Mark Inskip, Global Chief Executive at Kantar Futures quoted in Bloomberg on ‘why smart cities, leaps in artificial intelligence, and control of data will be so important for the mobility revolution.
The advent of the smart city
Leading cities like London, New York and Shanghai are investing heavily in new technology, with surveillance cameras watching for accidents or congestion, systems that change traffic lights to speed up or slow down vehicles and smart cards that pay tolls automatically.
However, the different technologies used and the data produced is largely isolated and lacks common standards. This will change in the next decade, although it will require significant investments of money, time and political will.
We will soon start to see integrated “intelligent highways” linked to the Internet of Things, with sensors embedded in road surfaces and in street features exchanging information with next-generation high-tech automobiles and drivers’ mobile devices, and connecting to a centralized monitoring system. Thus, automobiles will become mobile data collection points.
This solution will deliver massive savings of time and resources to communities, which should then cascade down to drivers, either directly (reduced toll charges and road taxes) or indirectly (faster and safer journeys, easier parking), and will also improve quality of life by reducing stress and environmental pollution.
Artificial intelligence is developing value judgements
Autonomous vehicles already follow “rule sets” that force them to obey the speed limit, or slow down when they detect that the vehicle ahead has done so. But human drivers can break the rules when necessary—for example, speeding up to get out of danger.
Algorithms are great for making binary decisions—yes/no, black/white—but it’s going to take a lot more work for smart cars to get to the point where they can make the decision to deliberately drive into a wall (and potentially harm their passengers) rather than hit (and probably kill) a child on a bicycle.
However, the need to solve such difficult problems will cause a massive leap in artificial intelligence over the next decade, as companies develop autonomous vehicles that have something approaching the human ability to make value judgements.
Reclaiming the freedom of the open road
Since the mass production of automobiles began, they have been sold as badges of individuality and freedom. Automotive marketing is dominated by messaging about the adventure of the open road. But, paradoxically, with the advent of autonomous vehicles and smart highways, personal details may become public information.
Right now, early adopters are literally buying in to the benefits of autonomous vehicles—which by definition are data nodes in the Internet of Things—and sharing their journeys. If we want shopping delivered to our trunk, or the tank filled with gas while we’re at work, we have to accept that Big Brother could be watching us.
Nevertheless, the public wants some control over personal data and privacy, and the automotive industry must listen. Drivers will likely expect some version of the EU’s existing “Right to be Forgotten” law, which allows people to have data about them deleted from web searches.
Anyone with a decent Satnav knows that you can delete your journey history, and something similar will have to be rolled out for automobiles with embedded technology, as drivers will demand the right to erase their tracks.
Read the full article over on Bloomberg, originally posted December 2016