What’s happened in AI: June 24th-30th
Relatively slow week in the AI world. Major highlights include Uber’s acquisition of Mighty AI and Argo AI funding a $15mm research center at Carnegie Mellon. More weekly news below.
Tag Archives: Uber
What’s happened in AI: April 15th-21st
We’ve seen two sides of Microsoft over the past two weeks. Last week, we learned that Microsoft was working with a Chinese military university on AI. This week, we learned they declined to sell their facial recognition technology to California law enforcement. While encouraging to hear given the current privacy and civil rights violations associated with many facial recognition technologies, the fact that they’re operating in China on this topic should still leave us all concerned. More weekly news can be found below.
What’s happened in AI: April 8th-14th
Thanks to Uber’s S-1 filing we have new insight on their investment activities surrounding autonomous vehicles. Last year they spent over $450mm on autonomous vehicles, and ~$1bn in total over the past three years. Quite a big bet they’re making and it will be interesting to see how they stack up against Lyft in the future. Other weekly news can be found below.
What’s happened in AI: March 11th-17th
Most of us could infer that large scale autonomous vehicle programs were capital intensive. With that being said, the recent news of Uber’s $20 million a month burn rate for its autonomous vehicle program must have caught a lot of us by surprise. With that amount of money they might as well pursue 1 or 2 acquisitions to help accelerate progress. Other weekly news can be found below.
What’s happened in AI: March 4th-10th
Another week with many developments in the autonomous vehicle world. In particular, Uber will not be held criminally liable for the pedestrian killed from one of its autonomous vehicles, Waymo is selling its Lidar sensors, and a recent report on the risks associated with a hacked autonomous vehicle in New York. More weekly news can be found below.
What’s happened in AI: December 17th-23rd
Anthony Levandowski is back in the news again. This time it’s for his new autonomous trucking startup Pronto.ai, where he completed a 3,099 mile cross-country trip in one of his trucks. If verified it would be the longest known journey for an autonomous truck. Levandowski just keeps finding ways to stay relevant.
What’s happened in AI: December 10th-16th
Some end of the year AI blues for the U.S. gov’t. Recent reports have indicated the Pentagon is concerned the U.S. is losing its AI advantage to China and Europe. Democratic lawmakers also pushed back against a compromise bill for self-driving vehicles. Will be interesting to see how legislature approaches AI in 2019. My guess is it will slip again, but hopefully I’m proven wrong.
What’s happened in AI: December 3rd-9th
Despite recent reports of Chinese VCs pulling back AI investment, many top AI players continue to raise large amounts of cash. ByteDance, the $75bn unicorn that has now surpassed Uber’s valuation, is in talks to raise another $1.45bn. The use of proceeds is to pursue their aggressive global expansion plans.
Meanwhile in the U.S., Republican Senator John Thune and Democratic Senator Gary Peters circulated a draft of a revised self-driving vehicle bill aimed at breaking a legislative stalemate. With the pace of innovation in the field, let’s hope they get this passed sooner rather than later.