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🏠 THE Robotaxi Scandal

🏠 THE Robotaxi Scandal

Wow

Stephen Flanders
September 04, 2023

Gm. Happy Monday everyone! Are robotaxis are a help or a harm to society? Is Gemini going to make everyone forget about GPT-4? Is Deion Sanders the greatest football coach of all time? Yep, we got a good one for you today.

— Stephen Flanders

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🏠 TECH

Cruise Might Be In Some Hot Water

Cruise, one of the most popular robotaxi companies, is now part of a very sad story.

Well, actually, that depends on who you ask.

The situation in question happened on August 14th when the now victim was hit by a car and left critically injured. Emergency services arrived on the scene and loaded the victim into the ambulance.

This is where the story diverges.

According to the San Francisco Fire Department, two Cruise robotaxis were stopped and blocking two lanes of the four-lane street. This forced the authorities to hastily move a police vehicle, and the delay this caused very well could have played a part in the victim’s ultimate death.

Cruise sees things differently. Their story is that the ambulance loaded the victim and immediately dipped out of there. No blocking or delaying to be found.

And according to the tape, it looks like both stories have elements of truth to them, as the video shows one stopped Cruise car, a wide open lane to the right of it, and a firetruck to the left of it. For whatever reason the ambulance chooses to go left, forcing the firetruck to move.

Whatever the case, this sad situation is the latest in an increasingly long line of incidents involving self-driving cabs:

Just a couple of weeks ago Cruise was forced to half its fleet after having one of its cars hit by a fire truck.
Cruise cars have randomly stopped working and clogged traffic.
They’ve also gotten stuck in wet cement.

The result has been a very loud segment of the population advocating for their removal.

This latest fiasco isn’t going to quiet these calls.

The Big Picture: The gaffes are the stories that make the news, but there is good evidence that robotaxis are already safer than human drivers.

Go From Fuzzy Thought To First Draft. In Seconds.

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Imagine a friend who listens to you talk, and then rewrites your words in text that’s easy to read and ready to share. Now, imagine that friend in your pocket. That’s AudioPen.

Use it to write articles, emails, messages, and more.

Customize its writing style, length, and language.

Even train it to write like you.

Or, like your favorite writer.

Ramble away!

🏠 AI

OpenAI Ain’t Happy

Last month, the blog SemiAnalysis posted an article about how Google’s Gemini AI model will blow GPT-4 out of the water thanks to Google’s vast stash of advanced GPUs.

Frequent readers of the newsletter will surely know that this could easily be the case, but that’s not the story today.

The story today is OpenAI’s reaction to the rumors that Gemini puts GPT-4 to shame. Spoiler alert: they aren’t happy. CEO Sam Altman even went so far to insinuate that, well actually just outright say, that SemiAnalysis was on Google’s payroll.

That’s obviously not that a dig that the SemiAnalysis team was going to take lying down.

Drama aside, I can’t wait to see Gemini for real. Computational power is a limiting factor for AI’s ceiling, but is it the limiting factor?

Gemini will go a long way toward answering that question.

The Big Picture: Gemini makes the AI race much more interesting.

🏃‍♀️ QUICKIES

What else is going on?

Apple has the spin all ready for the iPhone 15’s USB-C switch.
X is now using public data to train its AI models.
Microsoft is killing WordPad.
Some more details are out on the new California billionaire city.

Stat: $50B to $55B: Arm’s target valuation for its IPO. That’s a lot of bread, but also a lot lower than its internal valuation of $64B last month.

Rabbit hole: Shining A Light On The Digital Dark Ages (Long Now)

🤩 MONDAY MOTIVATION

Coach Prime pregame speech to his team was absolutely amazing 😮‍💨🔥
🎥: @WellOffForever , @DeionSandersJr
— Shannonnn sharpes Burner (PARODY Account) (@shannonsharpeee)
Sep 3, 2023