Who are these people who want to talk to their car to make it do everything? Who are they, where are they, and what the hell is their problem? And, perhaps more importantly, why is one of these woefully misguided people in charge of Rivian’s software and human-machine experience? And why are they so eager to deeply integrate AI “agentic” bullshit into cars?
I’m asking these questions because of an interview done on The Verge’s podcast Decoder that featured Wassym Bensaid, Rivian’s Chief Software Officer, the same man who once said that physical buttons for car controls are an “anomaly.” Oy. I can already tell I’m going to be cranky about all of this. Bensaid also has stated that “I think the car is actually a fantastic environment for AI,” and that “The final north star I have is having voice [controls] become the primary means of interaction with the vehicle.” So, it’s pretty clear where Bensaid stands: he wants a car without physical buttons, and an AI that you talk to controlling everything.
To me, such a car sounds like a technological triumph that I would be more than happy to roll off a cliff.
It’s also worth remembering that Rivian is one of those companies that makes you control where your HVAC vents are blowing by swiping at a touch screen with a little picture of a dashboard on it, inches from the actual dashboard vents. You know, like how an idiot would choose to control where air blows.
But let’s get back to this AI agent business that Bensaid is so hot on. This is part of why Rivian is so against integrating Apple CarPlay or Android Auto into their cars, even though so many people seem to want that, with many buyers considering it a requirement for any new car they may buy. From Rivian’s point of view, phone mirroring systems like CarPlay or Android Auto are bad because, according to Bensaid,
“The challenge with screen mirroring solutions is that they take over every single pixel in the car, and that’s not the way we see ourselves interacting with our users.”
… which is just a PR-massaged way of saying they don’t want to give up their screen real estate to a company they don’t control. Instead, Rivian –like a number of other automakers – would much rather you only use their own in-house UX for your interactions with the car, and in Rivian’s case, it looks like this will soon become far more voice-focused. As Bensaid says in the podcast,
“I think we are on the cusp of something really big. When you think about it, you’re in a car, you’re driving, you’re focused on the road. So, in theory, the primary interface with which you should be interacting with the car is actually voice. The only reason that drivers and consumers do not interact with the car through voice is that, to put it really bluntly, the technology has been broken. That’s really the beauty of what we have now with the technology disruption coming with foundational models.”
See, I’d have to disagree here. Even if you’re focused on the road, that doesn’t mean voice should be the “primary interface” with which you should be interacting with your car. Driving is a physical task; the primary interface is, and has always been, and should always be physical. Steering, braking, using muscle memory to move your hand to controls automatically – a good interface between a human and car means the car becomes almost a prosthetic. You don’t need that extra whole layer of cognition to put your desired actions into words at all.
Bensaid doesn’t seem to get this concept at all, and I think makes my argument for me when he describes a voice-controlled trunk-opening process:
The foundational models are providing us this wonderful opportunity to truly have a conversational experience where drivers can interact with the car in human language. I don’t need to tell the car, “Open the frunk.” I can say, “Open the front trunk.” Actually, I can say, “I have a bag in front of the car,” and it will actually open the frunk. I think that completely changes the way you interact with the car.
I agree, it does completely change the way you interact with the car. It makes it worse.
Just think about this for a second. Why would you want a “conversational experience” when it comes to getting your stuff out of the trunk, front or rear? Just think about how you normally get your bag out of a trunk now, in your average modern-ish car. You park, you get out of the car, you walk to the trunk at whatever end of the car your bag is in, and you open the trunk. That’s it. You don’t have to tell the car shit.
The car detects your key in your pocket, you push a little button or latch to open the lid, and you’re done. Telling the car “I have a bag in the front of the car” is just adding a useless step. Will the bag levitate out on its own? No. I mean, for most of us lacking telekinesis skills, no. So you still have to go and physically touch the trunk. What the hell is the point of telling the car you have a bag in the trunk? How much extra computing hardware is needed to process and execute that command? For what? Letting the car know you have a bag? So the AI can send that information to advertisers and you’ll see AI-enhanced duffel bag ads for the next three days? Fuck that.
Has Bensaid never been in a car with a friend, in mid-conversation, continuing as you leave the car and get your shit out of the trunk? Of course he has. We all have. Have you ever wanted to pause mid-conversation and tell your car where your bags are? No. Fuck no.
Part of what seems to be going on here is the mistaken notion that somehow your car needs to be doing the same things you already have a phone for. Listen to this bullshit from Bensaid:
“On top of that, we now have the opportunity with all the agentic framework to truly give people their time back in the car. I hope you tried our Google Calendar agentic integration. You can imagine how the experience will be in the future where you’re driving and can perform operations on your calendar. You should be able to perform operations on your email. In the future with the agent-to-agent integration, you can actually interact with many more apps from your own digital ecosystem.”
