INTRODUCTION by Denis Gantman

Throughout history, there have been people who have influenced the way we live. Amnon Shashua is one of these people.

I chose to prepare this research project on Amnon Shashua for several reasons. To begin with, we got an assignment from the teacher to choose a famous Jewish personality who has left a mark on the world and who we are interested in finding more about. In addition, I have heard a lot of Amnon Shashua and his company “Mobileye” and how he changed the word of road safety so I want to research him.

There are number of things that I already know about Amnon Shashua. Firstly, I know that he is the founder of “Mobileye” company, a famous company that is known all over the world. In addition, I know that he is supporting and working for the integration of men and women from the ultra-orthodox Jew sector into the market.

I expect to learn new and interesting things about Amnon Shashua. First and foremost, I expect to find out more about the road that he took to the success. Also, I want to learn about why he started doing what he is doing right now. Finally, I would like to discover what he sacrificed for the success.

Amnon Shashua has left his mark on the world. I am looking forward to finding out more about him.

INTRODUCTION by Ran Morsky

       Throughout history, there have been people who have influenced the way we live. Amnon Shashua is one of these people.

I choose to prepare this research project on Amnon Shashua for several reasons. To begin with, Amnon Shashua is one of the people I admire for the impact they have made in the environment because of a problem they had. In addition, Amnon shashua gave me a lot of inspiration to change what bothers me and spread my solution to my environment.

There are a number of things that I already know about Amnon Shashua. Firstly, I know that he is the founder of ” Mobileye” company (A product designed to reduce road accidents). In addition, I know that In 2010, Shashua launched an assistive device for the visually impaired based on computer vision capabilities.

I expect to learn new and interesting things about Amnon Shashua. Firstly, I expect to find out more about his successes, also, I want to learn about how he became so successful and how he thought about “Mobileye”. Finally, I would like to discover his failures and how he solved his problems.

Amnon Shashua has left his mark on the world. I am looking forward to finding out more about him.

INTRODUCTION  by Itay Cohen

       Throughout history, there have been people who have influenced the way we live. Amnon Shashua is one of these special people.

I chose to prepare this research project on Amnon Shashua for several reasons. To begin with, Amnon Shashua is a very important figure in the israeli high-tech and computer’s science industry. Professor Shashua is the President & CEO of Mobileye and a Senior Vice President at Intel Corporation. This industry is very interesting from my point of view and I would like to learn more about it and about this amazing person.

There are a number of things that I already know about Amnon shashua. Firstly, I know that he is a computer science professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Also, I know that he was born in Israel.

I expect to learn new and interesting things about Amnon Shashua. First and foremost, I expect to find out what his motives were. In addition, I want to learn about his biography and childhood. Finally, I would like to discover what the most significant  “eureka” moment in his career was and why.

Amnon Shashua has left his mark on the world. I am looking forward to finding out more about him.

And here we are 🙂

From right to left: Denis, Itay and Ran.

Amnon Shashua Biography

       Amnon Shashua was born on May 26, 1960. He is an Israeli computer scientist and businessman. He is a computer science professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem as well as Senior Vice President at Intel Corporation and President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Mobileye, and co-founder of Orcam.

Amnon Shashua learned in a computer class at “Ort Technicom”, Givataim.  He received his B.Sc (first degree) in mathematics and computer science from Tel-Aviv University in 1985 and his M.Sc (second degree) in computer science in 1989 from the Weizmann Institute of Science under the supervision of Shimon Ullman. His Ph.D (doctorate) in brain and cognitive sciences was received from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), while working at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, in 1993 and his postdoctoral training under Tomaso Poggio at the center for biological and computational learning at MIT. Shashua has been on the computer science faculty at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem since 1996.

In 1999 Prof. Shashua co-founded Mobileye, an Israeli company developing a system-on-chip and computer vision algorithms for a driving assistance system, providing a full range of active safety features using a single camera. Mobileye was launched with the belief that vision-safety technology will make roads safer, reduce traffic congestion and save lives.

Shashua’s work with Lior Wolfe on multiple-view geometry was one of three joint “best papers” at the 2000 European Conference on Computer Vision (ECCV) and received the Marr Prize “honorable mention” at the 2001 International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV). His work with Tamir Hazan on graphical models was the “best paper” runner-up at the 2008 Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI). Shashua received first prize in the 2004 Kaye Innovation award, and the 2005 Mifal HaPayis Landau Prize for Science and Research in the area of Exact Sciences – Robotics.

Also, he was appointed as an associate professor and in 2003 received full professorship. From 2002 to 2005 he was the head of the engineering and computer science school at the Hebrew University. Shashua currently has held the Sachs chair in computer science at the Hebrew University since 2007. Over the years, he has published over 100 papers in the field of machine learning and computational vision.

Today, approximately 10 million cars from 23 automobile manufacturers rely on Mobileye technology to make their vehicles safer to drive. In August 2014, Mobileye claimed the title for largest Israeli IPO ever, by raising $1B at a market cap of $5.3B. In addition, Mobileye is developing autonomous driving technology with more than a dozen car manufacturers. An early version of Mobileye’s autonomous driving technology was deployed in series as an “autopilot” feature in October, 2015, and will evolve to support more autonomous features in 2016 and beyond. The introduction of autonomous driving capabilities is of a transformative nature and has the potential to change the way cars are built, driven and owned in the future.

Our Figure’s Influence On Us

Amnon Shashua’s famous invention “Mobileye” has had an influence on us in a number of ways. To begin with, “Mobileye” develops vision-based self-driving cars and advanced driver assistance systems providing warnings for collision prevention and mitigation. It is now installed almost in every car, so that we use it every day and it keeps us safer. Furthermore, “Mobileye” gives us inspiration to invent things that will help society and make the world a better place. To sum up with, Amnon Shashua has had an influence on us with his ambition for excellence and for making the world a better and safer place.

