alt Hacker NewsI am going to say the question is the wrong way to look at this. People behave differently in different situations. While I am very conflicted like the GP about this specific case. I don’t think it’s as simple as - don’t do anything you won’t do in a human driven cab, and if you do those things, then calling cops should be acceptable.
On the contrary, we have a long history of evidence that when people think they aren't being watched, enough of them will do awful things.
This is why public restrooms in the US are vandalized, why there are low effort graffiti tags all over, litter in parks, and more.
People believing that something is watching - a human or machine with the autonomy to enact consequences - preserves the commons for the rest of us.