The download: Wayve’s driverless ambitions and child-built AI models

British self-driving car startup Wayve is heading west. The company’s cars learned to drive on the streets of London. But Wayve has announced that it will also begin testing its technology in and around San Francisco, which brings with it a new challenge: its AI must switch from driving on the left side to driving on the right.

As UK or non-UK visitors will know, this transition is harder than it sounds. Your view of the road, how the vehicle turns – everything is different. The move to the U.S. will be a test of Wayve’s technology, which the company says is more universally applicable than what many of its competitors offer.

For the first time, Wayve will compete against the heavyweights of the growing autonomous car industry, including Cruise, Waymo and Tesla. Will Douglas Heaven, our senior AI editor, stopped by the company’s office for a ride-along. Read on to find out what he thought.

Children learn to create their own little language models

“This new AI technology – it’s very interesting to learn how it works and understand it better,” says 10-year-old Luca, a young AI model builder.

Luca is one of the first children to try Little Language Models, a new application from Manuj and Shruti Dhariwal, two graduate students at MIT’s Media Lab, that helps children understand how AI models work by allowing them to create small versions themselves .

The program is a way to introduce the complex concepts that make modern AI models work without talking about them much in a theoretical lecture. Instead, children can see and visualize the concepts in practice, which helps them become familiar with them. Read the full story.