Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Rubbing a black snail on a wart and impailing the creature with a thorn will make the bumps go away. Giving a donkey some bread will treat whooping cough . Mumps can be cured if you rub your head on the back of a pig . They may sound a bit strange now, but folk remedies like these are an important part of human history.

Since General Motors acquired the San Francisco self-driving-tech developer Cruise in 2016, the Detroit automaker has poured more than 8 billion into creating a robotaxi service. Now GM is turning off the spigot. On a call with investors today, General Motors CEO Mary Barra said the company would no longer invest in Cruise and its robotaxi services. Instead, GM says it will combine Cruise's efforts on autonomy with its own teams focused on driver-assistance features. Eventually, the combined team will build "personal" autonomous vehicles, the chief executive said.

General Motors is putting the autonomous Cruise Origin shuttle van on ice. The company said that the embattled Cruise, of which GM is the majority owner, will now focus on making the next-gen Chevy Bolt. The automaker discontinued the previous Bolt last year due to a shift away from an older battery system but did not reveal plans for a new model at the time. According to a letter that GM CEO Mary Barra sent to shareholders, the indefinite delay of the shuttle van "addresses the regulatory uncertainty we faced with the Origin because of its unique design." Barra added that the per-unit costs of the next-gen Bolt will be much lower, "which will help Cruise optimize its resources."

General Motors (GM) will slash spending in its self-driving car unit Cruise, after an accident last month seriously injured a pedestrian and prompted regulators to retract its operating permit for driverless cars in San Francisco. The company announced today that it will "substantially lower" its spending on Cruise next year, according to Mary Barra, GM's CEO. "We expect the pace of Cruise's expansion to be more deliberate when operations resume," she said in a letter to shareholders. Until the accident, Cruise had been operating driverless taxis in three US cities, San Francisco, Phoenix and Austin, with plans to expand. In October, the company said it would no longer operate its vehicles without safety drivers behind the wheel.

The United States state of California has suspended testing of Cruise self-driving cars developed by General Motors (GM), citing safety concerns after a series of accidents and mishaps. California's Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) announced on Tuesday that it had suspended the deployment of GM self-driving vehicles and driverless testing permits, the latest regulatory agency to express concerns over their safety. "When there is an unreasonable risk to public safety, the DMV can immediately suspend or revoke permits," the department said in response to an inquiry from the news outlet AFP. Self-driving cars have been met with mixed reactions from the public, some of whom see them as an exciting technological development while others view them as a nuisance or a hazard. The suspension follows a series of accidents involving Cruise vehicles and marks a serious setback for GM's efforts to break into the autonomous vehicle industry.

Following President Joe Biden's announcement that he's running for re-election, the Republican National Committee (RNC) was primed with a new attack ad. However, new for 2023, the ad uses AI-generated imagery to create almost-realistic visions of what might happen. This includes hypothetical domestic and international incidents the RNC suggests might happen if Biden wins again: "This morning, an emboldened China invades Taiwan," a fake news announcer says. The RNC told Axios it was the first time it had used a video made entirely with AI. The ad features a faint disclaimer in the top-left corner noting the ad was "built entirely with AI imagery."

General Motors is studying the possibility of an artificial intelligence voice assistant in future vehicles, according to the company. GM Chair and CEO Mary Barra, who was asked for details Tuesday by Fox Business channel anchor Liz Claman, referenced the company's Ultifi "end-to-end" vehicle software platform. "It's one of many things we can put on the vehicle. The vehicle really is a software platform and starting in 2019, General Motors started rolling out vehicles where you could do over-the-air updates for almost every module in the vehicle," Barra said, in an interview that touched on artificial intelligence, self-driving vehicles and a current production shutdown tied to supply chain issues at one of GM's truck plants. "Having an assistant with a voice that's clear enough where you can ask questions and get answers, I think that's what the artificial intelligence will enable us to do," Barra said, noting that "we'll be able to make your car better as you own it."

General Motors is going to sell fully autonomous vehicles to regular people by the middle of the decade, the company's CEO Mary Barra declared during her speech at the 2022 Consumer Electronics Show. It was a bold claim that is sure to cause waves in the auto industry, especially as it continues to grapple with its own over-inflated expectations about the future of driverless cars. Barra didn't offer further details about the kind of vehicle it will sell, which markets it will target, how it will address liability in the event of a crash, and most importantly, whether owners will be able to sleep in their autonomous vehicles. To date, there are no self-driving cars for sale to consumers as personally owned vehicles. Autonomous vehicles, which are outfitted with multiple sensors and high-powered computer systems, are very expensive to develop.

For years, automakers have told a specific story about how self-driving cars would arrive in the world. They would be shared and electric, fleets of ride-hail vehicles shuttling passengers like fancy taxis. General Motors and Lyft signed an agreement to pull it off back in 2016; Ford promised its robotaxis would debut by last year; Daimler said it would work with Uber to deploy fleets of Mercedes-Benzes. The logic was financial: Autonomous vehicle technology would be so expensive to develop that carmakers wouldn't be able to offer it to most drivers at prices they could afford. This vision carried profound implications: If city dwellers could depend on fleets of shared robotaxis for long trips, they could abandon the personal car altogether.

General Motors secured its pivot to a high-tech future Wednesday by announcing plans to convert more assembly plants in North America to make electric vehicles by the end of the decade and to double company revenues by that time as it unveils more software and new EVs. GM leaders are expected to reveal new technology, such as an advancement to the automaker's hands-free driving system, as well as more EV products, including a new Chevrolet SUV EV priced at $30,000, during its annual Investor Day presentation, starting at 1 p.m. ET. "Our early investments in these growth trends have transformed GM from automaker to platform innovator, with customers at the center," said CEO Mary Barra. "GM will use its hardware and software platforms to innovate and improve their daily experience, leading everybody on the journey to an all-electric future." Barra emphasized that no hourly workers will lose their jobs in the transition to electric and GM continues to hire salaried employees who have a background in technology and digital software. "Late last year we hired 3,000 employees and this year alone we've hired 8,000 salaried workers especially in the technology, digital and the software space," Barra said.