With the California Legislature in the final three weeks of its session, big tech companies and business lobbies have so far had little success in getting changes to the California Consumer Privacy Act. The landmark online privacy law – enacted in summer 2018 – takes effect Jan. 1, 2020.

The law parallels a sweeping measure adopted by the European Union that took effect in May 2018. It gives consumers the right to know who is collecting what data on them from their online browsing and provides them the choice of opting out from collection.

Defenders of the state law say the reason it has been targeted so vigorously is because tech firms know that California often influences what other states or even Congress does. These companies prefer the present anything-goes data accumulation landscape allowed under federal law. The Golden State law did appear to inspire 24 states to consider online privacy laws this year, according to Pew’s Stateline research site, though few have been enacted so far.

Critics: Flaws will hurt bottom lines, customers

But critics say they are going after the law because it is poorly crafted and could both drive companies out of business and reduce the ways that online information gathering actually helps consumers by connecting them to goods and services they are likely to want. Among the criticisms offered by the California Chamber of Commerce and the state chapter of the National Federation of Independent Business:

• The limits put on what “personal information” can be gathered are so broadly written that they apply to broad swaths of information that can’t be linked to individuals but that can help businesses develop marketing strategies.

• The provision banning businesses from the sale of information gathered online is so broad it will make it difficult for businesses to use information that it has gathered directly and legitimately from use of their websites to determine what customized content to provide customers.

Legislation that would address these concerns has not advanced. 

Local agencies fear effect on public health, tax collection

The Bay Area News Group also reported on the failure of a bill that would have allowed government agencies to have access to consumer information for a variety of priorities, including helping government officials “to collect child support, find people exposed to infectious diseases, locate foster children’s family members, determine social service eligibility, and collect delinquent taxes and judgments.”

One measure – Assembly Bill 25 by Assemblyman Ed Chau, D-Monterey Park – has made progress. It would make clear that the law doesn’t cover employees acting within the scope of their basic job duties. As a co-sponsor of the original law, Chau had more credibility than some of the lawmakers’ who appeared to be proposing changes at the tech industry’s behest.

AB25 passed the Assembly on a 77-0 vote in May and an amended version was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee on an 8-0 vote last month. But it has not been considered by the Senate Appropriations Committee since its referral.

Dramatic late-session moves could resurrect some of the more controversial bills seeking to narrow the Consumer Privacy Act. But an official with the Electronic Frontier Foundation told the Bay Area News Group that come Jan. 1, the foundation expected that “the same bill [adopted last year] goes into effect.”

Why focus is likely to shift from Sacramento to Albany

The tech companies and lobbying groups could soon shift their attention from California, the richest state in terms of GDP, to New York, the third richest.

In 2020, lawmakers there are expected to consider perhaps the most far-reaching online privacy law in the world. One likely provision would make it a “fiduciary duty” for companies to use the data they accumulate in ways that advance the customer’s best interests. Depending on how this is interpreted, this could mean the end of the present model of micro-targeting of consumers through information gained from their online searches and activity – at least in New York state.

In December 2015, when the state Department of Motor Vehicles released draft regulations for the testing of driverless vehicles, California tech firms were stunned by their onerousness. Google immediately objected to a proposed requirement that drivers always had to be behind the wheel of autonomous test vehicles.

Soon after, a consortium including TechNet, the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, the Bay Area Council, the Wireless Association, the Consumer Technology Association, the Information Technology Industry Council and the Auto Alliance issued a statement pleading with the administration of Gov. Jerry Brown to encourage, not discourage, the nascent driverless vehicle industry.

Instead, the DMV initially decided to allow each of the state’s 480-plus incorporated cities and 58 counties to set up their own rules for such testing – potentially creating an immense maze for driverless vehicle companies.

To the relief of executives with Google, Uber, Lyft, Volvo and 40-plus other companies interested in testing their vehicles in the Golden State, the state government reconsidered its position. Beginning in April 2018, new DMV rules allowed for autonomous vehicles to be tested without a human behind the wheel. So far, only one company has met DMV’s standards and obtained a permit for such tests – Mountain View’s Waymo. But far more could qualify in coming years.

