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 don’t want my car to know what I am yelling at it.
“Is that what you think? Draining linked bank account and self driving off a cliff”
Look, If we’re going down this road, I Demand that Sigourney Weaver sits in the passenger seat to talk to the computer!
This is the purest gold COTD …. Someone on staff needs to recognized this and explain it to everyone else.
“Look, I have one job on this lousy ship. It’s stupid, but I’m going to do it, okay?”
Sure,..sure..
….so who’s gonna occupy DSM in 5 years?
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders? I’m in there a few times already!
Really? What for?
EDIT: I interpreted that as your work having been featured in it. I see now. Yeah. Same.
What have you got against the Des Moines airport?
…touche.
The Normal location? Another AI data center, of course!
Literally no one wants AI in anything. It’s a fucking disaster and it’s only going to get worse. The only people pushing this objectively evil, dystopian hell technology are fascists who have piles of money tied up in tech stonks and delusional brain boiled tech lizards who also have piles of money tied up in tech stonks and in all likelihood are also fascists.
If we all woke up tomorrow and discovered Silicon Valley mysteriously disappeared nothing of value would be lost. The best time for this bubble to pop was yesterday. The second best time is right now. The third best time is 60 seconds from now, and so on.
I feel like every day I find some app or web service has a pop up sharing the exciting news about their new AI and encouraging me to “start exploring.” I would LOVE for these companies to publish the % of ppl who click “dismiss” and how long it takes them.
I know some people would call me a Luddite or say I hate AI because it’s a tech invented after I turned 35, but some of the highest level of people in AI are truly warped individuals. Not only that, but all signs are pointing to it about to drive the US and possibly even the world off an economic cliff by decade’s end.
But it’s just another example of how Silicon Valley has just been grasping at straws trying to create the next world-changing technology and it just isn’t happening.
You just gave me the thought that “dead data centers” are gonna be the new dead malls. Can’t wait to see all the innovative new uses ppl come up with…
I bet we can repurpose them to run Doom in new and interesting ways!
I say it’s important to emphasize: The technology itself is not objectively evil or bad, and this is important.
Large Language Models are a potentially useful technology that can be designed and used in an ethical way that benefits both individuals and society.
The problem is that the people driving the development and use of AI have brought about the worst possible implementation of the technology, the worst use-cases, and the worst vision of a future where AI forcibly occupies and subverts every element of free society.
It’s easy to unconsciously anthropomorphize AI (and the Silly Cons encourage it), so it absorbs some of the rightful anger people have.
All anger should be directed at the people, without wasting a single drop on machines that have no will to act.
What he really means to say is that they want your data, and they don’t want Apple or Google to have a piece of it.
AND your subscription fee. After all, someone has to pay for the infrastructure they have to build out to sell your data.
Rivian is the second last car I’d ever consider purchasing.
More stupid fucking shit! I swear if AI (Artificial Idiocy) was some kind of living being, I would shoot them and throw them in the TRUNK…w/ the dead hookers! Ha ha
(That’s another reason why land yachts are so awesome)
I have zero need or desire for Apple Play or Android WhateverIt’sCalled in a vehicle. Heck, I have zero desire for any screens at all on the dashboard, except for maybe an LCD display for the radio showing the clock and/or radio station. If there has to be a mandated back-up camera monitor, put it in the rearview mirror.
When I’m driving a vehicle, I just want to, you know, drive. And shift my own gears if it’s a gasoline or diesel-powered vehicle. I’m also fine with using a hand-crank to roll up and down the windows.
No wonder the average vehicle costs more than $50K nowadays.
The real reason the average vehicle costs more than $50k is because people will pay it. They will stretch to make the payment ($1,000+ a month!!!) or extend the loan out to 6 or 7 years.
Car prices will continue to increase until the demand decreases enough that the higher price produces lower profit. For now, the higher price makes them more money, so all systems are go; probably until the next recession.
I think people pay it b/c in this country you need a car and there are no alternatives (at least not new). I don’t think people like that cars now cost what they do.
I’m mostly with you here, but I use the back-up camera and the mirror when I’m backing up, so putting it in the mirror wouldn’t be great for me.
I once rode in what I think was a Toyota, and I remember the rearview mirror just having a little 3″X3″-ish square show up one side or the other when the vehicle was in reverse. You still had the remainder of the mirror to use.
Something like that would work for me.
Yeah, that might actually be convenient.
I had a Toyota pickup with that postage stamp image in the rear view mirror. The only that that did was tell me the truck was in reverse. There was absolutely no useful information conveyed in the image.
1. This is incredibly fucking stupid. “I have a bag in the front” is not the same as “please open the front.” It means – and I feel pretty confident about this – that the speaker (“I”) has a bag in the front [of the vehicle].” It could be a garbage bag, a bag of cocaine, a duffel full of cash from a successful robbery. It still does not mean “open the frunk.”
