Transcripts For BLOOMBERG Best Of Bloomberg Technology 20240713

10 places to work. Doc you sign makes the glass door lift. We will talk to the doc you sign ceo about what makes the company so unique. Transportation, the self driving semi makes its first commercial freight run. We will hear from the company who performed this feet. Silicon valley is listening to your most intimate moments. It is the focus of a Bloomberg Businessweek indepth piece about how the Smart Speaker craze lets left users vulnerable to their conversations being transcribed. It was one of their most read stories wednesday. I spoke to bloomberg journalists about the story, including the devices, and use of contractors to transcribe intimate conversations. Lets hear from new york and San Francisco. We spoke to dozens of transcribers and contractors. Everywhere from ireland to india. They had ethical quandaries with the service. They were eavesdropping on a lot of siri alexa customers in order to improve the systems speech recognition by transcribing recordings we submit to the cloud. Disparity you mention. A lot of contractors felt it was ethically dubious whereas Silicon Valley folks we spoke to did not think it was an issue at all despite years of privacy issues. They sought as essentially a way of improving Quality Assurance. Apple whoive at worked on siri describe this as a way of fixing a voice bugs. The bigger question is whether or not they disclosed this to consumers. Did they have the sense that you humans may be listening . Any chance they take this more seriously Going Forward . We have seen more Companies Issuing disclaimers, but when it comes to Companies Like facebook or apple apple in particular says they have privacy at the center of their core values, but this would seem to be an indication that they have not woken up to the fact that users when itore privacy comes to interacting with their devices. Matt dayets bring in to explain security concerns that surround amazon. What was interesting to me was they gave the impression about privacy while not actually getting it. Your take. Out of the gate with mark speakers, they were Smart Speakers, they realize that putting microphones in peoples homes were to controversial. One of them is the spitting light on top of an echo speaker to let you know when it is recording. The other was the ability to delete your audio recordings, and imbue those three web portal. They lean hard on that transparency. They were not upfront with the fact that they were using user lab,as a massive r and d with no idea with what they were going to launch on alexa and correct errors. Taylor i want to get to facebooks latest. We are joined by sarah fire. What is interesting is facebook is a newer entrant into the market, why would they get it now . After all of the controversy listening devices, facebook still felt like it was important to do the same. They did not think of it as a very as a very different from all of the other things they collect from their users. Type, asroll, as you you interact on the surface, facebook thinks that you understand they are going to parse through everything you say and do, and use it to make their systems smarter. Between a difference machine doing that, and human beings doing that. Especially with audio data. There is something so intimate about the way this works behindthescenes. If it was so natural and obvious to the companies, why did they feel it was not necessary to disclose it to consumers . Consumers are alarmed. Given Everything Else that is going on with the lack of trust in facebook, any sense that consumers are trusting facebook echo they purchase . They are purchasing it. I think a lot of people are not aware of the network of contractors that are listening to this audio to do asthmatics plan, Quality Assurance testing. Trying to improve the way speak recognition works. Recognition. Facebook looks like this as an accessibility issue. They think all different types of human voices can be recognized by computers. The fact that they need humans to do this because the machines arent ready, that was not part of the marketing. I want to bring in garrett, google continues to use humans over some of the technology and some of the contractors instead of real employees. Does that help give them cover . Two google is also using contractors. I first started learning about this, digging into the story and reading the reports of my colleagues and others, this was mostly being done by contractors. These were not google employees, in some cases they are but mostly it was people employed by different companies, sometimes in countries far away from the headquarters these companies are based in and where they make decisions. Hit homele, that earlier this summer when one contractor in the netherlands walked out of one of his offices, taking with him a bunch of voice recordings, gave them to journalists who were able to listen to them and figure out who the actual humans were whose voices were being recorded. Those were consumers who were not expecting to be listened to. That is a bit of a scandal. Google has said they have paused human transcription of assisted audio, but they need to transcribe these with humans to continue to improve to make sure that to make sure they can understand different languages, accents and speech impediment spirit they will surely start doing that again soon to keep up with competitors. The senset to get that does