Latest news with #TravisKalanick
Gizmodo
12 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
All-In Podcast Boys Poke Fun at Uber Founder's ‘AI Psychosis' (Which They Encouraged)
Remember when the guys over at the All-In podcast talked with Uber founder Travis Kalanick about 'vibe physics'? Kalanick told viewers that he was on the verge of discovering new kinds of science by pushing his AI chatbots into previously undiscovered territory. It was ridiculous, of course, since that's not how an AI chatbot or science works. And Kalanick's ideas got ridiculed to no end by folks on social media. But the gentlemen of All-In now seem to be distancing themselves from Kalanick's ideas, even suggesting it could be related to the rise of 'AI psychosis,' despite the fact that they were more than happy to entertain the Uber founder's rambling nonsense when he was on the show. Kalanick appeared as a guest on the July 11 episode of All-In, explaining very earnestly how he was on the cusp of discovering exciting new things about quantum physics, previously unknown to science. 'I'll go down this thread with [Chat]GPT or Grok and I'll start to get to the edge of what's known in quantum physics and then I'm doing the equivalent of vibe coding, except it's vibe physics,' Kalanick explained. 'And we're approaching what's known. And I'm trying to poke and see if there's breakthroughs to be had. And I've gotten pretty damn close to some interesting breakthroughs just doing that.' The reality is that AI chatbots like Grok and ChatGPT are not capable of delivering new discoveries in quantum physics because that's beyond their capabilities. They spit out sentences by remixing and rehashing their training data, not by testing hypotheses. But All-In co-host Chamath Palihapitiya thought Kalanick was on to something, taking it a step further by insisting that AI chatbots could just figure out the answer to any problem you posed. 'When these models are fully divorced from having to learn on the known world and instead can just learn synthetically, then everything gets flipped upside down to what is the best hypothesis you have or what is the best question? You could just give it some problem and it would just figure it out,' said Palihapitiya. This kind of insistence that AI chatbots can solve any problem is central to their marketing, but it also sets up users for failure. Tools like Grok and ChatGPT still struggle with basic tasks like counting the number of U.S. state names that contain the letter R because that's not what large language models are good at. But that hasn't stopped folks like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman from making grandiose promises. Co-host Jason Calacanis was the only one to suggest that perhaps Kalanick was misunderstanding his own experience during the July 11 episode. Calacanis asked Kalanick if he was 'kind of reading into it and it's just trying random stuff at the margins.' The Uber founder acknowledged that it can't really come up with a new idea, but said it was only because 'these things are so wedded to what is known.' Kalanick compared it to pulling a stubborn donkey, suggesting it was indeed capable of new discoveries if you just worked hard enough at it. You'd expect that to be the last word on the topic, given the fact that the All-In guys like to avoid controversy. They infamously failed to produce an episode of the podcast the week that Elon Musk and President Trump had their blowout. (The podcast hosts are all friends with Musk, and co-host David Sacks is Trump's crypto czar.) So listeners of the new episode may have been a bit surprised to hear Kalanick's weird ideas discussed again, especially if it was to poke fun at him. The latest episode of All-In, uploaded on Aug. 15, opened with a discussion of so-called 'AI psychosis,' a term that hasn't been defined in medical literature but has emerged in popular media to discuss how people who are struggling with their mental health might see their symptoms exacerbated by engaging too much with AI. Gizmodo reported last week about complaints filed with the FTC about users experiencing hallucinations, egged on by ChatGPT. One complaint even told of how one user stopped taking his medication because ChatGPT told him not to at the same time as he was experiencing a delusional breakdown. AI psychosis isn't a clinical term, and it's hard to determine the precise number of people who are experiencing severe strains on their mental health from the use of AI chatbots. But ChatGPT's creator, OpenAI, has acknowledged that it's a problem. And Calacanis opened the show talking about how people can get 'one-shotted,' the new slang co-opted from video games and used for people who fall too deep into the AI rabbit hole. They anthropomorphize AI and fail to understand it's just a computer program, sending themselves into a delusional spiral. 'You may have even witnessed a little bit of this when Travis [Kalanick] was on the program a couple weeks ago and he said he was like spending his time on the fringes or the edges of… physics,' Calacanis said. 'It really can take you down the rabbit hole.' 'Are you saying Travis is suffering from AI psychosis?' co-host David Friedberg asked. 'I'm saying we may need to do a health check. We may need to do a health check because smart people can get involved with these AI. So we may have to do a little welfare check on our boy TK,' Calacanis said, seemingly in earnest. Palihapitiya seemed to think the underlying problem with AI psychosis was just a product of the so-called loneliness epidemic, but he ignored his own role in feeding Kalanick's narrative that AI chatbots were truly capable of new discoveries in science. David Sacks wasn't having it, insisting that AI psychosis was just a moral panic similar to fears 20 years ago over social media. 'This whole idea of AI psychosis, I think I gotta call bullshit on the whole concept. I mean, what are we talking about here? People doing too much research?' Sacks said, trying to downplay the news reports. 'This feels like the moral panic that was created over social media, but updated for AI.' Sacks admitted there was a mental health crisis in the U.S., but didn't believe it was AI's fault. And there's probably some truth to what Sacks is saying. All new technologies include some form of social upheaval and worries about what a given invention might mean for the future. But there's also no denying that people are much lonelier and isolated since the advent of social media. And that may not all be social media's fault. But revolutionary technologies will inevitably have both positive and negative impacts on society. The question is always whether the positives outweigh the negatives. And the jury is arguably still out on both social media and AI chatbots.
