It would be interesting to expand this reasoning to other STEM disciplines.

For example, would computer science researchers be more likely to express cynicism of self driving cars if there weren't lucrative jobs in industry or lucrative research contracts from car manufacturers (see https://www.csail.mit.edu/sponsors/strategic-partners for an example)?

I mean there must be dozens of self driving car efforts thousands of highly compensated CS researchers. Millions of dollars in academic partnerships. Is that not influential?

Would there be more cynicism about the safety narrative of these cars? Tenured academic computer science and AI researchers are the best positioned in society to comment on how realistic those claims are. But I'd argue the money has disincentivized them from saying so.