Now, there is a fresh sign of the DMV’s willingness to embrace new vehicular technology. On April 12, the agency released draft regulations allowing for testing of autonomous delivery vehicles. Heavy-duty vehicles that weigh more than 10,000 pounds are not allowed, but standard cars, trucks and vans can be tested. The DMV will only issue permits for fully autonomous testing to companies that have met the same safety standards that Waymo did. The rules are expected to be finalized by December.

Driverless deliveries may face less public anxiety

With polls showing millions of Americans are very nervous about riding in driverless vehicles, tech and marketing experts told The Verge website in January they were much more likely to gain initial acceptance for delivery purposes.

Robot deliveries with much smaller vehicles have already proven instant hits. San Francisco-based startup Starship Technologies has enjoyed huge success since January, when its 25 robots began deliveries on the 800-acre campus of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. Navigating campus paths and sidewalks at 4 miles per hour, the robots deliver small coolers capable of holding up to 20 pounds of groceries. Students use an app to direct the robots where to go and are sent access codes to open the coolers. Starship collects $1.99 per order.

A March 25 Washington Post story depicted university officials as initially unsure what sort of reception the robots would get. But on the first day of deliveries, “the machines were flooded by so many dinner orders that school officials had to pull the plug, shutting off orders so that robots weren’t operating late into the night, far behind schedule,” the Post reported.

Since then, they’ve become an accepted convenience of campus life at the university.

S.F. firm’s college delivery robots only the start

In late March, Starship announced that an even bigger order of food-delivery robots, 30-plus, had been shipped to a second U.S. college – Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. Unlike George Mason, NAU leaders were so confident the robots would be a hit with students that the university issued a press release quoting NAU President Rita Cheng as welcoming them to campus.

But much bolder plans are in the works. The Verge’s report in January noted that Burlingame-based startup Udelv was partnering with Walmart on an autonomous grocery-delivery service that will use the sort of vehicles that the California DMV is now crafting rules for. Home-food delivery services could be a $100 billion annual industry by 2025, the tech website reported.

The Udelv report came shortly after Cruise – GM’s autonomous vehicle company – announced it was teaming with San Francisco-based DoorDash on the same sort of food-delivery venture.

A far-reaching online privacy bill that got next-to-no vetting or legislative debate was

Assembly Bill 375 – the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 – would change the playing field in the relationship between users of some online services and the companies that provide the services. It would allow users to ask companies to delete their personal information and to be informed what information about them that the companies were collecting and selling. It would also allow online consumers to sue over some unauthorized breaches of their information – but only for up to $750.

The San Francisco developer who reportedly spent more than $3 million to gather signatures for his ballot measure told the Sacramento Bee that AB375 – while not as far-reaching as his proposal – was more than good enough. Alastair Mactaggart said he was willing to compromise and gain “certainty” of online privacy reforms rather than take on tech giants in a heavy spending free-for-all in the fall election. He pulled his initiative after AB375 was signed by Gov. Jerry Brown on Thursday afternoon – just before the deadline for its possible withdrawal with the Secretary of State’s Office. Brown’s signing came after the bill won unanimous approval from both the Assembly and Senate.

The process under which a measure that qualified for the ballot could be pulled if proponents were satisfied with the Legislature’s alternative was established in a 2014 state law that was billed as an important refinement to the state’s system of direct democracy. The bill was championed by then-Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento.

The most important differences between Mactaggart’s proposal and AB375 is that it gives tech companies more certainty of their own that there would be legal limits on their exposure to damage claims from those using their services.

The bill quickly made it to Brown’s desk despite warning from key players.

Tech lobbyist: At least ‘even worse’ measure is dead

The Internet Association, a lobbying group for tech firms with significant online presence, issued a statement decrying “many problematic provisions” in the bill and “the unprecedented lack of debate or full legislative process.” But the association said it would not “obstruct or block AB375 … because it prevents the even worse ballot initiative from becoming law in California.”

The state Senate Judiciary Committee, which approved AB375 on Tuesday, did so even though chairwoman Hannah-Beth Jackson, D-Santa Barbara, expressed “grave, grave concerns about this legislation” to the San Francisco Chronicle. But she also praised its consumer-friendly elements, which take effect in 2020.

