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Tesla Cybercab
This Tesla Cybercab won’t be the car self-driving passengers see around Austin in June (Sjoerd van der Wal/Getty Images)
Fear Factor

Poll: More than 70% of American voters say they wouldn’t use robotaxis or Tesla’s full self-driving tech

That sentiment holds across age, party, income, and geography.

Rani Molla

Ahead of Tesla’s robotaxi rollout next month, market research firm Electric Vehicle Intelligence Report surveyed 8,000 American voters in May on their feelings regarding autonomous driving. While CEO Elon Musk says his self-driving car service is ready for public roads, the public doesn’t share that view.

Some 71% of consumers said they wouldn’t ride in a robotaxi and 43% said they should be illegal. Meanwhile, 77% said they wouldn’t use Tesla’s full self-driving technology and 48% believe that should be illegal, too.

Americans’ biggest concerns are the “lack of human judgment” and the absence of a person in case something goes wrong. Survey takers also don’t think the technology has been sufficiently tested — and they don’t want to be crash test dummies.

“Right now, autonomous driving is viewed as a tradeoff between inconvenience and safety, and safety is going to win that fight every time,” Evan Roth Smith, EVIR’s head of research, told Sherwood News. “Autonomous driving demos and promos frequently over-focus on the convenience factor, but it’s safety incidents that make the news and penetrate to consumers.”

In all, the share of those who were concerned by autonomous vehicles (67%) vastly outweighed the portion who are excited about the tech (18%).

For now, Tesla’s robotaxi program is expected to launch in Austin with just 10 to 20 cars and is by invite only — so the American public won’t really get to express its opinions in the form of taking these vehicles or not for some time. Meanwhile, Google’s side project Waymo is bringing in a quarter of a million paid rides per week (which is still far from mass market).

“You can call that an ‘early adoption curve’ if you like, but there’s a real risk that the market for this technology is far more limited than hoped,” Smith said. “The headwinds are certainly strong enough to doubt that Tesla or any other company should be staking its near- or medium-term prospects on robotaxi adoption.”

Musk, however, is betting they will in the future and staking Tesla’s success to that bet. “The future of the company is fundamentally based on large-scale autonomous cars,” Musk said on the company’s last earnings call.

“In the not-too-distant future, buying a gasoline car that is not autonomous, will be like riding a horse while using a flip phone,” he said. “Some people still do it, but it’s rare.”

Tesla’s not-too-distant future may have to focus on getting the public onboard for that to come true.

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Apple to pay Google $1 billion a year for access to AI model for Siri

Apple plans to pay Google about $1 billion a year to use the search giant’s AI model for Siri, Bloomberg reports. Google’s model — at 1.2 trillion parameters — is way bigger than Apple’s current models.

The deal aims to help the iPhone maker improve its lagging AI efforts, powering a new Siri slated to come out this spring.

Apple had previously been considering using OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude, but decided in the end to go with Google as it works toward improving its own internal models. Google, which makes a much less widely sold phone, the Pixel, has succeeded in bringing consumer AI to smartphone users where Apple has failed.

Google’s antitrust ruling in September helped safeguard the two companies’ partnerships — including the more than $20 billion Google pays Apple each year to be the default search engine on its devices — as long as they aren’t exclusive.

Apple had previously been considering using OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude, but decided in the end to go with Google as it works toward improving its own internal models. Google, which makes a much less widely sold phone, the Pixel, has succeeded in bringing consumer AI to smartphone users where Apple has failed.

Google’s antitrust ruling in September helped safeguard the two companies’ partnerships — including the more than $20 billion Google pays Apple each year to be the default search engine on its devices — as long as they aren’t exclusive.

tech

Netflix creates new made-up metric for advertisers

It’s not quite WeWork’s community-adjusted EBITDA, but it’s also not quite a real number: Netflix announced today that it has 190 million “monthly active viewers” for its lower-cost ad-supported tiers. The company came up with the metric by measuring the number of subscribers who’ve watched “at least 1 minute of ads on Netflix per month” and multiplying that by what its research assumes is the number of people in that household.

It builds on Netflix’s previous attempt at measuring ad viewership with monthly active users, which is the number of profiles that have watched ads (94 million as of May). The MAV measurement, of course, is a lot bigger, and bigger numbers are more attractive to advertisers, who are spending more and more on streaming platforms.

“After speaking to our partners, we know that what they want most is an accurate, clear, and transparent representation of who their ads are reaching,” Netflix President of Advertising Amy Reinhard explained in a press release. “Our move to viewers means we can give a more comprehensive count of how many people are actually on the couch, enjoying our can’t-miss series, films, games, and live events with friends and family.”

