The promise of increased road safety is a key motivator for the development of automated vehicles (AV). Yet, demonstrating that an AV is as safe as, or even safer than, a human-driven vehicle has proven to be challenging. Should an AV be examined purely virtually, allowing large numbers of fully controllable tests? Or should it be tested under real environmental conditions on a proving ground? Since different test setups have different strengths and weaknesses, it is still an open question how virtual and real tests should be combined. On the way to answer this question, this paper proposes transfer importance sampling (TIS), a risk estimation method linking different test setups. Fusing the concepts of transfer learning and importance sampling, TIS uses a scalable, cost-effective test setup to comprehensively explore an AV's behavior. The insights gained then allow parameterizing tests in a more trustworthy test setup accurately reflecting risks. We show that when using a trustworthy test setup alone is prohibitively expensive, linking it to a scalable test setup can increase efficiency $\unicode{x2013}$ without sacrificing the result's validity. Thus, the test setups' individual deficiencies are compensated for by their systematic linkage.

President Trump reacts to the media and Big Tech's role in politics in a'Sunday Morning Futures' exclusive. The year 2020 proved to be a pivotal one in tech, as companies provided essential services during the coronavirus pandemic and unveiled 5G telecom technology while facing unprecedented antitrust scrutiny and accusations of censorship amid an intense election and social justice movement. "I think sometimes we hear that … U.S. innovation is slowing down, and I think the last year has shown that that's not really the case," Neil Chilson, senior research fellow for tech and innovation at the Charles Koch Institute, told Fox News. Chilson gave examples of the country's rapid COVID-19 vaccine development, SpaceX's astronaut launch in May and autonomous driving company Waymo's recent announcement that its self-driving cars will be completely autonomous in trials in Phoenix. "I'm pretty excited about the future. I think 2020 shows that the U.S. is still the world leader in tech and innovation, and we should continue to maintain our cultural appreciation for innovation and a regulatory environment that enables it," he said.