Can good design stop content creators from having sex in robotaxis?

好的设计能阻止内容创作者在自动驾驶出租车里发生性行为吗？

Humans can be a frisky bunch, and it wasn’t very long after Tesla Autopilot started letting drivers go hands-free before people decided to post footage of themselves having sex from the driver’s seat. Recently, The San Francisco Standard interviewed multiple people who claimed to have had sex in robotaxis belonging to General Motors’ now-defunct Cruise. 人类有时会表现得非常“活跃”。在特斯拉的自动驾驶辅助系统（Autopilot）允许驾驶员解放双手后没多久，就有人开始发布自己在驾驶座上发生性行为的视频。最近，《旧金山标准报》采访了多位声称曾在通用汽车旗下现已停运的 Cruise 自动驾驶出租车内发生过性行为的人。

“There’s no one to tell you, ‘You can’t do that.’ It gets to the point where you’re more and more and more comfortable, and if you’re with someone, like a more serious partner, it can escalate to other activities,” one man told SF Standard. “没有人会告诉你‘你不能这样做’。当你感到越来越自在时，如果你和某人在一起，比如关系比较亲密的伴侣，事情就可能会升级为其他活动，”一名男子告诉《旧金山标准报》。

“The interiors of vehicles has been sexualized and appropriated for sex since forever in popular culture. You can see it in movies, you can see it in lyrics, you can see it in photography,” said Alexandros Rouchitsas, a human factors/UX researcher and one of the organizers of a recent workshop, “Love in Traffic,” that brought researchers from academia and industry together in late September in Sweden to consider how design can help the problem. “在流行文化中，车辆内部空间一直被赋予性色彩并被用作性行为场所。你可以在电影、歌词和摄影作品中看到这一点，”人因/用户体验研究员亚历山德罗斯·鲁奇萨斯（Alexandros Rouchitsas）说道。他是 9 月下旬在瑞典举办的“交通中的爱”（Love in Traffic）研讨会的组织者之一，该研讨会汇集了学术界和工业界的研究人员，共同探讨设计如何帮助解决这一问题。

A growing problem?

一个日益严重的问题？

One difference between a robotaxi and a human-driven ride is the removal of the social obligation to interact with a human driver. There’s no need to make small talk, and you won’t have to listen to someone’s terrible opinion, which can lead to riders assuming far more privacy than the cameras and ridership terms and conditions provide. That’s a lesson that a pair of teens who hired a Waymo, spent their ride getting drunk, and shot gel beads out the windows learned the hard way this summer. 自动驾驶出租车与人类驾驶车辆的一个区别在于，它消除了与人类司机互动的社交义务。你不需要闲聊，也不必听取司机的糟糕观点，这可能导致乘客误以为自己拥有比摄像头和乘车条款所提供的更多的隐私。今年夏天，两名青少年租用 Waymo 出租车，在车内醉酒并向窗外发射凝胶珠，他们以惨痛的教训学到了这一点。

“You may be driving by yourself, but that’s not your classic private environment,” Rouchitsas said. Rouchitsas said there are two prevalent use cases. The first is the content creator. “So you have OnlyFans, you have Pornhub, you have a very mature adult industry in the US. So opportunistic content creators that might perceive this Waymo or public shuttles as studios: very cheap, providing good lighting, soundproof—kind of,” Rouchitsas said. “你可能是一个人乘车，但这并不是你传统意义上的私人环境，”鲁奇萨斯说。他指出目前有两种普遍的使用场景。第一种是内容创作者。“在美国，有 OnlyFans，有 Pornhub，成人产业非常成熟。因此，投机取巧的内容创作者可能会把 Waymo 或公共班车视为工作室：非常便宜，提供良好的照明，而且隔音——某种程度上，”鲁奇萨斯说。

The other is tourists, who might not know local customs. “I come from Greece, and I also come from an island, so I know what tourist debauchery looks like, what young people tend to do when they’re given context-wise the chance to do so,” Rouchitsas said. Cultural differences are also a concern, particularly with tourists visiting countries with much less permissive societies than the one they are used to. 另一种是游客，他们可能不了解当地习俗。“我来自希腊，也来自一个岛屿，所以我知道游客的放纵行为是什么样的，也知道年轻人在特定环境下获得机会时倾向于做什么，”鲁奇萨斯说。文化差异也是一个担忧，特别是当游客前往那些社会氛围比他们习惯的更为保守的国家时。

