TEACHING AUTONOMOUS TECH SKILLS TO AI ENGINEERS

In 2017, Jeremy Cohen started his journey in the self-driving car world. He was just graduated from an engineering school in France, and was trying to find meaning through an internship in Artificial Intelligence.

JEREMY COHEN 
Founder of Think Autonomous

Talking about his journey, Jeremy stated that "I was working as an integrator, so I wasn't building the solution, nor benefiting from it.

This is important, because otherwise the audience will not understand why I felt like not being the main actor" This is when he decided to pick a side, and Jeremy ultimately decided to teach himself skills in Artificial Intelligence. He learned that Al had many sub-families, and one day, as he was looking for a specialization, Jeremy discovered these 3 words: Self. Driving. Cars.

"I got immediately hooked by what engineers were working on. Cars that drove by themselves? I wanted to have this kind of impact on society, and I therefore made it a personal goal to become a self-driving car engineer," said Jeremy.

He started working hard on that goal, and fast forward a couple of years, Jeremy was working as a Perception Engineer for an autonomous shuttle startup in France. His goal was accomplished. Yet, he was feeling that the industry wasn't moving fast enough, and while working, hiring, and collaborating with engineers, Jeremy realized that the industry was late, and wouldn't bring self-driving cars to the world by 2020 as advertised.

One of the main reason? The lack of skilled engineers applying to companies. "Here, I would add some proof argument. Something showing that many of the engineers applying had an interesting profile, but never the type of skills we were looking for. I would even explain that sometimes, we were hiring unqualified engineers just because we needed people."

Skilling Engineers for the Autonomous Industry