that give us comfort thats not actual humans could be listening in . They all wish they could use technology to do the review, but the reliability is, this comes to artificial intelligence, it is still not good enough. You still need humans to double check that these things are learning, that they are improving. For the time being, we are going to need humans the same way with tesla cars. There will be accidents, we need human drivers in selfdriving we get to the point where the machine can fully take over. Taylor that was bloomberg technologys alstom car, and garrett do veeck. An update on the 26 point 5 million merger deal it is currently being challenged by 13 states and the district of columbia in the new york city courtroom. A sprint executive says the wireless provider will not survive much longer without that tmobile take over because it lacks the resources to update its network and has generally weak business prospects. The companys Vice President of Network Development testifies that sprint would not be viable within the next two years. The testimony rebuts claims by states that sprint has a viable plan b. I spoke to jennifer re, who was in the courtroom. I think that was the worst of the day for the company in terms of this deal. Those were bad documents. The chief marketing officer did suggest two other executives at sprint that may be what they could use as part of their negotiating tactic with tmobile to get a better price was that the deal would mean an increase of possibly five dollars a month per subscriber. Tmobile was not taking that into account when they were evaluating what they would pay for sprint. He did do a decent job and trying to play this down. It is a very damaging document in terms of the companys case. He said this is just a hypothetical. I didnt do any real studies, i was just guessing. This is the way marketers think. In fact, he did not think that that was something used as part of a negotiation. I would say that that was probably the most damaging part of the trial today. Taylor that was bloombergs jennifer rie. Fly due has seen shares to one of wall streets active shortsellers. We will find out his reason. If you like bloomberg, check us out on the radio. You can learn you can listen on the bloomberg app, online, or sirius xm. Taylor peleton peleton taking another head. Is not due to a widely criticized commercial, it is thanks to one of wall streets most active shortsellers. Andrew put out a note saying he sees clear flaws in the peleton business model, and predicts stock will fall nearly 85 next year to five dollars a share. I spoke to andrew left on the phone wednesday. People criticize that saying, why dont we look at per subscriber cost . That is difficult with how some of the software. If you see the chart i put out, it shows how much wall street is playing currently for every subscriber of peleton, compared to Planet Fitness and spotify. You can see the ev per subscriber is over 15,000 for peleton. Match. Com is 2100. Taylor we are showing that chart there which you can see is on a per value per subscriber basis. It certainly does look overvalued. I want to break that down a little bit. If you increase subscribers of the denominator goes up, the ratio falls. That is pretty much what people are buying this company on, their growth stock. People are not buying it on current subscribers, they are arguably buying on future subscribers. Would you say to that . It is not like fair enough, but this business has already taken the low hanging fruit. We know about the first 500,000 bikes, the problem is whos going to buy the next 500,000 bikes . The treadmill they introduced is a flop. They are behind the curve on the rest of the equipment. They are not there. It is extremely competitive, and most importantly now with their digital offering, they are giving for 12. 95 what when you buy the bike, you have to pay 39. 95. If you are value conscious, you can buy a bike for 700 and still enjoy the peleton experience. Digital. Eleton the ceo said that was their lead generations way of doing it. That seemed sloppy peleton peleton. You can enjoy and not pay 2000 per bike. Lor are you sure proton peleton short peleton. If peleton ends up being a billiondollar company, that is their major success, the spin bike. They did not create the spin bike, or streaming classes. If it is a 2 billiondollar company, that would be huge. I do not know why wall street has to think this is going to be a 9 billiondollar or 10 billiondollar company. Taylor we have tried to repeatedly reach out to management for comment, we have not heard back. Atrew, would you buy peleton five dollars a share . No. Thats like saying would you buy fitbit or gopro, it is dead money. The best days now are in the rearview mirror. I take that back, at five dollars a share i would buy to cover some of my short. [laughter] a knockay, this is not on the product. It is just not a 10 billiondollar product. This is going to wind up a billion and a half 1. 