What if your car could talk to the road?

Cavnue, a Washington, DC-based subsidiary of Alphabet’s Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners, hopes to answer that question with a pilot project it’s now conducting on a three-mile stretch of highway in Michigan.

Cavnue’s leaders see the potential for smart-road infrastructure to deliver safer, more accessible roadways. Tyler Duvall, the company’s co-founder and CEO, likened the advent of such technology to the buildout of the US interstate system in the 20th century.

“We think this digital transformation is as powerful an impact, potentially, as what happened with the interstate system,” he told Tech Brew. “So if we don’t take a more aggressive view as a country [on] supplying these technologies, we’re going to see a very uneven distribution of the benefits of automation in transportation.”

So far, Cavnue has gotten buy-in from state governments in Michigan and Texas. Duvall, who previously worked at the US Department of Transportation, hopes to see government play a more active role in supporting technology that will enable communication between infrastructure and the connected and automated vehicles that have become targets of massive investment by the automotive industry.

In Michigan, Cavnue recently unveiled the initial phase of the I-94 Connected and Automated Corridor. The company is billing it as a “first-of-its-kind smart-road deployment.”

Keep reading here.—JG

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A showdown is brewing over a California bill that could have big implications for how regulators treat generative AI models.

The Golden State’s Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act would add guardrails and require mandatory third-party audits for AI models above a certain cost and computing power threshold.

Amid vocal opposition from segments of the tech industry, the bill has cruised through committee hearings and state Senate approval with a final vote due by the end of August.

Beyond drawing lines for AI in the country’s most populous state—which also happens to be home to Silicon Valley—supporters hope and opponents fear that the law could set a precedent for other states and countries to follow, much like the EU’s recent passage of its AI Act or California’s landmark data privacy law, which passed in 2018. It also comes as efforts to legislate AI rules on Capitol Hill have stalled.

Who’s in what corner: Among the bill’s backers are so-called godfathers of AI, Geoffrey Hinton—who has been outspoken about the risk of AI since quitting Google last year—and Yoshua Bengio. AI safety groups including Encode Justice and the Center for AI Safety Action Fund are co-sponsoring the bill.

On the other side, the bill’s biggest detractors include the startup incubator Y Combinator and venture giant Andreessen Horowitz. The former, along with dozens of startup founders, sent an open letter to Wiener in June with a laundry list of concerns, as first reported by Politico.

Keep reading here.—PK

America’s hottest hybrid pickup truck is getting a facelift—or rather, all-wheel drive and a bigger screen.

Ford this week unveiled and will start taking preorders for the 2025 Maverick. The compact pickup truck, which has emerged as a hot commodity since it debuted in 2021, is slated to play a key role in the automaker’s electrification strategy.

In fact, Maverick is a prime example of the flexible approach to electrification that Ford has adopted amid a choppy transition to all-electric vehicles. Ford is emphasizing the power of choice as it offers a range of internal combustion engine, hybrid, and battery-electric options across its lineup.

“Few OEMs can offer a customer choice like Ford at our scale,” CEO Jim Farley said during the company’s Q2 earnings call. “Ford is No. 1 in our home market for internal combustion. We’re No. 2 in EVs…and we are the No. 3 hybrid brand in the US.”

Farley said that having “the right mix of fully and partially electric solutions” is one of the “success criteria” for EVs.

Keep reading here.—JG

Straight from the automation experts. Process orchestration pros are gathering from far and wide this fall. The CamundaCon NYC conference is back for another year of exclusive keynote speakers and breakout sessions from companies like Capital One, Intuit, and Atlassian. In-person tickets, which give you access to ~special~ sessions, are discounted until Sept. 9. Register today.

Usually, we write about the business of tech. Here, we highlight the *tech* of tech.

Log off, tune in: We are all dutifully behind the keyboard, doing our jobs, and definitely not watching Simone Biles perform incomprehensible feats to rack up gold medals. Right?

Lol of course not! We are 100% trotting away from our laptops to watch the best athletes in the world do their thing, and fresh data from Cloudflare confirms that we are indeed shirking responsibility to root for the home team.

Late last month, the digital services firm noted an uptick in phishing attempts associated with the games, and it’s now tracking drops in web traffic during performances and competitions. Some highlights? Web traffic plummeted 20% during Celine Dion’s performance during the Opening Ceremony. In the US, traffic dipped the most when Biles was onscreen, dipping as much as 6% after her floor routine and during her vault routine in the team final.

Spot the fake: Digital dupes, whether a voice or an image, stand to be a problem as the presidential election looms. What can a responsible voter do? Arm yourself with the knowledge you need to identify AI-generated fakery.

The Washington Post put together a helpful guide full of tips and tricks for spotting counterfeit candidates. Brush up—it’s gonna be a long 94 days.