’s been a huge complaint,” says Nathan Proctor, who leads US PIRG’s right-to-repair campaign. “Farmers will be relieved to know there might be a non-dealer option for that.”

Other parts of the new agreement, however, are too vague to offer significant help to farmers, proponents of the right to repair say. Although the memorandum has much to say about access to diagnostic tools, farmers need to fix as well as identify problems, says Schweitzer, who raises cattle on his 3,000-acre farm, Tiber Angus, in central Montana. “Being able to diagnose a problem is great, but when you find out that it’s a sensor or electronic switch that needs to be replaced, typically that new part has to be reprogrammed with the electronic control unit on board,” he said. “And it’s unclear whether farmers will have access to those tools.”

Deere spokesperson Haber said that “as equipment continues to evolve and technology advances on the farm, Deere continues to be committed to meeting those innovations with enhanced tools and resources.” The company this year will launch the ability to download software updates directly into some equipment with a 4G wireless connection, he said. But Haber declined to say whether farmers would be able to reprogram equipment parts without the involvement of the company or an authorized dealer.

The new agreement isn’t legally binding. It states that should either party determine that the MOU is no longer viable, all they have to do is provide written notice to the other party of their intent to withdraw. And both US PIRG and Schweitzer note that other influential farmers groups are not party to the agreement, such as the National Farmers Union, where Schweitzer is a board member and runs the Montana chapter. 

Schweitzer is also concerned by the way the agreement is sprinkled with promises to offer farmers or independent repair shops “fair and reasonable terms” on access to tools or information. “‘Fair and reasonable’ to a multibillion-dollar company can be a lot different for a farmer who is in debt, trying to make payments on a $200,000 tractor and then has to pay $8,000 to $10,000 to purchase hardware for repairs,” he says. 

The agreement signed by Deere this week comes on the heels of New York governor Kathy Hochul signing into law the Digital Fair Repair Act, which requires companies to provide the same tools and information to the public that are given to their own repair technicians.

However, while right-to-repair advocates mostly cheered the law as precedent-setting, it was weakened by last-minute compromises to the bill, such as making it applicable only to devices manufactured and sold in New York on or after July 1, 2023, and by excluding medical devices, automobiles, and home appliances.