5 billiondollar company. Taylor i want you to take a look at a chart i am showing here. Andrew, to describe for you, you know the story. It is the share price versus the Short Interest which is now 66 . It is one of the companies that have ipo food over 1 billion a billion dollars. If it is crowded, it is crowded. You always have to properly allocate when you are a short seller. The thesis is, i would never own a stock because it is a crowded short. There is nothing they can do to turn this business around. Unless they create a bike that works out for you. Other than that, they are not going to be a 9 billion10 billiondollar spin by company a year from now. Taylor i want to get some of the conversation. Reallys at oppenheimer highlighted that lowerpriced terminal that could come out into the future. If they do a lowerpriced treadmill, and you hit a massmarket, how does that impact your position, given you could see this company hit a Critical Mass . No doubt, they are going to put out a lowerpriced treadmill either later this year or next year. Expensive one flopped. They have to, because the treadmill is a much more popular piece of equipment than a bike. That this does not just fall off the quick fall off the cliff, this is just decelerating growth. I was in the mall, and the peleton store was empty. Not something for everyone. Of course youre going to put out a treadmill ended it and it is going to sell, but it is going to compete. As consumers become more informed, it is going to be a battle for peleton. Taylor does the announcement of a rowing machine change your thesis . Everyone has a rowing machine. The competition echelon behind them has like six different skews. For ipowas preparing highfiving, their competition surpassed the offerings of peleton. Is a super lady appeared digital weights, again with the mirror, these are all technologies that peleton has not taken advantage of. Is important. People here five, or think 30 in terms of stock prices instead of thinking peleton will end up a 1. 5 billiondollar company. Left. that was andrew theng up, intel surprises public by releasing information it could have kept secret. We will find out what that is. Tictocviral video app has canceled meetings with a senator over immense scrutiny over privacy data concerns. We will find out why the company pulled the plug. Taylor an unusual move for intel, their the first to willingly disclose what is normally private data. Its paying a quality data. In a report tuesday, intel released data about a pay disparity in 2017 and 2018. The Company Provided the data to the u. S. Equal Employment Opportunity commission. The results are not bloombergs jeff green joined me to discuss. Weep we probably didnt learn anything that was a big surprise by looking at the numbers. The surprises that we can see the numbers at all. This is data that every company had to release as of september, one el may be the only at least so far who shared it with us. We are beginning to see the macro information that feeds aso what you would think of median income. This show where women are and where men are. As you said, it is not flattering, but it is the first step to figuring out where the problems are. Taylor where are the biggest problems . Where you would expect. White men and asian men make the top paying jobs, and women are clustered in the lower paying jobs. It is a structural problem in society, particularly intact. That is what intel says they want to bring to light. If the industry has a problem, they are willing to share theirs. Taylor it was notable that intel is openly sharing more data than they need to. What is intel trying to tell us about why they are doing this . They are admitting that this exposes them to vulnerability. They got beat up today. Those charts do not look awesome. For some people, this is a revelation. It is kind of a fresh attack. Their thought is that this only gets fixed if everybody is pulling in the same direction. They need pressure to be on everyone to look at this structurally and figure out what is wrong. Also, on themselves. They put a part of their pay down on top executives for fixing this. There is external pressure now for everyone to be able to look, employees included, and see how this plays out. Createsdo you think it enough pressure where other Tech Companies would step in and do the same . Recentof some of the examples are any evidence. Citigroup did this with median pay and there has not been a flood of banks joining them. Report lastve a week saying this is how many assaults we have had. It is not like every other platform has said here are our numbers. You start to add these things up potentially, may be a regulator rate change in government might weigh in. People who get ahead of this might have a way an ability to shape it. It is a loss leader kind of thing where you are you are taking the risk out of the gate that may pay off in the future. In 2017these results and 2018, as you know. Any indication that 2019 could have been better . . We will never know. This data was collected under a program that was brought forth by the obama administration. The Trump Administration has said we do not need to continue this, it is too hard on companies. This data in its current form is not going to be collected for 2019. We will have to see if there will be a new program, or if companies will come up something voluntary. This. S the sad part about this data is really interesting, and we may never get a chance to see it again. Offer anyff, do they potential solutions on how to be the first to try to fix a problem . One of the things they pointed out is that the industry isabout 26 women, or that what is available. They made it a goal to have 26 of their employees women, which they met last year. Their top executives only 20 women, so one of the ways to change this ratio is by making 26 of the executives women because that is going to push more women into these higherpaying jobs. And then it is just math. In need is more women higherpaying jobs than lower paying jobs. That has been something particularly intact, but in every industry has not happened. The overall pay difference in the u. S. Is women make . 