2. This is still really fucking stupid. “Touching things is too hard, but dictating a detailed itinerary, fact & logic checking it, and forwarding it to a distribution list is totally the type of thing you should be doing while driving” is one of the profoundly stupid conclusions to a thing I’ve ever heard. It’s a weird technophile autoerotic ouroboros of making up problems that can only be solved by more of and more complex technologies, i.e., worse problems than those originally set out to be solved.
3. Respectfully, Torch, I absolutely do not want a vehicle that spontaneously decided to change fundamental aspects of how it drives without my discretion. I can’t shift faster than a DCT, I can’t beat ABS or TCS, I don’t want to go back to a distributor for ignition. I’m aware of turbo lag and VVT and cylinder deactivation*. But those systems don’t hop in like an automotive Clippy and say “hey, looks like you’re tearing ass on the back roads! I’ve changed the power and braking profiles to be more aggressive, good luck! I’ll be ready to chat when you want to finish writing this resume!”
*Edit: added a “cylinder deactivation” though I’m not necessarily trying to be exhaustive with dynamic technologies.
I think now that vehicles have electronic accelerator pedals, this kind of on-the-fly adaptation is already happening. I say “I think” b/c it’s subtle enough I’ve never noticed. Let’s keep it that way.
I’m of the strong opinion that any touch screen device in my car should not attract any attention whilst driving and it should not be interacted with at all.
Dean from Supernatural said it best: “A car should do one thing, drive”
Can’t wait to see Rivian wrecks on the side of the freeway because the AI overheard you talking about your suitcase or golf clubs or etc and popped the frunk at 75mph, flinging the hood over your windscreen.
Also, this means RIP to any prospect about getting an R3.
I cancelled my R2 reservation because it was still going to be too big for what my wife wanted, but was very excited for the R3. Less so now.
Ditto, the R3 was one of the very few upcoming vehicles that seems like it could be worth buying, but if this is the path Rivian is going, everything they make is getting firmly crossed off the list.
At the risk of sounding old, I just want to listen to my music and run google maps on the screen.
So much this. I don’t want to think about my email at all while I’m driving. I’m supposed to be paying attention to driving. glancing at a map or listening to spoken directions fine. Let my punch up a tune or playlist from my music library. That’s about it. For everything else car-related, there should be physical controls. And if it’s not car-related, I shouldn’t be focusing on it because I’m driving.
If a car has an FM radio (preferably with an AUX input) and working AC, it pretty much has the minimum requirements for me. Unfortunatley, you can’t buy a new car so sparsely accessorized, so the average MSRP tops $50K now. 🙁
Unfortunately, what worked well in Android Auto got completely fucked up with the Gemini integration. I used to be able to press the button on the steering wheel and say “Play Me the News” and the 4 news sources that I had would play. Now, it gives me a fucking AI Summary of the news.
I choose different sources for my news (CBC, NRP, FOX, BBC) so I could get different viewpoints. Now I don’t even trust what it is giving me.
Screw you AI.
Truly the worst integration. Prior to the new dumber Gemini integration I could push the button on the wheel, say a place name, and Google maps would ask if I wanted to navigate there. Now Gemini will spout a lukewarm wikipedia imitation of any place you say, taking over a minute before asking if you’d like to navigate there. What I now have to do is say “Navigate to [place]” when I push that button. It’s like they didn’t test the thing at all. And yes, I tried to have it adjust on the fly on a route recently and it was abysmal. Totally worthless half-baked tech.
Unless it’s KITT, I don’t want to be speaking to my car.
“I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
Voice command seemed so cool in Star Trek.
Dave: Hey Rivian, adjust port air vent 3 degrees to starboard.
Adjust center port air vent 5 degrees to port with a -5 degree declination.
Riv: I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.
Dave: Hey Rivian, Adjust center port air vent 5 degrees to port with a -5 degree declination.
Rive: I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that. The center port air vent is at maximum port deflection.
Dave: Hey Rivian, up your tailpipe.
Riv: I’m sorry Dave, I’m fully electric and have no tailpipe.
I still don’t think these tech bros realize that the Star Trek computer was a written character. Sigh. The fact that it infers wild amounts of context and always happens to respond just so is completely lost on them.
reminds me of futuristic movies that show characters pulling up holographic displays and using full body gestures instead of a keyboard and mouse. Oh and every time you do anything it makes a different beep.
Please please don’t let this be next.
A phone is great for app / software related things, as unlike a car, you can bring it into a store, an office, your home, etc. without causing major damage or vehicular manslaughter.
A car, unlike a phone, can drive you different places.
Maybe these devices can stick to their metaphorical, and occasionally physical lanes.
