How Waabi's Founder Is Implementing AI To Solve Problems With Self-Driving Technology

Forbes

Raquel Urtasun, Founder & CEO of Waabi, has been utilizing AI technology for decades. Now, she's applying generative AI to build better tech for self-driving vehicles. Urtasun discusses how and why she built Waabi to solve these issues facing the trucking industry and how the company is helping to fix the world's supply chain issues.  Subscribe to FORBES: https://www.youtube.com/user/Forbes?sub_confirmation=1  Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:  https://account.forbes.com/membership/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=display&utm_campaign=growth_non-sub_paid_subscribe_ytdescript  Stay Connected Forbes newsletters: https://newsletters.editorial.forbes.com Forbes on Facebook: http://fb.com/forbes Forbes Video on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/forbes Forbes Video on Instagram: http://instagram.com/forbes More From Forbes:  http://forbes.com  Forbes covers the intersection of entrepreneurship, wealth, technology, business and lifestyle with a focus on people and success.

Transcript

00:00My name is Raquel Urtasun. I am the founder and CEO of Wabi. We are providing a solution

00:09that is much more capital efficient, as well as a much faster path to market, starting

00:14with self-driving. But you're going to see us doing much more than just self-driving

00:17trucks, which is our first product.

00:22I started working in AI 25 years ago as an undergrad, where I got really fascinated by

00:26this concept of an artificial brain that can really do the same task as humans. However,

00:33this was just an idea at the time, so we needed to really push the technology to the next

00:37level. So I spent most of my career doing research as a professor. Once this technology

00:41was really ready to get it to the next level, then I identified that there was a big hole

00:48in self-driving, and in particular in trucking, where the incumbents were going with AV 1.0,

00:57which was an approach that was very hand-engineered, that was not scalable, that was not going

01:03to get us there to a product that will really solve the issues that the potential customers

01:08will need.

01:09Generative AI is at the core of all the technology that we do at Wabi, but in particular there

01:17is two big pillars of very differentiated GNI technology. On one side we have the virtual

01:24driver, this is the brain that drives our self-driving trucks, and it's key in order

01:30to be interpretable, something that you can verify, something that technology, where you

01:36can really, in the event of something going wrong, you can trace the decisions of why

01:41the system decided to do a particular maneuver. So that's one big pillar of technology.

01:46The second pillar of technology solves the other core piece, which is the data problem.

01:52In order to be able to train systems and in order to be able to make the safety case and

01:59test under all possible conditions the system, it's not enough to drive on the real world,

02:05you will need to drive so many billions of miles that you're exposed to too much risk

02:11and nobody has the fleets necessary to do that.

02:16Instead, what we did with the second generation of generative AI technology is to build a

02:21simulator which we call Wabi World, which is the same as the real world. So we actually

02:25solved the data problem. So we can really expose the system to safety critical accidents

02:30or unavoidable accidents, et cetera, so that our system is safer, but also probably safer

02:37than anybody else.

02:41Where we are now, it's very clear to everybody that actually this technology is going to

02:45revolutionize the physical world and that has become kind of like the aha moment for

02:51everybody like, you know, this is the next big revolution. This is really where the big

02:58disruptor is. However, when we started the company three and a half years ago, you know,

03:03this was, you know, we could see this ahead of time and it was very contrarian.

03:08AI is a tremendously powerful technology that can really help business leaders to increase

03:16the productivity of their workforce, to make better decisions about, you know, business

03:22decisions. But at the same time, there is also a lot of hype about, you know, AI in

03:28the sense that, you know, everybody's doing AI these days and there is this thought that,

03:33you know, a standard tool will solve everybody's problems. So it's very important to make

03:38informed decisions, very careful decisions about where is this technology the right solution

03:45or the right tool, the way that we interact with machines, the way that we interact with

03:48the physical world. The, you know, the world is for this technology to conquer and I think

03:53it's, you know, I'm very excited about that future and, you know, how we can provide,

03:59you know, a better world for the generations to come.

04:03Microsoft Mechanics

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