81 on the dollar compared to men. This is being able to see it one person at a time. Taylor i am not sure if you will, or anyone can answer this. I am originally from new york and we thought this was a big problem in finance. We come to San Francisco and find out that tech is worse. Why is tech the biggest sector struggling with this . Get think it is who you coming out of college who wants to go into these jobs . You get the graduates, but then they come into the industry and from everything i have seen, the data i look at, they do not stay. They say i can go somewhere else with this expertise, because Everybody Needs tech. They go somewhere else and they are treated better. Would you have to create an environment, they call it the warm line. You can call if you think you need to leave and you can talk somebody into they are collecting that data and trying to figure out why people want to leave. Taylor that was bloombergs jeff green. Coming up, officials from tiktok were supposed to meet with senators pressing them over security concerns. We will get into why it is not happening. Bloomberg technology is live streaming. Our globalfollow breaking news network. This is bloomberg. Taylor welcome back to the best of bloomberg technology. Now i look at the United States versus tiktok. The viral video app is under pressure from those who worry about Data Security and user practices. Executives have canceled a number of scheduled meetings with u. S. Senators that were set to take place in washington this week. Bloombergs paul allen and i sat down with our own kurt wagner on tuesday. Kurt we are told these are delayed, and that they will be rescheduled in the new year. Part of the issue is, you may have heard other things going on in washington, d. C. These days with the potential impeachment of the u. S. President. As a result, the feeling from the tiktoc side was there is a lots going on right now. Not the best times to be having these meetings. Of course, some of these senators are curious as to why they pulled the plug but we should be hearing about these again in 2020. Paul when those meetings take place, what kind of questions will the senators want answered . Kurt all of the biggest questions have to do with user privacy and data storage. It is owned by a massive Chinese Technology company. There are is a lot of concern around where this information is being stored . Is it being stored in the u. S. , in Mainland China . Really talking to the company. This is a relatively new app and company to most of the u. S. , especially most politicians. Really getting basic questions about how the business works. What the data is collected and where it is stored. I think it is going to be the primary purpose. Taylor kurt, it seems like we have had a few moments of what looked like progress. Namely this week, a 1. 1 million settlement kids privacy suit. Where is tiktok in terms of responding to some of the concerns . Kurt they want to have these discussions. The fact they were going to be in d. C. This week was a signal they were willing to answer some of these questions. Obviously, we will wait and see if these meetings do indeed get rescheduled. They are seriously going to answer the question. I think this is a really popular app in the u. S. , and things are going well for the app and for the company. If they want that to continue, they realize they have to play ball a little bit here. I would be surprised if they l on these bai meetings. I think it is an important dialogue to be having right now. Paul in terms of the settlement from that case in illinois, 1. 1 million, that seems like small change, really. Doesnt it . Was that a surprising verdict . To the people who brought the action . Kurt i dont know if it was necessarily surprising, but you are right 1. 1 million in the world of Technology Companies is pretty much nothing. Right . This is a slap on the wrist. I mean we were describing , facebooks 5 billion ftc privacy settlement as a slap on the wrist. When you think about 1 million, it does not do much. We are seeing a sign that a lot of the privacy issues are becoming, at the very least top , of mind for companies after many years where they were not. Even if it is a nominal amount, at least there is some kind of decision that is being made. And at least companies are being held, to some extent, accountable. Taylor you know we have also , spoken with other senators , like Marsha Blackburn of tennessee, who has come out and been a big critic and helped increase the age in which you can make inapp purchases to 18 from 13. It sort of seems like small progress, but in the bigger picture, how much is it doing . Kurt yeah, and senator blackburn is one of the politicians who tiktok supposed to meet with. She tweeted the meeting got canceled. I think we saw something similar last week with instagram. Actually requiring users to enter their age when they create an account. You cannot create an account if you are under 13, which is what was always the rule but never really enforced. I think what we are seeing from this pressure is these things do seem small. Is a 13yearold going to create not one