 |
|
|
|||||
Waymo vehicles, the self-driving taxis from Google parent company Alphabet, have emerged as a literal flashpoint in the Los Angeles ICE protests, which ramped up heavily over the weekend. The protests against the presidents immigration crackdown in the city began on Friday, as ICE raids broke out among several majority-Latino neighborhoods such as Paramount. Although the subsequent protests were reportedly mostly peaceful, Trump deemed them sufficiently disruptive to warrant sending in 2,000 National Guard troops on Saturday. It was a historic escalation, the first time a president has activated the National Guard without request from a state’s governor since 1965and it provoked an incendiary reaction. On Sunday, amid rising tensions, protesters ultimately set at least five Waymo vehicles ablaze. Though their reasons for doing so remain unconfirmed, plenty of evidence suggests what might have fueled their actions. Waymo, one of Fast Companys Most Innovative Companies for 2025, first began as a Google self-driving car project in 2009, before launching commercially in Phoenix in 2020. The company then spread out to San Francisco in 2022, before hitting Los Angeles last November. As of last December, the service had driven over 50 million rider-only miles, according to the companys website. Around 100 of Waymos 1,500 total robotaxis currently operate in Los Angeles during normal conditions, covering roughly 79 square miles from Santa Monica to downtown L.A. After those five cars were destroyed on Sunday, though, the company removed vehicles from downtown L.A. and shut down service in that area for the time being. (We are in touch with law enforcement, a representative from the company confirmed to Fast Company.) Before the end of the day, both X and Bluesky ensured that images and videos of the fiery vehicles had circulated widely, leaving a trail of jokes and finger-wagging in their wake. Setting vehicles on fire has a long history in protest going back at least to the 1992 Los Angeles riots following the verdict in the Rodney King trial, and before that, the 1968 Paris Student & Workers Uprising in Paris. Though obviously illegal, igniting cars tends to serve as a defiant expression of rage and hopelessness in the face of perceived oppression. On a practical level, one reason protesters might be choosing Waymos is because they are owned by a massive tech company, rather than any one individual. (Alphabet led a $5.6 billion funding round for Waymo last fall, to cover costs through the divisions next growth period.) Destroying these cars comes with a guarantee that no drivers will be injured, financially or otherwise, since no such drivers exist. Protesters can simply order up a Waymo to incinerate as easily as ordering a pizza. Their very lack of humanity makes them ripe targets in a civil uprising. Of course, there appear to be strategic reasons for targeting Waymos as well. According to a report from 404 Media back in April, the LAPD is known to requisition and publish footage from these autonomous vehicles, which are equipped with roving cameras, to solve various crimes around the city. Since Waymos can function as mobile panoramic Ring cameras, protesters who prefer to limit the amount they are captured on film have incentive to disable as many Waymos as possible. Rumors circulated on Bluesky late on Sunday that some protesters may have set Waymos on fire strictly because the cars may be essentially collecting evidence for future trials, although vandalism of the cars seems extremely traceable. However, one final reason why protesters may have targeted Waymos is because there is an overlap between the people defending their immigrant neighbors and the people who are generally against societys automated future. No civil unrest was necessary, after all, for a fired-up Lunar New Year crowd in San Francisco to set a Waymo on fire in February 2024. All it took was an autonomous cab jamming its way into an intersection packed with revelers who happened to be loaded for bear with fireworksand an increasing sense that driverless cabs are now a symbol of everything people hate about AI. There have been further incidents of Waymo vandalism, though, in both San Francisco and Los Angeles in the months since. CNNs Brian Stelter described the blaze on Sunday as something out of a dystopian sci-fi novel, but really, whats more dystopian: robotaxis being destroyed in a protest, or automated taxis working perfectly and putting thousands in an immigrant-friendly profession out of a job?
