Self-driving car red light ticket to carmaker, FTC investigation into OpenAI and Anthropic, and tech giants pressed on secret data center deals.
An article reposted by Huxiu on September 30 raised a very concrete question: when a self-driving car runs a red light, who does the traffic police ticket go to. The current practice is to ticket the carmaker, because the car is being driven by the carmaker's system. The trouble is in gathering evidence. Determining a violation requires driving data, and the data sits on the carmaker's servers, so the carmaker has to hand it over itself. The author's analogy is blunt: this is no different from letting students grade their own exams. The article says the relevant draft now out for comment leaves the evidence-gathering step to the carmaker. For drivers, this determines who has to prove what after an accident. Before buying a car, ask one question first: how long does this company keep driving data, and does the traffic police need to go through procedures to retrieve it. For companies doing autonomous driving, whether the data interface is opened and to whom will soon be written into the rules. The draft puts the responsibility on carmakers, so carmakers have to find a balance between keeping records and privacy: keep too little and you can't explain what happened; keep too much and users' trips end up on someone else's servers.
CNBC reported on September 30 that the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has launched an investigation into AI companies including OpenAI and Anthropic, on the grounds that their products may pose risks. An FTC spokesperson confirmed the investigation to the media. The focus of the probe is how the products will be used and who they might harm, which is broader than a typical merger review. In the same week, another regulatory push is also advancing: tech giants are being pressed on why data center deals are being signed in secret. For people who use ChatGPT and Claude every day, there's no visible change in the short term. For companies building AI products, the compliance checklist gains one more item: lay out the risk points before launch, don't wait for regulators to come asking. Companies aren't entirely passive here either: whoever puts out safety test reports and incident-handling procedures first has one less hurdle when bidding for government and bank clients.
The Wall Street Journal reported on September 30 that several tech giants are being pressed over their AI data center deal arrangements, with the question being why those multi-billion-dollar leases and power supply contracts weren't fully disclosed. Data centers are the heaviest asset in this round of AI expansion — buying chips, building facilities, pulling power, the money is all piled up here. The report says the more complex and opaque the deals, the harder it is for outsiders to judge how much long-term obligation each company is carrying. What ordinary investors can do is very concrete: dig through a company's financials, find the data center-related long-term commitments, and compare them against its cash flow. For suppliers of servers, power and racks, whether the customer list is public directly determines whether orders can be counted in their own earnings guidance. Once power contracts and long-term leases are public, peers can work out a rival's capacity rhythm, which is also why many companies don't want to disclose.
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