Ford (USA) will invest a billion dollars over the next five years in a company specialising in artificial intelligence. Chief Technology Officer Raj Nair says Ford have chosen to partner with Argo AI, based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on strength of a previous relationship with Argo’s founders and the wellspring of engineering talent coming from nearby universities such as Carnegie-Mellon.
That’s where some of those Argo founders Ford likes went to school, at Carnegie-Mellon’s National Robotics Engineering Center, after which they went on to leadership positions in the self-driving activities of Google and Uber. “This is very much an engineering problem that requires a tremendous amount of engineering talent,” Nair said. “It’s an aspect of where we’re going where the talent is.”
Argo AI will engineer and test self-driving cars in Pittsburgh, developing and using new advancements in artificial intelligence, machine learning and computer vision to help build safe and efficient vehicles. Ford intend to develop autonomous vehicles by 2021.
“It’s an engineering and test centre,” says Argo CEO Bryan Salesky, adding that Pittsburgh is well-suited for testing because of its challenging topography and irregular street grid. “It’s where [Chief Operating Officer Pete Rander] and I will be based, and we’ll be employing a number of engineers and scientists from the region.” The company intend to add 200 high-tech jobs by the end of the year in Pittsburgh, Michigan and California.
Salesky, a 20-year city resident, said Pittsburgh is in the midst of a high-tech renaissance: “That renaissance is really being fueled by technology and development coming out of the universities”.