Category:
E-Commerce
At long last, Apple has finally entered the AI race. That was the first line in my story about Apples announcements at WWDC 2024, almost exactly one year ago from today. After the company announced a bunch of highly personalized AI features last June, Apple seemed poised to finally reap the rewards of its long-time effort to build trust around user data privacy. At last years WWDC, Apple software head Craig Fedherighi said the company intends to offer a personal intelligence model on users phones that draws on personal context. Apple, it seemed, was finally going to leverage its considerable strengths and deliver proactive AI features that leverage the users own personal data. But 12 months later, that still hasnt come to fruition. Fedherighi said early on in todays WWDC 2025 keynote that the AI personalization features, which tap into private user data to offer proactive AI-generated insights, had failed to reach Apples high bar for quality. More announcements on that front, he added, would arrive in the coming year. Meanwhile, the world outside Cupertino moves on, and the generative AI boom continues to accelerate. After last years keynote, this years presentation felt like a throwback to years past, with Fedherigi and friends running through a litany of modest UX and feature upgrades to iOS and the other Apple operating systems. In iOS, they showed us a breezy new UX look (featuring translucent app and widget panels), refreshed icon design, a live translation feature, and Mixmoji (combine two existing emoji into one!), etc. Theres also a new AIpowered 3D effect that shifts a lock screen images perspective as the user tilts their phone. (Didnt the ill-fated Amazon Fire phone do that?) There were also some updates to the AI Visual Intelligence features announced last year. iPhone users can already tap on real-world objects via their phone camera to get more information. Now, they can do the same within any app, including social media, to identify and learn about objectsand in some cases, on where to buy the items. The screenshot interface now lets users search for items within the image or ask ChatGPT deeper questions about them. (Google announced the addition of on-screen object search earlier this year.) But while Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic are integrating their AI models with users’ personal and professional data, Apple seems stuck in neutral Apple had every opportunity to own personal AI. It had a big head start with the acquisition of Siri way back in 2010. It controls billions of devices, it designs the chips, and it has the trust of billions of consumers. And Apple users already store a wealth of personal data on their phones, which the company could leverage to offer a personal assistant with an intimate knowledge of the user. Instead, while Apple talks about new icons and Genmoji, OpenAI continues embedding itself deeper into consumer workflows and digital habits. ChatGPT is learning users tastes, preferences, and memory. And now, Apples former design guru is helping OpenAI build a hardware device that could harness all that power. I was optimistic when Apple hired John Giannandrea from Google in April 2018 to lead its machine learning and AI strategy. Reporting directly to Tim Cook, he seemed like the right person to inject new life into Apples AI ambitions. After all, transformer modelsthe foundation of the generative AI revolutionwere invented at Google while Giannandrea was still there in 2017. They sparked immense excitement and innovation at Google, and I hoped hed bring that same energy to Apple, baking it into core products like the still-lagging Siri. He didnt. Giannandrea still leads Apples core AI division, but Siri and robotics have since been moved out from under his leadership. Still, thats not to say Apple is anything close to cooked. The company makes the biggest and best smartphone in the world, and will for a long time. And it sells digital services through its devices better than anyone else. Still it’s worrying that it doesn’t seem to be acting with the urgency that the moment demands. The next big thing is here, and Apple isnt at the forefront. Separately, Apple researchers released a widely discussed paper over the weekend that calls into question whether new large reasoning models are capable of the kind of cognitive function that could lead to artificial general intelligence, where the AI performs as well or better than humans at most tasks.
Category:
E-Commerce
U.S. seaborne imports of goods from China dropped 28.5% year-over-year in May, the sharpest decline since the pandemic, as President Donald Trump’s 145% tariffs took hold, supply chain technology provider Descartes said on Monday. China is the top U.S. supplier of goods that enter through seaports, including the nation’s busiest in Los Angeles/Long Beach. Domestic businesses ranging from retailer Walmart to automaker Ford depend on those goods to operate. Overall U.S. seaborne imports in May tumbled 7.2% from the year earlier to 2.18 million 20-foot equivalent units – snapping a streak of near-record increases fueled by companies frontloading goods to avoid higher duties. “The effects of U.S. policy shifts with China are now clearly visible in monthly trade flows,” Descartes said in a statement. West Coast ports are more dependent on China trade and bore the brunt of the declines. From April to May, the nation’s busiest seaports in Long Beach and Los Angeles experienced steep drops in goods from China, 31.6% and 29.9%, respectively, Descartes said. Top imports from China included furniture, bedding, plastic goods, machinery, toys and sporting goods. The United States and China agreed to a 90-day pause on punitive tit-for-tat tariffs last month. U.S. and Chinese officials met in London on Monday to defuse the high-stakes trade dispute between the world’s largest economies. Port executives and shipping consultants expect volume from China to rebound during the tariff truce, albeit at a more moderate level. That’s because the U.S. lowered the tariff for many goods from China to 30% during the pause. “China-origin imports may continue to soften in the months ahead as importers reassess sourcing strategies amid rising landed costs,” Descartes said. Lisa Baertlein, Reuters
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||