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1. 🔊 What industry do you work in and what is your role?
2. 🔊 What are your responses in your role / position?
3. 🔊 Can you describe to the function of your workplace / company?
4. 🔊 How many departments, how many offices. National or International?
5. 🔊 What are the minimum requirements for employment ie Education or Experience?
6. 🔊 How many opportunities are there to ‘move up the ladder’?
7. 🔊 What is the process for changing job roles ie Interview? Test?

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🔊 General discussion about your workweek:

1. 🔊 Current projects? Deadlines? Opportunities?
2. 🔊 Anything of interest happening?

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Script

1. 🔊 As Zoox, the secretive robotaxi developer recently acquired by Amazon, gets ready to unveil its futuristic fleet vehicle, its former CEO who dreamed up the company is re-emerging with a new startup that’s designing AI-enabled software he hopes will allow cars to “teach themselves” to drive.

2. 🔊 Early-stage HYPR, created by Zoox cofounder Tim Kentley Klay, says it’s using reinforcement learning, a branch of machine learning that utilizes a reward-based approach, to train driving algorithms dynamically–ideally with no need for direct human instruction or supervision. The Alameda, California-based startup has raised a $10 million seed round and begun testing its approach with a modified Daimler Smart Car. Backers include R7 Ventures and Australian billionaire Andrew Forrest.

3. 🔊 Kentley Klay “kicked in a modest  amount,” he says without elaborating. “HYPR will be an ahead-of-the-curve robotics company,” Kentley Klay tells Forbes. “We are focused on building the learning software stack and infrastructure. When we have that, we will share how we are going to exploit it.”

4.🔊 As a designer, commercial artist and entrepreneur hailing from Melbourne, Australia, rather than an auto or AI engineer, Kentley Klay was an improbable entrant into the crowded race to develop self-driving cars when he cofounded Zoox with Stanford University computer scientist Jesse Levinson in 2014. 

5.🔊 The pair raised nearly $1 billion for a pure robotaxi company serving big cities, starting with San Francisco, pursuing Kentley Klay’s sci-fi vision for ferrying passengers in purpose-built, driverless electric vehicles that maximize rider comfort and convenience–and with no steering wheels, brake and accelerator pedals.

6.🔊 Disagreements over strategy led to Kentley Klay’s unexpected firing in late 2018. The Foster City, California-based company was acquired by Amazon this year for an estimated $1.3 billion. Zoox cofounder Levinson remains chief technology officer.