Elon Musk expands his empire of misinformation; CNN, October 15, 2024

 Allison Morrow, CNN; Elon Musk expands his empire of misinformation

"At any Tesla event, you have to go in expecting a good amount of smoke and mirrors. This is the company run by Elon Musk, after all — its self-anointed Technoking who’s made overpromising and underdelivering a theme of his career.

But Thursday’s “Cybercab” robotaxi unveiling was, even by Musk-ian standards for bluster, one giant optical illusion. The kind of spectacle that should remind everyone that the world’s richest person is someone who promotes and appears to relish misinformation and hyperbole on a mass scale, whether he’s speaking to investors, his millions of followers on X or whichever politician he feels is most likely to agree with his increasingly right-wing and conspiracy-laden worldview...

The robotaxis, Tesla’s fully driverless vehicles that it hopes to put into service next year, were the main event. But the company’s humanoid Optimus robots stole some of the spotlight as they danced and mingled with the crowd, pouring drinks and playing charades.

That all would have been impressive if not for a few liiiittttle things. Like, the fact that the robots were not actually autonomous and were being operated remotely by humans, which was first reported by Bloomberg. At one point, an attendee even got a bartending bot to admit that it was being assisted by a human.

“This was not disclosed, and many thought they were operating autonomously,” Gordon Johnson, a longtime Tesla critic and short-seller, said in a note Monday.  “In our view, this is very deceptive.”

The event — rather appropriately held on a Hollywood stage — was light on details about how Tesla plans to improve its “Full Self Driving” system, or how it plans to actually get its driverless cars on the road."

The bill finally comes due for Elon Musk; Vox, October 9, 2024

 Andrew J. Hawkins, Vox; The bill finally comes due for Elon Musk

"What is an autonomous car? It sounds like a simple question, but the answer is trickier than it seems. To help clear things up, SAE International, a US organization that represents automotive engineers, created a six-step guide to automation. Intended for engineers rather than the general public, it ranged from Level 0, meaning no automation whatsoever, to Level 5, meaning the vehicle can drive itself anywhere at any time without any human intervention.

And there’s plenty of room for error and misunderstanding. A problem we’ve seen is what researcher Liza Dixon calls “autonowashing,” or any effort to overhype something as autonomous when it’s not. 

Most experts dismiss Level 5 as pure science fiction. Waymo and others operate Level 4 vehicles, but very few people really believe that Level 5 is attainable. Level 5 would require “an astronomical amount of technological development, maintenance, and testing,” Torc Robotics, a company developing self-driving trucks, says. Others call it a pipe dream. 

Except Musk. At a conference in Shanghai, Musk said with supreme confidence that the company “will have the basic functionality for Level 5 autonomy complete this year.” That was in July 2020."

How a robotaxi crash got Cruise’s self-driving cars pulled from Californian roads; The Washington Post, October 28, 2023

Trisha Thadani, The Washington Post , The Washington Post; How a robotaxi crash got Cruise’s self-driving cars pulled from Californian roads

"Here in California, the whiplash from approval to ban in just two months highlights the fragmented oversight governing the self-driving car industry — a system that allowed Cruise to operate on San Francisco’s roads for more than three weeks following the October collision, despite dragging a human pinned underneath the vehicle...

Ed Walters, who teaches autonomous vehicle law at Georgetown University, said that driverless technology is critical for a future with fewer road fatalities because robots don’t drive drunk or get distracted. But, he said, this accident shows that Cruise was not “quite ready for testing” in such a dense urban area...

Under the DMV’s autonomous vehicle program, companies are asked to publicly report collisions involving driverless cars only when they are in test mode. That means if an incident like the Oct. 2 crash occurs while the company is technically operating as a commercial service, the company does not have to publicly report it as an “Autonomous Vehicle Collision Report.”"

Cruise Stops All Driverless Taxi Operations in the United States; The New York Times, October 26, 2023

 Yiwen Lu, The New York Times; Cruise Stops All Driverless Taxi Operations in the United States

"Cruise said on Thursday evening that it would pause all driverless operations in the United States, two days after California regulators told the General Motors subsidiary to take its autonomous cars off the state’s roads. 

The decision affects Cruise’s robot taxi services in Austin, Texas, and Phoenix, where a limited number of public riders could hail paid rides. Noncommercial operations in Dallas, Houston and Miami were also paused.

Cruise did not say how long the halt will last. Testing of driverless vehicles with a safety driver behind the wheel will continue, the company said."

Autonomous Vehicles Are Driving Blind; The New York Times, October 11, 2023

 Julia Angwin, The New York Times; Autonomous Vehicles Are Driving Blind

"For all the ballyhoo over the possibility of artificial intelligence threatening humanity someday, there’s remarkably little discussion of the ways it is threatening humanity right now. When it comes to self-driving cars, we are driving blind...

