It's not like people in San Francisco came together and voted to say, let's be the testing

ground for autonomous vehicles or driverless cars.

Like, nothing like that ever happened.

It's not even like the elected representatives like myself ever voted to say, let's be

the testing ground for these autonomous vehicles.

There was no vote from the city saying, let's ramp the testing ground for these autonomous vehicles. There was no vote on the city

saying, let's ramp up from this nighttime testing to where they can operate 24-7 and where they

can take passengers and so forth. It was all done by the tech industry going to Sacramento,

exerting their power and influence through a lot of money in the lobby.

Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us. I'm your host, Paris Marks, and this week my guest is Dean Preston.

Dean is a San Francisco District 5 supervisor and the first Democratic Socialist elected in San Francisco in 40 years.

He's also a tenant attorney and the founder of tenants together. I wanted to have Dean on the show for a few reasons. First of all, you know, you've probably seen the stories recently about the robotaxies that are all over San Francisco and causing havoc on the streets of the city. So I wanted to talk to Dean about that and how these companies like Google and GM are able to roll these vehicles out on the streets and why they are not being held to account of why those

vehicles are not being taken off the street because there is a lot of public opposition.

There is a lot of recognition that these things are not performing as the companies promised

they are. And so why is nothing

happening here? Why is the city not stepping up to do something? And there are very key and important

reasons why that is happening. And Dean outlines them, not just because of state authorities taking

away power from the city, but also because of a lack of desire from people within the

city itself who have the authority to do something about this to actually use that power.

But then, you know, that leads us into a broader conversation about the impact that the tech

industry has had in San Francisco more broadly, as it has become this major industry, as it has

created these people who have immense power and wealth within the city and kind of the

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