Computer Vision News - January 2018

Computer Vision News 23 Raquel Urtasun the subject of transportation? There are two things. On one side, it’s really great that we managed to build self-driving cars. We’re going to touch the lives of everyone. This has many, many interesting potential benefits. Are we going to save lives? There are 1.3 million people that die every year from crash accidents. Every little percentage that we can save actually means many, many people. And we have people who get wounded… And also people that don’t have mobility. The elderly and people with disabilities cannot have a normal life. We can bring them that. Pollution is an issue, the air condition in our cities. If you think about it, 20% of our cities are actually dedicated to parking. Imagine how many trees, grass, and parks you could build with that landscape. So you belong to an organization that’s trying to push things forward in this direction? That’s correct. Uber is going to bring cheap transportation to everyone, transportation of people, transportation of goods and transportation of food. I really like the idea of creating a platform where everybody can benefit, not just the rich. That was one of the reasons why I was super excited joining Uber. The next thing is cities. What makes you passionate about this? Transportation is just one way to think of how to improve our cities. There are many things that we can do, from understanding how our cities evolve to being able to create energy efficient houses to understanding how we move in cities. There are many, many things that we can do for our cities. Did you grow up in a city? Yes. In a small city north of Pamplona where they have the running of the bulls. There is no AI per se, there is just bulls. [ laughs ] How many bulls did you kill? I didn’t kill any. I don’t want to kill the bulls. The bulls actually charge. People have to run, or they can be killed. I don’t agree with bullfighting, but the running of the bulls, I agree with. What was your main source of inspiration to go in the direction of improving our cities? I have lived in cities my whole life. There is always this thought of “ what if we had this, what if we could change that? ” I think that now we have the tools to actually start to change those things and to make our lives better. Can we expect big corporations to improve our lives? Yes, of course. All of us citizens, we have a duty to the place where we live. The corporations should be the first ones to contribute to the government. It’s not about a war between corporations and government. It’s really about how government, corporations photo: utoronto.ca Raquel with Geoff Hinton Guest