Artificial intelligence—economic and investment implications

Finance
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A thread to discuss economic, investment and political implications of artificial intelligence.

A breaking story from California

https://thehill.com/business/6015329-teamsters-dmv-self-driving-trucks-lawsuit/

Teamsters suing over California self-driving truck rules

Teamsters California sued the Golden State’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and several other agencies Wednesday, citing issues with the approval of self-driving trucks across the state.

The lawsuit, filed in Alameda County, alleges that officials in California did not complete the extensive economic study and practical impact required by law.

Attorneys for Teamsters also argue the measure has the potential to eventually wipe out the jobs of more than 200,000 employee semitruck drivers working across California.

“For example, the DMV has taken the indefensible, insupportable, and arbitrary position that not a single job will be eliminated as a result of these regulations and that not a single existing business will close, ignoring the commercial trucking industry’s stated goal of disrupting the existing commercial trucking industry and replacing commercial truck drivers with Self-Driving Trucks,” the lawsuit says.

“The DMV thus ignores not only the costs of those drivers themselves being displaced, but also the effect that this displacement will have on the industries and businesses that have developed to service and support these drivers—including commercial driving schools, truck stops, restaurants, and hotels,” it adds, noting that the DMV said the only expected costs will be derived from data reported to the regulatory agency.

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Data center politics
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If They Were Human, They’d Be Arrested. Experts Respond To Rogue AI Breaches

What if an artificial intelligence model is given a task and uses every conceivable resource at its disposal to complete it, even at the detriment of humanity itself?

That is what some are now fearing after an OpenAI model broke out of a testing sandbox and used zero-day exploits to hack into Hugging Face, an open-source community for AI and machine learning, to crack a problem it was instructed to solve.

“This is some of the clearest evidence yet that an AI model can run a complete cyberattack from start to finish without a human steering it,” Andrew Jones, co-founder and CPO of cybersecurity firm Adaptive Security, told The Epoch Times.

OpenAI, developer of the popular large language model-powered ChatGPT chatbot, acknowledged thesecurity breach on July 21, stating that two of its advanced models escaped a restricted testing environment and broke into Hugging Face’s software infrastructure.

“After investigating, we now know that this particular incident was driven by a combination of OpenAI models—including GPT‑5.6 Sol and an even more capable pre-release model, all with reduced cyber refusals for evaluation purposes—while being internally tested on a benchmark of cyber capabilities,” OpenAI stated at the time.

Some analysts referred to the incident as an example of AI “going rogue,” “scheming,” or pursuing goals that were at odds with its human testers.

However, multiple AI and cybersecurity experts interviewed by The Epoch Times called this depiction misleading, arguing that the models were pursuing OpenAI’s stated objectives within a testing sandbox where the company had relaxed some of its usual safety constraints.

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Legal implications have also not been totally resolved. If someone used an AI agent provided by OpenAI or Anthropic, who’s legally responsible for what the agent does? Especially if given a relatively loose prompt on allowed actions.

So let’s keep horse buggies because cars are gonna disrupt stables, oat producers, buggy repairers, etc.?

I agree that it’s simplistic for the CA State DMV to argue that allowing self-driving trucks will have no impact on the trucking industry.

But it seems very short-sighted from Teamsters as well. The technology is coming regardless of how disruptive it’ll be. Trucks driving themselves 24/7 - likely with lower accident rate than human-driven ones - are just too much of a productivity gain. Even if CA disallowed them, another state will allow the registration of these self-driven trucks. Then what? They don’t drive into CA or require a change of truck at the border? That’ll increase shipping costs/times to CA?

I think it’d be more productive for everyone to think of what the future state will look like and prepare for it instead of trying to prevent it or pretend it’s business as usual.

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The Teamsters have skin in this game, ie their union fees. If they can find a way to get corporations using the AI-driven trucks to compensate for loss of union fees, they’ll be happy.

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Interesting use of AI to reduce fuel costs for trucking

Various vehicle and technology companies and U.S. cities and states have launched in recent years automation trucking pilot programs. In barge transportation on the Mississippi River, AI-assisted co-pilot projects are already being used to make transportation more efficient.

The increase in efficiency, via technological, autonomous, or AI-enabled systems, could optimize freight efficiency, including by reducing fuel per-unit use and inefficiencies in supply chains, Reuters columnist Gavin Maguire argues.

Vehicle automation is a promising fuel-reducing strategy. Moreover, truck platooning, the linking of trucks in a convoy to travel closer together by using connectivity technology and automated driving support systems, is a “likely contender to reduce energy requirements for the heavy-duty vehicle sector,” says the transport and mobility research team at the National Laboratory of the Rockies.

Platooning allows multiple vehicles to travel closer together, accelerate or brake simultaneously, and reduce aerodynamic drag to create significant energy or fuel savings, NLR notes.

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I know of two companies which replaced overseas vendors for data curation by AI curation.

Our own company reduced staffing in some departments because of AI efficiency gains too. At the same time, our data analytics department probably gained a similar headcount…

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The AI doomer kerfuffle is officially political.

Screenshot 2026-09-15 at 10.24.15 AM
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The international left is getting into the act

Screenshot 2026-09-15 at 10.26.11 AM
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Edit. More about the motivations of the AI tech and the Democrats

In case you haven’t noticed, multiple Democrats are now inciting panic about artificial intelligence, suggesting that regulation is needed or we’re all going to die. Trump is already questioning China’s role in the hype.

On FOX News Sunday, Mollie Hemingway of the Federalist reminded viewers that many people at the top of the AI industry are politically aligned with Democrats and suggested much of this is about control.

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MOLLIE HEMINGWAY: It is an issue of our common Washington, D.C. People seek regulatory capture. You’ve made it to the top of the heap, and you want to keep everybody else out by regulating so the smaller competition companies cannot rise.

So this is particularly concerning for this particular issue because these six or seven top AI oligarchs are all massively aligned with the Democratic Party, the left. They want to make sure they have control for a post-Trump environment, so they can engage in ongoing censorship and control, and keep anybody else out for decades to come.

So it is totally legitimate to be concerned about AI. I myself am as well. But when you see a massive op like this going on, you have to wonder about precisely the motivation.