10 ms·

Toyota to Invest $1B in AI and Robotics R&D

101 points by mcspecter 11y ago

dfcab 11y ago
So they can invest $1B in this but not fix the spaghetti code in their cars that causes unintended acceleration? Priorities!
- ryanpetrich 11y ago
  Perhaps they're doing both?
  - dfcab 11y ago
    Hope so
- jessaustin 11y ago
  Actually inserting that code was the first anti-human action of Toyota's rudimentary Skynet-inspired AIs.
- nols 11y ago
  According to DOT the problem was floor mats and driver error, not code http://www.caranddriver.com/features/its-all-your-fault-the-dot-renders-its-verdict-on-toyotas-unintended-acceleration-scare-feature http://www.caranddriver.com/features/its-all-your-fault-the-...
eachro 11y ago
This is great to hear. I wonder if they're pumping some of this money into TTI-C as part of this initiative.
martythemaniak 11y ago
I suspect their heavy bet on hydrogen will sink them long before they see any returns from AI and Robotics.
onion2k 11y ago
Whenever a company writes a press release with a large sounding number in it my first question is "Is that a lot?". I have no idea how much it costs to run a robotics lab. As this is over the next five years, what would an average of $200m/year actually buy you? Is that a team of 50 very clever people working on cutting edge stuff, or is it 5 interns and a really expensive patent lawyer? Headline numbers are designed to appeal to our "Crumbs, I wish I was a billionaire!" instincts, but without the context of what's being invested in and the domain knowledge of how much the industry typically spends, this could be awesome or it could be entirely non-newsworthy. I don't know.
- adrianN 11y ago
  A PhD student gets something like 2500 Euros before taxes per month where I did my PhD. So it costs the institute maybe 40-50k a a year to fund one PhD student's salary. Let's say 100k including office space and some hardware to play with. 200 Million pays for many PhD students.
  - psb217 11y ago
    Yes, but for graduating PhD students 175k-225k/year is roughly market (base) rate for people with proven understanding and ability in the most relevant areas (i.e. multiple publications in top conferences like ICML/NIPS/CVPR/ICCV/ICRA/RSS/etc). Though, a billion dollars will still pay for quite a few of those.
    - adrianN 11y ago
      I think that depends a lot on the location. I know a couple of people who do PhDs in Japan and they are a lot less well paid than German PhD students. I expect that this difference persists even after they graduate.
      - psb217 11y ago
        Very true. These are rates in the SF Bay Area and NYC. IDK what it's like elsewhere, though I've been told it's possible to get offers in this range in London too.
ilurk 11y ago
Back in the 80s and 90s there was a lot of media and memes (as in ideas, not the funny images) that Japan was the land of robots. Even a Japanese version of the human evolution chart where the last stage was a mecha. But it seems to me that it has lost the race. And I don't know why. South Korea robotics is as advanced as Japan's. And Google just bought all the best people/companies that were out there. The same thing happened with smartphones. Japan had the best smartphones a decade or two ago. Blazing internet speed. TV on your mobile. Connection to the washing machine (IoT anyone?). Yet it lost it to iPhone and even Android. Sony is unable to compete with Samsung. This is purely my idea on things. I could be completely wrong as I don't have numbers from some of my conceptions. Would also love to known the opinion of someone who had lived in Japan on why they can't; well, scale outside of Japan (english language bottleneck?). @patio11 ???
- martythemaniak 11y ago
  I was there on vacation not too long ago - it is a very interesting place. Most of the "weird" things we associate with Japan as outsiders are usually very practical and sensible solutions to local problems. I think it's definitely true that Japan is a leading nation in many ways - not just technologically, but also socially and both in the good and bad aspects. But because Japan is a fairly unique place the local solutions don't translate 1:1 to the outside world, so you have to and disentangle their solutions with their particular environment to get a true sense of what's coming. Smartphones are a good example - everything they do today (and more, TV for example) existed in Japan years before, but it was in local format. I take is that it was easier for Apple and Google to implement similar technologies rather than for Japanese companies to translate their technologies to a different mindset.
  - orthoganol 11y ago
    > Japan is a leading nation in many ways - not just technologically, but also socially and both in the good and bad aspects I lived in Japan. Most expats (granted, not engineers) are in agreement that Japan feels like 2050 for technology but 1950 socially. There is zero PC-sensibility, zilch, doesn't exist in their culture. It's also a man's society, women are expected to give up their careers after marriage. Race is deeply ingrained in their world view in a way that would anger PC-conscious Americans. There is also zero culture of accepting integration from people who are not Japanese by blood. Go to your Japanese girlfriend's family's get together and listen to them mention how the Japanese are a superior race to Westerners (maybe that was a fluke but I doubt it from swapping stories). Mention that it's relatively accepted that the Japanese descended from the Koreans and watch how people react. Listen to seemingly progressive 20-something at bars talk about how Chinese people are unclean. After all, they believed their political leader was divine until the end of WWII and they built an empire based on their hierarchy of races up until the end of WWII, much like NSDAP's 'project' but without receiving the same kind of international backlash (a wave of pacifism yes, but backlash for the racial elements not so much). They have a culture of friendliness towards foreigners which is awesome, unlike say China, so you don't fully see this side of Japan until you live there. I really do love Japan, I have zero ill will towards the country or it's people, but it's simply wrong to claim it's socially progressive in almost any way by Western standards.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

