What still isn't clear to me is why Uber is involved in the development of self-driving cars, vs. profiteering and duplicating once the first viable examples have been released.

On the surface autonomous vehicles appear to be a long-term capital draining exercise. Do they view the first mover advantage as that beneficial in this case that they'd risk all their future growth to be first to market for something that they could, conceivably, get a better ROI for being "second" to market with a more durable option?