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Quora's Director of Engineering Leaves to Head Deep Learning Driverless Startup Drive.ai

Apr 5, 2017 05:45 PM

Apr 5, 2017 07:55 PM

It may seem strange to find the director of engineering at a question-and-answer site all of a sudden pick up and lead a new driverless startup, but to Kah Seng Tay, both engineering tasks require building the right infrastructure to handle large amounts of AI data.

Drive.ai, the tech startup that Tay will be joining as its first-ever director of engineering, claims to differentiate its strategy by using deep learning to drive its self-driving cars. Deep learning is a machine learning system that is mirrored after the human brain.

According to Recode, Drive.ai's CEO Sameep Tandon wants his autonomous cars to be different, and "develop the brains of a self-driving car that scales easily across geographies:"

Not to pick on Google too much, but after 10 or so years they're only in four or five cities. It just goes to show how hard it is for companies to build technologies that can scale geographically.

Tay has been hired to build out Drive.ai's engineering team, which currently has around 60 people. Tay feels confident enough that he will be able to transition from Quora to the driverless startup, which just received $12 million in funding back in August.

Tay relayed his confidence in his ability to Johana Bhuyian at Recode: "I played a personal role in the recruiting initiatives and strategies to grow the team at Quora. Quora's engineering team grew 10x during my time there."

Initially, the tech startup wants to make a number of kits that could be fitted to specific models of vehicles. These kits will then be used to market to delivery trucks, commercial fleets, and ride-share services.

Drive.ai's goal is to integrate its deep learning software and hardware kits into enough vehicles where the company could eventually use its name to leverage deals with automakers, and ultimately, to tackle the autonomous market.

Would you feel comfortable enough to be driven around by a driverless ride-sharing service? Let us know below!