Abstract: The robotaxi industry has one of the most extreme use case for Machine Learning with very large image/LiDAR datasets and resource-hungry training jobs. I will recount my experience leading the ML Infrastructure team at Cruise, the #1 robotaxi company. From training on desktop GPUs to being entirely cloud-based, I will detail the challenges we faced, how we solved them. I will also detail what guarantees need to be built into any production-grade ML platform to ensure fast, robust, and safe ML development.
Bio: Emmanuel Turlay is the founder and CEO of Sematic, an open-source ML infrastructure company. Emmanuel started his career in academia researching particle physics at CERN, before branching out into tech and moving to the US in 2014. He led engineering teams at Instacart, and then Cruise, where he led the ML Infrastructure team for four years. In 2022, Emmanuel founded Sematic to bring learnings from building ML infrastructure for robotaxis to the rest of the industry in an open-source manner.
