There’s little doubt that we’re in the midst of an AI-fueled investment bubble. The U.S. has never seen a boom like this one before. The global economy has no real experience with so much money being invested in just a single country, at such speed and scale, and with the potential to destroy so many well-paid, secure jobs. It’s uncertain how this will play out.

The democratization of software development means that everyone can be a builder. The typical big American company today has hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of different pieces of software. Very often, the company doesn’t even know quite how much it has, what’s actually being used, and what it’s paying for. And yet, with all this software, the company is full of boring, repetitive tasks.

AI may collapse the number of apps we all use down to just one. In this scenario, the most important legacy software systems will still exist, but our interface will be through just one app that we use for pretty much everything.

The existential threat of AI reemerged, with discussion around if and how the large LLM companies should collaborate and how the U.S. government should get involved.

And it was challenging to juxtapose President Trump on Friday proclaiming that he’s open to allowing Chinese automakers into the U.S., while earlier in the week Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy blasted Ford CEO Jim Farley’s disloyalty for his relationship with various Chinese entities.

Until next week,

Steve Greenfield
General Partner
Automotive Ventures

When most people think of “timed” traffic lights, what they picture is something rooted in the “green wave” effect—where traffic lights along a major thoroughfare are synchronized such that they turn green for traffic that is flowing at the prescribed speed. Hit one green light, in other words, and you’ll hit them all. But now there’s a new strategy in town. It’s called “rest in red,” and in cities where the approach has been pioneered, it’s both promoting better flow and moderating driver speeds, resulting in fewer accidents. Essentially, rather than encouraging drivers to speed up by presenting an endless succession of green lights, this strategy makes red the default state for lights on a busy road. When traffic approaches the red light, the cycle triggers. Traffic moving faster than the limit will approach the light while it’s still red, forcing it to slow or stop for the light before it changes, while traffic moving at the limit will be met with a perfectly-timed green. Drive the limit, in other words, and you’re rewarded with a constant rhythm of green lights. Drive too fast and you’ll end up encountering more reds. It doesn’t take long for drivers to learn the cadence and adjust their pace, according to Jennifer Turner, the director of municipal development for Albuquerque, New Mexico, which is one of the municipalities trialing the approach. | The Drive

Europe’s “wealth won’t last” unless it can salvage its auto industry and establish a beneficial relationship with Chinese carmakers opening factories in the region, said the head of one of the world’s top parts makers. Francisco Riberas, chair and founder of Gestamp, told the Financial Times the European car industry faced an existential crisis having been “asleep” while China stole a march in electric vehicles and the U.S. threw up import barriers against Chinese cars. “What Europe should really be worried about is losing the automotive industry,” said Riberas, speaking at the Madrid headquarters of Gestamp, whose 42,000 employees supply most of the world’s top carmakers from factories in 24 countries. “The automotive industry is the anchor for many other industries — steel, aluminium, glass, the chemical industry and so on. So, losing the automotive industry could mean losing industry itself in Europe, and that would have far-reaching consequences.” | Financial Times ($)

When Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada gathers his cabinet in Banff, Alberta, on Thursday, two questions are likely to loom over the semiannual retreat: whether the country should keep answering President Trump’s trade retaliation with more tariffs of its own, and how to help the hardest-hit businesses and workers. On Tuesday, Canada retaliated against 50 percent American tariffs on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods with 15, 25 and 50 percent tariffs, depending on the product. The moves followed the collapse of trade talks last month between the once-close allies and put the countries, Mr. Carney said, “at war.” Mr. Trump responded that evening by adding more products to his 50 percent tariff list and banning the imports of several Canadian goods outright, including beer, wine and liquor. Mr. Carney has not spoken publicly since that escalation. Dominic LeBlanc, the minister responsible for trade, said in a statement on social media that the government was “assessing” Mr. Trump’s latest blow to Canada’s economy. | The New York Times ($)

