OpenAI Invests $5M Into the Self-Driving Race with John Hayes, Cofounder of Ghost Autonomy

We're joined by John Hayes, CEO and Cofounder of Ghost, a self-driving car startup using multimodal LLMs to solve the autonomous driving problem, that OpenAI just invested $5 million into. If you need an ERP platform, check out our sponsor NetSuite: http://netsuite.com/cognitive. We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com . SPONSORS: Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/cognitive With the onset of AI, it’s time to upgrade to the next generation of the cloud: Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. OCI is a single platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs. Train ML models on the cloud’s highest performing NVIDIA GPU clusters. Do more and spend less like Uber, 8x8, and Databricks Mosaic, take a FREE test drive of OCI at oracle.com/cognitive NetSuite has 25 years of providing financial software for all your business needs. More than 36,000 businesses have already upgraded to NetSuite by Oracle, gaining visibility and control over their financials, inventory, HR, eCommerce, and more. If you're looking for an ERP platform ✅ head to NetSuite: http://netsuite.com/cognitive and download your own customized KPI checklist. Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off. X/SOCIAL: @labenz (Nathan) @ghosthayes (John) @GhostAutonomy @CogRev_Podcast TIMESTAMPS: 00:00:00) - Introduction to John Hayes and Ghost Autonomy's partnership with OpenAI (00:04:30) - The journey to founding Ghost, and how multimodal LLMs will change self-driving cars (00:05:03) - John's background founding Pure Storage and moving into autonomy (00:13:24) - Overview of different self-driving technology stacks (Lidar vs cameras) (00:14:03) - Sponsors: Shopify | Omneky (00:25:39) - Different approaches to how we know self-driving cars work well enough for public deployment (00:32:21) - Sponsors: Netsuite | Oracle (00:34:24) - Current state of robotaxis and China (00:39:47) - Where Ghost fits into the autonomous driving landscape and their tech stack (00:50:51) - Affordable radar systems (00:51:54) - Ghost’s approach to interpretability (00:53:27) - Using LLMs for driving (00:54:59) - Partnership with OpenAI and how Ghost’s unique LLM solution to the self-driving problem (00:57:40) - GPS’ unreliability which can be solved by multimodal approach (01:02:31) - Hallucination is the best part of LLMs (01:04:09) - Using maps as extended memory and storage for driving data (01:09:20) - Ghost business model and the user experience (01:16:37) - OpenAI as currently the only provider of advanced multimodal models (01:24:17) - How self-driving cars should address fear and standing up for the technology (01:29:30) - AI: China and the US, and why China is being pushed towards self-driving (01:31:39) - Regulators in the US are responsive to consumers (01:32:26) - VC subsidization of self-driving (01:33:25) - John’s widest angle outlook on the AI revolution