“The important thing is that in the US, someone might take offense. In Sweden, someone might take offense. In other countries, someone might take offense and want to take further action, not stop at offense,” Rouchitsas said. “We had a visit at a design studio that specializes in [autonomous vehicles], and there are many brands that operate in the Middle East right now. So there are many brands that operate in Asia, in China. We’re talking about countries that have completely different legal frameworks,” he said. “重要的是，在美国，有人可能会感到被冒犯。在瑞典，有人可能会感到被冒犯。但在其他国家，有人可能会感到被冒犯并采取进一步行动，而不仅仅是感到冒犯，”鲁奇萨斯说。“我们曾参观过一家专门从事自动驾驶汽车设计的工作室，目前有很多品牌在中东运营。也有很多品牌在亚洲、在中国运营。我们谈论的是拥有完全不同法律框架的国家，”他说。

Depending on the country, you might not even have the entire robotaxi to yourself. “One of our colleagues mentioned that in India, you don’t actually book the whole car. So you book a seat, which means that you might end up, even in the context of a Waymo ride, to be with strangers,” Rouchitsas said. 根据国家的不同，你甚至可能无法独享整辆自动驾驶出租车。“我们的一位同事提到，在印度，你实际上预订的不是整辆车。你预订的是一个座位，这意味着即使是在 Waymo 的乘车环境中，你也可能最终与陌生人同乘，”鲁奇萨斯说。

Nowhere to hide

无处遁形

When it comes to the physical design of the robotaxi interior, “You can design against these sort of events in the sense that traditional public transport and traditional private vehicles have been designed,” Rouchitsas told Ars. That’s particularly true for purpose-designed vehicles like Zoox’s robotaxis, or larger autonomous people movers. 谈到自动驾驶出租车内部的物理设计时，鲁奇萨斯告诉 Ars：“你可以像设计传统公共交通工具和传统私家车那样，通过设计来预防这类事件。”对于像 Zoox 的自动驾驶出租车或大型自动驾驶载人工具这类专门设计的车辆来说，情况尤其如此。

“I was checking videos on Pornhub, and I thought to myself, most of these things happen inside public transport, believe it or not, just because the seats are opaque, you can hide behind them. What if you make them transparent? Interior design, that’s very easy. And this actually popped up in the workshop—just don’t give people curtains to fool around behind,” Rouchitsas said. “我查看了 Pornhub 上的视频，心想，信不信由你，大多数这类事情都发生在公共交通工具里，仅仅是因为座椅是不透明的，你可以躲在后面。如果把它们做成透明的呢？室内设计，这很容易。这实际上在研讨会上也被提了出来——只要别给人们提供可以躲在后面胡闹的窗帘就行，”鲁奇萨斯说。

Reminding riders that they’re being monitored is probably a good idea, too. “It should be reminded that privacy does not mean engaging in anything that you wouldn’t engage in public. So for instance, public displays of affection should follow rules, not of our bedroom, but probably more closer to our work environments,” he said. 提醒乘客他们正受到监控可能也是个好主意。“应该提醒人们，隐私并不意味着可以从事任何你在公共场合不会做的事情。例如，公开的亲昵行为应该遵循规则，不是卧室的规则，而可能更接近于我们的工作环境，”他说。

That may be a good use for an AI assistant in the cabin. These could be reactive—responding to a bystander who has become uncomfortable—or proactive, warning riders that they’re engaging in risky business and that it’s time to stop. As the aforementioned teens found out, occupant monitoring systems can detect intoxicated passengers quite accurately. “You can have AI assistants act proactively as well when you’re obviously intoxicated; you can play the mother hostess in a way,” Rouchitsas said. 这可能是车内 AI 助手的一个好用途。它们可以是反应式的——回应感到不适的旁观者；也可以是主动式的——警告乘客他们正在进行危险行为，是时候停止了。正如前面提到的那两名青少年所发现的那样，乘员监控系统可以相当准确地检测到醉酒乘客。“当乘客明显醉酒时，你可以让 AI 助手主动采取行动；你可以扮演一个类似‘母亲式’的主人角色，”鲁奇萨斯说。

We reached out to Waymo and Zoox to see how they discourage sexual behavior among riders but did not hear back by the time of publication. 我们联系了 Waymo 和 Zoox，询问他们如何劝阻乘客的性行为，但在本文发表前未收到回复。