Volkswagen CEO Says He’s Not Scared of Apple

Volkswagen’s CEO Herbert Diess isn’t intimidated by Apple, even though the tech company potentially has an electric car on the way. From a report: “The car industry is not a typical tech sector that you could take over at a single stroke,” Diess said in an interview with German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. “Apple will not manage that overnight.” For years,…

SoftBank Expects Mass Production of Driverless Cars in Two Years

SoftBank Group Chief Executive Masayoshi Son said on Friday he expects mass production of self-driving vehicles to start in two years. From a report: While in the first year the production of units won’t be in millions, in the next several years the cost per mile in fully autonomous cars will become very cheap, Son said, speaking at a virtual meeting…

Microsoft Joins $2 Billion Deal With GM To Roll Out Self-Driving Cars

Microsoft is joining GM, Honda and others in a $2 billion investment round in Cruise to help commercialize its self-driving cars. The deal bumps Cruise’s valuation to $30 billion, from $19 billion last year. From a report: The investment is part of a broader commitment by GM and Cruise to use Microsoft’s Azure cloud-computing platform across their companies, especially as they…

Volvo’s Polestar Plans an Electric Ride-Hailing Robotaxi with Waymo

Slashdot reader Way Smarter Than You shares this article from Car and Driver:
Polestar, the Volvo premium electric brand, will come out with a new electric vehicle platform just for ride-hailing vehicles. The automated driving technology is called Waymo Driver, and Waymo has been testing it in vehicles from a number of automakers, including Jaguar Land Rover, Nissan, and Renault. You’ll be…

UPS Will Use Arrival’s Electric Trucks In the US, Europe

Delivery giant UPS has ordered 10,000 electrical trucks from Arrival, a technology company based in the UK. The two companies hope to deploy the trucks across Europe and North America over the next four years. Engadget reports: If everything goes well, UPS has the option to buy another 10,000 vehicles. For now, the trucks are still in a prototype phase. The…

The Dangers of ‘Black Box’ AI

PC Magazine recently interviewed Janelle Shane, the optics research scientist and AI experimenter who authored the new book “You Look Like a Thing and I Love You: How Artificial Intelligence Works and Why It’s Making the World a Weirder Place.” At one point Shane explains why any “black box” AI can be a problem:
I think ethics in AI does have to…