WASHINGTON: Uber Technologies unveiled its newest Volvo self-driving car in Washington on Wednesday as it works to eventually deploy vehicles without drivers under some limited conditions.
Uber said the new production XC90 will be assembled by Volvo Cars in Sweden and have human controls like steering wheels and brake pedals, but also with factory-installed steering and braking systems designed for computer rather than human control.
Uber Advanced Technologies Group chief scientist Raquel Urtasun showed off the company’s artificial intelligence technology that allows it to drive autonomously for long distances on highways without maps and “on the fly” to plot its course and navigate construction zones.
“Our goal is get each one of you to where you want to go much better, much safer, cheaper,” Urtasun said.
As the race to push out autonomous cars across the globe heats up, other companies are also working to deploy self-driving vehicles in limited areas.
Ford Motor Co’s majority-owned autonomous vehicle unit, Argo AI, launched its new fleet of self-driving test vehicles — Ford Fusion Hybrid — in Detroit on Wednesday, expanding to five US cities.
The No. 2 US automaker also opened a research center in Tel Aviv, joining a growing number of major automakers and suppliers setting up shop in Israel’s tech hub.
General Motors Co. in January 2018 sought permission from US regulators to deploy a ride-sharing fleet of driverless cars without steering wheels or other human controls before the end of 2019, but is still struggling to win regulatory approval.
Alphabet Inc’s Waymo unit is operating a robotaxi service in Arizona and said last month it is partnering with Lyft Inc. to serve more riders.
South Korea’s Hyundai Motor Co. and Kia Motors Corp. both said they would invest in the self-driving car software startup Aurora and speed up development of their respective autonomous vehicle technologies.
Carmakers have struggled to maintain profit margins faced with the rising costs of making electric, connected and autonomous cars. As a result, they are setting up alliances and lining up outside investors to combat spiraling development costs.
Previously, Uber had purchased about 250 Volvo XC90 SUVs and retrofitted them for self-driving use.
The new vehicles — known by the internal code number 519G and under development for several years — are safer, more reliable and will replace the older vehicles in Uber’s fleet “soon,” according to Eric Meyhofer, the head of Uber’s Advanced Technologies Group.
“This is about going to production,” Meyhofer said in an interview at an Uber conference in Washington on Tuesday.
The new vehicle also has several backup systems for both steering and braking functions as well as backup battery power and new cybersecurity systems.
Uber is not ready to deploy vehicles without human controls, Meyhofer said.
“We’re still in a real hybrid state,” he said. “We have to get there and we’re not going to get to thousands of cars in a city overnight. It’s going to be a slower introduction.”
The new XC90 vehicles have an interior fish-eye camera to scan for lost items, Uber said. They also do not have sunroofs since the self-driving vehicles have large sensors on the roof and are equipped with auto-close doors to prevent an unsafe departure.
Uber, which has taken delivery of about a dozen prototypes of the new vehicle, but has not yet deployed them on public roads, said the car’s “self-driving system will one day allow for safe, reliable autonomous ridesharing without the need” for a safety driver.
Asked if Uber will deploy self-driving cars without safety drivers in limited areas in the next few years, Meyhofer said: “Yes — way before that.”
But he added that Uber wants to be in “the good graces of public trust and regulatory trust” before making the business decision to deploy.
In December, Uber resumed limited self-driving car testing on public roads in Pittsburgh, nine months after it suspended the program following a deadly accident in Arizona.
In March 2018, authorities in Arizona suspended Uber’s ability to test its self-driving cars after one of its XC90 cars hit and killed a woman crossing the street at night in the Phoenix suburb of Tempe, then Uber’s largest testing hub. The crash was the first death attributed to a self-driving vehicle.
In March 2019, prosecutors in Arizona said the company was not criminally liable in the crash and would not pursue charges. Uber has since ended testing in Arizona, but plans to eventually resume testing in Toronto and San Francisco, Meyhofer said.
The death prompted significant safety concerns about the nascent self-driving car industry, which is racing to get vehicles into commercial use.
Volvo Cars Chief Executive Hakan Samuelsson said in a statement that “by the middle of the next decade, we expect one-third of all cars we sell to be fully autonomous.”
Volvo Cars, which is owned by China’s Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd, will use a similar autonomous base vehicle concept for the introduction of its first commercially available autonomous drive technology in the early 2020s.
Volvo and Uber said in 2017 that the rideshare company planned to buy up to 24,000 self-driving cars from Volvo from 2019 to 2021 using the self-driving system developed by Uber’s Advanced Technologies Group.
