In the world of autonomous vehicles, Pittsburgh and Silicon Valley are bustling hubs of development and testing. But ask those involved in self-driving vehicles when we might actually see them carrying passengers in every city, and you'll get an almost universal answer: Not anytime soon. An optimistic assessment is 10 years. Many others say decades as researchers try to conquer a number of obstacles. The vehicles themselves will debut in limited, well-mapped areas within cities and spread outward. Above, one of the test vehicles from Argo AI, Ford's autonomous vehicle unit, navigates through the strip district near the company offices in Pittsburgh. Even the most optimistic experts say it will be 10 years before self-driving vehicles are everywhere The fatal crash in Arizona involving an Uber autonomous vehicle in March slowed progress, largely because it hurt the public's perception of the safety of vehicles. Companies slowed research to be more careful. Google's … [Read more...] about 5 reasons why autonomous cars aren’t coming anytime soon
Carnegie mellon silicon valley
China’s greatest natural resource may be its data
Kai-Fu Lee built his career working for the giants of Silicon Valley: Apple, Microsoft, and Google. But today, as one of the most successful venture capitalists in the field of artificial intelligence, Lee has decided that best place to be an AI capitalist is in communist China. Lee's firm, Sinovation Ventures, has funded 140 AI startups, including shared-bicycle companies, education companies, and a firm that's developing dishwashing robots. Lee says that the future for AI companies in China offers more promise than anywhere else, because of the simple fact that in a country of 1.4 billion, there's just more data than anywhere else. In China, data has become its own kind of abundant natural resource. Lee has called China "the Saudi Arabia of data." "People are ordering takeout 10 times more than the U.S. They're doing mobile payment 50 times more than the U.S. They're ordering shared bicycles 300 times more than the U.S.," Lee says in the clip above. "And all that data can be fed into … [Read more...] about China’s greatest natural resource may be its data
An African solution to the global tech talent shortage
‘Eat, sleep, code, repeat,’ is the mantra in Andela’s Nairobi campus, home to a network of Africa’s brightest coders. Taking the inspiration for its name from the late South African President Nelson Mandela, Andela Invests in Africa’s burgeoning network of software engineers. Launched in Nigeria in 2014, and boasting Google Ventures and the Chan Zuckerburg Initiative among their financial backers, the firm has raised over $81 million in venture capital and counts more than 800 software developers on its books. In addition to its offices in San Francisco and Austin, Andela’s African network now includes tech campuses in Nairobi, Lagos, Kampala and Kigali. The Kigali campus is a pan-African office – the Rwandan capital was chosen because it has one of Africa’s most enabling business environments and one of the world’s least restrictive visa regimes. “What we look for are high growth companies that are looking to scale their … [Read more...] about An African solution to the global tech talent shortage