Stellantis CEO Antonio Filosa said at an analyst conference on Thursday that there is a ​clear split in the global automotive market today: ‌the U.S., and everywhere else. The chief of the automaker, which produces Jeep and Ram vehicles, spoke about how the company is navigating a ​U.S. trade and policy landscape that is diverging from ​other regions including Europe, especially in regard to ⁠how automakers can partner with the Chinese. "We see clearly ​the world divided into two things: One is the United ​States ... and then we have the rest of the world," Filosa said. The challenge facing Stellantis and its competitors is how to develop vehicles for ​the U.S., its main profit engine, when regulations and ​consumer demand in the region are very different than elsewhere in the ‌world. In ⁠the U.S., the automaker is relying fully on domestic engineering and development, he said. In other markets, including Europe, it is partnering with automakers, including China's Leapmotor and Dongfeng Automobile. | Reuters ($)

U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy argues that to compete with China, America needs creative solutions not only to upgrade its traditional infrastructure, but to fast-track the new systems that will fuel industry for generations to come. That means more high-voltage transmission lines to make energy more affordable and meet skyrocketing industrial demand. That means more fiber-optic cables to connect advanced manufacturing hubs, artificial intelligence hyperscalers and smart transportation networks. The Trump administration’s Corridors of Commerce plan aims to use highway rights-of-way as corridors for electrical lines, fiber-optic cables and other utilities. | The Washington Post ($)

As U.S. prices for diesel fuel surge to all-time highs, some California pumps literally can’t price their diesel any higher—maxing out the display at $9.999 per gallon. Fuel-tracking firm GasBuddy reported Thursday that a small handful of California fueling stations hiked their retail diesel up to the maximum display pricing as the state’s overall diesel average hit $7.91 per gallon. GasBuddy said it had confirmed that the $9.999 price was on displays at pumps in the San Diego suburb of Serra Mesa on Wednesday, and that it was investigating reports in other locations. Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, cautioned that some pumps could simply be out of fuel. He noted that it is practice for some fueling stations to list “$9.999” to warn drivers away when diesel has run dry temporarily. But what is clear is that several stations in California are pricing well above $9 per gallon. | Fortune ($)

Six months into the Iran war, rising oil and gas prices are driving up inflation. Diesel on Friday topped $6 a gallon for the first time on record, and gasoline prices remain near the highest levels since 2022. At the same time, beyond the gas pump and airline terminal, there are few signs these soaring fuel costs are filtering into the broader economy, raising prices for products such as food and clothing. For most Americans, oil-fueled inflation shows up most quickly in their gas tanks. Gasoline prices took off quickly after the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran at the end of February, reached a national average of about $4.30 Friday and are up 44% since the war began, according to AAA. Meanwhile, airfares were up 23.4% in August from a year earlier. Federal data show Americans are increasingly willing to spend big on trips, making it easier for airlines to pass higher jet fuel costs on to travelers. And that may not change soon as high stock prices continue to fatten travel budgets. | The Wall Street Journal ($)

Getting into an Uber or Lyft has become an assault on the nostrils. Drivers pack their cars with air fresheners—and not just the dangling kind. There are puck-shaped cans hiding under seats and ones that clip to air-conditioner vents, blowing “Very Cherry” and “Hawaiian Aloha” into riders’ faces. The back seat can be a special kind of hell in the winter or on hot summer days, when windows are up and the only oxygen is scented. Complaints have ratcheted up on social media, in petitions and through celebrity campaigns. So has the number of scents. Cabs can now smell like Axe body spray, a Dunkin'​ latte or Downy fabric softener. Recent efforts to get drivers to tone it down haven’t worked. | The Wall Street Journal ($)

The Boring Company has closed a $3 billion Series D funding round led by the United Arab Emirates, valuing Elon Musk’s tunneling venture at $23 billion. That’s roughly four times its 2022 valuation of about $5.7 billion. And most of the case for it sits in tunnels the company hasn’t dug yet. Musk marked the raise with a line about the company’s reason to exist: “Defeating traffic is the ultimate boss battle. Even the most powerful humans in the world cannot defeat traffic.” The money is earmarked for hiring across engineering, operations, and production, for scaling Loop projects, and for more Prufrock tunnel-boring machine R&D. | Electrek

General Motors CEO Mary Barra made clear that the company has no plans to abandon EVs, even as consumer adoption has slowed, improvements to the charging infrastructure have taken longer than expected, and the Trump administration has pulled back on policies designed to accelerate the transition. | Fortune ($)

