An AI boss has told how an autonomous car drove him around central London through Trafalgar Square and past Big Ben without his hands on the steering wheel.
Alex Kendall, co-founder and chief executive of Wayve, explained how artificial intelligence is revolutionising driving.
The UK firm has secured $1 billion dollars (£837 million) in funding to build AI products used to power self-driving cars.
Mr Kendall told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We have been building this technology for seven years, taking quite a different approach here to what is being done in Silicon Valley to autonomous driving.
“We have built embodied artificial intelligence and this allows cars to have the onboard intelligence to make safe decisions to drive on our roads.
“This capital is going to give us the opportunity to deploy this technology into the automotive industry and give cars that you will buy very soon the power of AI to improve the safety of driving and ultimately accelerate the journey from driver assistance up to full autonomous driving.”
But he was challenged over Peugeot chief Linda Jackson arguing that full autonomous cars are still a “long, long way away”.
Mr Kendall responded: “That’s the exciting thing is that AI is just changing the game here.
“I was on a ride just yesterday through central London, going past Trafalgar Square, Big Ben and all of the complexities of the roads here and the systems are now intelligent enough to be able to drive without any hands on the steering wheel through these kind of environments.”
Pressed whether he did, though, have his hands on the wheel, he added: “No, no.
“The system was driving itself through these kind of environments.
“We have a safety operator behind the wheel today monitoring the system but this technology is going to come to the roads at scale very, very soon.”
Wayve is known as a pioneer in so-called Embodied AI for autonomous driving, effectively foundation models on which autonomous vehicles are built, enabling them to learn from and interact with a real-world environment.
The huge round of funding for Wayve is being led by Japanese tech giant Softbank, with Nvidia and existing investor Microsoft also backing the firm, which is the biggest investment ever in a UK AI firm.
Rishi Sunak has sought to put the UK at the forefront of the AI revolution and said he was “incredibly proud” of the investment for Wayve, arguing that it was a “testament to our leadership in this industry”.
The Prime Minister added: “We are leaving no stone unturned to create the economic conditions for businesses to grow and thrive in the UK.
“We already have the third highest number of AI companies and private investment in AI in the world, and this announcement anchors the UK’s position as an AI superpower.
“From the first electric light bulb or the World Wide Web, to AI and self-driving cars, the UK has a proud record of being at the forefront of some of the biggest technological advancements in history.”
Wayve was founded in 2017 and is known for being the first to develop and test an end-to-end AI autonomous driving system on public roads, and has since expanded on this work with its Embodied AI developments.
Mr Sunak held an artificial intelligence safety summit in November last year at Bletchley Park, the once top-secret home of the World War Two Codebreakers.
Artificial intelligence chiefs and experts including Elon Musk and some world leaders attended the gathering which focused on “frontier AI” which offers the greatest potential to deliver economic, health and other benefits but also could pose an existential risk to mankind.