WIRED
01-08-2025
- Automotive
- WIRED
Uber's Drive to Become the Kleenex of Robotaxis
It doesn't matter who makes the tech—when you call a robocar, Uber's mission now is to make sure you use its app. Photograph:At a 2015 event, then-Uber CEO Travis Kalanick pondered aloud the future of his ride-hail company in a world of self-driving cars. There were still a ways off, he acknowledged—five or 10 or 15 years. But to him, Uber's role was clear. "Are we going to be part of the future?" he said. "Or are we going to resist the future, like that taxi industry before us? For us, we're a tech company, so we've said, let's be part of that.' Kalanick isn't at the head of Uber anymore, but the specter of disruption remains. Ten years later, self-driving vehicle companies that mostly didn't exist in 2015 are readying robotaxis for passenger rides. Moreover, nearly every player in the currently hot robot car space has something in common: They've signed a deal with Uber. Yes, really. Take a look: It's the classic 'throwing spaghetti on the self-driving cars to see what sticks' strategy. Uber's interest in self-driving makes a ton of sense. The business estimates it spends $2 per mile to have a pesky human behind the wheel, and Dara Khosrowshahi, Kalanick's replacement, said in a recent interview that Uber pays drivers a global average of 80 percent of riders' fares. (Many drivers believe Uber takes much more.) How much more money could Uber made if robots did the driving? 'We think it's an enormous, enormous long-term opportunity,' Khosrowshahi said. This year alone, Uber has announced tie-ups with China's Baidu, and Momenta; Volkswagen; the Michigan-based developer May Mobility; and this month, the Bay Area self-driving vehicle company Nuro and Arizona EV manufacturer Lucid, who together say they'll launch 20,000 robotaxis over the next six years, starting in a US city next year. As the world, and the taxi business, hints at big changes on the roads, Uber seems poised to maintain its status as the Kleenex of ride-hail, a name brand synonymous with an entire category. It's inconsequential who builds the tech—when you call a robocar, Uber wants you to use its app. 'To them, it doesn't really matter who ultimately succeeds,' says Sam Abuelsamid, who writes about the self-driving-vehicle industry and is the vice president of marketing at Telemetry, a Michigan research firm. 'If you've got a car that works and can drive safely, you're welcome to come onto Uber and provide rides.' Still, it's too early to say whether the Kleenex gambit will work. Plenty has changed since 2015. Kalanick is no longer at Uber, deposed by a hostile board in 2017. The company marked a grim milestone in 2018 when one of its own testing self-driving vehicles struck and killed a woman. The incident, for which federal investigators later found the ride-hail giant partially responsible, led to a suspension and then reorganization of Uber's self-driving development effort. In 2020, Uber sold off its autonomous vehicle unit to a competitor. In some ways, though, this asset-light existence—where Uber serves as the middleman for drivers and riders, without owning its own (robo)car—seems to have worked for the company. Under the guidance of CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, the company finally recorded its first profit last year. One potential issue for Uber is that its particular role in the autonomous vehicle industry won't be super useful for a while. Uber is powerful because it's already on the phones of some 160 million active monthly users all over the world. The company is good at matching people driving cars with those millions of people who want rides. But there likely won't be millions of robotaxis for a while. Waymo, the US leader in robotaxis, has about 1,500 vehicles operating in five cities. Baidu says its next city, Dubai, will have 100 robotaxis by the end of this year. 'This is a marketplace that for quite some time will be supply constrained, not demand constrained,' says Len Sherman, a professor at Columbia Business School who has written about Uber. Self-driving car developers want access to Uber's network—but because there simply aren't that many self-driving cars, the company is less useful in the near-term. This leads to another potential issue: Uber may have less power to get a big chunk of each fare in the robotaxi world. The company has spent billions figuring just how much they need to pay individual drivers to take on fares. Robotaxi tech developers who have spent their own billions building self-diving software will likely look to take a bigger portion of each fare. After all, companies including Tesla and Waymo run their own ride-hail apps. Do they really need Uber? 