In many cities in the United States and China, cars are already driving autonomously on the roads – now even without safety drivers. By 2025, these vehicles will also be on German roads, says Johann Jungwirth, Senior Vice President for Autonomous Driving at the Israeli automotive supplier Mobileye, in the F.A.Z. podcast "Artificial Intelligence.
Holger Schmidt
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Advances in artificial intelligence make this step possible, even if the development has not been quite as fast as hoped. For companies, several new business models are conceivable: "It certainly starts with driving services, because the technology is still so expensive that an end customer can not afford it for his car." For example, driving services can be robo-taxis that pick up passengers autonomously and bring them to their destination. The sale of digital personal chauffeurs as high-priced special equipment for cars of end customers in the cost framework between 12,000 and 15,000 euros would then be foreseeable from 2025/2026 at the earliest.
According to Jungwirth, most people will quickly get used to autonomous driving. "You reach the threshold relatively quickly, sometimes after 15 minutes during the first ride, that you trust the digital driver and then take out your smartphone." The driving services of Cruise or Waymo in San Francisco even have the problem that the police receive calls about passengers who fall asleep during the autonomous drive and continue to fall asleep at their destination. For customers who are more skeptical about the technology, Jungwirth also describes less self-sufficient solutions with which passengers could slowly build trust in artificial intelligence. To justify this trust, manufacturers are currently focusing on minimizing the risk of accidents in AI development. In particular, redundancies, for example overlapping camera images, or separate power supply of different sensors, should ensure the safety of the system. "The goal is to drive factor 10 or factor 100 [safer] than humans."
The episode is part of our podcast "Artificial Intelligence". It explores the questions of what AI can do, where it is applied, what it has already changed and what contribution it can make in the future. For the podcast, the F.A.Z. has brought Peter Buxmann and Holger Schmidt, two proven AI experts, on board: Both research and teach the potential of AI and its effects on the economy and work at the Technical University of Darmstadt. Peter Buxmann holds the Chair of Information Systems and has been working on the applications of AI, digital transformation and data-based business models for many years. His podcast partner Holger Schmidt is a digital economist, speaker and author. His core topics are AI, platform economy and digital business models. In each episode, the two hosts take up a new aspect of artificial intelligence, explain connections and give precise classifications. The episodes have a length of about thirty minutes and appear monthly on the first Monday.