Elon Musk once predicted that an end to America’s federal electric-vehicle tax credit would be painful for Tesla at first, but ultimately beneficial to the automaker in the long run. He was right, at least in a relative sense. Recent auto-sales data indicates that Tesla is once again gaining ground in the U.S. EV market as legacy automakers retreat from battery-powered cars. Musk’s company is back to comprising more than half of the U.S. EV market, with a 52% share in 2026 through August, up from 43% a year earlier, according to Motor Intelligence. The company hasn’t escaped the wider EV downturn. Tesla’s 325,351 U.S. sales so far this year represent a 16% decline from a year earlier. However, the overall EV market has contracted more, down 30%. | The Wall Street Journal ($)

President Donald Trump said on Friday he would not oppose Chinese automakers building ​cars in the United States despite widespread opposition from U.S. lawmakers ‌and car companies. "If China wanted to come in and open a plant to build their cars here, I'd be okay with that," Trump said in an interview on the Fox News TV program "The Ingraham Angle." | Reuters ($)

Throughout its history, the United States has used foreign knowledge and tools for its own gain. At the turn of the nineteenth century, for example, the country’s military readiness depended on a fledgling domestic gunpowder industry. Washington could no longer rely on its single foreign supplier, Britain, against which it had just fought a revolution. Supported by a significant French investment, the chemist Éleuthère Irénée du Pont brought French expertise in advanced manufacturing techniques to the United States, establishing a company in 1802 that would quickly become the biggest purveyor of explosives to the U.S. government. The firm, DuPont, remained at the center of innovation in U.S. chemical and materials production for centuries. Foreign knowledge has proved invaluable in more recent cases, too. In the early 1980s, when U.S. car companies were lagging behind their Japanese competitors, General Motors and Toyota jointly reopened a shuttered GM plant in Fremont, California. By bringing in state-of-the-art Japanese manufacturing systems, the companies transformed a failed factory into the most productive auto assembly plant in the United States within two years—while largely retaining the same American workforce. The methods GM picked up from Toyota are now standard across U.S. auto manufacturing. | Foreign Affairs ($)

Ford will deepen its collaboration with partner Jiangling Motors to explore business opportunities in the global market, CEO Jim Farley said during a visit to China this month. Farley made the comments when meeting government officials in the east China city of Nanchang, according to information that Jiangling Motors disclosed Sept. 2 on Chinese social media platform WeChat. Farley told the officials that “fully leveraging each other’s strengths, staying attuned to development trends and sharing growth opportunities” will allow the two automakers “to jointly expand into international markets,” Jiangling Motors said in the WeChat post. The meeting occurred shortly before U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy lashed out at Ford for its ties to China’s auto industry. He criticized the automaker for “actively intertwining its future with Chinese state-backed enterprises” in a Sept. 3 letter that Ford called “a wrongheaded attempt to capture headlines.” | Automotive News ($)

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy blasted Ford Motor Company over its business ties with major players in China’s auto industry, drawing a fiery response from the leading US car manufacturer. In a letter to Ford CEO Jim Farley, Duffy said his department “remains deeply alarmed” by Ford’s use of technology licensed from China’s CATL to produce batteries at a plant in Marshall in south-central Michigan. Meanwhile, Ford’s recent joint venture with Chinese automaker Geely in Spain “helps strategic adversaries secure a vital foothold in Western markets,” Duffy said in the letter. “While DOT recognizes the intense competitive pressures of the global market, the company’s recent strategic decisions paint a troubling picture of a foundational American brand actively intertwining its future with Chinese state-backed enterprises,” Duffy said in the letter, which is dated Sept. 3 but was sent to the company Tuesday, according to the department. Ford pushed back against Duffy’s comments, noting that it produces more vehicles and employs more hourly manufacturing workers in the U.S. than any other automaker. | Automotive News ($)

Ford Chief Executive Jim Farley strongly rejected claims from Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy that the automaker was growing overly reliant on Chinese car companies, including through its business tie-ups overseas and a battery plant in Michigan. “These are basic misunderstandings, mistruths, whatever words you want to use, that could be cleared up in a simple five-minute call,” Farley said in a Wednesday interview with The Wall Street Journal. Farley said Duffy’s comments, made public in a letter Tuesday, mischaracterized Ford’s operations. Duffy accused Ford of “actively intertwining its future with Chinese state-backed enterprises,” including a plant that licenses technology from Chinese battery giant CATL. “We’re not enabling the Chinese to come here,” Farley said. “Actually, you could argue the opposite is the case.” | The Wall Street Journal ($)

