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Ford Hires 550 Former Argo.ai Engineers, Creates Latitude.ai

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Re: Ford Hires 550 Former Argo.ai Engineers, Creates Latitude.ai

#11

Post by bombcar »

p1esk wrote: post #9
roseway4 wrote: post #6

Not mentioned here, but in this Techcrunch article, is Ford’s expensive flip-flopping on AV: https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/02/ford-forms-automated-drivi... > Argo AI burst on the scene in 2017 stacked with a $1 billion investment from Ford — and Iater an investment from VW. The startup shuttered suddenly in October 2022 after Ford and VW determined they would no longer pursue AV technology, at least not under the Ar…

Wait, so they killed the 550 person AV startup they were funding, took 2.7B loss, and 4 months later hired those same 550 people to resume the same work? Something looks seriously wrong here.

Maybe they wanted out of the VW contract agreements.

Re: Ford Hires 550 Former Argo.ai Engineers, Creates Latitude.ai

#12

Post by jfim »

kjksf wrote: post #8
paxys wrote: post #5

> Ford hired about 550 employees formerly of Argo AI is pretty weird framing. Did they acquire the company? Or certain parts of it? I'm gonna guess they didn't actually recruit and interview all of them one by one.

Well, Ford (and VW) were major investors in Argo AI. Argo AI ran out of money, no-one else was willing to put more money in so Argo AI had to shut down. It looks like Ford effectively acquired the company by hiring all the people (who would otherwise be out of the job) but without actually acquiring the company. They waited for the company to dissolve and then picked up (most of?) the people. I'm sure it was possible…

> Argo AI ran out of money, no-one else was willing to put more money in so Argo AI had to shut down.

For those interested, there are a few more details about that in this Bloomberg article: https://archive.ph/ipQqz

Re: Ford Hires 550 Former Argo.ai Engineers, Creates Latitude.ai

#13

Post by fshbbdssbbgdd »

binarymax wrote: post #3
cjdoc29 wrote: post #2

> Latitude AI – a Ford subsidiary – is developing new automated driving technology with an initial focus on a hands-free, eyes-off driver assist system for next-generation Ford vehicles Not that every company should follow Tesla's approach, but I think it would be great if other companies don't get too focused on their production systems being eyes-off, hands-off. I'd much prefer more people having access to these sy…

Hyundai’s lane keep is so bad that I don’t trust it at all. In the three times I’ve tried to use it, it started to veer off the road suddenly and in strange ways on even the slightest curve. It should be recalled and disabled.

Hyundai has sold cars with multiple different systems in recent years (HDA2 is better than HDA1).

Re: Ford Hires 550 Former Argo.ai Engineers, Creates Latitude.ai

#14

Post by jnsie »

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #10
p1esk wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, so they killed the 550 person AV startup they were funding, took 2.7B loss, and 4 months later hired those same 550 people to resume the same work? Something looks seriously wrong here.

Possibly they wanted to restart the company without the external partners (mainly VW)?

Maybe but there's got to be a less expensive way of doing that. Buying VW's stake?

Re: Ford Hires 550 Former Argo.ai Engineers, Creates Latitude.ai

#15

Post by madrox »

p1esk wrote: post #9
roseway4 wrote: post #6

Not mentioned here, but in this Techcrunch article, is Ford’s expensive flip-flopping on AV: https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/02/ford-forms-automated-drivi... > Argo AI burst on the scene in 2017 stacked with a $1 billion investment from Ford — and Iater an investment from VW. The startup shuttered suddenly in October 2022 after Ford and VW determined they would no longer pursue AV technology, at least not under the Ar…

Wait, so they killed the 550 person AV startup they were funding, took 2.7B loss, and 4 months later hired those same 550 people to resume the same work? Something looks seriously wrong here.