An Uber spokeswoman said Tuesday that the company plans “to work with Volvo on tens of thousands of vehicles in the future.”
Uber unveils next-generation Volvo self-driving car
Uber unveils next-generation Volvo self-driving car
- The new vehicle has several backup systems for both steering and braking functions
- Carmakers have struggled to maintain profit margins faced with the rising costs of making electric, connected and autonomous cars
AI will never replace human creativity, says SRMG CEO
- Speaking to Maya Hojeij, senior business anchor at Asharq with Bloomberg, Jomana R. Alrashid expressed pride in SRMG platforms that had absorbed and adopted AI
RIYADH: Jomana R. Alrashid, CEO of Saudi Research and Media Group, highlighted how AI cannot replace human creativity during a session at The Family Office’s “Investing Is a Sea” summit at Shura Island on Friday.
“You can never replace human creativity. Journalism at the end of the day, and content creation, is all about storytelling, and that’s a creative role that AI does not have the power to do just yet,” Alrashid told the investment summit.
“We will never eliminate that human role which comes in to actually tell that story, do the actual investigative reporting around it, make sure to be able to also tell you what’s news or what’s factual from what’s wrong ... what’s a misinformation from bias, and that’s the bigger role that the editorial player does in the newsroom.”
Speaking on the topic of AI, moderated by Maya Hojeij, senior business anchor at Asharq with Bloomberg, the CEO expressed her pride in SRMG platforms that had absorbed and adopted AI in a way that was “transformative.”
“We are now translating all of our content leveraging AI. We are also now being able to create documentaries leveraging AI. We now have AI-facilitated fact-checking, AI facilities clipping, transcribing. This is what we believe is the future.”
Alrashid was asked what the journalist of the future would look like. “He’s a journalist and an engineer. He’s someone who needs to understand data. And I think this is another topic that is extremely important, understanding the data that you’re working with,” she said.
“This is something that AI has facilitated as well. I must say that over the past 20 years in the region, especially when it comes to media companies, we did not understand the importance of data.”
The CEO highlighted that previously, media would rely on polling, surveys or viewership numbers, but now more detailed information about what viewers wanted was available.
During the fireside session, Alrashid was asked how the international community viewed the Middle Eastern media. Alrashid said that over the past decades it had played a critical role in informing wider audiences about issues that were extremely complex — politically, culturally and economically — and continued to play that role.
“Right now it has a bigger role to play, given the role again of social media, citizen journalists, content creators. But I also do believe that it has been facilitated by the power that AI has. Now immediately, you can ensure that that kind of content that is being created by credible, tier-A journalists, world-class journalists, can travel beyond its borders, can travel instantly to target different geographies, different people, different countries, in different languages, in different formats.”
She said that there was a big opportunity for Arab media not to be limited to simply Arab consumption, but to finally transcend borders and be available in different languages and to cater to their audiences.
The CEO expressed optimism about the future, emphasizing the importance of having a clear vision, a strong strategy, and full team alignment.
Traditional advertising models, once centered on television and print, were rapidly changing, with social media platforms now dominating advertising revenue.
“It’s drastically changing. Ultimately in the past, we used to compete with one another over viewership. But now we’re also competing with the likes of social media platforms; 80 percent of the advertising revenue in the Middle East goes to the social media platforms, but that means that there’s 80 percent interest opportunities.”
She said that the challenge was to create the right content on these platforms that engaged the target audiences and enabled commercial partnerships. “I don’t think this is a secret, but brands do not like to advertise with news channels. Ultimately, it’s always related with either conflict or war, which is a deterrent to advertisers.
“And that’s why we’ve entered new verticals such as sports. And that’s why we also double down on our lifestyle vertical. Ultimately, we have the largest market share when it comes to lifestyle ... And we’ve launched new platforms such as Billboard Arabia that gives us an entry into music.”
Alrashid said this was why the group was in a strong position to counter the decline in advertising revenues across different platforms, and by introducing new products.
“Another very important IP that we’ve created is events attached to the brands that have been operating in the region for 30-plus years. Any IP or any title right now that doesn’t have an event attached to it is missing out on a very big commercial opportunity that allows us to sit in a room, exchange ideas, talk to one another, get to know one another behind the screen.”
The CEO said that disruption was now constant and often self-driving, adding that the future of the industry was often in storytelling and the ability to innovate by creating persuasive content that connected directly with the audience.
“But the next disruption is going to continue to come from AI. And how quickly this tool and this very powerful technology evolves. And whether we are in a position to cope with it, adapt to it, and absorb it fully or not.”