101 points by mcspecter 11y ago

dfcab 11y ago

So they can invest $1B in this but not fix the spaghetti code in their cars that causes unintended acceleration? Priorities!

ryanpetrich 11y ago
Perhaps they're doing both?
- dfcab 11y ago
  Hope so
jessaustin 11y ago
Actually inserting that code was the first anti-human action of Toyota's rudimentary Skynet-inspired AIs.
nols 11y ago
According to DOT the problem was floor mats and driver error, not code http://www.caranddriver.com/features/its-all-your-fault-the-dot-renders-its-verdict-on-toyotas-unintended-acceleration-scare-feature http://www.caranddriver.com/features/its-all-your-fault-the-...

eachro 11y ago

This is great to hear. I wonder if they're pumping some of this money into TTI-C as part of this initiative.

martythemaniak 11y ago

I suspect their heavy bet on hydrogen will sink them long before they see any returns from AI and Robotics.

onion2k 11y ago

Whenever a company writes a press release with a large sounding number in it my first question is "Is that a lot?". I have no idea how much it costs to run a robotics lab. As this is over the next five years, what would an average of $200m/year actually buy you? Is that a team of 50 very clever people working on cutting edge stuff, or is it 5 interns and a really expensive patent lawyer? Headline numbers are designed to appeal to our "Crumbs, I wish I was a billionaire!" instincts, but without the context of what's being invested in and the domain knowledge of how much the industry typically spends, this could be awesome or it could be entirely non-newsworthy. I don't know.

adrianN 11y ago
A PhD student gets something like 2500 Euros before taxes per month where I did my PhD. So it costs the institute maybe 40-50k a a year to fund one PhD student's salary. Let's say 100k including office space and some hardware to play with. 200 Million pays for many PhD students.
- psb217 11y ago
  Yes, but for graduating PhD students 175k-225k/year is roughly market (base) rate for people with proven understanding and ability in the most relevant areas (i.e. multiple publications in top conferences like ICML/NIPS/CVPR/ICCV/ICRA/RSS/etc). Though, a billion dollars will still pay for quite a few of those.
  - adrianN 11y ago
    I think that depends a lot on the location. I know a couple of people who do PhDs in Japan and they are a lot less well paid than German PhD students. I expect that this difference persists even after they graduate.
    - psb217 11y ago
      Very true. These are rates in the SF Bay Area and NYC. IDK what it's like elsewhere, though I've been told it's possible to get offers in this range in London too.

ilurk 11y ago

Back in the 80s and 90s there was a lot of media and memes (as in ideas, not the funny images) that Japan was the land of robots. Even a Japanese version of the human evolution chart where the last stage was a mecha. But it seems to me that it has lost the race. And I don't know why. South Korea robotics is as advanced as Japan's. And Google just bought all the best people/companies that were out there. The same thing happened with smartphones. Japan had the best smartphones a decade or two ago. Blazing internet speed. TV on your mobile. Connection to the washing machine (IoT anyone?). Yet it lost it to iPhone and even Android. Sony is unable to compete with Samsung. This is purely my idea on things. I could be completely wrong as I don't have numbers from some of my conceptions. Would also love to known the opinion of someone who had lived in Japan on why they can't; well, scale outside of Japan (english language bottleneck?). @patio11 ???

martythemaniak 11y ago
I was there on vacation not too long ago - it is a very interesting place. Most of the "weird" things we associate with Japan as outsiders are usually very practical and sensible solutions to local problems. I think it's definitely true that Japan is a leading nation in many ways - not just technologically, but also socially and both in the good and bad aspects. But because Japan is a fairly unique place the local solutions don't translate 1:1 to the outside world, so you have to and disentangle their solutions with their particular environment to get a true sense of what's coming. Smartphones are a good example - everything they do today (and more, TV for example) existed in Japan years before, but it was in local format. I take is that it was easier for Apple and Google to implement similar technologies rather than for Japanese companies to translate their technologies to a different mindset.
- orthoganol 11y ago
  > Japan is a leading nation in many ways - not just technologically, but also socially and both in the good and bad aspects I lived in Japan. Most expats (granted, not engineers) are in agreement that Japan feels like 2050 for technology but 1950 socially. There is zero PC-sensibility, zilch, doesn't exist in their culture. It's also a man's society, women are expected to give up their careers after marriage. Race is deeply ingrained in their world view in a way that would anger PC-conscious Americans. There is also zero culture of accepting integration from people who are not Japanese by blood. Go to your Japanese girlfriend's family's get together and listen to them mention how the Japanese are a superior race to Westerners (maybe that was a fluke but I doubt it from swapping stories). Mention that it's relatively accepted that the Japanese descended from the Koreans and watch how people react. Listen to seemingly progressive 20-something at bars talk about how Chinese people are unclean. After all, they believed their political leader was divine until the end of WWII and they built an empire based on their hierarchy of races up until the end of WWII, much like NSDAP's 'project' but without receiving the same kind of international backlash (a wave of pacifism yes, but backlash for the racial elements not so much). They have a culture of friendliness towards foreigners which is awesome, unlike say China, so you don't fully see this side of Japan until you live there. I really do love Japan, I have zero ill will towards the country or it's people, but it's simply wrong to claim it's socially progressive in almost any way by Western standards.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]