Calendar integration? “Perform operations on your email?” Why the fuck would you want your car to be part of that? That’s already what your damn phone is for? And these “agent-to-agent” integrations, that just means that some AI bullshit built into your car is talking to the AI bullshit built into your phone so in the end, what is the AI agent in your car doing other than passing along messages to the phone that’s right fucking there with you and if they just let you have the damn Android Auto or CarPlay you could talk right to it? Or just talk to it as it sits on the seat next to you? What’s the point of all this?
You car doesn’t need to uselessly duplicate all the features of your phone. It’s the wrong tool for that job. Your phone is a good personal assistant tool because it’s the size and shape of a well-worn bar of soap and you can slide it in your pocket, not a 4,000 pound hunk of metal and plastic with wheels. Nobody wants their phone to sprout spindly wheels to you can drive it to work, just as we don’t need to use our cars to answer fucking emails.
Here he is again talking about the car replicating phone jobs:
“You can imagine that in the future, instead of having that mono access to every single app on your car — or honestly, even on your smartphone — you can start aggregating and connecting many of those apps through the agentic framework and have them present a unified user experience.”
Yeah, you can imagine that in the future, Wassym, leave me out of it. Who decided we needed a “unified user experience” via phone and car? Let phone do the phone shit, and let your car do the car shit. Phone mirroring is great: all the phone things: reminders, music playlists, calendar stuff, navigation, whatever are available through your car, but using the same interface you’ve been using all day, all the data and settings and preferences still there like you like them, just accessible on your dashboard. It’s fine. Let the phone have that. The car doesn’t need it.
Bensaid describes another situation that he thinks reinforces Rivian’s decision to duplicate the jobs of your phone, but really does the opposite:
“This is how we’re able to connect the navigation to Google Calendar, for example. I can go to the assistant now and say, “I want to plan a trip from San Francisco to San Diego, and I want to have two charging stops. I want them to be close to an Italian restaurant. I love Italian food.” The assistant would go and play that, and then I’ll say, “Okay, print the summary, add it to my calendar, and then send it as a text to my wife.”
Again, why is the car’s AI doing this? If this was all just handled on your phone, it could be done before you’re even in the car. The car doesn’t need to be in this loop at all.
This, I think, is the root of the problem. Car software people want the data and eyeball-access that phones have, and unless you clumsily try to force it to happen with this redundant and inane car-AI-as-middleman approach, it won’t happen. And that’s fine. Really, all of the AI in the car – if there must be any – should be behind the scenes. Like, why would you want a command to change drive modes? The car can sense your inputs, and if you’re stomping the throttle and brake hard, switch to a sportier mode. If you’re being gentle, go to eco. Just adapt based on the driver’s inputs, seamlessly. That level of machine learning seems fine.
But who the fuck wants an LLM to talk to when you’re driving? I don’t need some untrustworthy AI making decisions for me about what music I want to listen to or opening the damn trunk or adjusting the HVAC. No one wants this, no one needs this. Just stop.
Honestly, based on the rate of change of technology compared to the lifespan of cars, why would you want to be locked into some complex car UX or LLM, anyway? Sure, you can update software, but the hardware isn’t going to get better over time. The average age of a car in America is over 12 years old. Who is using a 12-year old smartphone? All this crap should be modular and easily swappable.
Bensaid noted that for a lot of these interactions, the computing hardware will be local to the car, in addition to using cloud-based resources. Honestly, either way has drawbacks: local hardware will eventually be unable to run more modern software, and cloud-based solutions are dependent on connectivity and the health/desires of the company. They could shut features down at will, or discontinue them, or make them into subscription services. Why are we okay with any of that?
I guess I should note that there seem to be plenty of people in China that like talking to their cars and AI in general. I guess this is just one of those cases where 500 million plus people are wrong and I’m right. It happens, it’s okay.
We’re going down a bad path. I’m sure Mr.Bensaid is a wonderful man, a smart man and probably a very tender, generous lover, but I think he is woefully misguided when it comes to how people – real, actual people, not AI-deluded dillholes – want to actually interact with their cars.
I’m going to go out on a limb here, but I still think that people want to drive their cars, not have tedious conversations with them. That’s what friends are for, after all.
(top images: YouTube/The Verge, Rivian)
I would guess that the majority of people these days in the Rivian target demos use their phones more than their cars. I do not think that number will go down. The people working on the phones are MUCH better at the logistics of normal tasks he describes in the interview than car UX designers.
