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The Hitchhiking Robot Experiment Did Not Do So Well

posted by janrinok on Sunday August 02 2015, @10:48PM   Printer-friendly
from the the-robots-will-remember... dept.

tonyPick writes:

The Hitchbot, a hitchhiking robot which was planned to tour the US has apparently failed to make it out of Philadelphia.

When hitchBOT the hitchhiking robot started his journey in Boston two weeks ago he wanted to see the entire country. Unfortunately, he never made it out of the Northeast. The researchers who built hitchBOT announced today that they need to stop the experiment because hitchBOT was vandalized in Philadelphia.
...
The goal of the hitchhiking trip was to see how humans would interact with hitchBOT. And apparently the answer was "not well." HitchBOT has been around the world, including trips across the entirety of Canada and Germany without major incident. But America is clearly a hard land for our robot brothers and sisters.

Previous SN article.

Originally spotted at io9.

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 2) by e_armadillo on Monday August 03 2015, @06:20PM

    by e_armadillo (3695) on Monday August 03 2015, @06:20PM (#217483)

    I fail to see how this is insightful. Inherently violent? Based on what information? Based on a couple internet news articles?(the Guardian maybe?) Based on the decisions of its leadership? These are hardly representative of the population as a whole, yes they were elected in our system, but that doesn't excuse taking them as the brush to paint the entire US population as violent.

    I am a father of four daughters, my wife is a whisp of a thing (100lb), and I can say that I am not nervous about their safety, or my own. It isn't because I have armed them to the teeth. I haven't loaded them up with pepper spray. My daughters ride mass transit and my wife walks to work. I have had disagreements with others in public, none have gone to blows. I have witnessed plenty of disagreements in public, and none of them have ended in violence. If SpockLogic's statement were true, then in my 50 years, I would think I should have witnessed at least a few instances of "inherent violence".

    We have our flaws, as do ALL countries. Saying the US is an inherently violent society is just wrong, and revising it to "inherently destructive" would be equally off.

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