Ahti Heinla is the co-founder of Starship Technologies, reacting to hard tech founders claiming they run fully end-to-end neural networks for autonomous navigation.
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.”
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…”
Disclosure
Starship Uses a Hybrid C++ and Neural Network Architecture
“We are actually not operating an end to end neural network. But we are operating a combination of, yes, C++ and neural network.”
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.”