| | | | | By Jeff Brown, Editor, The Bleeding Edge | | |
What an exciting week for autonomous technology. | | On Sunday, June 22, Tesla finally launched limited access to its Robotaxi autonomous ride-hailing service in Austin, Texas, to about 20 company-chosen riders. | | The videos and feedback were almost entirely positive and public primarily on X. It was exciting to see. It wasn’t flawless, which even I wasn’t expecting it to be, but it was very successful. More than 100 autonomous rides were successfully given with no accidents. | | Mainstream media, however, was not so kind, focusing instead on a number of “mistakes” such as: | - Entering the wrong lane
- Sudden braking
- Speeding
- Driving over a curb
- A Robotaxi stopped on a road and put on hazard lights
| | But while the media was so critical, it made no effort to show or explain the resolution and how the car managed itself safely in the situation that it found itself in. | | I’m providing a video clip below of one of the major criticisms that the media positioned as a horrible problem… | | | | Source: X | | If we watch from the beginning of the clip, we’ll see that the car moves to the left lane to get in position for an upcoming left turn. The wheel wobbles a bit as it realizes that its left turn is one more block ahead, it corrects, and continues to drive straight (but notably on the wrong side of the double yellow lines – there were no cars in oncoming traffic, so no danger). It then returns to the left-hand lane to get in position for its turn. | | All in all, it was in the wrong lane for about six seconds, and it self-corrected safely. Honestly, I’ve made that mistake many times myself over the years, and the autonomous software did a great job figuring it out. | | And there was one instance when a Robotaxi got stumped when it stopped on the road. A Tesla teleoperator dialed in within seconds to the car to alert the passengers that they were on top of the situation. | | The Robotaxi put on its hazards just like any driver would if they were having trouble with their car. The issue was corrected, the ride resumed, and the Tesla took the passengers safely to their destination. | | I remember very clearly the early rollouts of Waymo and Cruise when they had some major problems, including running over a woman and dragging her 20 feet under the car. | | The Robotaxi launch wasn’t flawless, but it has been far better than any previous attempt by any other company. | | Tesla has now further opened up the Robotaxi network to more users beginning today. It is cautiously expanding its operations and making improvements day by day. | | The approach makes perfect sense and will ultimately accelerate wide-scale rollouts as more data and training are collected. | | Have a wonderful weekend, | | Jeff |
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| Bleeding Edge Readers Would Prefer a Robot Nurse |
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| Hey Jeff, | | When I was 42, I went back to school for a BSN, Bachelor of Science in Nursing, because I enjoy helping people. I already had a career and my first wife, and I got dealt into a yearly gift from her family’s fortune (Her great-grandpa actually was a pick-and-shovels guy with an emporium at Leadville, Colorado, when the mines first opened, and they also opened the first insurance company when Colorado was a territory and that just got bought up by AJG). It wasn’t a fortune, but it was a third salary and enough for us to be very comfortable. | | When we started doing clinicals at a local hospital, I didn’t like how much time nurses spent charting and giving meds. I wanted to be hands-on and actually help people, and that job is done by the forgotten CNA, Certified Nurse Aid, who doesn’t make enough to survive. I started doing CAN and going to class, but the school here was very difficult as one of the top three schools in the country 24 years ago, and I could not do both the further into the studies we got. | | I eventually dropped out with four administrative classes left in the last half of my senior year and went to work at a local Short/Long/Physical Therapy facility as a CNA to help, not for money. | | They would give us anywhere from 10-20 patients, which is WAY too much for one person. The nurses would help rarely, and you had to just about beg them. I don’t want to get into details, but I saw abuse and horrors every day! | | I would NEVER let my family go to any facility as long as I can physically help, which gets out of range every year I age. Several patients would freak out when anyone but me tried to help them, and they suffered when I wasn’t working. I take care of people like I want to be treated, with love and respect and a gentle, caring hand. There aren’t many people who understand how rough they are; it breaks my heart. | | “Convalescent Hospitals” are nothing of the sort. They are places people dump the family members they don’t want to care for. No other nation treats its elderly as horrifically as Americans do. It is a shame on us all! Would it be any different if they knew exactly how horrible it is? | | I still keep those poor people, and every such place, in my prayers daily. Sorry about your father-in-law, but it was worse than you wanted to imagine. | | – Paul M. |
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| Hi Paul, | | I’m grateful to you for writing in with an insider’s perspective. I’ve witnessed this myself with my own family, and even experienced this myself in some of my stays in a hospital (there have been too many!). | | | In fact, in our poll (which you can still weigh in on right here) that we ran last Wednesday when we published that issue, a whopping 74% of you voted in preference for a humanoid robot caretaker. Just under 9% preferred a human nurse. | | These are incredible results and came as quite a surprise. I suspect that they represent what most of us already know… the reality of what you shared with us. | | The remainder of the votes, for the most part, wanted a combination – a human nurse with a robot assistant, of sorts… |
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| A blend of those two options would be my preference. I’m 76 and don’t need any assistance as of now, but the future comes quickly. |
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| [A] human nurse backed up on an Optimus or other robot |