While California, as the nation’s largest and wealthiest state, often finds its policies emulated by other states, it’s not clear if AB375 will be copied in other capitals. Companies like Google, Amazon, Comcast and AT&T have steadily increased lobbying and campaign contributions in many states and may try to get what they consider model online privacy legislation passed elsewhere – so it could in theory compete with California’s version.

However, Facebook voiced its support for the state bill. “While not perfect, we support AB375 and look forward to working with policymakers on an approach that protects consumers and promotes responsible innovation,” a Facebook official told the Sacramento Bee.

Companies in the region are increasingly offering their employees paid time off to participate in protests, marches and other demonstrations as part of civic engagement policies.

“Democracy is a participatory institution; it’s not just something that takes place every four years when you have a candidate in a race,” Adam Kleinberg, CEO of San Francisco ad firm Traction, told the San Francisco Chronicle.

The company gives its workers two paid “Days of Action” per year.

Furthermore, tech giants like Facebook recently allowed their employees to take a day of paid leave to participate in the May Day immigration rights demonstration in San Francisco — a rally that was largely a protest of Trump’s agenda.

“At Facebook, we’re committed to fostering an inclusive workplace where employees feel comfortable expressing their opinions and speaking up,” a spokesman explained in an emailed statement. “We support our people in recognizing International Workers’ Day and other efforts to raise awareness for safe and equitable employment conditions.”

Major tech figures like Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and co-founder Sergey Brin have all spoken out against the president, illustrating this administration’s frosty relationship with the industry.

And even those who showed a willingness to work with the White House have faced a wave of scrutiny. For example, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick resigned from the president’s business advisory council earlier this year after facing intense backlash, seeing #DeleteUber trend at the top of Twitter over his decision to offer guidance on a job growth agenda.

The policies appear to reflect a growing discontent in the heavily liberal region that Trump presents more than just policy differences — but an existential threat to their well being and daily life.

“It’s a recognition of the fact that civic engagement is something that we should be doing not just as individuals but as a company,” Buoyant CEO William Morgan told CS Monitor about his software company’s policy. “I wanted to make it more clear that we could not be passive citizens in this world.”

While the policies aren’t new — as companies like Comcast have been offering such leave for years — they appear to be taking on new life in the Trump era.

“People were wishing that I was dropped off in an (Islamic State) territory, calling me an idiotic libtard, candy-ass, saying they hope we’ll go out of business. Really nasty stuff,” Kleinberg told the Chronicle about the backlash to the policy.

Overall, Trump’s policy proposals have been met with a particularly strong response in Silicon Valley due to his stance on issues like the controversial H-1B visa program that tech companies say they rely on to recruit top talent — but one critics say comes at the expense of American workers.

And the president’s rhetoric may be having some effect, as the number of H-1B applications dropped to under 200,000 in 2017 — a 15 percent decrease from a year earlier.

“Tech companies in San Francisco and San Mateo counties lost 700 jobs from January to February and tech employment has dropped by 3,200 jobs since hitting a peak last August,” the New York Times observed, citing chief San Francisco economist Ted Egan. “Venture capital has peaked and has been going down steadily since 2015,” said Egan. “A lot of the employment in our tech sector is in companies that are not profitable. If they can’t secure new venture funding, some of them run out of cash. If we see a real downturn in the tech sector we could be in a situation where the U.S. economy is doing better than San Francisco’s.”

For months, Bay Area businesses and investors have had to adjust to unfamiliar economic terrain. “The drop continues a year-long slowdown of the economic machine that powers Silicon Valley’s tech sector, leaving some startups resorting to layoffs and other cost-cutting measures to make ends meet,” the San Jose Mercury News reported. “But analysts say they’d better get used to it — investment activity isn’t going to return to the highs the industry saw in 2014 and 2015 any time soon. Instead, they say, the lower numbers represent a new, more sustainable normal as investors become more selective.”

High stakes

The Valley’s outsized importance to California’s economic fortunes has shifted expectations for tech nationwide. “Nationwide, the number of angel and seed stage funding rounds — which generally mark a company’s first fundraising efforts — dropped 62 percent in the first quarter of 2017 compared with the first quarter of last year,” the Mercury News noted. “Though startups closed fewer funding deals, the amount of money investors spent actually ticked up in the first quarter of this year compared to the quarter before — largely thanks to Airbnb raising $1 billion this year, and Instacart and online personal finance company SoFi each raising more than $400 million. Smaller, early-stage startups suffered most in the slowdown.”

