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Opinion

Get Ready for UX-Defined Vehicles or Not

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
Everyone’s mimicking Tesla, pioneer of the software-defined vehicle. Software will buttress next-generation vehicle architectures. But shouldn’t carmaker imagination reach further, to a vehicle defined by user experience?

The “software-defined vehicle” is a convenient and overused terminology when auto industry types discuss the architecture of future vehicles. The term implies a car whose functions and performance can be patched, fixed, and updated over the air. Such software can alter and improve control, for example, of a vehicle’s firmware and entertainment system.

But c’mon. Can’t we do better than that?

Read More »Get Ready for UX-Defined Vehicles or Not
Ultra Cruise will become available when GM launches the Cadillac CELESTIQ.

The Ultra Question for Ultra Cruise

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
General Motors is throwing all the sensor technologies they can scrounge at its upcoming Ultra Cruise – the company’s next-generation hands-free driving system. Will that make Ultra Cruise a better “automated vehicle” than a Tesla?

The sensor suite that comes with General Motor’s new Ultra Cruise seems quite impressive. But what jumped out to me in GM’s announcement wasn’t the gadgetry. The grabber was the new claim that GM customers will “over time” be able to “travel truly hands-free with Ultra Cruise across nearly every paved public road in the U.S. and Canada, including city streets, subdivisions and rural roads, in addition to highways.”

Read More »The Ultra Question for Ultra Cruise
Love has no algorithm

Love Has No Algorithm

By David Benjamin

“You’d be surprised how much time I spend explaining to my colleagues that the chief dangers of AI will not come from evil robots with red lasers coming out of their eyes.”
—Congressman (with a Master’s degree in AI) Jay Obernoite

At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January, the question that haunted the conventioneers, from engineers and marketing flacks to a seedy and asocial army of “influencers,” was “How do I talk to my washing machine?”

Read More »Love Has No Algorithm

ChatGPT & AI: Stop Panicking and Look at the Potentials

By Bolaji Ojo

What’s at stake?
ChatGPT and generative artificial intelligence variants will be massively disruptive but that is no reason to react with the kind of apprehension that could stunt their use and deprive society of the benefits. Moreover, AI is here to stay, and its financial potentials are enormous.

The recent controversy over the fast adoption of ChatGPT and generative AI borders on hysteria. Having just broken into widespread use, the apprehension about how artificial intelligence will impact all aspects of economic and social lives is understandable. However, just like in the early days of the internet, we have not even begun to plumb the depths of how the technology will be applied in years to come.

Read More »ChatGPT & AI: Stop Panicking and Look at the Potentials
The Last of Us (HBO Max)

ChatGPT Will Eat Our Brains

By Girish Mhatre

In the latest of the zombie apocalypse sagas – HBO’s “The Last of Us” – a deadly, highly infectious fungal pathogen causes most of the world’s human population to morph into hordes of walking dead.

It’s art anticipating life.

The pathogen running rampant today is OpenAI’s ChatGPT, a natural language processing system of the class known as Large Language Models (LLMs). Think of it as a chatbot that’s light years ahead of the kind you might encounter on a web site.

Read More »ChatGPT Will Eat Our Brains
Intel Foundry Services

As Foundry Use Surges, IDM Renaissance Becomes Critical

By Bolaji Ojo

What’s at stake:
The growing reliance of semiconductor vendors on foundries is problematic as the limited number of contractors will eventually not be able to satisfy the market’s IC needs. IDMs can help plug the gap but doing so successfully would require a complete overhaul of the current capital equipment funding system.

Foundries are the new alpha males of the semiconductor manufacturing world. The recent spate of supply deals between foundries and OEMs – at least one of which bypasses semiconductor suppliers – attest to the complete dominance of chip production by foundries and the quandary the industry is sliding into.

Read More »As Foundry Use Surges, IDM Renaissance Becomes Critical
What Tesla claimed in an opener of its promotional video, "Full Self Driving Hardware on All Teslas," released in Oct. 20, 2016

Tesla Deposition Exposes Disregard for Human Drivers

By Junko Yoshida

What’s at stake:
Tesla is envy of its rivals. That makes a deposition by Tesla’s chief Autopilot software director required reading. His testimony highlights the company’s modus operandi that permits reckless beta roll outs of automation software, enabling the faulty assumption that infallible human drivers will be able to correct mistakes made by vehicles. Distancing themselves from Tesla isn’t enough. It’s time for every car manufacturer to step up and make safety a priority.

Investigations into business or political wrongdoing often lead reporters to top executives, about whom they poise the inevitable question:  “What did he know, and when did he know it?”

But in the case of Tesla, there’s no reason to bother Elon Musk. The question is already asked and answered.

Read More »Tesla Deposition Exposes Disregard for Human Drivers