A Waymo self-driving car in San Francisco, California (Getty Images)

WE, ROBOT 🤖

Tesla’s robotaxi event is finally here — will it be a watershed moment for autonomous vehicles?

Tesla’s self-driving rival Waymo is already doing 100,000+ paid trips per week

10/9/24 8:32AM

For a decade, Elon Musk has crafted a narrative about the potential of robotaxis — a self-driving, self-funding Optimus Taxius that could transform the economics of Tesla. Now, a grand reveal is finally upon us at the company’s “We, Robot” event, which starts at 7 p.m. ET tomorrow.

Will Musk deliver? For Tesla and its shareholders, the stakes are high. As competition in electric vehicles has intensified, squeezing the company’s margins, and Tesla’s rapid sales growth has slowed, Tesla’s stock has come under pressure. At its peak in November 2021, Tesla was worth more than $1.2 trillion; today it’s closer to $770 billion (though that’s still more than 3x what its next most valuable competitor, Toyota, is worth). Some financial analysts bill robotaxis as the company’s future.

Let’s talk reality

The truth is, robotaxis are already here. In June, Google-backed Waymo opened up its services to the public, and it now counts ~700 vehicles in several cities, which are completing more than 100,000 self-driving rides a week. That progress is off the back of years of testing — Waymo autonomous vehicles racked up ~4.9 million miles in 2023, according to the California DMV, more than any other company that filed reports (Tesla does not report data).

Waymo has plans to expand slowly, with a small number of robotaxis in geofenced environments. Elon Musk described Waymo’s technology as “quite fragile” and not able to scale because it is a “very localized solution.” Amazon’s Zoox has also released plans to launch services in Las Vegas from next year, whilst GM-owned Cruise recently resumed its operations after an accident in 2023.

If Tesla does deliver its iPhone moment, revealing some amazing prototype that could bring robotaxis to the masses, the question will pivot once again to: how do you convince people they are safe? A Forbes legal survey from July revealed that 93% of people have at least some concerns about self-driving cars.

Millie Giles

TAKING ACCOUNTS

Britain announces social media ban for under-16s starting early 2027

The UK government plans to use the same model for the restrictions as Australia — but how successful has that case study been so far?

UK Prime Minister Announces Under-16s Social Media Ban

Jon Keegan1h

Anthropic pulls Fable and Mythos access worldwide after Trump administration bars their use by foreign nationals

Only days after releasing two versions of its next-gen AI model, Anthropic has disabled them for users worldwide.

Anthropic says it received a Friday night order from the Trump administration to suspend access to the models for any foreign national (anywhere in the world) — a group that included some Anthropic employees. In response, the company turned off access to everyone.

Last week, the company released to the public its much-anticipated Claude Fable 5 model (and its restricted version Claude Mythos 5, which is still being tested with trusted partners). Anthropic said in a blog post announcing the action that officials cited national security concerns with the new models, while offering few specific details.

The post said that the government gave the company “verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak” of the public Fable 5 model. A jailbreak is a means by which users can evade restrictions built into the code to unlock prohibited functionality. Anthropic downplayed the significance of the attack, and said other major models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-5.5, could also be affected by the technique described.

Fears of these first Mythos-class models being misused are running high, after Anthropic warned the cybersecurity world in May that the advanced cyber capabilities of Mythos have rapidly discovered thousands of vulnerabilities in ubiquitous software, leading to the decision to restrict the full version of the model to a close group of trusted partners for testing.

This morning, Axios reported that Anthropic technical staff have flown to Washington to meet with White House officials to resolve the issue.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Trump administration’s decision to take action against Anthropic was prompted by discussions that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy had with officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. According to the report, Amazon researchers said they had been able to evade some of Fable 5’s security restrictions using specific prompts. Amazon is a major investor in Anthropic.

Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the Pentagon’s blacklisting of the company on national security grounds.

Statement on the US government directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5

This morning, Axios reported that Anthropic technical staff have flown to Washington to meet with White House officials to resolve the issue.

Anthropic is currently suing the US government to fight the Pentagon’s blacklisting of the company on national security grounds.

Rani Molla4h

Tesla used skewed data in push for European FSD approval, Reuters finds

Tesla has used highly questionable safety stats in an effort to win over European regulators and rekindle sales in the region, according to a Reuters investigation.

Tesla reportedly pitched regulators in Sweden and the Netherlands with claims that its Full Self-Driving (FSD) tech is over 7x safer than human drivers. However, independent researchers told Reuters that the stats are misleading because Tesla compares airbag-deployment crashes involving FSD-equipped vehicles with much broader US crash statistics, while also benchmarking newer Teslas against the entire US vehicle fleet, which is significantly older on average.

Despite the flawed metrics, the Dutch regulator approved FSD in April, saying its decision was based on its own “tests, analyses and verifications,” and Tesla is now pushing for EU-wide clearance. A version of FSD is currently available in five European markets.

Exclusive: Tesla presented misleading ‘Full Self-Driving’ safety data to European regulators

Rani Molla6/12/26

Report: Microsoft weighs Xbox spin-off amid major overhaul

Microsoft is reportedly considering spinning out or restructuring its struggling Xbox unit, per The Information. While new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, who took over in February, is preparing for layoffs, she’s simultaneously planning to boost investment in its biggest franchises like “Halo,” “Fallout,” and “Minecraft.”

The latest potential shake-up comes as the gaming division battles major headwinds, following a massive 33% plunge in Q3 console sales and a recent move to slash Game Pass prices while removing new “Call of Duty” titles.

Microsoft Has Considered Spinning Out Xbox, Plans New ‘Halo,’ ‘Fallout’ Games

Hyunsoo Rim

BOT HIRING

6/12/26

AI was the top reason cited for US job cuts for the third straight month in May

Employers cited AI for nearly 40% of May’s cuts — a share that’s kept climbing since Challenger began tracking it in 2023.

robot carrying sacked mid adult businessman