But larger, established tech firms have encountered new problems, too — including fierce challenges in potentially huge markets, like the one for driverless cars, that are now crowded with heavyweight competitors. “Google’s lawsuit alleging that Uber straight-up stole its autonomous vehicle technology won’t go before a jury until October, but Uber already finds itself on dangerous ground,” according to a Wired report on the conflict. Last week, the magazine observed, “the judge presiding over the civil case said he might just grant Google’s request for a preliminary injunction, which could force Uber to rein in or even stop testing its robocar technology testing until the case is resolved.”

Pumping the brakes

Prognosticators have altered their outlook accordingly. “Extrapolating from Q1, the full year 2017 is on track to hit the lowest level in terms of dollars since 2012, and in terms of deals since 2011,” Business Insider noted. “But it’s not for a lack of money. In 2016, VC funds raised $41 billion, the best year in a decade. In Q1 2017, they raised another $7.9 billion.”

According to some analysts, the combination of big war chests for funds and more modest pathways for founders was likely to translate into slower but more sustainable growth. Eric Buatois, veteran venture capitalist at Benhamou Global Ventures, told Marketplace that while a crash was unlikely, a cooling-off period would probably help avoid a hard landing. “Like most people in Silicon Valley, Buatois doesn’t use the words ‘tech bubble’ or ‘bust’ when describing the recent tech economy. Instead, he describes it as ‘frothy,'” according to the program. “‘Froth’ is the Silicon Valley term for when startups are valued at much more than they’re worth. Unlike a bubble, froth doesn’t pop — it subsides. Buatois thinks that could be a good thing for Silicon Valley.”

As Silicon Valley rushes to stake out a lead in what’s hoped to be a robust market for driverless cars, the company spun off of Google has established a clear lead — perhaps giving the competition a reason to consider focusing their efforts outside the Golden State. 

“New data on tests of self-driving car technology in California suggest that Alphabet Inc.’s efforts remain ahead of many rivals in the intensifying race to bring fully autonomous vehicles to the roads,” the Wall Street Journal reported, noting that the company’s driverless unit, Waymo, clocked nearly 640,000 miles on California roads in a 12-month span encompassing the end of 2015 and most of 2016.

Pulling ahead

The newly released figures underscored how significant of an advantage in experience and testing the Google-spawned enterprise has gained over its rivals, which now include not only the likes of Tesla and Apple but old-line auto companies like GM and Ford that have begun to move into the driverless space as well. “The data show that Waymo, the driverless car unit of Alphabet, logged 30 times more miles of testing in autonomous vehicles than all of its competitors combined last year in California,” according to Financial Times. “Its cars were also the most accurate, with human intervention needed for safety reasons only 0.2 times per thousand miles.”

“The data provide the most comprehensive snapshot yet of competing driverless car technologies, at a time when carmakers and technology companies are racing to be the first to perfect autonomous vehicles. It shows Waymo, BMW, Ford and Nissan as the most accurate systems. California is unique in the U.S. for requiring that companies testing autonomous vehicles report their miles driven and ‘disengagements’ (when a human driver has to take over the wheel) each year. In the absence of federal laws on self-driving cars, these disclosures are the only comprehensive information that allow for side-by-side comparisons between carmakers.”

Only by racking up lots of miles on the road can driverless companies accumulate enough instances of disengagement to correct and refine its programming. Human takeover, Waymo explained in its report, “[is] a natural part of the testing process that allow our engineers to expand the software’s capabilities and identify areas of improvement,” Marketwatch reported. “It marked a 50 percent increase in total autonomous miles within California compared with the prior reporting period, which was two months longer than this reporting period, it said. The number of disengagements fell 75 percent to 124 last year from 341 in 2015, Waymo said.”

Greener pastures?

