Jensen Huang took the stage at the CES trade show in Las Vegas this week to make the clearest pitch yet for Nvidia’s autonomous driving technology. In doing so, the chief executive officer’s vision for vehicles that can drive themselves edged into the terrain of major customers like Tesla and its boss, Elon Musk.
Huang’s remarks sparked a widely watched — if notably polite — indirect multiday exchange between two of the most influential figures in technology. It also sharpened a central question about autonomous driving: Who controls the technology that will first power consumer cars that drive themselves — and later, driverless cars known as robotaxis that are designed for ride-hailing? And whose autonomous vehicle system is the best?
On Monday, Huang used his speech to America’s largest technology showcase to extol the virtues of Nvidia’s Alpamayo, an open-source AI model designed to speed development of Level 4 self-driving cars. Such cars — consumer-owned at first, and robotaxi-fleet-operated later — can drive themselves without human supervision or intervention, within a defined geographic area.
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