Nvidia CEO hints at self-driving capabilities for Tesla; an AI that’s going to look around corners [Video]

Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang spoke at the Wall Street Journal* WSJD Live conference in Laguna Beach, California last week. In a fascinating talk, Huang discussed Nvidia's evolution from a computer graphics mainstay known within the video game scene to a deep learning powerhouse celebrated within the self-driving sector. Case in point, Tesla Motors [NASDAQ: TSLA] CEO Elon Musk recently announced new self-driving hardware, saying, "it’s basically a supercomputer in a car." That supercomputer Musk referred to is Huang's Nvidia Drive PX 2. And much of Huang's comments revolve around Tesla and what he envisions for the exciting future of self-driving cars.

Image: Car Advice AU

Huang called Nvidia's advances in self-driving nothing short of superhuman: "the thing that deep learning [computer algorithms that enable abstract thinking] did was it made it possible for us to achieve perception at a level that is superhuman... [and] recognize objects better than humans can. The beautiful thing about a car doing perception, using our computers, is that it never gets tired. It has eyes all around the car. It’s never intoxicated. And it’s never angry. It has no emotions. So once you train and test the car, it gets better and better as more and more experiences accumulate."

Source: Wall Street Journal*

Huang acknowledged that he takes his Tesla to work daily and takes his hands off the wheel as soon as he gets on the highway. His thoughts on Tesla Autopilot? "The current-generation Tesla’s doing a fairly good job on highways. But it’s going to do a ton better." He hinted at what a ton better might look like: "We’re going to have an AI inside the car that’s going to look around corners. So even if you’re driving, the AI might prevent you from an accident. There’s all kinds of things that the AI could predict on your behalf. The thing to realize is the quality of the software improves over time, whereas people’s performance of driving decreases."

Source: Wall Street Journal* 

When asked if Elon Musk was pushing Tesla too quickly into a self-driving future, Huang responded, "If you don’t develop the technology and deploy it, it never gets better. At some level, you have to put it on the road. But what’s important is it’s a massive software problem. So companies like Tesla who have a great deal of software capability have an advantage. There’s a rigorous methodology of developing software. The software becomes better and better over use." He concluded, "the cars will learn from every other car’s experience. We’re going to see capabilities of computers grow way faster than at any time in the history of our industry."

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*Source: Wall Street Journal