Self-driving car startup Cruise has received more than $2 billion in a new round of investment from Microsoft, General Motors, Honda, and institutional investors, according to a joint statement by Cruise, its owner GM, and Microsoft on Tuesday. The investment will bring the valuation of Cruise to $30 billion and make Microsoft an official partner. Per Tuesday's announcement: "To unlock the potential of cloud computing for self-driving vehicles, Cruise will leverage Azure, Microsoft's cloud and edge computing platform, to commercialize its unique autonomous vehicle solutions at scale. Microsoft, as Cruise's preferred cloud provider, will also tap into Cruise's deep industry expertise [emphasis mine] to enhance its customer-driven product innovation and serve transportation companies across the globe [emphasis mine] through continued investment in Azure." So, Cruise will get the much-needed funds to conduct research and (possibly discounted) access to Microsoft's cloud computing resources and move closer toward its goal of launching a purpose-built self-driving car.

Carol E. Reiley is the co-founder and president of Drive.ai. She previously founded Tinkerbelle Laboratories. During my Ph.D. studies, I developed a voice-activated human-robot interface for a surgical robotic system using Microsoft's speech recognition API. But, because the API had been built mainly by 20-30-year-old men, it did not recognize my voice. I had to lower my pitch in order for it to work.

Only nine states and Washington, D.C., have laws on the books related to autonomous vehicles. Olli, a self-driving bus, is set to debut in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Local Motors) SAN FRANCISCO - If you've got tech skills and are interested in self-driving cars, there's a good chance you'll wind up working in the Bay Area. Where jobs in the automotive field were once exclusively tied to Detroit, the mushrooming importance of software to mobility has seen employment opportunities migrate west as established automakers such as Ford Motor and Mercedes-Benz boost their ranks in Silicon Valley. That shift is borne out by data provided to USA TODAY by Paysa, a site that uses machine learning to provide salary information and career success insights for both job seekers and businesses. Over the past six months, dozens of companies looking for self-driving car talent posted more than 350 job listings, with 230 of those jobs based in either Mountain View or Palo Alto.

But there are two big problems with Musk's explanation. For one, how does Tesla quantify Autopilot's safety record compared with an ordinary car? Musk says that, in a car without Autopilot, there is on average one death for every 89 million miles traveled; but in a car with Autopilot, the first death won't happen for more than twice as many miles. It's not clear, however, how he reaches this conclusion. Academics like Missy Cummings, a roboticist at Duke, and John Leonard, an engineer at MIT, have long called for more transparency from the manufacturers working in the self-driving car space.