Despite the flurry of activity, some in Sacramento have found cause for concern. The same absence of federal law that helped make California such a hotbed of activity brought with it a potential downside — regulatory reactions against the modest risks that the development of driverless cars can bring to streets. In fact, in a recent tiff that rattled nerves, Uber refused to apply for state permits for its self-driving vehicles, drawing a reprimand that saw the powerful ride-sharing company opt to ship its driverless fleet to welcoming Arizona. Hoping to head off a stampede, a new bill introduced by State Sen. Jerry Hill, D-San Mateo, “would require the DMV to immediately accept or reject an application to put a driverless car on the road,” as the Los Angeles Times reported. If passed, the legislation would clear a considerable hurdle now facing companies like Uber in California. “The regulations the DMV has proposed, by contrast, would give the agency 180 days — nearly half a year — to decide yes or no.”

Competition has geared up nationwide for the favor of driverless car companies, which especially covet urban environments where they can be free to test their vehicles in complex but reasonably controllable environments. GM President Dan Ammann told the Chicago Sun-Times, “GM is awaiting the state Legislature’s approval before it can consider testing self-driving cars here, as it does already in California, Arizona and in the Detroit area,” the paper noted. “Yet even without the legislation, GM has introduced in Chicago its Maven car-sharing service, which is envisioned as eventually operating with driverless cars for hire, and Express Drive, which lets drivers for GM’s partner Lyft rent a car at a subsidized rate. The rental program is GM’s entry into developing a network that will eventually include driverless cars.”

“The crash may be the first case of one of its autonomous cars hitting another vehicle and the fault of the self-driving car,” Reuters reported. “The Mountain View, California-based Internet search leader said it made changes to its software after the crash to avoid future incidents.”

The collision resulted from a confluence of atypical but not unusual circumstances on a roadway in Mountain View. Because of a sandbagged manhole, the car had to make a wider right turn at an intersection than it had originally planned to do. In the flow of traffic, the bus approached from behind. “We can imagine the bus driver assumed we were going to stay put. Unfortunately, all these assumptions led us to the same spot in the lane at the same time. This type of misunderstanding happens between human drivers on the road every day,” Google concluded in its monthly report for February.

“This is a classic example of the negotiation that’s a normal part of driving — we’re all trying to predict each other’s movements,” the report suggested. “In this case, we clearly bear some responsibility, because if our car hadn’t moved there wouldn’t have been a collision. That said, our test driver believed the bus was going to slow or stop to allow us to merge into the traffic, and that there would be sufficient space to do that.”

Market moves

Despite the reassuring tone of the summary, Google-watchers noted that an important threshold had been crossed. “Google has prided itself on the fact that its self-driving car fleet has never been responsible for any of its crashes — they’ve always been caused by another (decidedly more human) force,” The Verge observed. But business analysts have not been too hard on the company; “in fairness, unless every single car on the road is autonomous, Google is right: there is some degree of negotiation involved, and false assumptions in those negotiations are where the crashes can happen,” The Verge added.

Other companies in the automated car business have been pushing hard to compete. Apple recently (and quietly) acquired the old Pepsi bottling plant in Sunnyvale, a 96,000-square-foot acquisition that quickly sparked speculation around its expanded electric vehicle program, the Silicon Valley Business Journal noted.

Fantasies and fears

Civic leaders, at least in California, have also tilted in favor of a future full of automated cars. In a crowded metropolis — especially one with lots of roads and little public transit — robocars could make a potentially massive difference in emissions and congestion. At a recent appearance with Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and others for the Times-hosted California Conversation series, Google’s robocar chief had played up the vehicles’ intelligent safety measures. “Chris Urmson, head of Google’s self driving car project, offered a presentation showing how its autonomous cars learned to avoid even the most anomalous hazards — such as a duck in the road being chased by a person in a wheelchair,” the Times recalled. “Urmson said 94 percent of accidents are caused by human error and argued that self-driving cars would save lives.”

Consumers, by contrast, have shown signs of being more skittish. According to a new AAA survey reported by CNN, “75 percent of drivers say they wouldn’t feel safe in such a vehicle,” even though “60 percent drivers would like to get some kind of self-driving feature, such as automatic braking or self-parking, the next time they buy a new car.” The legal issues surrounding insurance liability in automated crashes have also raised questions. USA Today columnist John Shinal wondered who would be held liable “if a hypothetical-and-conscientious Uber driver of the future overrides the control” of a robocar “to avoid an old lady walking her dog — but instead hits and kills an Amazon grocery deliveryman[.]”