Hulu is an example of the same model. It was funded by a consortium of industry players, like Comcast, Fox, and Disney. Volkswagen and Ford were doing the same thing. Unlike Hulu, though, it wasn't successful. My guess is they felt leadership was lacking. I'm sure if you zoomed in, you'll notice some of the AV startup execs aren't among the 550.

Re: Ford Hires 550 Former Argo.ai Engineers, Creates Latitude.ai

#16

Post by resource0x »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #7
paxys wrote: post #5

> Ford hired about 550 employees formerly of Argo AI is pretty weird framing. Did they acquire the company? Or certain parts of it? I'm gonna guess they didn't actually recruit and interview all of them one by one.

Ford owned Argo in a partnership with VW and recently divested of it with some serious losses, causing Argo to go under. This is a (separate) subsidiary being formed under Ford, but neither an acquisition nor individual hiring.

They will divest of it again with some serious losses as soon as AI hype vector changes direction. Trend is your friend :-)

Re: Ford Hires 550 Former Argo.ai Engineers, Creates Latitude.ai

#17

Post by xattt »

fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: post #13
binarymax wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hyundai’s lane keep is so bad that I don’t trust it at all. In the three times I’ve tried to use it, it started to veer off the road suddenly and in strange ways on even the slightest curve. It should be recalled and disabled.

Hyundai has sold cars with multiple different systems in recent years (HDA2 is better than HDA1).

HDA1 is more robust Lane Keep Assist that takes into account mapped highway curves and adjusts speed and steering accordingly. The car might as well be on rails.

I haven’t had issues with vanilla LKA on a non-HDA mapped road other than expected problems where lane markings or shoulders are unclear.

Perhaps grandparent poster has a misaligned camera on their vehicle.

Re: Ford Hires 550 Former Argo.ai Engineers, Creates Latitude.ai

#18

Post by AlotOfReading »

cjdoc29 wrote: post #2

> Latitude AI – a Ford subsidiary – is developing new automated driving technology with an initial focus on a hands-free, eyes-off driver assist system for next-generation Ford vehicles Not that every company should follow Tesla's approach, but I think it would be great if other companies don't get too focused on their production systems being eyes-off, hands-off. I'd much prefer more people having access to these sy…

People have been trying the driver-monitoring-as-a-shortcut approach for years now. It turns out that effective driver monitoring is extremely difficult, so the typical result is that you end up with the worst of both worlds: A system designed under the assumption that there's a human backup and a human that's not able to react quickly enough to prevent accidents.

It's not clear how to fix this, because the human can appear completely fine by all observable metrics even when they aren't, and vice versa to a lesser extent. This problem also gets worse the better your autonomous performance is.

That's why virtually every safety expert in the field is fairly critical of these sorts of systems.

Re: Ford Hires 550 Former Argo.ai Engineers, Creates Latitude.ai

#19

Post by scrapcode »

p1esk wrote: post #9
roseway4 wrote: post #6

Not mentioned here, but in this Techcrunch article, is Ford’s expensive flip-flopping on AV: https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/02/ford-forms-automated-drivi... > Argo AI burst on the scene in 2017 stacked with a $1 billion investment from Ford — and Iater an investment from VW. The startup shuttered suddenly in October 2022 after Ford and VW determined they would no longer pursue AV technology, at least not under the Ar…

Wait, so they killed the 550 person AV startup they were funding, took 2.7B loss, and 4 months later hired those same 550 people to resume the same work? Something looks seriously wrong here.

What is the possibility that the decision to kill it was just really bad timing, right before this big "boom" in rapid AI advancement?

Re: Ford Hires 550 Former Argo.ai Engineers, Creates Latitude.ai

#20

Post by threeseed »

jnsie wrote: post #14
Tuna-Fish wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly they wanted to restart the company without the external partners (mainly VW)?

Maybe but there's got to be a less expensive way of doing that. Buying VW's stake?

I am sure if there was a simpler way Ford would have done it.

The obvious reason is that VW either (a) doesn't want to sell it or (b) wants to retain IP.

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