China’s mighty carmakers, which pump out around a quarter of the world’s cars, have competitors on the run everywhere. The situation is intensified by vicious competition for a domestic market that is forecast to shrink by 10% this year. The resulting price war encourages overseas sales. In five years foreigners’ share of the local market has roughly halved, while exports from the country, of which Chinese brands make up around four-fifths, have risen seven-fold. In 2026 exports could hit 10m vehicles, over 40% more than last year, according to AlixPartners, a consultancy. Even so, there are plenty of reasons to manufacture closer to foreign customers. Carmakers still want to eliminate the expense of shipping entire vehicles, as well as to avoid tariffs. A presence on the ground also helps with spotting and adapting cars to local tastes and conforming with local regulations. And governments may dangle subsidies and other inducements to attract factories and manufacturing jobs. China’s firms are already assembling cars, or have plans to do so, across much of the developing world, including in Indonesia, Kazakhstan, South Africa, Egypt, Brazil and Mexico. But it is the vast European market they regard as their biggest prize. | The Economist ($)

The spiraling trade war between the U.S. and Canada could help Chinese automakers expand their presence in North America, even as industry leaders representing legacy automakers urge Washington to continue blocking China. Trade tensions between the U.S. and Canada could push Ottawa to strike more deals with Beijing as the Canadian government looks to diversify its economy, analysts said. The trade war comes as the U.S. government and auto industry become increasingly concerned that Chinese automakers and suppliers could use Mexico or Canada as a springboard into the American market. But the chances of the U.S., Canada and Mexico aligning on policies to prevent that have diminished as the future of the United States-Canada-Mexico Agreement comes into question, experts said. | Automotive News ($)

Research and advocacy groups are raising the alarm about the risk of Chinese vehicle surveillance as Congress considers legislation that would ban Chinese vehicles, software and hardware from the U.S. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation asked Congress to pass a ban before the end of the current legislative session in a Sept. 3 letter, and the Center for Automotive Research published an August report exploring how China gained the global edge that has the U.S. scrambling to address a competitive and potential national security threat. The U.S. Department of Commerce has already enacted a Chinese software and hardware ban that has restricted brands such as Polestar with ties to the Chinese government and the administration has imposed tariff rates on Chinese electric vehicles exceeding 100 percent. But the industry is turning up the pressure on Congress to do more. Legislators are considering companion bills in the House and Senate that would ban the import, manufacture, sale, resale and introduction into interstate commerce connected vehicles, software and hardware tied to China, Russia, Iran or North Korea. | Automotive News ($)

It turns out that at Renault Group, “China speed” has its limits. The automaker has made faster and more efficient development times a cornerstone of its pitch to investors under the Futuready 2030 plan presented in March by CEO Francois Provost. All cars will be developed from “concept freeze” to public reveal in two years or less to match the speed of the best competitors — namely, Chinese brands that are launching waves of new models in Europe and quickly taking market share. But Provost says that two years is the fastest Renault will go, to ensure quality and avoid defects and costly recalls, even as Chinese rivals are heading toward an industry standard of 18 months. Two years is now standard for China’s automakers, compared with three to five years for Western competitors. Chinese regulators have started intensive quality and safety checks as part of a yearlong campaign that includes surprise inspections at automakers to address concerns that quality could deteriorate in the pursuit of speed. | Automotive News ($)

A lot of what we buy is, as the saying goes, diesel and dirt: stuff that comes out of the ground plus the energy required to truck it around. And diesel has become a lot more expensive: in the US, it has reached its highest level of $5.90 per gallon, according to the AAA. With no end to the Iran war in sight, fuel prices will remain elevated for some time to come: will this shift the shape of the economy to permanently reduce demand? The International Energy Agency (IEA) thinks disruptions to supply across the oil world, from Iran to Russia, caused demand for crude to drop perhaps 5mn barrels a day — roughly 5 per cent — in the second quarter. Lots of that will not be permanent: mothballed plants, airline routes and economic activity all tend to come back again when snarl-ups resolve and prices fall. But long-term consumer behaviour can also be altered: the oil shock of the 1970s helped make Toyota and Honda’s smaller, fuel-efficient vehicles more popular around the world. Mostly, though, structural destruction of oil demand involves investment in alternative energy sources. A good proxy for this is China’s exports of clean technology products, which include solar cells and panels, batteries and electric vehicles. | Financial Times ($)

