General Motors shuts down Cruise – what does this tell us about the risks of AI?

On Tuesday, General Motors took the decision to shut down its self-driving car division, Cruise. It will be folded in to GM’s technical teams to develop driver assistance and autonomous driving in personal vehicles, and will no longer operate self-driving taxis.

This is a remarkable reversal that comes at the end of eight years of General Motors’ ownership of Cruise. GM acquired Cruise in 2016, and they have invested $8 billion in the company since then, including $850 million in funding as recently as June 2024.

Cruise had been central to General Motors’ vision of the future. Three years ago the CEO of GM, Mary Barra, promised to double company revenue by 2030, partly by generating $50 billion a year from Cruise. Its closure will likely cut R&D costs for GM, but deny the company potential profits from the autonomous taxi industry or a lucrative tech valuation.

It might appear that this decision has come about as a result of recent events that demonstrated flaws in the self-driving programs operating Cruise vehicles. In October 2023, California suspended Cruise’s permit to operate robotaxis without a safety driver. This came after an incident where a pedestrian was hit by a driver, knocking them into a Cruise autonomous car. The Cruise vehicle drove to the side of the road, unaware that it was dragging the person with it. It was video footage of this event that led the California DMV to determine that Cruise’s vehicles were not safe for public operations.

Potentially as a result of the risks of using AI technology, one of the largest automotive manufacturing companies in the world has been forced to re-imagine its vision of the future. It is more important than ever that these risks are properly understood.