Netflix last reported its long-followed and more easily understood paid membership numbers at the beginning of the year, when it crossed 300 million.

It builds on Netflix’s previous attempt at measuring ad viewership with monthly active users, which is the number of profiles that have watched ads (94 million as of May). The MAV measurement, of course, is a lot bigger, and bigger numbers are more attractive to advertisers, who are spending more and more on streaming platforms.

“After speaking to our partners, we know that what they want most is an accurate, clear, and transparent representation of who their ads are reaching,” Netflix President of Advertising Amy Reinhard explained in a press release. “Our move to viewers means we can give a more comprehensive count of how many people are actually on the couch, enjoying our can’t-miss series, films, games, and live events with friends and family.”

Netflix last reported its long-followed and more easily understood paid membership numbers at the beginning of the year, when it crossed 300 million.

tech

Ahead of Musk’s pay package vote, Tesla’s board says they can’t make him work there full time

Ahead of Tesla’s CEO compensation vote at its annual shareholder meeting tomorrow, The Wall Street Journal did a deep dive into how Elon Musk, who stands to gain $1 trillion if he stays at Tesla and hits a number of milestones, spends his time.

Like a similar piece from The New York Times in September, this one has a lot of fun details. Read it all, but here are some to tide you over:

  • Musk spent so much time at xAI this summer that he held meetings there with Tesla employees.

  • He personally oversaw the design of a sexy chatbot named Ani, who sports pigtails and skimpy clothes and for whom “employees were compelled to turn over their biometric data” to train.

  • The chatbot, which users can ask to “change into lingerie or fantasize about a romantic encounter with them,” has helped boost user numbers, which are still way lower than ChatGPT’s.

  • Executives and board members have told top investors in the past few weeks that they can’t make Musk work at Tesla full time. Board Chair Robyn Denholm explained that in his free time, Musk “likes to create companies, and they’re not necessarily Tesla companies.”

Like a similar piece from The New York Times in September, this one has a lot of fun details. Read it all, but here are some to tide you over:

  • Musk spent so much time at xAI this summer that he held meetings there with Tesla employees.

  • He personally oversaw the design of a sexy chatbot named Ani, who sports pigtails and skimpy clothes and for whom “employees were compelled to turn over their biometric data” to train.

  • The chatbot, which users can ask to “change into lingerie or fantasize about a romantic encounter with them,” has helped boost user numbers, which are still way lower than ChatGPT’s.

  • Executives and board members have told top investors in the past few weeks that they can’t make Musk work at Tesla full time. Board Chair Robyn Denholm explained that in his free time, Musk “likes to create companies, and they’re not necessarily Tesla companies.”

tech

Motion Picture Association to Meta: Stop saying Instagram teen content is “PG-13”

In October, Meta announced that its updated Instagram Teen Accounts would by default limit content to the “PG-13” rating.

The Motion Picture Association, which created the film rating standard, was not happy about Meta’s use of the rating, and sent the company a cease and desist letter, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.

The letter from MPA’s law firm reportedly said the organization worked for decades to earn the public’s trust in the rating system, and it does not want Meta’s AI-powered content moderation failures to blow back on its work:

“Any dissatisfaction with Meta’s automated classification will inevitably cause the public to question the integrity of the MPA’s rating system.”

Meta told the WSJ that it never claimed or implied the content on Instagram Teen Accounts would be certified by the MPA.

The letter from MPA’s law firm reportedly said the organization worked for decades to earn the public’s trust in the rating system, and it does not want Meta’s AI-powered content moderation failures to blow back on its work:

“Any dissatisfaction with Meta’s automated classification will inevitably cause the public to question the integrity of the MPA’s rating system.”

Meta told the WSJ that it never claimed or implied the content on Instagram Teen Accounts would be certified by the MPA.

tech

Dan Ives expects “overwhelming shareholder approval” of Tesla CEO pay package

Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives, like prediction markets, thinks Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s $1 trillion pay package will receive “overwhelming shareholder approval” at the company’s annual shareholder meeting Thursday afternoon. The Tesla bull, like the Tesla board, has maintained that approval of the performance-based pay package is integral to keeping Musk at the helm of the company, which in turn is integral to the success of the company. Ives is also confident that investors will back the proposal allowing Tesla to invest in another of Musk’s companies, xAI.

“We expect shareholders to show overwhelming support tomorrow for Musk and the xAI stake further turning Tesla into an AI juggernaut with the autonomous and robotics future on the horizon,” Ives wrote in a note this morning.

The compensation package has received pushback, including from Tesla’s sixth-biggest institutional investor, Norway’s Norges Bank Investment Management, and from proxy adviser Institutional Shareholder Services.

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