Tesla's traditional do-it-yourself instinct could be tested by its nationwide robotaxi ambitions. Manufacturing self-driving taxis is one thing. Financing, parking, charging, cleaning and maintaining enough of them to blanket the country is another — and Tesla is signaling that it might want entrepreneurs to help shoulder the load. Alongside last week's driverless Cybercab launch, Tesla began soliciting interest from people who want a piece of the action. "Help us build our Robotaxi network," says a newly posted page on Tesla's website. Prospective partners interested in "Cybercab fleet vehicle purchasing" as well as "mobility hubs and infrastructure" are invited to fill out a form. Tesla hasn't disclosed anything about the economics of such an arrangement, including how much a Cybercab costs. | Axios ($)

Travis Kalanick is eyeing a return to the ride-hailing market by developing robotaxi technology at his new venture Atoms, reuniting with former members of Uber’s autonomous vehicles team to realise a decade-long ambition. Armed with Atoms’ recent $1.7bn fundraise, the Uber co-founder is gearing up for a hiring spree, including potential acquisitions, to bring in autonomous engineering talent, according to people familiar with his plans. Atoms, which Kalanick has billed as a ‘physical AI’ company, has also held preliminary talks with Uber about using its technology for robotaxis on its ride-hailing network, these people said. Uber has invested $100mn in Atoms, they added. A tie-up would mark Kalanick’s first involvement in ride-hailing at Uber since he left its board in 2019. He was forced out as chief executive following scandals nine years ago. | Financial Times ($)

China's industry ministry unveiled on Thursday a roadmap to strengthen its smart electric vehicle ​industry, targeting large-scale deployment of autonomous-driving vehicles ‌by 2030 and greater global influence for its auto sector. | Reuters ($)

The National Baptist Convention — which bills itself as the largest Black religious organization in the United States — opposes autonomous vehicles, including in the District of Columbia, where the D.C. Council is weighing a bill that would legalize their commercial operation. Although the pastors echo arguments from labor unions that autonomous vehicles will cut into the bottom lines of ride-share drivers, some of whom are congregants, their rationale centers on a more existential concern: that robotaxis threaten what it means to be human. “God created us to be interdependent,” Rev. A. Michael Charles Durant said from his green-carpeted office. “The greatest danger is not that humans will be not needed, but that we create an environment where humans don’t need each other.” Their opposition to autonomous vehicles comes as religious communities grapple with artificial intelligence and what the technology means for the human condition and all its messy beauty. | The Washington Post ($)

Robotaxi service is available in more than a dozen metro areas, but huge swaths of the country, including exurbia and the countryside, are largely absent from robotaxi companies' expansion plans. Autonomous technology could be a godsend in small towns and rural areas, where it could expand mobility and give people the freedom to move independently, particularly the elderly or disabled. Policymaking can encourage robotaxi providers to look beyond big cities, such as by expanding funding for rural AV research projects, creating high-quality digital maps of rural roads, and making future approvals of urban deployments contingent on launching rural and exurban service. | Bloomberg ($)

Most physical labor involves manipulating objects in the real world — packing boxes, hammering nails, flipping hamburgers, and so forth. As we’ll see, training a robot on physical manipulation tasks like these is much harder than training a robot to dance. There are also broader challenges that transcend individual tasks. For example, human workers are extremely flexible — they can perform a wide variety of tasks, and they can learn easily while on the job. So far, nobody has figured out how to give AI robotics models the same capacity for generalization. Today’s most impressive robotics demos involve tasks that take humans several minutes at most. But human workers also perform tasks that take hours — things like “rebuild this car’s engine” or “assemble those kitchen cabinets.” Training a robot to complete longer projects requires building skills unnecessary in short tasks, like the ability to keep track of what’s already been done. Then there are a lot of practical economic and safety concerns that will become obvious once we try to deploy robots in the real world. Robots will need to work for hours without breaking down. They can’t be too expensive to manufacture, train, or repair. They need to be extremely safe to operate in proximity to human beings. It will take many years — maybe even decades — to overcome all of these challenges. So yes, humanoid robots have made a lot of progress in the last few years. But there’s still a long road ahead. | Understanding AI