Forgot to mention but the Podcast host Nilay Patel has an excellent article about ‘Software Brain’: https://www.theverge.com/podcast/917029/software-brain-ai-backlash-databases-automation.
The last paragraph is a good summary:
And so the tech industry is rushing forward to put AI everywhere at enormous cost — energy, emissions, manufacturing capacity, the ability to buy RAM — and locked into the narrow framework of software brain without realizing they are also asking people to be fundamentally less human. They then sit around wondering why everyone hates them.
I think it took about a day for me to replace Gemini back to Google assistant when Gemini was forced upon me a few weeks ago. I use it for one thing… to enter an address into Waze if I’m driving. I don’t need a damn conversation.
Our 330e has voice commands and I can tell it “I’m cold” and it will adjust the temp higher. But it’s still faster to hit the button and adjust the temperature up.
Both android auto and carplay do a great job (even compared to just 5 years ago) of finding a destination for Maps when I’m driving and it’s voice only through my car’s microphone. But if I’m stationary i’m still going to type it because then it’s right 100% of the time. And 80% of the time I type it into my phone while walking to my car and it just pops up and I don’t have to interact with the car at all.
Perhaps Mr Bensaid is just a very lonely man? You should all invite him to shrimp parties or whatever. Once he makes a friend or two he will get it.
Send him a fleshlight—if he doesn’t already have a collection, I bet he’d love it.
Yes, one with a built-in AI agent!
He’ll be able to say to it “hey, I left my suitcase in the front trunk, wink wink”
Do they have extra-small fleshlights?
“Oh, here’s a silicone garlic peeler for you”
can you get them with AI???
I just put myself on another watch list to find out that whole AI sex bots are … ahem … coming out in the near future.
“Do they come in lizard”?
“Yes, sir, we don’t advertise it, but it makes up much of our preorders from affluent technology clients. They also come with a human-like face mask option. The prototypes had issues with drooping—you might have seen Kellyanne Conway? She was the most visible—well, we’ve fixed that with a skeletal shrink wrap effect that clings tighter. If you’re interested, you’ll want order option GLP-1. Our longterm test prototypes are successfully running all over Hollywood.”
He doesn’t need that, remember?
“probably a very tender, generous lover”
Ha ha ha ha
Watching people completely roll over to AI and let it completely absorb them and just about every aspect of their lives since 2023 has been one of the most terrifying things I’ve witnessed. People went from hating AI and fearing a future Skynet or Cylon invasion, to openly asking AI questions about their personal lives and even trusting answers from fucking chat bots. All while contributing to the utter destruction of our planet and overlord government surveillance via the datacenters… and most people seem completely okay with all of it and will continue using their stupid Chatslop app to ask what the weather is.
We are so absolutely fucked. Stick to your Apple car play and Android auto
I’d like to subscribe to your newsletter.
It feels like a feedback loop. The more you use AI, the less you need to use critical thinking skills. A few years in, there’s no need to think critically about AI anymore.
There’s a podcast I’ve listened to for the last 5 years or so, the QAA podcast (Q-Anon Anonymous), they did a terrifying episode on people with AI “partners”, which is sad and scary, but the really terrifying part is how fast you can get an AI “companion” to suggest you do the following; cut off contact with family or friends, break the law, off yourself. Can the AI companies prevent this? Yes, of course, but adding those guardrails reduces interaction, so, hey, ya gotta break some eggs to sell a bunch of omelets.
Just doing the Tech Overlords work.
It’s long but it’s worth every second to watch this. He goes on a month-long experiment to see if AI can make him psychotic. The premise sounds funny (his usual shtick is comedy) but it gets real scary real fast.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRjgNgJms3Q
“The final north star I have is having voice [controls] become the primary means of interaction with the vehicle.”
I can’t stress this enough – I don’t want to interact with my vehicle. I want to get in it and drive to where I am going and get out of it. The “interactions” that would benefit from talking to my car are interactions that either:
1) I want to be able to with muscle memory (lights, wipers, radio) and not have to think about at all or
2) shit that you created as “features” that aren’t necessary and are mostly just distracting. If they are done right, I should never have to touch them. If you are going to give me automatic climate control, I want to never touch it (which is often true, but not often enough). Rain sensing wipers should only get set to “on”. Auto headlights should know that it’s fucking raining or snowing out and turn themselves on.
Voice commands are at best a substitution for good UI, and at worst an intentional “feature” making cars worse for the sake of selling innovation
100% this. Also, these buffons seem to forget there are times when you are driving that you don’t want to speak or make any sound. Like say a baby is sleeping and the last thing you want to do is shout repeatedly at your stupid car “turn the fucking heat down 5 degrees or I’ll crash this into the wall”.
Good point.
Or turn the heat down while on a call.
Or change the radio station without disrupting my upcoming GPS instructions.
