The self-driving vehicle industry may be young, just a bit over a decade old, but already a meaningful trend is taking shape: it's proving to be more open to women CEOs and founders–including women of color–than the broader tech industry and for U.S. companies generally. With this week's news that Waabi founder and CEO Raquel Urtasun raised $83.5 million in a Series A round for her Toronto-based startup, three out of 12 leading autonomous technology companies in North America are now led by women. What's more, in a time when companies across all industries are working to improve diversity, two of the women leading self-driving tech companies, Zoox CEO Aicha Evans and Waymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana, are Black. "I've been really excited to see the number of women interested in autonomous technology. There's an appreciation for what it can do for people, what it's going to unlock," says Alisyn Malek, who left General Motors to cofound autonomous shuttle startup May Mobility in 2017 (and is currently executive director of the Washington-based Commission on the Future of Mobility).

Whether it's the phone in your pocket, the GPS in the car, or the software that the store on the corner uses, artificial intelligence has become a part of everyday life. With everything from cruise control and automated braking systems becoming standard in cars to the incorporation of machine-learning in shipping management, we have come to rely on it. We have even developed early warning systems and disaster relief programs using projections and data from advanced computing. As the use of artificial intelligence increases, so does the importance of the diversity of those who create it. There is evidence that increased gender diversity improves team dynamics and that AI programs magnify the behaviors of those who create them.

Dr. Carol Reiley's achievements are too long to list. She co-founded Drive.ai, a self-driving car startup that raised $50 million in its second round of funding last year. Forbes magazine named her one of "20 Incredible Women in AI," and she built intelligent robot systems as a PhD candidate at Johns Hopkins University. But when she built a voice-activated human-robot interface, her own creation couldn't recognize her voice. Dr. Reiley used Microsoft's speech recognition API to build her interface.

A self-driving car will soon be one ride option available from Lyft in the San Francisco Bay Area, as the ride-services company ramps up its efforts to become a serious player in autonomous vehicle technology. Lyft said on Thursday that self-driving cars will soon be dispatched to certain passengers who request a ride through the app in the area. The cars will come from Drive.ai, a Mountain View, California, startup that builds software to turn cars into autonomous vehicles. A self-driving car will soon be one ride option available from Lyft in the San Francisco Bay Area. Lyft will partner up with Drive.Ai, a startup that builds software to turn cars into autonomous vehicles It is the latest in a string of partnerships between Lyft and an autonomous car company, but it is the one with the most immediate impact to Lyft passengers.

When management upheaval, allegations of corporate espionage, and revelations of sexual harassment sent Uber into a public relations sinkhole, its long overshadowed rival Lyft shifted into overdrive. Drive.ai is a tech start-up that creates self-driving car sensors and software that can be retrofitted onto existing vehicles. SAN FRANCISCO -- Ride-hailing start-up Lyft may soon be picking up passengers in self-driving cars owned and powered by tech start-up Drive.ai, the two companies announced Thursday. When the program starts around Drive.ai's Mountain View headquarters, around 10 cars outfitted with the company's sensors and software will become a part of Lyft's free self-driving service, although passengers who are assigned an autonomous Lyft can opt out. "The purpose here is to see how passengers interact with autonomous vehicles, as well as to see how cities need to change to integrate them," Drive.ai

What does artificial intelligence researcher Andrew Ng have in common with a "very depressed robot" from "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"? Here are some fun facts about the man who connected graphics chips to neural networks and has taught millions of artificial intelligence students online. Google's deep-learning unit was originally called "Project Marvin" -- a possible reference to a morose and paranoid android with a "brain the size of a planet" from "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." Ng didn't like the association with "this very depressed robot," he says, so he cut to the chase and changed the name to Google Brain. Ng met his roboticist wife, Carol Reiley, at a robotics conference in Kobe, Japan.

Imagine a driverless vehicle capable of using a variety of emojis, honks and signs to communicate its intentions to nearby drivers and pedestrians. Drive.ai, a new entrant in the autonomous vehicle race, has begun testing a fleet of such vehicles near its home base in Mountain View, Calif. The company, staffed by researchers from Stanford University's artificial intelligence laboratory, is getting an assist from Steve Girsky, a former General Motors executive who has been named to the Drive.ai Girsky stepped down from GM's board in June after holding several posts at the automaker, including vice chairman of GM and chairman of its Adam Opel subsidiary. "We all know that the automotive industry is in the midst of a foundational shift," Girsky said in a statement.

Startup Drive.ai is revealing its product and strategy for the first time, and the autonomous driving tech company is looking not only to create the best hardware and software to enable self-driving cars, but also to make sure those cars communicate with people outside of the car in the most effective way possible. Core to Drive.ai's approach is using deep learning across the board in its autonomous driving system, which means they're teaching their self-driving cars somewhat like how you'd teach a human. That involves providing a host of examples of situations, objects and scenarios and then letting the system extrapolate how the rules it learns there might apply to novel or unexpected experiences. It still means logging a huge number of driving hours to provide the system with basic information, but Carol Reiley, co-founder and president of Drive.ai, "We are using deep learning for more of an end-to-end approach. We're using it not just for object detection, but for making decisions, and for really asking the question'Is this safe or not given this sensor input' on the road,'" Reiley explained.

Many years ago, a company pitched me an intriguing product to review: a display you mount in the rear window of your car, which you can use to send customized messages to drivers behind you. With the tap of a button near your dashboard, the display would light up with a scrolling message of whatever it was you wanted to tell other drivers--a great way to get pulled over by a cop, if not outright killed by some already-angry tailgater. The Silicon Valley startup Drive.ai The theory is that digital signs would make self-driving vehicles a bit safer, since they don't really have a great way of letting pedestrians know their intentions beyond simple turn signals. The sign would be able to indicate various statuses about the vehicle to those near it, including when it might be safe to lane-split (because the self-driving car has noticed you and promises to not merge into the next lane and smoosh you).

The first intelligent robots that humans interact with on a regular basis will likely be self-driving cars--not a humanoid working in the cubicle next door. Drive.ai, an autonomous vehicle tech startup founded by former graduate students working in Stanford University's Artificial Intelligence Lab, officially came out of stealth mode--a temporary quiet period to avoid alerting competitors--on Tuesday with some details about what it's building and a high-profile addition to its board. Steve Girsky, who sat on the General Motors board for seven years until June, has joined the Drive.ai The Mountain View-based startup, which has raised 12 million from an undisclosed venture capital firm and strategic investors, was forced out of stealth in April when it was awarded a license to test autonomous vehicles in California. But until now, little was known about what Drive.ai was working on. The startup is focused on developing deep learning software--a sophisticated form of artificial intelligence--and applying it to everything the self-driving car does from recognizing objects to making decisions.