On cars and AI

Lifted from the Internet: WSJ electronic

The Morning Download: Toyota Ramps Up AI Research That Drives Autonomous Vehicles By Steve Rosenbush

Good morning. Toyota Motor Corp. is working fast to catch up in the development of autonomous vehicles, an area where some car companies have a head start. The critical asset in this tech market isn't so much technology, as it is the capital, and the willingness to deploy it in an effective way.

Toyota said Thursday it is expanding its artificial intelligence research to University of Michigan, its third university collaboration in the U.S., to try to advance its efforts in autonomous driving, the WSJ's Mike Ramsey reports. Last year Toyota announced a $1 billion effort to expand its research in autonomous driving and has hired professors from Stanford University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he notes. It also brought on the entire staff of Jaybridge Robotics in Cambridge. The latest partnership includes the hiring of UM researchers Ed Olson and Ryan Eustice, autonomous vehicle experts at the Ann Arbor-based school, according to the WSJ.

Toyota said the UM campus will be responsible for fully autonomous cars, the Stanford campus will be working on partially autonomous vehicles and the MIT campus will work on machine learning, an interesting coordinated approach to the research effort. Speaking of capital and the willingness to deploy it, Uber said Thursday that it hired Ford Motor Co.’s top electric vehicle executive, Sherif Marakby.