How AI is Reinventing the Car

In their simplest form, cars are meant to serve as transportation vehicles that transfer us from point A to point B.

This is useful enough of course, but in a day and age when we have become accustomed to milking every ounce of innovation out of our machines, it wasn’t too long before people began to wonder whether our cars can serve as more than just modes of transportation.

Given that cars today are run and monitored largely by computers, it wasn’t much of a stretch to figure out how to take cars to the next level and turn them more into computers than cars.

With large touch screens in nearly every modern car today, and with many consumers familiar with music apps such as Spotify and home entertainment devices such as Amazon’s Alexa, which is connected to the internet and can provide endless amounts of useful or pointless information, the obvious next step is to incorporate this into cars.

With this in mind, cars have now become entertainment centers, sources of knowledge, music companions, valets, personal assistants, and more.

Drive anywhere and you can now ask your car where the closest restaurants or movie theaters are, where the next gas station is, or what the weather is in the next state.

We still aren’t quite at the self-driving stage, but it seems that is the next level of AI we will see cars reach.

In fact, people have had several bad experiences with self-driving technology.

Recently, a tech CEO called attention to his frightening story when engaging his Tesla’s co-pilot.

The Tesla owner took to Twitter to confront founder and CEO Elon Musk after being left 'shaking' following his experience.

Founder and CEO of AI startup Rabbit Inc., Jesse Lyu, took to Twitter on January 2 to share a recording taken from his Tesla vehicle.

In the video, you can hear Lyu explaining: "Yeah so the autopilot is engaged waiting for the left turn.

"[...] You're going to see something crazy. So here we go, it turns green and it's making a turn, but it f**king turns into the train line right?

"[...] I got nowhere to go and you can tell from behind [...] the train's right here. It's f**king right here. I've got nowhere to do. And it's a red light."

Lyu said: "I could've [been] killed because of this. I mean I'm very happy with the autopilot, but this one time, that's scared the s**t out of me. That's crazy. It's insane. I was literally shaking. [...] I had to run the red light to save my life."

While Musk has said he plans to introduce fully autonomous Robo Taxies without a steering wheel or pedals within a year or two, it is possible many people will still be too nervous to ride in one until the technology is more fully developed and roads and lane markings are better prepared for such vehicles.

Until then, AI-powered technology will continue to lead the way with features such as adaptive cruise control, lane departure warning, tire pressure warnings, and automatic emergency braking, for instance.

And of course, we can always ask for directions to the best scenic routes or our favorite burger joint.