The Interview

We chose to interview Mr.Shashua. Amnon Shashua is the founder of ‘Mobileye’.

We chose to interview him because we are doing the project on him, and also he helps the community with charity foundations and new, exciting technology.

Q:

What do you think students should learn in school today?

A:

Five points math, physics, realistic professions that represent the future. especially computer science. If we look forward towards the future, we will see that everything runs around a software that defines the automation. Then there will be problems because people that used to work at a factory, work today at ‘Burger King’.  Technology makes some jobs worthless and useless, but also makes new, more interesting jobs.”

Q:

Do you think that programming should be learned like students in first grade learn reading and writing?

A:

Programming is a basic skill. With a pen you can make poetry, with a paintbrush to create art, and with encoding we can create a value. Learn how to encode, this is not just about the mechanical side, this is about the algorithmic thinking. Today when young students learn computers in school, they are thaught how to use ‘power point’. That’s a waste of time in my opinion.

Q:

 What is your strategy for the upcoming years at Mobileye?

A:

I aim for automatic taxis until 2022, marketing the technology of ‘ConsumerAV’ in 2025 and level 4-5 of automatic driving in 2023. We are not excited about being first in the market, we prefer to take our time and learn about the evolving technology. Furthermore, we believe that other companies will fail. We prefer doing well instead of going fast.

Q:

 How is the price (of “Mobileye”) determined? Bargaining for another hundred million dollars, less a hundred million?

A:

No. Determining the price was actually simple: Intel agreed, as is the case in such cases, to pay the market price of Mobileye Plus Premium, and that’s the incredible number that the company’s market value before the deal was about ($ 11 billion).

Q:

We saw that you were a major contributor to “KamaTech”, a program for training ultra-Orthodox to work in high-tech, how do you think the state can help the target?

A:

Stop giving annuities. You see that there is a clear connection: more allowances – less join the work cycle. The state, as in everything, should not interfere. High-tech is not booming because the state has done something. Giving annuities is a disturbance.

Q:

How long will you be in the career?

A:

I don’t count it that way. I am where I can influence, technologically, not politically. Currently, Intel Mobileye’s environment gives me a lot of satisfaction and impact on the future of transportation and life-saving. It’s an impact that only few people get, and even if they don’t pay me a salary, I stay in Mobile. In Orcam I have a different influence, I want to influence artificial intelligence and its development, I am located where I feel satisfaction and influence, I am not looking for something that will affect my bank account. It is unnecessary.

Q:

How do you contribute to the community?

A:

We plan to establish a very large foundation for the community and social matters. Today, we are also donating to a lot of hospitals for promoting minorities in the framework of an organization called “Desert Stars”that promotes youths from the Bedouin sector to graduate from high school and continue to academic studies. Furthermore, we are contributing to the advancement of employment of the Haredim in the high-tech sector.

Q:

Did you expect your children to follow in your footsteps?

A:

The oldest son studied computer science at the Hebrew University, and today he works at cyber company ,the girls are studying now psychology and education and the youngest son is serving in army in a computer programming unit. But it came from them. I don’t believe in cheerleading, people have to discover their inner fire. It’s not like I picked them up and said if you don’t, it’s going to annoy me.

Q:

How was “Mobileye” created?

A:

The initial idea was to create a system that prevents accidents and after a lot of improvements we created “Mobileye”.

Q:

Is there a shortage of employees?

A:

If you want a non-skillful manpower it is easy but the outstanding and skillful manpower is very difficult to reach. It’s a national mission. We have to start opening the area for more Haredi sectors and Arab sectors.

PRESENTATION REPORT

On 31.12.2019, we made a presentation in front of my classmates and teacher on Amnon Shashua.

There were a number of things we wanted to achieve by making our presentation in this way. To begin with, we wanted to talk about the history of Amnon Shashua and about his way to the top. Furthermore, we passed on his contributes to the community in a creative way, we divided word search puzzles for our classmates and let them solve it in an innovative way.

In order to prepare this presentation, we followed a number of steps. First of all, we made a presentation to illustrate what was said and after that, we search for his main contributions. Moreover, we thought about a different way to produce the information that we found.

The presentation in class was done in the following way. We presented the life of Amnon Shashua before Mobileye and then his life after Mobileye and about his company. In addition, we presented his conterbution to the community and then we did the creative part of the presentation, word search puzzles.

We learnt several things about Amnon Shashua while doing this section. Firstly, we learned about his degrees, when and where he received them and their subjects. Secondly, we learned about the prizes he received over the years. Last but not least, we learned about his help to the community and we tell about it to our class.

Looking back on our presentation, there are several things that could have been done differently. First, we could have talk more about his childhood and about his family. Also, we could have used a higher level of English when we spoke. Lastly, we could have bring more pencils, to give the teams that won the word search competition, as an ultimate prize.

Our classmates also gave a feedback about our presentation. Shir said that she enjoyed the presentation, the language was clear and the activity was creative and fun. Furthermore, Dekel said that she understood every word we were saying, and that’s helped her to keep her focus. Moreover, Eitan said that although the prize we gave him for winning the word search puzzle was pretty disappointing (we don’t understand him. A pencil is a very nice prize in our opinion), he enjoyed the presentation and learned many new things about a person he didn’t know before.

In conclusion, we feel we did a good job in this section because we did our presentation in an interesting and original way.

Bibliography

• Amnon Shashua From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• 100 המשפיעים 2018- אמנון שעשוע
• שעשוע של סיפור – ידיעות אחרונות
• https://www.mako.co.il/news-digital/2020_q1/Article-ff4fd07795b8f61027.htm‏l