Assembly Bill 1681, introduced by Assemblyman Jim Cooper, D-Elk Grove, would mandate that phones made “on or after January 1, 2017, and sold in California after that date” must be “capable of being decrypted and unlocked by its manufacturer or its operating system provider,” as CNET reported. “Any smartphone that couldn’t be decrypted on demand would subject a seller to a $2,500 fine. If the bill becomes law, there would be a ban on nearly all iPhones and many devices that run Google’s Android software across the state.”

With California home to both Google and Apple, observers quickly declared a broadening trend toward increased legal pressure on tech companies. But competing justifications for the crackdown have emerged, with lawmakers outside California opting to hang their own legislation on a different peg. As Ars Technica remarked of AB1681:

Despite very similar language to a pending New York bill, the stated rationale is to fight human trafficking, rather than terrorism.

AB1681’s language is nearly identical to another bill re-introduced in New York state earlier this month, but Cooper denied that it was based on any model legislation, saying simply that it was researched by his staff. He also noted that the sale of his own iPhone would be made illegal in California under this bill.

World worry

California policymakers have become an intimate part of the global push to prevent smartphone encryption from helping individuals and groups evade law enforcement monitoring and detection. At the Davos Open Forum, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., joined an international panel of public and private-sector officials to air concerns about the potential for over- or under-enforcement. “Governments claim the need for greater security and seek to monitor global communications, while citizens, more willing than ever to share, demand greater protection of their digital privacy,” according to Vice News, whose editor in chief moderated the discussion.

In the U.S., meanwhile, top law enforcement officials have sought to coordinate a nationwide effort patterned after California’s and New York’s, each of which drew support from its respective Attorneys General. “The National District Attorney’s Association hasn’t hidden its intention to mobilize its local offices,” according to The Verge. “The association, along with the International Association of Chiefs of Police, announced in November that they planned to partner with state legislators to enact mandatory smartphone decryption bills around the country. The group wrote in a letter that it looked ‘forward to working with lawmakers to strengthen our current laws, and ensure they are representative of today’s technology and the challenge public safety officials face in preventing crime and safeguarding their communities.'”

An uphill battle

But pushback has already begun from within the crypto and tech communities. On the one hand, advocates and activists have long warned against granting governments a so-called “backdoor” to the data and metadata stored on devices and accessible through them. “There have been people that suggest that we should have a backdoor,” Apple CEO Tim Cook recently said on “60 Minutes,” as the Silicon Valley Business Journal noted. “But the reality is if you put a backdoor in, that backdoor’s for everybody, for good guys and bad guys.”

On the other hand, however, going further, “legal and technical experts argue that even if a national ban on fully encrypted smartphones were a reasonable privacy sacrifice for the sake of law enforcement, a state-level ban wouldn’t be,” as Wired observed. “They say, the most likely result of any state banning the sale of encrypted smartphones would be to make the devices of law-abiding residents’ more vulnerable, while still letting criminals obtain an encrypted phone with a quick trip across the state border or even a trivial software update.” For that reason, both the California and New York bills face an uphill climb, despite strong pressure to pass them — or some version of them — into law.

The draft regulations, issued last week, “would mandate that autonomous vehicles be operated by a licensed driver who could take over if necessary. That driver would also be on the hook for traffic violations,” as the New York Times reported.

Automakers, meanwhile, faced a litany of potentially cumbersome requirements. “The manufacturers of self-driving cars would have to subject their vehicles to a third-party safety test. And they would apply for three-year permits that would allow them to lease but not sell self-driving cars to the public,” the paper noted. “Manufacturers would also have to regularly report accidents, come up with security measures to prevent hackers from taking over cars, and tell passengers what kind of data, beyond whatever information is needed to safely run the car, the companies are collecting about them.”

Broad challenges

From both the public and private sector, criticism has been swift. The DMV’s “incomplete rules came more than 11 months after the department’s deadline,” as the Los Angeles Times observed. “Google said Wednesday that it was ‘gravely disappointed,’ and that the aim of its program is to improve safety on roads,” the Times added, while Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom “warned last week that the rules might be too onerous and block innovation.”