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| I’d really like a combination of a human nurse and a humanoid robotic caregiver. |
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| A nurse, physician, or health professional conducts a review of the patient. This allows for an effective review of their medication and any necessary adjustments based on the patient’s conditions/diagnosis and monitoring specific health needs. I’m in favor of the humanoid robot providing care. |
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| Or wrote in with their own takes and experiences… |
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| Likely a robot due to cost. We recently lost my father-in-law, who lived with us for the last three years. He had a visiting nurse through the VA a couple of times a week for the last year or so. The need is real. As mentioned in the article, nursing homes aren’t the best, and they can encumber all of a person’s assets if you don’t plan and set up estate properly. |
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| A combination of both. As a caregiver for my husband, it sure would be great if I had a helping hand in the home from a reliable humanoid robot caregiver. And I have friends with husbands who have Alzheimer’s or dementia who are hesitant about putting them in a home and could sure use the home support. |
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| I agree that I would prefer a humanoid nurse to one who is overworked and has a bad attitude. However, if you have moderate resources, made some good insurance decisions earlier in life, and are willing to do the research, there is a better alternative. I know this from personal experience with my own mother. There are Elder Care Facilities that have conscientious and caring staff. Often, this means a higher cost, but this can be mitigated by getting long-term care insurance earlier in life, which my parents did. I know this doesn’t apply to everyone, but with some good decisions, a large portion of the population does have a third, better option. |
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| Including a few who echoed your concern about overwhelmed and overworked nursing staff even having the capacity to provide sufficient care… |
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| A humanoid robot when staffing levels of human nursing staff were below the recommended patient-to-staff ratio. |
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| For care that allows me to stay in my home, definitely robot. For assisted living and nursing homes, a combination of a human nurse looking over 10 people with assistance from several robots. |
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| A human if they were truly dedicated to the tasks at hand. A humanoid if it could do everything a human could and had compassion. |
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| Thanks to everyone for participating and writing in. There were so many responses, we couldn’t possibly fit them all in one issue. The feedback really puts the issue into perspective. | | The good news is that we’re well on our way to a future where intelligent humanoid robots with the capacity to work, learn, adapt, and anticipate our needs will be widely available. In hospitals, in nursing homes and other care facilities, in our workplace, and in our homes. | | And for those who still prefer a human caregiver, don’t worry. Human nurses aren’t going anywhere. And with the added support of the humanoid robot workforce, they’ll be less overworked, less exhausted, and not so thinly stretched, making it easier for them to meet patients’ needs. | | What’s Up With Cerebras? |
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| Can we get an update on the Cerabas IPO, please? One of the reasons I joined ETI was the Cerabas IPO. | | Thanks. | | – Joseph S. |
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| Hello Joseph, | | Great to have you on board. | | I monitor all IPOs daily as part of my normal workflow, and, of course, I’m paying close attention to Cerebras. It will be one of the largest and most important IPOs of 2025. | | Cerebras has already chosen its underwriters, namely Citi, Barclays, and UBS. I know that the demand is through the roof, and Cerebras is carefully picking its window to go public. | | There haven’t been any recent filings with the SEC that would provide us with specific details, so I can only speculate on timing and reasoning. I’ve been at this for a few decades, so I have a pretty good feel for what’s likely going on. | | Companies as prominent, promising, and in a very hot sector like AI are in the best position to maximize their public offering. Good timing allows them to raise more capital – exactly the amount they want to raise. | | Executives looking to take their company public tend to avoid highly volatile markets and windows with a lot of negative “noise.” There was a lot of that in the first half of the year with the new Trump administration, DOGE, Ukraine/Russia, the breakout of conflict in the Middle East, tariff negotiations, and persistently high interest rates. | | Put simply, the last six months have not been ideal for taking a company public. There has been too much risk and too many distractions with everything that was happening. | | But we did see some positive progress in the IPO markets this quarter, with 42 IPO’s raising about $7 billion. Two exciting tech companies, Circle (crypto) and Chime (fintech), received particularly strong demand. | | If it were my decision, I’d wait until the Federal Reserve starts cutting interest rates. | | This is long overdue, and a cut of at least 50 basis points is warranted at the next meeting. But then, that’s been the case for a while now, and so long as Fed Chair Jay Powell continues his misguided campaign against rate cuts, we don’t know if that will happen yet. | | But if it were me at Cerebras, I’d be looking for the sector rotation into smaller capitalization stocks, which will only happen when rates start to come down. | | The next FOMC meetings are July 29–30 and September 16–17. If I had to make a prediction, I would say we might look forward to an IPO in the September/October time frame. | | With that said, it still might happen any week now, and we’ll let you know the moment we see some movement. | | More to come. |
