Hands on the wheel… California’s DMV axed Cruise’s permit to operate autonomous cars in the Golden State, saying the GM-owned biz’s tech isn’t safe for public roads. On Friday, Cruise said it was pausing all driverless operations in the US. One San Francisco gov’t agency stat: over six months last year, Cruise cars had an injury-crash rate 6X higher than the 2021 national average for human drivers. It’s a costly detour for GM, which hoped Cruise could hit $50B in revenue by 2030, but rival Waymo says its driverless whips are still running in SF, LA, and PHX.
All gas… no brakes. VC Marc Andreessen’s 5K-word manifesto on “techno-optimism” (a view that tech can fix any problem) is the talk of techie town. In it he argues that slowing down AI growth “is a form of murder,” includes the quote “love doesn’t scale,” and largely denounces regulation. This year, 190+ AI-related bills were intro’d in the US, and several AI companies were hit with copyright lawsuits. Andreessen (who’s backed ~28 AI startups since last year) is bullish, but only 10% of Americans think AI helps more than it hurts.