Activity Program

The creator of autonomous cars and smart screens on planes, today innovates based on the ethics of technology.

Mois Navon is a Jewish American engineer who went to Jerusalem to fulfill his dream of working in the Israeli innovative ecosystem. Founder of Mobileye – the startup that bought the automotive visual system that fueled the autonomous vehicle revolution – rose to fame in 2017 by selling the chip he developed to Intel for $15 billion, the largest high-tech sale in the Israeli history. Today, the sophisticated ADAS (Advanced Driving Assistant System) is found in 140 million vehicles and dominates 70% of the market.

His first taste of technological development came while he was finishing his studies at UCLA, United States, working at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where he helped create an innovative processor tube to detect cancer cells. Subsequently, he began a computerized simulator for the US Strategic Defense Initiative’s Star Wars anti-missile program. While at IBM, they developed high-tech products, including smart displays for commercial airlines, algorithmic chips for pay TV, and fiber optic chip networks.

Throughout this process, Navon developed a strong connection with Jewish spirituality. After the sale of Mobileye he decided to become a rabbi. He is currently finishing his PhD at Bar Ilan University’s Department of Jewish Philosophy, where his thesis deals with applying Jewish philosophy to address ethical questions in the field of artificial intelligence. “I am an engineer by profession and a rabbi by passion,” he has said repeatedly in talks he gives around the world. Its central themes are the future of cities, the ethical dilemmas of AI, autonomous cars and robots. His talk “Innovation, Autonomous Cars and Purpose”, in which he narrates his life path, has filled stages around the world.