Lyft has just announced plans to partner with three companies in the autonomous vehicle (AV) sector and gradually introduce their technology into its network starting in 2025. The three companies are Mobileye, May Mobility and Nexar. Mobileye is a pioneer of self-driving technology and has also developed advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). Lyft's partnership with Mobileye will allow vehicles already equipped with Mobileye's tech to start transporting passengers to their destinations, integrating them into the Lyft network seamlessly. The technology will be available to both small and large fleets on Lyft.

For me, autonomous vehicles inspire profound fascination and deep fear. I'm fascinated by their prospects for the future--their inevitability. I also constantly wonder: how can we make this mode of travel safe? How's it possible a self-driving car could ever be safe? At CES 2023, I started to get some answers.

In 2022, the AI boutique movie became a blockbuster. It took exactly ten years for the modern AI story to transform from the new new thing for a bunch of geeks to popular entertainment for the masses. In 2022, AI conversationalist ChatGPT signed up more than one million users in 5 days and AI image generator Midjourney amassed 6 million members in less than 6 months. The 2012 deep learning breakthrough in image identification convinced many computer science PhD candidates to switch their dissertation work to the new superior method for finding patterns in data. Even more important, the entire "Silicon Valley" community fell for the hype created by this new phase of the six decades-long quest for replicating human intelligence in a computer.

Recent weeks have seen a number of reports of the death of self-driving cars, triggered mostly by the closure of Argo.AI, the self-driving startup funded by Ford and VW. That shutdown hasn't been the only bad news in a year of bad news for almost all of tech. The declarations that self-driving cars are a decade or more away have come from press like Bloomberg and Techcrunch, but perhaps more concerningly from insiders like Oxbotica and Luminar (though they claim to have always felt this way.) We've also seen all the public companies (except MobilEye) see very large stock declines this year, especially the SPAC-funded startups. Monday saw the "merger" of LIDAR pioneer Velodyne into Ouster.

June 2020: Volkswagen will invest USD 2.6 billion in capital and assets in Ford's self-driving unit ... [ ] Argo AI to market new-technology vehicles in the United States and Europe. Argo.ai, an autonomous vehicle (AV) unicorn, announced on October 26, 2022, that it would terminate operations across its locations in Pittsburgh, San Francisco, New Jersey and Munich. It impacts roughly 2100 employees and, more importantly, puts into focus the feasibility and business model for autonomous transportation on public roads. The company was founded in 2013 by alums of the 2006 DARPA Grand Challenge, Google, and Uber AV initiatives and secured significant backing and funding from Ford in 2017 ($1B) and later from Volkswagen in 2020 ($2.5B). Both investments occurred under the auspices of earlier CEOs, who have since been replaced (Ford CEO Jim Hacket in 2020 and Volkswagen CEO Herbert Deiss in 2022). It is unsurprising that new management saw things differently and did not want to inherit their predecessor's strategic bets.

Intel Corp. Chief Executive Patrick Gelsinger is guiding the chip giant through a period of industry upheaval. On the one hand, U.S. semiconductor makers are grappling with softening demand for chips amid inflation and recession fears, and facing new government restrictions on certain exports to China. On the other hand, the industry is about to get more than $50 billion in subsidies to help it shift more production to the U.S. from Asia, thanks to the bipartisan Chips and Science Act that President Biden signed into law over the summer. Under Mr. Gelsinger, who lobbied heavily for the legislation, Intel is going on an expansion spree, investing heavily in new factories in Ohio and other places. The company has also moved forward with an initial public offering of Mobileye, its automated-driving unit.

Intel is expected to report a sharp drop in quarterly earnings, hurt by a rapidly shrinking market for personal computers that its chips go into. The company after the closing bell Thursday is projected to post sales of about $15 billion during the quarter ended in September, a retreat of more than 21% from the year-earlier period, according to a FactSet survey of analysts. Net income likely fell by around 93% to $494 million, the analysts estimate. Intel and other chip makers cashed in on a boom in computer and electronics sales at the outset of the pandemic with the shift toward remote work and distance learning. The market has turned, though, with high inflation, rising interest rates and recession fears that have weighed on demand.

Shares of Mobileye Global rose 27% out of the gate in their trading debut, in one of the highest-profile and largest initial public offerings of the year. Intel automated car-driving unit initially traded at $26.71, above its IPO price of $21 a share. That gives Mobileye a valuation of more than $21 billion. The stock opened on the Nasdaq stock market a little before midday Wednesday, trading under the symbol MBLY. More than 3.5 million shares changed hands in the opening trade.

Intel self-driving car unit Mobileye Global priced its initial public offering at $21 a share, a dollar above the top of its targeted range, according to people close to the deal. Mobileye raised $861 million by selling 41 million shares, valuing the company at roughly $17 billion, the people said. That is more than the $15.3 billion that Intel paid for the Mobileye in 2017 but a far cry from the $50 billion or more that the chip giant originally set its sights on when it unveiled plans for the listing late last year. The Wall Street Journal previously reported that Intel was expected to price the IPO at or above the top of its targeted range of $18 to $20 a share. A weekly digest of tech reviews, headlines, columns and your questions answered by WSJ's Personal Tech gurus.

Corp. Chief Executive Pat Gelsinger said that recently imposed U.S. restrictions on semiconductor-industry exports to China were inevitable as America seeks to maintain technological leadership in competition with China. Speaking at The Wall Street Journal's annual Tech Live conference, Mr. Gelsinger said the restrictions, which require chip companies to obtain a license to export certain advanced artificial-intelligence and supercomputing chips as well as equipment used in advanced manufacturing, are part of a necessary shift of chip supply chains. "I viewed this geopolitically as inevitable," Mr. Gelsinger said. "And that's why the rebalancing of supply chains is so critical." A weekly digest of tech reviews, headlines, columns and your questions answered by WSJ's Personal Tech gurus.