The question was about theoretical possibility - practical limitations of present-day tech are irrelevant. OP also didn’t put any constraints on how big, heavy or complex the robot would have to be, or if it has to be able to do anything else besides make more of itself. Even if the machinery it has to contain occupies a city block, that’s okay.

Yes, theoretically of course it is.

On the stock thing, maybe wait until after the AI bubble bursts and half them go bankrupt.

What we actually need to govern is management stupidity.

It gets reported and investigated all the time. PG&E, a large power company in California, paid around $14 billion in the court case following the big fires there a few years ago.

You’re talking about general character not level of friendship.

Because the US has Freedom! and other countries have plain old actual freedom.

I want one where the detectives who find the days-old dead body puke their guts out because of the smell.

Good point, the sounds car companies use probably have to be approved by regulators.

Not true, young padawan. I personally hit a jaywalker one time and didn’t even get a traffic citation. She was crossing against the light, at night, in a pounding rain, and apparently hadn’t bothered to look. I wasn’t quite able to stop in time. Witnesses confirmed my story and contradicted hers (that she was in the crosswalk with the light in her favor). If somebody disables their own hearing it’s on them, but if they claimed not to hear you and your car was in fact not making any sound because you disabled it (in violation of federal law) it would be on you.

Modern Americans will complain but they won’t significantly resist, because actual resistance is too much harder than typing.

Imagine if somebody invented a replicator!

If you’re in the US federal law requires EVs to emit sounds while going under about 20 mph so pedestrians and cyclists can hear them approach. If you ever hit anybody who steps into the street because they couldn’t hear you, you’ll be in deep doggie doodoo.

Mine has selections but no option to use my own.

Sounds like an excellent question to pose in a constitutional law class. Let’s put our best social media randos on it!

Is there a publicly available list of domains lemmy instances filter out? For transparency.

Nobody’s ever gotten mad at me for using wikipedia. Does this happen anywhere specific?

Sensible attitude. I would think certifying these vehicles for public roads requires a black-box type recording system, as on airliners, which local authorities would immediately collect for a crash investigation. If so, that data will show whether the car or the guy was driving. There’s really no point in people taking sides based on feeling a certain way about Elon Musk.

Since it’s a US-only phenomenon, looking at vehicle types popular in the US seems like a good starting place, but that assumes phone use affects people’s awareness of their surroundings uniformly - I would want to confirm that by ruling out cultural differences between countries.

I thought big trucks and SUVs were doing it - at least that’s what a different headline said.