Totaling your car is getting easier

Dinged your mirror? To the scrap heap! [Bloomberg]( This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a slightly bruised yet drivable vehicle of Bloomberg Opinion’s opinions. [Sign up here](. Today’s Agenda - The rise of the [disposable car](. - [AI deals]( won’t get you far. - Where the [Gen Z jobs]( are. - A [Hot Ones Emmy](? Not bizarre. Accidents Happen Story time! Back in college, I totaled my car on the way to the library. My brakes stopped working as I approached a red light. And instead of, I dunno, using the emergency brake, I panicked and decided to go off-roading through the backyard of a sorority house, all while “[Shower](” by Becky G blasted from the stereo. (The people in the vicinity — who thankfully I didn’t hit — thought I was on some sort of joyride.) Eventually, I pin-balled my way through a bunch of trees, which was terrible for the exterior of the car but did wonders to slow it down. Then I just opened up the door and jumped out while the vehicle was still in motion — a poor choice in retrospect, but it was barely rolling at that point. The police officer didn’t buy my story when he showed up, but then he stuck his hand under the driver’s seat and tugged on the brake pedal. The line was severed like a cartoon head. It was a whole thing to explain this to my insurance company. But nowadays, you don’t need to do all that to total your car! It’s much easier, thanks to the dozens of newfangled sensors, cameras, touchpads and [surveillance mechanisms]( stored in our four-wheeled death machines. “The high cost of repairing these systems may mean the vehicle is written-off, or totaled, following a crash,” Chris Bryant [explains](. “More than one-fifth of vehicles are now declared a write-off by insurers after examining claims; this is close to a record and around five times higher than in 1980.” The economic rationale behind sending slightly bruised yet drivable vehicles to the junk yard is simple. “Right now, repairing a car is very expensive,” he writes. Motor vehicle repair prices have increased by almost 50% since the start of the pandemic, so the cost of fixing a car often exceeds the pre-accident value. That’s especially true if the car is on the newer side. Let’s say you side-swipe your driver-side mirror. That can’t be too bad, right? It’s not, unless your side mirror is equipped with a camera. The cost of fixing a new F-150 pickup truck mirror will set you back an eye-watering $1,600. What’s worse is that “Advanced Driver Assistance Systems” — think: automatic braking and lane-keeping assistance — often lull drivers into a false sense of security and tempt them to look at their phone instead of the road. With used cars, the story is slightly different: “Insurers were strongly incentivized to fix vehicles when second-hand prices soared during the pandemic, but these trends have begun to reverse,” Chris explains. In any event, the uptick in totaled vehicles is a boon to salvage auctions like Copart, where shares are up 23% in the past year: While I’m happy for Copart, I really hope that the recovered parts of my old pickup truck aren’t still out there in some other unlucky soul’s car. Pizza Glue Artificial intelligence is having a weird week. First, OpenAI thought it could get away with using a voice that sounded alarmingly similar to actress Scarlett Johansson without her permission. (Beth Kowitt [says]( Sam Altman — fresh off of [watching]( Her — “sorely miscalculated.”) And now we have Google [telling users]( to add an eighth cup of non-toxic glue to pizza sauce to give it more tackiness: Despite such [egregious errors](, the “WE DO AI NOW” train is barreling full-speed ahead, with Wall Street Journal parent company News Corp. signing [an agreement]( with OpenAI reported to be worth some $250 million over five years. “There is a premium for premium journalism,” News Corp. CEO Robert Thomson said. But how “premium” can it be when AI is still at Elmer’s-in-pizza-sauce levels of inadequacy? And it’s not just the Journal. Everyone from the [Financial Times]( to the [Associated Press]( now dabbles with the technology. Even the Washington Post, which had a money-losing 2023, is [betting on AI]( for its salvation. Yesterday, the paper’s chief tech officer went so far as to [tell the staff]( that going forward, they will have “AI everywhere in our newsroom.” But Dave Lee [says]( the flurry of announcements and agreements are futile: “There is no opting out of AI … publishers can either take a deal or not — knowing that the machine has likely guzzled up their content regardless.” Consider OpenAI’s model. Sure, it’s a “nonprofit-corporate hybrid,” whatever that means. But it lacks transparency and ethics. “No one who values the Fourth Estate should accept the prospect of AI companies, which should be the subject of journalistic scrutiny, holding what could one day, if other business models continue to crumble, be extreme control over a publication’s financial health,” he writes. Read [the whole thing]( (without the help of ChatGPT, please). Telltale Charts Gen Z’s dream job is working for the government. I know! I had to re-read that four times to make sure I wasn’t missing something, too. But that’s what this [new survey]( from Handshake, a recruiter for college students, shows. Allison Schrager [says]( “there is something depressing about recent college graduates, with their whole lives ahead of them, dreaming about … a job in government.” What happened to delusion? There’s nothing wrong with the public sector, but these kids should be hankering to create the next [Nvidia](! We want them to win the Nobel Prize! A career in the civil service seems painfully boring in comparison — but maybe that’s exactly what they’re after: When’s the last time you flipped to CBS, NBC or ABC to watch late-night TV? For me, the answer is not in a very long time. Sure, my mom used to howl over the [Jimmy Kimmel bit]( where parents pretend they ate all of their kid’s Halloween candy. But my formative years were influenced by YouTube vlogs, not midnight monologues. That’s one reason why Hot Ones, the internet show where Sean Evans eats spicy chicken wings with celebrities, is so successful. The series, which just ushered in its 24th season with Furiosa star [Chris Hemsworth](, is looking to compete against the likes of Seth Meyers and Stephen Colbert for a [Primetime Emmy Award]( for outstanding talk series. If the chicken wing show clinches the win, I say “it will spell the end of late-night as we know it” in [my latest (free!) column](. Further Reading A [rare lull]( at the border gives Biden an opening. — Bloomberg’s editorial board Nikki Haley shows us [who she really is](: a coward. — Mary Ellen Klas If you use [Cash App](, be sure to read the fine print. — Marc Rubinstein Coinbase’s [Supreme Court loss]( is its own fault. — Stephen L. Carter Walmart is [breathing]( down Target's neck. — Andrea Felsted Anything can happen during a [UK campaign]( — and usually does. — Martin Ivens King Charles’ [portrait]( is artful propaganda. — Howard Chua-Eoan ICYMI The US wants to [break up]( Live Nation-Ticketmaster. The Supreme Court is cool with South Carolina’s [voting map](. There are more [401(k) millionaires]( than ever before. Kickers POV: You’re at the mall, [surfing]( in the world’s largest indoor wavepool. POV: You got hit by a [110-mph foul ball]( and now you’re on a trading card. POV: You got your [doctorate at 17](, just in time for prom. (h/t Sarah Green Carmichael) POV: You’re a heavyweight champion in professional [slap fighting](. (h/t Beth Kowitt) POV: You waited 3.5 hours for a [Something About Her]( sandwich. Notes: Please send pizza glue and feedback to Jessica Karl at jkarl9@bloomberg.net. [Sign up here]( and follow us on [Threads](, [TikTok](, [Twitter](, [Instagram]( and [Facebook](. 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