now, because they need to enter the birthday . Probably not. But at least they are putting in Safety Measures they should have had all along and now being called out on it for the first time. And in many cases, they are actually following through. Paul does any of the things have to do with the u. S. Regulators also investigating . How is that proceeding . Kurt it is hard to imagine it is not a point of discussion here. Right . They are looking at these tiktok excuse me, the acquisition of music. Ly, which was been merged with tiktok. I am told there are conversations between the company and the regulatory body. I think that you have to if you , are tiktok, you have to take this seriously. One thing that is unique is the cfius i am told arrangements happen while it the acquisition is happening. There is a little bit more that the regulators can do. They can block something. This is an acquisition that happened two years ago. It is well past the point of being able to be blocked. Now it is a question of what types of guardrails can be put up. What stipulations can they impose upon someone like tiktok . I have to imagine thats top of mind. Taylor that was bloombergs kurt wagner. Coming up, facebook will remain the top target of digital advertiser spending according to bloomberg intelligence. So how much of the credit goes to instagram . Later, the first crosscountry commercial freight run in a selfdriving truck. This is bloomberg. Taylor instagrams stories are making significant contributions to facebook. According to a report, instagram is drawing almost 10 of all ad spending at the end of the third quarter. The report also stated advertiser spending on Instagram Stories jumped almost 70 from the prior year. To discuss, we were joined by eric and also bloomberg technologys sarah frier, who covers facebook. It goes to show advertisers are starting to catch on to this new user behavior. People increasingly are posting these more ephemeral forms like stories. Advertisers have been slow to catch on. We should not expect advertisers to fully be participating in that format for a while. So this is a good sign for facebook, that the revenue is catching up. Taylor eric, in your opinion, how much of an increase is this . , prior to relative years . Off, storiesirst only launched in 2016. They really just started monetizing them this year. The growth is relatively rapid. Instagram is growing at 16 and will account for 20 of worldwide revenue. It will be even higher in instagram specifically. When you look at Instagram Stories, most of the monetization is happening within the u. S. Taylor to play off of that, if the stories are monetizing well, do we expect the next logical move to be to go overseas . Sara i think you will see more monetization from instagram in general. The problem is users are increasingly migrating to the ephemeral format and not posting as much on the main page. The main feed has ads that are much more expensive, so the overall advertising price has been depressed because of this shift to stories. Maybe once it becomes more natural, you will see that improve over time. Taylor eric, is this a good sign that, as long as they are monetizing it and ad revenue is rising, is that really what matters . Eric it does appear that it would cannibalize some spending from the instagram newsfeed. , which takes a higher price, currently. That really has not happened, and advertisers are just generally increasing spending. Taylor eric, do these things actually work . I see ads, but are people clicking on them . First off, facebook, instagram, they have great tools for advertisers. When you look at attribution, they really are ahead of the pack, in a lot of ways. You can type back if someone saw an ad to whether or not they made a purchase. Shop will ads will be even more important moving forward. That something closer to the consumer as well. A lot of the ads are brand building. There are a ton of options and tools for advertisers who need to improve roi. And prove that their advertising is effective. Taylor that was Eric Haggstrom of emarketer and sarah frier. Of bloomberg technology. A bad year for the global tv industry, with sales falling almost 4 in 2019. That is the steepest drop since recession a decade ago. Advertisers are following users to the internet, but there are some winners. I spoke to an advisor a Marketing Technology company on monday. What we are seeing is just a maturation of television advertising. The dollars are finally following consumer idol. What we know is six out of 12 adults stream, watching more streaming content than they do linear. That is not even taking into account the number of adults that say they will either cut the cord or have already. You look that the Holiday Season now, a third of consumers say they will watch zero Live Television during the holidays. A real challenge for marketers who spend 95 of the tv budget in the linear tv channels is becoming very aware of those dollars are moving towards where the streamers are going. And theres going to be some winners and losers. Taylor dallas, that is a fascinating statistic. You are going to watch zero ads of live tv, zero hours of live tv this Holiday Season. Is that a new statistic . Dallas it is. A new survey came out the harris poll researching consumers that says fully a third say they will watch zero Live Television. Theres three ad races to watch as we try to sum up who is going to be the