Or interrupt a conversation amongst people in the car.
Or just generally get very distracted because you just wanted the fan speed turned down 1 tick because it’s gotten warm but it changed the temp by 5 degrees and now the AC kicked on despite it being 12 degrees outside and now you’ve been staring down at the screen for 20 seconds trying to fix it and whoops that was a red light.
Android Auto and CarPlay solve an actual problem that car owners want! They can get into their car and have their map app of choice, their audio apps of choice and all of their content and contacts available without having to duplicate all of these efforts with their car’s crappy infotainment system.
Car makers try to end-run around these apps because it prevents them from being able to monetize their customers by selling their data and charging subscription fees.
And do you know what I don’t want to have to do in my car? TALK TO IT. Also, this future which has LLMs eating up other companies IP and using it for their own uses forget the fact that Apple Google Uber etc. would have to actually be on board to allow this to happen, and I doubt they are going to just blindly let their services be turned into an LLM content farm.
Android Auto and CarPlay solve an actual problem that car owners want!
Right, it’s just an extension app, not something new.. I mean there are some actions I wish it could access, but I’m not looking to create yet another environment, likely one I have zero control of, to deal with..
Yes! And if you have more than one vehicle, the best thing about CarPlay and android auto is you get the same user interface the same settings, the same favorites, the same contacts, the same screen everythingregardless of the brand model or age of vehicle? Also great when you hop in the rental.
screw AI.
“Gretchen, stop trying to make fetch happen! It’s not going to happen!”
So I push a button on my steering wheel about 2 blocks from the house: “open garage door”. Can I have your PIN? she asks (she is Ilsa) “WXYZ”, OK opening the main door..
That’s plenty, because you know what else happens?
Someone on my podcast says “google” and Ilsa has a stroke trying to understand what they want to google. Ilsa is lovely, but her abilities are limited, and you know what? Good. She should only speak when spoken too and have the most limited access to operating my vehicle.
No CarPlay/AndroidAuto and agentic AI?
At this point I don’t know how the car drives, but I just don’t care, I ain’t buying one from Rivian.
Slate should probably pay this guy for the PR work he’s doing for Slate trucks LOL
Slate will make a fortune selling cars with a tagline of “no voice controls” or “no AI” to every boomer, gen-X, and millennials like me that are just tired of this shit. If it had a screen, it better have android auto and carplay. Otherwise don’t give me a fucking screen, I’ll get a phone mount. Give me the couple of buttons and knobs I need and then just stop.
I’ve been waiting for a car that has nothing but a factory universal phone mount and bluetooth audio with a multifunction wheel (volume, play, skip) for infotainment. Until then, any car without a DIN slot is not a serious long-term option.
They’d make a fortune from Gen Z too, if we had one.
Ironically, I find it’s older people in my life who are most on board with adopting voice command tech. I cannot tell you how many times my father has cussed out at siri after she fumbled his vague prompt about the weather or how old so-and-so celebrity is.
Same. I think, to older people, it’s novel and futuristic. To everyone else, it’s incessant, ubiquitous tedium they can’t get away from, not even on the drive home if scumbags like this guy set a standard. Maintaining a sane, healthy life is about balance. I can’t help but think, combined with everything else of modern society, that keeping us imbalanced and stressed is by design.
AI companies have literally done research and found that the best way to get more people using AI more often is to target low AI literacy. People who know the tech use it less often, for fewer things.
Old people who don’t know better and babies who they hope will never know better are the prime demographics.
man that’s dark.
Sure is.
Stop dissing on us old people, you pipsqueak. With the wisdom of age, for some of us, comes ever finer tuning of our bullshit meters.
Hahahahahahahahahaha. What an idiot. Wassym Bensaid, that is. Not Jason. Torch gets it. Just last weekend I was in the mountains on a highway (not a dirt road in BFE or anything) and lost cellular signal for about a half mile. That’s a long time to wait to do a simple task if the entirety of the AI is not onboard the car which it seems unlikely to be. I swear these tech bros think that their testing grounds of Silicon Valley is representative of the entire country. They are making products they want and not what everyone else wants or needs.
“Lost network connection, turning vehicle around…”
“Lost network connection, stopping. Please restore network connection to continue.”
Rivan: we want you to explore the wilderness, but only where you have 5 bars of cell service. Otherwise your car bricks.
So many “services” ASSume you are always in cellular service range. It seems like when I get 20 miles from home, there’s no service or spotty service. That’s why I have music stored on my phone and want to use actual GPS based Satnav. Only momma’s car has satellite radio (and even that doesn’t work all the time in the mountains).
And they’re dumb f’n weirdos who’ve been told they’re brilliant and gifted for simply existing, so everything they think is cool is completely different from anyone within a range of normal that exists in a space outside that of a sideshow freak.