 “Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Transportation, which declined to comment on California’s rules, has focused most of its efforts on a narrow slice of robotic safety. It is addressing communication signals between autonomous vehicles, but not the broader question of determining if these robot cars will be safe.”

Beltway observers hoped to land objections to the California regulations that might reverberate at the federal level in the future. “As currently constructed, these proposed rules work at cross-purposes with operator and passenger safety and with the state’s desire to ensure a livable planet in the future,” wrote R Street’s Ian Adams in a Sacramento Bee op-ed. “But given some thoughtful modifications, they could present a real opportunity for California to lead the world into its next era of transportation.”

Some tech watchers have claimed that the DMV’s proposed rules would actually create greater driver risk in their push for safety. Earlier this year, in remarks at the influential SXSW conference, Google’s Astro Teller had cast doubt on the idea that human drivers would increase protections inside self-driving cars. “Even though people had sworn up and down ‘I’m going to pay so much attention,’ people do really stupid stuff when they’re driving,” he said, according to Forbes. “The assumption that humans could be a reliable back up for the system was a total fallacy!”

Forging ahead

Nevertheless, new-entrant car companies like Google, as well as traditional automakers, have determined to forge ahead with self-driving and driverless projects. Ford has been heavily rumored to have struck a collaborative partnership with Google, with an announcement expected in January. “In September, Google hired former Ford and Hyundai executive John Krafcik as CEO of Google’s Self-Driving Car Project,” the Chicago Tribune noted, while former Ford CEO Alan Mulally sits on Google’s board of directors. “Google parent Alphabet is planning to make the project its own unit to compete in the car-sharing business,” the Tribute reported.

This month, Ford joined the ranks of self-driving contenders signed up with California’s mandated Autonomous Vehicle Testing Program. “Manufacturers working on autonomous driving vehicles in California that want to test these vehicles on the streets need to enroll,” as Silicon Angle noted — a requirement that has so far drawn compliance from a litany of big names. “Volkswagen Group of America, Mercedes-Benz, Google, Delphi Automotive, Tesla Motors, Bosch, Nissan, Cruise Automation, BMW and Honda” have all signed up, according to the site.

A central contribution of this paper is to document employment opportunities created in entirely new industries – that appeared for the first time between 2000 and 2010 – associated with the arrival of new technologies.

 

These data are used to examine the determinants of new industry creation, showing that new industries are more likely to emerge in human capital abundant places and cities that specialize in industries that demand similar skills.

 

Yet, the magnitude of workers shifting into new industries is strikingly small: in 2010, only 0.5 percent of the U.S. labour force is employed in industries that did not exist in 2000.

 

Crucially, it is found that many new industries of the 2000s stem from the digital revolution, including online auctions, internet news publishers, social networking services and the video and audio streaming industry. Relative to major corporations of the early computer revolution, the companies leading the digital revolution have created few employment opportunities: while IBM and Dell still employed 431,212 and 108,800 workers respectively, Facebook’s headcount reached only 7,185 in 2013.

 

Because digital businesses require only limited capital investment, employment opportunities created by technological change may continue to stagnate as the U.S. economy is becoming increasingly digitized.

Uber an exception to grim picture — for now

But there is a California company that is an exception to the scenario outlined by Berger and Frey. It’s San Francisco-based Uber. Earlier this month, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick used a posting on his company’s web site to trumpet its claim to have created 1 million jobs around the world in 2015.

That trend isn’t necessarily likely to last, however. Uber, Google and other tech firms in California are leading the push to create self-driving cars.

This is from a September report on TechCrunch.

Uber poached around 50 scientists working on self-driving car technology at Carnegie Mellon University’s National Robotics Engineering Center earlier this year. Uber had been partnering with CMU to research building its own autonomous vehicles. But then it pulled from a massive venture funding war chest to hire away a lot of CMU’s talent for its Uber Advanced Technologies Center.

 

Now, Uber appears to be publicly trying to win back the good graces of the academic community by announcing a $5.5 million gift to CMU. The money will support hiring a new robotics faculty chair and three fellowships.

Google was also in the news on this front this month, ripping the California Department of Motor Vehicles for its proposed rules on self-driving cars.