Walmart and driverless vehicles

Did you know Walmart is testing driverless vehicles?

Main point: "As Walmart looks to compete in retail's delivery wars against rivals like Amazon, autonomous vehicles will ultimately play an important role in its ongoing strategy of improving delivery times to customers. So too will drones, as the company has already agreed to iniital pilots with a trio of drone companies, including DroneUp and Flytrex."

Other items in the article:

• "A Walmart Neighborhood Market in Bentonville, Arkansas, will soon start receiving shipments delivered via a driverless box truck, as part of the retail giant's expanded pilot with autonomous vehicle startup Gatik."
• "...the Gatik pilot has logged 70,000 operational miles 'in autonomous mode' with a safety driver behind the wheel to monitor deliveries since its launch in 2019."
• "Walmart's expansion of initial tests will see Gatik's 'multi-temperature Autonomous Box Trucks' operate that same two-mile route without a driver starting next year."

AI and bias

 An article described reviewing research articles for bias as a way to think about eliminating bias in assessments.

Main point: "More strategic use of AI systems — through what I call “blind taste tests” — can give us a fresh chance to identify and remove decision biases from the underlying algorithms even if we can’t remove them completely from our own habits of mind."

Basically, it controlling for variables that aren't significant. For example, would an article be more likely to be published just because the reviewers knew who the author was? 

The article also gave the example of blind taste tests, describing how people preferred the taste of one drink if they knew the brand name but preferred the other drink if the brand names were hidden.

The article argued for "the value of creating blind taste tests for AI systems, to reduce or remove bias and promote fairer decisions and outcomes across contexts."

Autonomous vehicles in Germany

There was an interesting article that described autonomous vehicle testing in Germany.

• The startup had a specific goal: "In partnership with Moovit, the mobility-as-a-service startup Mobileye acquired in May for $900 million, Mobileye aims to build full end-to-end ride-hailing experiences with its Luminar lidar-equipped vehicles using Moovit’s platform and apps."
• Main point: "...it [the vehicle] was able to drive autonomously within days of delivering the vehicle thanks to its technology that leverages crowdsourced data to map over 15 million kilometers (~9.32 million miles) of roads daily."

Other things to consider:

• "...driverless cars can potentially minimize the risk of spreading disease because of the reduced human interaction."
• "...the video shows its vehicle reaching speeds of up to 130 kilometers per hour (~80 miles per hour) and navigating a left turn on green through an intersection, among other maneuvers. It also avoids an opened car door, a bus pulled to the side of the road, and a vehicle that’s parallel parking; executes an unprotected left turn and lane changes on a highway; and moves around stopped emergency vehicles and down a narrow, congested street."