winner in the 75 billion ad race. You have the platform race, content race, and the data race. On the platform side, roku is the number one smart tv operating system in the world. Hundreds of apps utilized roku. Roku sells those ads for the apps. Their advertising business is up 80 yearoveryear. On the content side, a couple of platforms like hulu which is owned by disney and pluto tv which is owned by viacom that have really leaned into the adsupported model. Versus the subscription supported model. A majority of consumers support an adsupported model rather than subscriptionbased. Which is why you see hulu, 70 of their users are ad supported. The last, which get the least amount of attention is the data race. Television advertising today is bought and sold the way we have been doing it for 30 years. Off a few thousand settop boxes on nielsen that are trying to extrapolate the behaviors of 300 million americans. Marketers are saying that does not work. We have begun seeing companies , like samba tv, for example, a company that has software on most Television Manufacturers and devices. They are in 25 million televisions across the world. They are able to provide Realtime Data for marketers , a breadth and depth that has never before been available, that is driving higher roi for the marketers. For no other reason, we will see ad dollars continue to migrate to streaming and smartconnected devices simply because they work better. Taylor dallas, i want to break down three of those that you just touched on, one of which is roku. You take a look inside my terminal, it is the stock of roku and the average analyst price target. The trend is up, but it has been a volatile story as investors try to figure out what streaming wars mean for roku. Do you believe that you cannot launch a streaming platform unless you also do it with roku . Dallas i think roku is the undoubted winner here in the streaming wars as we think about what happens in the next couple of months and what has already happened. You look at disney plus, for example. Disney was seeing a million downloads. During that same timeframe, roku downloads were up 50 . People were actually going to get the roku operating system so they could then access disney plus. So they are uniquely positioned in the ecosystem today to benefit from the 8 billion to 10 billion of content that is going to be spent, because you need to watch it on a platform. Disney does not have a platform, that you can watch it on. Neither does netflix. You will be going to your roku device. You have seen the roku television. It is the number one tv operating system in the world. You can buy a 55inch smart 4k tv for 200. They are really in a great position in the market today. Taylor you talk about some of the winners, namely hulu, which makes me wonder if it is a price or content . Do i like hulu because it is four dollars, five dollars a month and not 15 a month . Or is it a content story . Dallas i think what hulu has done well is they are having their cake and eating it too. They are offering the user either the subscription model that has no ads or the adbased model. So the user is actually getting to pick and choose what they want. We have seen some polling that 58 of u. S. Consumers prefer an adsupported model, around five dollars, six dollars a month. And about 40 prefer subscriptionbased model. The challenge we did not talk about the losers, but i think the real challenge has to be for netflix. I said i believe netflix will have to introduce an advertising supported model. They have reached a saturation point in the United States with subscribers. They cannot raise their price any higher with disney undercutting them at less than half the price. What hulu has done is they have read the market and understand there is an appetite for both and they offered both. , taylor that was a dallas lawrence of channel factory. Still ahead, 40,000 pounds of butter delivered crosscountry in a selfdriving truck. We will learn how that happened, next. This is bloomberg. Taylor glassdoors annual list of the best places to work some h names like google and facebook drop out of the top 10. Other companies are up. Docusign landed the number three spot. I sat down with ceo dan springer on wednesday. Dan i think our employees have spoken that there are a couple of things we have gotten right. We have created an exciting vision. We can go beyond what most know is for an have a broad platform to build on. Susignith our dock yo impact investment, we have given people the reason to be proud of working at our company. We have announced a new product to try and be a process of role player and whats going on with global warming. And people love working at a company, because they hear stories from customers all the time. Taylor we just heard that culture starts at the top. What is your number one piece of advice in terms of the tone you are setting . Dan two things. Go to a company that is already fabulous, it makes your job a lot easier, and i did that. But in terms of the parts that improve the culture, we do a lot to understand what our employees want to make us the best place they have ever worked. This is the work of their lives, as we say, and then try to deliver on that component. Taylor i want to talk about the fundamentals of your company. You went public in april 2018. Its been a while, but i hear a lot of ceos saying, thank god i went public when i did. The environment today