San Francisco Outlaws Santa’s Little Robots

by  Charles Hughes

 If busy people in San Francisco were hoping for a helping hand from delivery robots in the holiday season, they are out of luck. After a previous attempt was voted down, San Francisco city supervisor Norman Yee’s proposal to impose a virtual ban on robot delivery in the city passed unanimously.  

The city had previously served as a hub of delivery robot testing and pilot programs, but now the operations and scope of delivery robots will be severely curtailed, and Santa’s little delivery helpers will not be around for the holidays.

“Not every innovation is all that great for society,” said supervisor Yee. He described these regulations as the “first and most restrictive” of their kind. 

But the ordinance is anything but praiseworthy: it errs too much on the side of precaution and could stifle innovation and the development of new technologies that would improve people's lives. Yee stressed that sidewalks in the city were for people, not robots. Imagine the lost opportunities if years ago regulators had insisted that roads were for horses, not cars.

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