Despite all these real-world examples of harm, many regulators remain distracted by the distant and, to some, far-fetched disaster scenarios spun by the A.I. doomers — high-powered tech researchers and execs who argue that the big worry is the risk someday of human extinction. The British government is holding an A.I. Safety Summit in November, and Politico reports that the A.I. task force is being led by such doomers...

The doomer theories are “a distraction tactic to make people chase an infinite amount of risks,” says Heidy Khlaaf, a software safety engineer who is an engineering director at Trail of Bits, a technical security firm."

With self-driving cars, it's the ethics we have to navigate; The Japan Times, September 17, 2023

PETER SINGER, The Japan Times ; With self-driving cars, it's the ethics we have to navigate

"One important but often overlooked ethical issue raised by autonomous vehicles is whether they should be programmed to avoid hitting animals and, if so, which ones...How we should value the lives and interests of all sentient beings is a question that AI ethics needs to address."

Armed with traffic cones, protesters are immobilizing driverless cars; NPR, August 26, 2023

 Dara Kerr, NPR; Armed with traffic cones, protesters are immobilizing driverless cars

"An anonymous activist group called Safe Street Rebel is responsible for this so-called coning incident and dozens of others over the past few months. The group's goal is to incapacitate the driverless cars roaming San Francisco's streets as a protest against the city being used as a testing ground for this emerging technology."

Self-driving semis may revolutionize trucking while eliminating hundreds of thousands of jobs.; The Hill, March 23, 2022

 Joseph Guzman , The Hill; Self-driving semis may revolutionize trucking while eliminating hundreds of thousands of jobs.

"Aniruddh Mohan, a PhD candidate in the department of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University and co-author of the study, said widespread implementation will depend on how successful pilot programs in the Sun Belt are in the coming years, but warned any lapse in safety could slow down progress. 

“One thing to keep in mind, just as we saw with the passenger vehicle automation race, the moment you even have one accident, that could really set the industry back,” Mohan said. 

“So I think it remains to be seen how quickly this develops.”"

South Africa to introduce regulations around self-driving cars; BusinessTech, May 7, 2021

BusinessTech; South Africa to introduce regulations around self-driving cars

"The Department of Transport says that it plans to introduce new regulations around self-driving cars in South Africa, as it expects autonomous vehicles (AVs) to become a reality in the country in the not too distant future.

In its strategic performance plan for 2021/2022, the department said that these vehicles will move on streets with little or no control by humans.

It added that autonomous vehicles could solve a number of mobility issues for the country – including road safety, social inclusion, emissions and congestion.

“Government is putting in place policy, legislation and strategies to take advantage of the benefits associated with AVs, while also minimising risks and unpremeditated consequences,” it said.

“The new policy, legislation and strategies should provide a welcoming environment for testing and development of AV technology.”"

Did Uber Steal Google’s Intellectual Property?; The New Yorker, October 22, 2018 Issue

Charles Duhigg, The New Yorker; Did Uber Steal Google’s Intellectual Property?

"Levandowski, for his part, has been out of work since he was fired by Uber. It’s hard to feel much sympathy for him, though. He’s still extremely wealthy. He left Google with files that nearly everyone agrees he should not have walked off with, even if there is widespread disagreement about how much they’re worth. Levandowski seemed constantly ready to abandon his teammates and threaten defection, often while working on an angle to enrich himself. He is a brilliant mercenary, a visionary opportunist, a man seemingly without loyalty. He has helped build a technology that might transform how the world functions, and he seems inclined to personally profit from that transformation as much as possible. In other words, he is an exemplar of Silicon Valley ethics.

Levandowski is upset that some people have cast him as the bad guy. “I reject the notion that I did something unethical,” he said. “Was I trying to compete with them? Sure.” But, he added, “I’m not a thief, and I’m not dishonest.” Other parents sometimes shun him when he drops his kids off at school, and he has grown tired of people taking photographs of him when he walks through airports. But he is confident that his notoriety will subside. Although he no longer owns the technology that he brought to Google and Uber, plenty of valuable information remains inside his head, and he has a lot of new ideas."

Exclusive: Theresa May to announce ethical oversight of AI used to drive cars, diagnose patients and even sentence criminals; The Telegraph, January 22, 2018

Steven Swinford, The Telegraph; 

Exclusive: Theresa May to announce ethical oversight of AI used to drive cars, diagnose patients and even sentence criminals

"The Prime Minister is expected to use her keynote speech at a summit of World leaders in Davos on Thursday to discuss the opportunities and ethical challenges presented by the rise of artificial intelligence.

Ministers believe that Britain has the chance to become a World leader in artificial intelligence, just as it currently is in other cutting-edge technologies such as genomics.

However there are significant concerns that computer algorithms could end up making critical ethical decisions without human oversight."