'I guarantee they'll drive a harder bargain,' says Sherman. (A spokesperson for Uber didn't provide financial details of its existing partnerships.) Chinese Uber competitor Didi—which acquired Uber's China business in 2016—seems to be following the old Uber self-driving playbook. It has its own autonomous vehicle technology subsidiary, which is building autonomous vehicle software. It said last year that it would work with EV firm GAC Aion to mass produce robotaxis starting this year. It may be that Uber hasn't totally closed the door on owning some of its own robotaxi tech. Earlier this summer, the New York Times reported that Kalanick was back, and in talks to acquire the US arm of the Chinese AV company a financial assist from Uber. A spokesperson for declined to comment on the report. Uber told the Times that it plans to work with many AV players globally. The Kleenex strategy, in other words. One company is conspicuously missing from the tall stack of Uber's autonomy partnership press releases, of course. In a February interview, Uber CEO Khosrowshahi seemed to indicate that's not for lack of trying. Tesla appears to want to own its whole self-driving car operation: the technology, the cars, the maintenance, and the app that powers it—but Uber could still be a great robotaxi partner, Khosrowshahi said. 'Ultimately, we're hoping that my charm and the economic argument gets Tesla to work with us as well,' he said.
Los Angeles Times
18-07-2025
- Automotive
- Los Angeles Times
Uber partnering with Lucid, Nuro to launch robotaxis in 2026
Uber Technologies Inc. is teaming up with electric vehicle maker Lucid Group Inc. and self-driving tech startup Nuro to launch a robotaxi fleet. Uber announced Thursday it or its third-party partners will purchase and operate Lucid Gravity SUVs outfitted with Nuro Driver technology on its ride-sharing network. The company aims to launch the first vehicle later in 2026 in an unidentified major US city, with plans to deploy at least 20,000 of the robotaxis over six years. The ride-sharing company also announced it's making separate multi-hundred-million dollar investments in both Lucid and Nuro. That funding will include $300 million for Lucid that will be used in part to upgrade to its assembly line to integrate Nuro hardware into the Gravity vehicles, according to the EV company. Separately, Lucid also said it plans a 1-for-10 reverse stock split, subject to shareholder approval. The Lucid-Nuro deal adds to more than a dozen partnerships that Uber has announced with autonomous vehicle tech developers and carmakers, including Waymo and Volkswagen Group of America, as it aims to be the go-to commercial app for robotaxis. Earlier this week, Uber announced a partnership with Chinese AV maker Baidu to deploy robotaxis in several non-US markets. Currently autonomous rides are available through the Uber app in Phoenix, Austin, Atlanta and Abu Dhabi. The substantial investments by Uber further underscore its strategy shift away from developing autonomous technology in-house, as it did under co-founder and former Chief Executive Officer Travis Kalanick, in favor of partnering with and investing in firms that specialize in AV. Uber has monetized some of its equity stakes in firms such as autonomous freight company Aurora Innovation Inc. to fund future investments in the driverless ecosystem, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has said. Competition is intensifying in the still-nascent robotaxi market, with EV giant Tesla Inc. rolling out its long-promised service in Austin last month and CEO Elon Musk pledging to expand to other cities. Uber first partnered with Nuro in 2022 on food delivery robots. The following year Nuro pivoted from building and scaling custom AVs to focusing on developing autonomous software. The Uber partnership also adds a notable customer for Lucid, one of the few pure play EV makers in the US, as it works to popularize Gravity, its second vehicle model. The company has been working to amp up production and deliveries, and has estimated it will produce 20,000 vehicles in 2025, more than double the year before. Prototype robotaxis developed by Lucid and Nuro are already in operation on Nuro's Las Vegas closed-circuit testing grounds. Lucid interim CEO Marc Winterhoff said Uber chose its SUV because the company can integrate the necessary hardware at its factory. Nuro's software will be added once Uber receives the vehicles. Winterhoff had said in a call with investors in May that the company was in advanced discussions with partners about using Gravity for autonomous vehicle purposes. 'This is a stepping stone on our journey to expand our tech leadership from electric vehicles and licensing into partnerships in other areas,' Winterhoff told Bloomberg this week. 'A lot can happen in six years. I really see this as the first starting point.' Lucid also has been working on advanced driver systems and announced earlier this year that it had partnered with King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia. Winterhoff said the company still plans to work on its own autonomous and driver assistance technology. This week Lucid separately announced it's adding hands-free drive and lane change assist to its software suite. Carlson and Lung write for Bloomberg.
