Robots are being used to deter homeless people from setting up camp in San Francisco...

[TheWorldNewsOrg]

Robots produced by Silicon Valley startup Knightscope are being used to shoo away homeless people in San Francisco. Knightscope’s business model is to rent the robots to customers for $7 an hour, which is about $3 less than minimum wage in California.

— MetaProgram (@ProgramMeta) December 13, 2017

via TheWorldNewsOrg

World News

[TheWorldNewsOrg]

Robots are being used to deter homeless people from setting up camp in San Francisco https://t.co/vgbIBJMqYz http://pic.twitter.com/z74K9vsTH2

— Business Insider (@businessinsider) December 12, 2017

via TheWorldNewsOrg

World News

[JW Insider]

Amazing that China, for example, generally builds robots to focus on building things, and the United States builds robots to keep the status quo. These particular robots make a good metaphor for the silicon valley economy. They are kept so that rich people can't be bothered or disturbed after exploiting properties through gentrification processes. SF is notorious for extremely low new building projects to keep real estate prices high, where most adjacent counties in California have much more unimproved and untouched acreage than acreage that has been built upon. In fact, even where SF will begin to expand is not into newly zoned areas for new building, except by encroaching upon Oakland so that additional gentrification processes can be used to remove the majority black and latino populations to rebuild Oakland as a playground for the rich. Silicon Valley has even been finding ways to aid this specific type of gentrification, even through social media, military and law enforcement support -- and Oakland was one of the first targets.

 

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

If you really want to disperse homeless people with robots ...(but it may cost $3.00 an hour extra ...) have them erratically weave in and out among the homeless, waving their arms wildly, and saying ( in both English and Spanish ...) "I am a 30 second bomb .... I am a 29 second bomb ... I am a .... BZZZZT!".

[TrueTomHarley]

“Robots produced by Silicon Valley startup Knightscope are being used to shoo away homeless people in San Francisco.”

 

I wonder how they go about this. Can’t one jam a stick in their spokes?

 

[James Thomas Rook Jr.]

... a coffee cup full of gasoline ... ?

[Space Merchant]

They should be concern about getting people off the streets into shelters and sanctuaries rather than booting them elsewhere. Robotic force is a no-go.