Robots Need a License Plate
A robot at a restaurant in San Jose started dancing uncontrollably a few days ago. It smashed plates, sent chopsticks flying. Three employees spent minutes trying to stop it, searching an app for the shutdown command. No emergency button, no switch. Just three people trying to physically restrain a machine that wouldn’t stop. The robot was wearing an apron that read “I’m good.” It wasn’t.
This is what happens when a chatbot hallucinates. Except here it happens physically. Autonomous robots run on probabilistic systems, the same engine that makes Artificial Intelligence assistants invent data. When a chatbot hallucinates, you close the tab. When a robot hallucinates, it comes at you.
In San Jose the system made autonomous decisions, kept executing them, and nobody knew how to stop it. That was a small robot. Think about a 65-kilogram one in a warehouse, or a hospital.
We regulated drones: you can’t fly one without a license, insurance, airspace rules. Cars: no vehicle circulates without a license plate, inspection, mandatory insurance. Autonomous robots in public spaces operate with none of these rules. Just because you don’t see them in your city yet doesn’t mean they’re not coming.
I’ve proposed something simple: mandatory visible license plates on every autonomous robot in public space. Large, readable, traceable. If a robot damages you, you need to know who’s responsible.
The international standard for industrial robots exists, it covers factories but not the restaurant where you’re having dinner. They’re high-risk and not regulated for civilian use, and meanwhile you can buy them on Amazon. With physical robots the hallucination has material consequences. It has weight, it has arms.
Mandatory license plates, physical emergency stop, mandatory insurance, clear liability. We already did all of this for every other machine that moves among people. What do you think?
#ArtificialDecisions #MCC