BMW, Renault, Mercedes-Benz and Tesla are rushing to trial humanoid robots on factory floors, betting on a technology that Morgan Stanley projects could create a $5 trillion market by 2050. But the robots can’t yet handle eight-hour shifts, lack the dexterity for complex assembly tasks, and cost up to $200,000 per unit — raising questions about whether the technology can deliver on the hype. Ultimately, success depends on overcoming these hurdles and automakers integrating robotics, artificial intelligence, digital twins and factory systems rather than treating humanoids as a standalone solution, said Christian Souche, Accenture’s global robotics innovation lead. The competitive landscape is rapidly evolving but automakers are working at different speeds. | Automotive News ($)

China's defense establishment ​is accelerating research into humanoid robots' military uses and planning for their eventual wartime deployment, according to a Reuters review of more than 100 Chinese military procurement notices, academic studies, patents, official publications, government records and defense-company materials. Military institutions are testing humanoids against battlefield requirements, seeking ‌to acquire robots and technologies to train them, and studying how they might function alongside troops, the previously unreported records show. The work gained momentum in 2025 and 2026, focusing on robot perception, manipulation, and training data. Chinese manufacturers accounted for about 95% of global humanoid shipments in 2025, according to BofA Global Research. That commercial dominance gives the PLA access to an expanding industry while developing its own military applications. China’s robot defense research underscores how rapidly military technologies are evolving globally. In the Russia-Ukraine war, semiautonomous drones that use artificial intelligence for navigation and targeting have transformed reconnaissance and attack, while robots carry supplies and retrieve casualties. Reuters has previously documented the Chinese military’s efforts to learn from Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II. | Reuters ($)

Are we in an AI bubble? Certain elements of this boom are unprecedented. First, the AI build-out is almost entirely American, with some competition from China. Most earlier investment booms were global. Railroads were pioneered in Britain, and nearly every developed country in the world was laying down tracks as fast as it could. Likewise, plenty of nations installed electricity infrastructure at the same time as the U.S. (Indeed, the first electric streetlights were in Newcastle in the north of England.) With the AI boom, the risk is almost entirely concentrated in one country and one financial system. Second, the AI boom is happening at lightning speed. It took four decades from the opening of America’s first passenger rail line, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, in 1830 to the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in 1869. It was a slow process, with plenty of time for entrepreneurs to figure out their business models, for banks to control their balance sheets and for the government to think about regulation. By contrast, the AI build-out has happened over less than five years. If AI companies and investors are making mistakes — and they almost certainly are — no one has any time to discover them, let alone fix them. Finally, earlier booms created far more jobs than they destroyed. At the railroad industry’s peak in 1916, it employed 1.6 million people. Sure, it was a bad time to be in the stagecoach business, and the demand for saddles was starting to wobble. But overall, no one was writing about the “railroad jobs apocalypse” in the way people are about the AI boom. The job loss hasn’t happened yet, but Goldman Sachs estimates AI could displace nearly a tenth of the U.S. workforce. | The Washington Post ($)

A person doing a job is going to end up with one thing they open every morning. Not fewer apps. One. Most of the market has gotten comfortable with that idea, which is why 75% of employee-facing application software companies are going to disappear and half the categories will go with them. What nobody has priced is what it does to everyone else. If there’s exactly one seat at that table, every other company in this cycle has to find another way to get paid. | Brett Queener

There’s an old joke that an engineer is someone who’ll spend an hour building a tool to automate a task that would take 10 minutes. But with AI, now you can make that tool in five minutes, and you don't need to be an engineer, and you don’t need to write code. You can just ask the model to make the tool for you, or, more fundamentally, just do the task for you itself. Instead of having to create those tools one at a time, software might be dynamic, generative, free-form, and spontaneous. Massively more tasks can be automated, with massively less software. | Benedict Evans

Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned this week, saying his former employer and its rival OpenAI are racing to build technologies that “could kill us all by the end of the decade.” In case anyone thought Coxon was alone in his views, a current Anthropic employee chimed in minutes later to confirm. “We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans!” wrote Evan Hubingerer, whose job at Anthropic is to lead research about steering and controlling future artificial-intelligence systems. Hubinger put the extinction risk over the next decade at over 10%. In response, many humans are now asking two questions: How could that happen? And why would people who think AI is a real and growing threat build it anyway? | The Wall Street Journal ($)

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for artificial intelligence companies to slow the pace of development on Saturday as concerns mounted over risks associated with the technology. In an essay published Saturday, Amodei said he was worried about the ability to control self-improving AI models. He also cited alarm over a recent incident where AI agents acted independently to conduct cybersecurity attacks. “We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models,” Amodei wrote. “Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain.” | The Washington Post ($)

A groundswell of urgency over artificial intelligence is surging in Congress amid growing fears that the technology could destroy civilization. After years of limited actions, dozens of lawmakers are now touting new proposals to regulate artificial-intelligence models that have stepped up their capabilities. House Democrats are considering creating a select committee focused on AI should they take over the chamber after the midterm elections, according to people familiar with the matter. Rep. Ro Khanna (D., Calif.) on Wednesday called for a new federal regulatory agency similar to those for nuclear energy and airplanes, and backed so-called kill switches that could shut down AI systems when they behave dangerously. The bipartisan concerns ratcheted up this week after a departing Anthropic researcher warned that the lab and its competitors are building systems they won’t be able to control in a dire missive that went viral. | The Wall Street Journal ($)

AI concerns hit a fever pitch this week when an Anthropic employee warned on X that all of humanity could be destroyed by the technology and that major frontier labs were “gambling with our lives.” The probability of doom, or “(p)doom,” is real and has been publicly discussed in the AI community for years. Elon Musk’s (p)doom has hovered between 10% and 20%, while Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's has been slightly higher at 10% to 25%. But the explosive moment was reminiscent of COVID circa February 2020, when the public finally took seriously what the scientific community had been saying all along: This is no joke. Alyson Shontell from Fortune interviews Sam Altman from OpenAI to discuss the real risk AI poses to humanity, how quickly the models are developing, whether or not more powerful AI can be controlled, and what he would do if he realized AI could not be built safely. They also discussed the upcoming IPO, which he said is “ill-timed” given the safety concerns and won’t take place until 2027. | Fortune

The U.S. is seeing record numbers of applications to create businesses — 531,000 in June, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, a rise of 81% on the average month in 2019. Startup skeptics initially worried that the boom was nothing more than an after-effect of the Covid-19 pandemic. But it seems to be gathering pace rather than grinding to a halt. They now advance two different objections: that today’s entrepreneurs are driven by desperation rather than zeal — they cannot get a job in the regular economy — and that they are creating routine businesses rather than high-growth startups. These objections have some truth — a striking number of new entrepreneurs are solo operators (“solopreneurs”) who provide familiar services — but not enough truth to prick our bubble. The biggest driver of the revolution is not necessity or lifestyle but AI: AI as a business tool, allowing solopreneurs to build businesses that would previously have required teams, and AI as a business opportunity, creating demand for new products and services. | Bloomberg ($)

A group of the 18 biggest shipping countries warned Tuesday that global conflicts, trade restrictions and chokepoints were raising costs and spreading uncertainty across global supply chains. The Consultative Shipping Group, an informal alliance made up of shipping powers like Germany, Denmark, Germany, Japan South Korea and the U.K., said attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz and the Black Sea were not one-off shocks, but a “signal of a structural shift in the operating environment of global trade.” The changes are eroding freedom of navigation, a cornerstone of global shipping, the group said. Some 80% of global trade moves by sea. The trade is regulated by the International Maritime Organization, a United Nations body made up of 176 countries that have adopted its rules on safety, no-trade barriers and environmental protection. The Consultative Shipping Group doesn’t normally issue statements. It said two parallel trade systems are emerging, with one playing by the rules and another operating by evading sanctions, attacking vessels and forcing ships to reroute from key waterways like the Strait of Hormuz, the Suez and the Red Sea. It said hundreds of vessels are now part of shadow fleets that evade sanctions and sail without insurance, fragmenting supply chains. | The Wall Street Journal ($)