is so difficult. Are you happy you went public when you did . Dan i have a somewhat contrarian view. I think companies should go public when they are ready and not try to time the market. You have to make sure you have the right controls in place. We are fortunate that i think we went out at a time that some of the challenges today we did not have to give a lot of dought to, do we want to a direct listing . A traditional ipo is now on the minds of everyone going public. But for us, it was a good time. We have gotten behind the choppiness of last year and can grow very well Going Forward. Taylor you know, docusign is not profitable just yet. Do you get a lot of pressure to be profitable . Dan we are profitable on a nongap basis. But i do think we get investors now telling us that growth is the number one imperative. We are focused on doing that. I told you we are trying to build the agreement cloud, the next big thing, and will focus on growth. But investors want the path to profitability. And what we have shown is that we are going to be highgrowth, but also a profitable organization. Taylor that was docusign ceo dan springer. Holiday freight run with pounds of butter. 40,000 thats what ai did with this truck. A provider of technology, plus ai completed the first crosscountry haul in three days. To explain what had happened, we were joined by the cofounder and chief operating officer John Kerrigan on tuesday. John the vast majority was it drove from california to pennsylvania. There are federal rules around rest breaks and so on. But all of our trucks are staffed with both a safety driver and an Operations Specialist so we had to follow all of the federal rules for that. Segments, like Road Construction that the pennsylvania d. O. T. Asked us to drive through in manual. But aside from that, it was mostly autonomous. Taylor what are companies telling you about the cost savings . Shawn people are excited and interested in the technology. As you know will be sometime for the technology is fully released as a product. But there will be tremendous benefits in terms of safety and cost. That is what we were setting out to demonstrate in this run, going up through the rockies and the great plains. Demonstrating the overall reliability and safety. Taylor what is your relationship like with policymakers . You mentioned working with the department of transportation. How do you ensure you are working with them and getting responsible regulation . Shawn we try to be very proactive in working with different regulators. Earlier this year, we reached out to the state d. O. T. s in all lower 48 states. We also announced a partnership with the minnesota d. O. T. Around testing. What we find is actually quite encouraging. That from a regular standpoint, theres a lot of interest in supporting the technology. Again, because of safety. This technology has tremendous potential in terms of safety on the road. Taylor is safety the biggest question you get from regulators . Shawn i think there are a lot of questions, but safety is one. How do you demonstrate the safety of the systems . By doing runs like this, demonstrating that it works. Taylor i spoke with a guest from stanford, she came from spacex. She was walking me through the height curve says we are in the cross of disillusionment. This will take way longer than any of us expected. On your timeline, where are we . In reaching true economy, level 4, level 5 . Shawn we are focused on level for autonomy. The ability to go from distribution hub to highway, to the highway, and a distribution hub on the other side. Fully economist with Better Safety and lower fully autonomous with Better Safety and lower costs. We see the timeline for that is around 2023. That is not just a function of when our technology is ready. Also a function of when our partners are ready. Thats why this run was so important. Its the timeline for when things like the platforms we build on are ready for autonomous systems. In terms of redundant systems for electrical and other components, the timeline for redundancy of components, so things like brakes and steering, you need redundant actuators in there. As well as the timeline on the regulation front. The timeline for those front asns to fall in you look across all of those, 2023 is when we think it will light up. Kerrigan,at was shawn plus. Ai cofounder and coo. That does it for this edition of the best of bloomberg technology. We are livestreaming on twitter. Check us out and follow our global breaking news network on twitter. This is bloomberg. Beyond the routine checkups. Beyond the notsoroutine cases. Comcast business is helping doctors provide care in whole new ways. All working with a new generation of technologies powered by our gigspeed network. Because beyond technology. There is human ingenuity. Every day, comcast business is helping businesses go beyond the expected. To do the extraordinary. Take your business beyond. Francine Minouche Shafik knows the worlds of economics and finance well. She was the youngest ever Vice President at the world bank before becoming deputy managing director at the imf. At the bank of england, she was responsible for Balance Sheets of nearly 500 billion pounds. Forbes even named her one of the most powerful women on the globe. Now, she is back to the world of academia as the director of the worldrenowned London School of economics. In september, i spoke with Minouche Shafik for leaders