Yahoo
17-07-2025
- Yahoo
The Former CEO of Uber Kind of Sounds Like He's Losing It When He's Talking About AI
It sounds like the co-founder and former CEO of Uber has had a big gulp of the AI Kool-aid — and then some. On a recent episode of the All-In podcast, Travis Kalanick, who resigned from the ride-hailing company in disgrace in 2017, spoke rapturously about his experience using chatbots like ChatGPT and Grok. That's when he revealed his sincere conviction that he, a mere college dropout, was on the verge of achieving a breakthrough in physics just by probing the AI models. "I'll go down this thread with GPT or Grok and I'll start to get to the edge of what's known in quantum physics and then I'm doing the equivalent of vibe coding, except it's vibe physics," Kalanick said, as spotlighted by Gizmodo. "And we're approaching what's known," he enthused. "And I'm trying to poke and see if there's breakthroughs to be had. And I've gotten pretty damn close to some interesting breakthroughs just doing that." Kalanick appeared to have a special affinity for Elon Musk's Grok, which was embroiled in controversy earlier this month after making posts calling itself "MechaHitler," praising the Nazi leader, and making a series of outrageously racist and antisemitic statements. At no point did the former Uber boss even mention these fresh stains on Grok's record — he was too busy pontificating over the idea of actual scientists getting their hands on the AI. "I pinged Elon on at some point. I'm just like, dude, if I'm doing this and I'm super amateur hour physics enthusiast," Kalanick said, per Giz, "what about all those PhD students and postdocs that are super legit using this tool?" He did not leave us hanging in suspense. "Grok 4 could be this place where breakthroughs are actually happening!" Kalanick said. "New breakthroughs!" Kalanick appears to be parroting the spirit of the claims made by Grok's creator, Musk. Upon the release of Grok 4 last week — the "smartest AI in the world" — Musk promised that Grok would not only discover "new technologies" within the next few years, but "new physics." Incredibly, this was only a minor escalation in his original promise that Grok will be a "maximum truth-seeking" AI that will unlock the "true nature of the universe." So far, neither Grok nor any other large language model has proved capable of unearthing the secrets of spacetime, or what's behind a black hole's singularity, or anything else particularly novel. Even the most advanced LLMs are marred by frequent episodes of inventing facts out of thin air, something the industry likes to euphemistically call "hallucinations." In Grok's case, it remains remarkably prone to declaring itself an incarnation of Adolf Hitler, being racist, or seemingly believing it's Elon Musk himself. To his credit, Kalanick does inject some mild criticism for LLMs into his spiel, saying they're too "wedded to what is known" and — in an apparent contradiction — need to be double-checked. But he framed this as an issue that could be overcome with tenacious prompting, instead of reckoning with what some believe are the technology's fundamental shortcomings. In a remark that sums up his credulous zeal, Kalanick laid out the one simple trick the AI industry should do to supercharge science, which is: being good at science. "If you have an LLM or foundational model of some kind that is the best in the world at the scientific method? Game the eff over," Kalanick said. "You just light up more GPUs and you just got like a thousand more PhD students working for you." Easy, right? More on AI: The Pentagon Is Pumping $200 Million Into Elon Musk's AI That Just Had a Nazi Meltdown Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
15-07-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Uber's latest robotaxi partner is China's Baidu
Uber has struck another deal with a robotaxi provider, and this time it's with Chinese tech giant Baidu. The two companies announced Tuesday that they have agreed to a 'multi-year strategic partnership to deploy thousands of Baidu's Apollo Go autonomous vehicles (AVs) on the Uber platform' in multiple markets outside the U.S. and mainland China. Those deployments will start in Asia and the Middle East later this year, the companies said. Uber has been on a tear of AV partnerships lately as it looks to protect its ride-hailing business by embracing the rise of robotaxis. In the last few months alone, Uber has agreed to put AVs from Waymo, Volkswagen, May Mobility, and Pony AI on its platform in different cities around the world. In some cases, Uber is taking direct stakes in these companies. In May, Uber announced an expanded partnership with China's WeRide that included a $100 million investment. Uber is reportedly also considering helping its founder Travis Kalanick finance a takeover of Pony AI. As fast as these partnerships have been coming, they are still in the very early stages. In this instance, riders initially won't be able to request a Baidu AV in Uber's app. Instead, the companies say the rider 'may be presented with the option' to have their trip fulfilled by a fully driverless Apollo Go AV. This is similar to how some of Uber's other partnerships already work.