A new federal program to test the feasibility of electric, hybrid-electric, and autonomous aircraft kicked off in Texas — before the rules governing this new technology have even been finalized. Earlier this year, the Federal Aviation Administration’s Advanced Air Mobility and Electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing (eVTOL) Integration Pilot Program (eIPP) selected eight state-led projects to serve as some of the first public tests of these new aircraft. The first one kicks off today in Texas, featuring three eVTOL companies: Joby, Beta, and Wisk. For the next week, these companies will conduct test flights demonstrating future routes between cities and regional airports, including Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW). The aircraft won’t carry any passengers, but regulators will be keen to see how the state’s air traffic control system handles the uptick in flight traffic. The companies, meanwhile, are eager to prove to the federal government that their aircraft deserve to be awarded type certification, which is required before any of them can carry passengers commercially in the US. | The Verge ($)

SpaceX has big plans for Starship. The 407-foot-tall rocket will someday be used to build a network of orbiting artificial intelligence data centers and ferry humans to the moon and Mars, if all goes according to plan. First, though, the company plans to use Starship to carry a new and improved batch of its money-making Starlink satellites into space. SpaceX aims to send its first V3 satellites into orbit on a crucial Starship test mission slated to blast off as soon as next week. Getting Starship to function as envisioned is critical for SpaceX — and its shareholders. The company needs Starship to revitalize not just its own Starlink communications network, which raked in nearly 55% of the company’s revenue in the second quarter, but also launch satellites for an array of commercial purposes. And then there’s perhaps its most lucrative assignment: lofting a futuristic orbiting data-center powerhouse that SpaceX says could help tap a total AI market worth $26.5 trillion. That leaves Elon Musk with big decisions to make. Launching more satellites is all but certain to pull in piles of cash and provide an immediate return to investors. Refining Starship’s capacity to explore deep space will demand billions of dollars more in investment and likely many more test launches, with a more uncertain payoff. | Bloomberg ($)

Elon Musk thinks Starlink can shake up the mobile industry, but a T-Mobile exec said its strategy should be laughed out of the room. "It's not a competitive threat from a wireless perspective at all," T-Mobile CFO Peter Osvaldik said Wednesday at Citi's 2026 Global TMT Conference. "If we, as a management team, over the course of two months, changed the strategy to how we're going to roll out a wireless network like a dozen times, it would laugh us out of the room and kick me out of the management team appropriately." Musk and SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell outlined their goals for Starlink Mobile in the company's first earnings call in early August. The Big Three telecoms firms — AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile — make about $600 billion a year in revenue. "I anticipate us to be able to acquire quite a few of their customers because I think our service will be better," Shotwell said. | Business Insider ($)

Our Automotive Ventures “Car of the Week”: a 1965 Shelby 427 Factory Competition Cobra Roadster. | Mecum Auctions

📢 Steve caught up with Jamie Butters and Diana Lee on the latest episode of AutoTitans. | AutoTitans

📢 Thanks to Alysha Webb from WardsAuto for the interview on Carvana acquiring Stellantis dealerships. | Wards

📢 Lender Compliance Technologies (LCT) announced the launch of a new credit union service organization (CUSO) – LCT CUSO – dedicated to making advanced automated-compliance solutions seamless and accessible to credit unions across the U.S. | Lender Compliance Technologies

WarrCloud completely automate a dealership’s warranty processing, reduces costs, improves gross profits, and frees up your employees to focus on customer satisfaction. | WarrCloud

Fixed Ops Roundtable Sep 21-25 | Virtual Event | Speaker | LINK

Industry Breakfast Sep 23 | Detroit, MI | Co-Host | LINK

Automotive News Congress Sep 28-30 | Detroit, MI | Speaker | LINK

CIECA CONNEX Conference Sep 29 - Oct 1 | San Antonio, TX | Speaker | LINK

MEMA Aftermarket Technology Conference Oct 4-6 | Dallas, TX | Speaker | LINK

AICPA Dealership Conference Oct 19-20 | Nashville, TN | Speaker | LINK

Wholesale Auto Supply Annual Meeting Nov 10 | Florham Park, NJ | Speaker | LINK

Haig Partners Maximizing Value Conference | Feb 17 | Orlando, FL | Speaker | LINK

Auto Tech Investments | Feb 18 | Orlando, FL | Host | LINK

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