Unless you’re living under a rock, you’ll know how much ‘AI’ (for Artificial Intelligence – which is kind of a misnomer… but that’s a topic for another day) has now been intertwined into many people’s daily lives. It’s no longer just a tech demo – news outlets are now using ChatGPT to write articles, and text-to-image generative AI models even spawned a new art form.
AI is quickly embedding itself into the very fabric of all industries, and at CES 2024, the technology has now found yet another avenue for existence – inside your cars.
To be clear, AI in cars isn’t exactly news – the technology is already in use today to design cars, train autonomous driving systems, and even hone your driving skills. The hot new trend at CES 2024, however, is to put generative AI systems directly into your cars’ infotainment systems, where the driver and occupants are expected to interact with the technology directly.
Major carmakers, including Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, and BMW have all announced at this year’s show that they will be integrating some form of generative AI into their upcoming voice assistant systems, be it ChatGPT, Alexa, or another branded large language model (LLM). And with Intel, Qualcomm, and AMD all showing off their AI-focused automotive silicon this year, we’re sure these won’t be the last to embrace ChatGPT in their cars, either.
All of these carmakers have the same grandiose plan using AI to make cars easier and more natural to interact with – but the question is, do they actually work?
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Numerous studies – some published as recent as 2020 – have suggested that voice assistant in cars are inherently dangerous, with some even comparing them to drunk-driving. The issue stems from distraction, or “inattention blindness”, as voice assistants require active cognitive functions to interact, and thus taking your full attention away from the road.
Even worse, studies found that the divided attention could linger for 20 seconds even after the driver stopped talking to the voice assistant – perhaps waiting to see if the “smart” assistants actually understood your commands. You can just imagine how dangerous this can be at highway speeds.
Of course, many of these issues can be potentially fixed by more advanced AI models and better technology. Faster processing speed, more predictive functions, and more conversational commands can all help reduce the cognitive load required to interact with the voice assistants. But I’d argue there’s one problem that AI voice assistants can’t solve yet, at least not directly, and that’s the fact that people don’t seem to want to use them.
I obviously don’t have the numbers for this, but anecdotally, it seems that very little people – at least amongst my peers – are actually using voice assistants inside their cars aside from the initial “honeymoon” phase in a new car. Heck, I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone actually using Siri in public, either.
Earlier voice assistant systems were notoriously bad, and people might have been put off from ever giving them a second chance after their bad initial experience with them. There’s also a possibility that the voice assistants are just not that good at deciphering other languages (yes, Manglish is one, even though the Proton X70 seems to be pretty good at it), leading to subpar experiences, but it may also just be that speaking to an inanimate object just feels fundamentally… weird.
“I think part of it is just that there’s something inherently social about language. For thousands of years it has developed as an inherently social system. So I think there is something in human beings that is hesitant to talk to something that is not another sentient being,” Northern Illinois University professor of linguistics and cognitive science, Betty Birner, said to Ars Technica.
“We’ll talk to our dogs, but we may not want to talk to our toaster. So I think that’s a little part of it. That we use language to communicate and we have a notion of what communication means, and it means another mind. Right? My mind in communication with yours,” she added.
Carmakers are championing AI as the ultimate solution to safer driving, but I posit there’s an even simpler answer to in-car interactions – put the damn buttons back.
ALSO READ: Study confirms that buttons are indeed better than touchscreens in cars