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| | Nvidia, AMD, Intel, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Tesla, Oracle, Palantir, IBM… They all need this little-known company’s product. And this company has a virtual monopoly in the U.S. That means this company that’s located in an American ghost town – with only 30 people – could be the key to the $100 trillion AI boom. |
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| Are Tesla’s Robotaxis Truly Ready for Launch? |
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| Jeff,
Will you admit that the Tesla robotaxi launch had some obvious flaws (and that they are not at the level you make them out to be)? Here’s some feedback: | | The host of the YouTube channel Tesla Daily (@TeslaDaily) was one of the influencers invited to participate, and an excerpt of their full-trip video appeared on Reddit’s r/SelfDrivingCars. In that snippet, a “significant” glitch occurred, according to the post, as the driverless car experienced a navigation issue at an intersection, failing to turn left and then driving on the wrong side of a double yellow line. | | “Ooof, that’s not a good look,” one commenter stated. Another user speculated that a “remote operator” intervened to steady the wayward Tesla, as Tesla has reportedly been leaning on teleoperators to supervise the driving as well, suggesting that the cars won’t self-correct in the way the robotaxi in the clip did. | | Someone else raised a similar concern, citing the lack of reaction from the person in the passenger seat during the incident –and the fact that the robotaxis were operating within strict physical borders.” find it most disturbing that the safety guy’s surprise level is at 0%. You can tell he’s seen that s*** before. Within a geofence area,” they wrote. Neither commenter was alone in their suspicions about whether the robotaxis were truly autonomous. | | Regards. | | – John A. |
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| Hello John, | | Thanks for writing in, and yes, as per my comments at the beginning of today’s AMA, the Robotaxi launch wasn’t perfect. | | I’ve never maintained that Tesla’s full self-driving (FSD) software has reached perfection. But what I have been writing about is how consistently good it is and how quickly the FSD software has been improving. | | It’s very rare for me to see an issue with my Tesla when on self-driving. Every once in a while, it might pause too long, or the wheel will wobble on a turn, or it will unnecessarily hesitate (for safety purposes). Hardly anything to raise alarms over, and certainly no worse than you might witness from the backseat of a human-driven vehicle. | | What I noticed in nearly all the negative commentary was that they failed to share or show how the car recovered from the situation. | | No one was in danger, safety protocols were in place, and in one instance, we could see the use of the backup teleoperators assisting the rides. This happens with Waymo as well. | | Despite the small quirks and hiccups, I’m still impressed with the early launch of the Robotaxi. | | But regardless of the hiccups in the first few days of applying this revolutionary technology to ride-hailing networks, it’s not these imperfections that we should be focused on. | | What we should be watching is how quickly Tesla improves its software and how quickly it can scale its Robotaxi network. That’s what will give us insight into whether or not Tesla can enable full-scale Level 5 autonomous vehicles nationwide. | | Let’s keep a close eye on these developments and see which direction it goes. Either way, success or failure, I’ll be sharing it in The Bleeding Edge. | | A Warm Welcome to New Readers |
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| Hi, this message is for Jeff Brown. | | I just read Are You Vibing Yet?, and just wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed your writing style. I am not in the tech space at all (I barely know how to update my iPhone), but have an interest in AI and am trying to learn. I find the info out there a bit overwhelming and cumbersome to read – not really accessible to anyone who is just starting out, but I walked away with so much empowering information from your piece. I\’ve already shared it with colleagues and my sister and sub\’d to the newsletter. | | As someone who is also in communications, I really applaud your accessible, human style of writing and want to say thank you. I think I will learn a lot from you and I am excited for the next issue already! | | – Samira R. |
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| Hi Samira, | | | | I completely share your perspective. You’re absolutely right, most information out there about technology is cumbersome to read, or it just doesn’t make any sense at all. | | Sometimes it’s just bad writing, and other times I can see that the writer clearly doesn’t understand the subject that they are writing about. | | I think a lot about how to make complex topics easy to understand and the best way to distill key technological trends into valuable and actionable takeaways for my subscribers. | And one more thing, all of my back issues of The Bleeding Edge can be found right here. It is a library of information and insights that you might find useful. | | So if a topic, technology, or company comes up that you’re interested in, you might try clicking on “search” in the upper right and seeing what Bleeding Edge issues come up. It can be a great resource. | | Thanks again for the compliment. It’s great to have you on board, and I can only promise you that the months and years ahead are going to get that much more exciting. | Thanks to everyone for writing us. My team and I love hearing from our readers, and if you have a question you’d like answered in a future AMA, you can reach us right here. | | Have a great weekend. | | Jeff | | |
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| | | Amazon has been gearing up to “employ” humanoid robots in its delivery network. |
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| | | Vibe coding is like a magic wand for a wide range of software programming tasks… |
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| | | The website development company Wix just completed a very interesting acquisition… |
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