⚑ Tokyo, Japan

From cloud pipelines to vehicle deployments, Paul’s world of work is all about making artificial intelligence safe and scalable. He shares how his team is helping bring next-generation AD/ADAS and Woven City — our test course for mobility — to life with new-look AI tools, and offers insight into the unique opportunity at Woven by Toyota to work across disciplines like legislation and research to shape technology people can truly depend on.

Q: Who are you building for?

Our primary customers are within Woven by Toyota. We really try to support the success of our business and ADAS and Woven City.

Q: What does that look like in practice?

ADAS: They are trying to develop automated driving models. So our role there is to one, provide them and annotate data that they can use to train the models, and then two, (provide) the compute that they need to run their training jobs.

We're very tied to the hardware when we develop AI models for the vehicle. How we get the data from the vehicle into the cloud and then process it in the cloud, and then have trust that the AI model is correct and good enough to use before it gets deployed to the car is a very different pipeline than say, I just want to chat with an AI agent or something like that.

"How we get the data from the vehicle into the cloud and then process it in the cloud, and then have trust that the AI model is correct and good enough to use before it gets deployed to the car is a very different pipeline."

Q: Three keywords to describe Woven by Toyota?

I think the three keywords I would use would be number one: diversity; number two: engaging; and number three: opportunity.

Q: Why ‘opportunity’?

To me, what makes this work really interesting is that we have a lot of cutting edge projects. One area that I'm particularly interested in is the safety and security of AI in production.

So through that interest, I've gotten involved with many different teams at Woven by Toyota and Toyota Motor Corporation to discuss things like legislation, research, and other various cutting edge avenues in that (AI) space.

Q: What’s unique about the application of AI here?

It's really cool to see something tangible that you've helped support and worked on. So being able to go into a car and then point at it and say “Hey, this is something that my team helps support and develop” is kind of really cool to see. And you don't get that with other areas of AI.

"It's really cool to see something tangible that you've helped support and worked on."

Q: In your perspective, what makes a strong team?

We’re a really diverse culture internally and also in the people that we work with. As part of that, I think communication is key.

We come from different backgrounds. Externally, we have teams in automotive. We have teams a bit further away from automotive and being able to kind of speak the same language, communicate with them well is key to our success.

And obviously technology is important. So that's something we do want to keep and make sure we have a really strong technical background. But communication is almost just as important.

Q: What are you focused on now?

I really want to bring the best in class AI to Woven by Toyota and Toyota with ever increasing quality and safety to really improve the outcomes that we can produce with AI in the various applications that can be used for.