Ahti Heinla is the co-founder of Starship Technologies, addressing how Starship designs its autonomy software stack compared to pure end-to-end AI models.
Assertion Partly supported
Starship Has Completed 8 Million Deliveries With Zero Street Thefts
“And actually none of your, our robots have ever been stolen from the street, and we have done eight million deliveries.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Pedestrians Consistently Treat Delivery Robots With Friendliness Globally
“But in terms of actually how people treat robots, there's not much difference actually. People are actually really friendly towards, towards our robots. I understand it's really hard to believe, but that is actually true. It's completely true.”
Opinion
Pure End-to-End Neural Networks Are Hard to Prove Safe
“It's not surprising to me at all that you can do it. The downside with that, it's very hard to prove that it is safe.”
Assertion Partly supported
Starship Has 8 Million Deliveries Compared to Closest Competitor's 300,000
“We have done, you know, eight million deliveries. I'm not sure, you know, our closest competitor, there are lots of competitors, tens of competitors. Our closest competitor probably has done 200,000, maybe, or 300,000. Not sure. Something like that, right? Lik…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Foundational AI Dramatically Reduces Human-in-the-Loop Needs for Starship
“Yeah, it is definitely helping and improving our stuff. I think we were in commercial quality operation already before that, but it is helping us tremendously for sure. Primarily it is clearly something that is is it dramatically reducing the need for this, yo…”
Disclosure
Starship Will Adopt LiDAR When Sidewalk-Suitable Specs Hit the Market
“The moment that that the lidar with suitable spec appears on the market, we will absolutely use it. So we are not like religiously anti anti lidar at all.”