The hacker who built his own self-driving car is ushering in the age of cheap AI

Silicon Valley was taken aback when Bloomberg profiled a 26-year-old named George Hotz in December who said he had single-handedly built a self-driving car in his garage. It was true that Hotz was an accomplished hacker, being the first person to jailbreak an iPhone. But could a solo effort comprised of 13 cameras really produce results to rival the work of giants like Google, Ford, and General Motors, not to mention well-funded upstarts like Tesla? The skepticism has turned to validation, as Hotz--who made a name for himself by hacking the first iPhone and later, the Playstation 3--has received 3.1 million in funding, led by one of the Valley's most prestigious firms, Andreesen Horowitz. A partner at the firm, Chris Dixon, wrote on Medium that he had tested Hotz's car, brought AI experts to inspect it, and generally "dug deep" into the system.