Keep your less competent hands off those tasks and concentrate on the bridge between the car specific tasks and the generationally better experience of the personal pocket computer that have had decades now more experience than you have. Ordering your normal coffee is NOT a car task. It sometimes happens in a car but it something happens OUT of your car. There’s your litmus test, if it can ONLY happen in the car, go for it; otherwise, please get the fuck out of the way.
I personally will make purchase decisions based on this and I’m old, good luck with the kids. Quit making shit worse for no better reason than control you vultures.
I been said that Bensaid ain’t no homie of mine. For real, I cannot express how much I do not want this.
In general I do not find AI helpful and hope that bubble pops.
Though, recently Tesla’s new cars reset their terrible Lane Keep Assist on every drive to get some new NHSTA rating. It’s overly sensitive and when you touch the road lines too long, it grabs the steering wheel, and forces you towards the dump truck, bush, or cyclist you are trying to avoid.
Anyway, to disable (every drive) it’s a couple menus deep and quite annoying to get to (every drive). Standard voice commands don’t allow you to disable it and Grok is only good for telling jokes as far as I can tell.
Sooooo, if I could turn off with AI, it could somewhat cancel out the other terrible road “intelligence”.
It comes back to 3 factors, all of which revolve around money. These are all from the viewpoint of an automaker:
I agree with you mostly Torch. Talking to machines is stupid.
Also, my problem with voice command systems is that it shuts out people with speaking disabilities (like mutes). Why should they be denied the proper operation of a car?
I heartily disagree.
The Rivian is a 5000+ pile of junk.
Bensaid comes across as one of the people I want to punch in the mouth just to get them to shut up.
Or how’s this for a voice command: “Wassym. STOP.”
Bad take on their part. I would not consider a new/newer vehicle without CarPlay. Zero interest in the AI integration they describe either. But this is all coming from the company that has you go into a damn screen to move air vents so their idea of UX is awful anyhow.
I think Rivian is pushing this because it looks good to investors, whether or not anyone actually cares about this stuff
Regarding Carplay/AA, I think if a company can make an infotainment that replicates all the functionality people want from Carplay, it would be OK to go without it
It’s always been a shortcut for car companies to drop something in place so they don’t have to figure out how to make a great UX on their own
For companies like Tesla and Rivian, it’s probably less about “control of the pixels on screen” and more about the back-end. Owning the entire stack means it’s a lot easier to integrate features like good EV route planning, battery preconditioning, etc. and make updates to it
For example, if Rivian adds carplay and uses the apple maps version of EV route planning (like in the Mach E) they would have to rely on Apple not to break something in the integration, have a lot less control over updates, adding new functionality and features, etc. because they’d have to rely on Apple
Hey Torch, this resonates with me. On my last trip through the Upper Peninsula, much of it still untouched by modern technology, I started daydreaming about living in a place that didn’t have touchscreen/AI everything. I then started writing a screenplay about an island that shrugged off post Y2K tech and the citizens resorted to an Amish 2K lifestyle. Going through that process made me realize how little we’ve gained in the past 26 years especially compared to what we’ve lost.
I live near silicon valley and nearly every billboard is whatever the latest thing tech companies want to push
Whenever I leave the area, it’s refreshing because I see far more normal billboards, like “Jesus Saves” and “Better Call Saul Goodman” type of stuff
Lately the whole silicon valley culture has been really making me sick. It has infected nearly everything. I realized something recently… that we actually stopped trying to solve problems at some point and pivoted to creating distractions so we could ignore the problems. I don’t think it’s going to work out well for us…but hey a few of us will be MUCH richer.
I don’t want anybody other than a living human talking to me….
I have only one message to our grandkids: I am sorry we f…ed up everything
we cut all the trees, fished all fish, contaiminaed every inch of the planet with plastic…but the car talks to me
oh buddy buddy buddy please just STFU and just copy late90s “full of buttons” interior…. and just see! just see how people will react, how they will parsie the BRAND for all the tactile funtions. HAve you ever watched ASMR shorts on YT? if not, you do it today for next 3 hours. What makes me attached to a car or brand is my interaction. interaction by screen makes every function or command bland and generic.
have you ever used the volume knob control on older BMW radio? try by using your hands and twisting that knob and you will learn somethign today.
or visit W140 interior and just copy….please just copy, you won’t even be blamed…. but please stop stop this non-sense.
My enthusiasm towards Rivian just lost 20 points after this… I am sorry but just like Jony Ive this guy seems to be working in the wrong industry…. he would be amazing at Dyson for example
Rivian: A car company that makes mildly interesting vehicles, with the worst possible ways to control them.