Oh man, I gotta get going. Where’s the driver?
I need a driver. Come on! Are you the driver?
Of course. Where do you wanna go to?
Oh my God!
Hey Guy!
Let’s go see Hong Kong!
Absolutely. I just get my safety-belt on.
Alrighty!
So why are you in Hong Kong?
That’s very easy. Here in these days is the RISE conference.
The biggest – if you want – digital conference here in Asia,
founded only four years ago.
And as digitalization is one of the most important topics for us,
that’s the place to be.
Did you see anything that really excites you there?
Well, I walked the stands. A lot of start-ups.
There are very ambitious people, very excited.
Not all of them will change the world, but some might.
And, of course, the main topic these days is artificial intelligence.
Yes. Where will people truly encounter AI –
in cars, in their life, wherever?
When I look at our company,
there is basically no area which would not be affected by AI.
Whether it’s production where we do predictive maintenance
based on data, whether it’s in R&D where, of course,
we’re getting much more powerful tools to develop cars faster,
simulate, use the data collection of a huge amount of cars
to come up with better solutions.
You go on the sales side where the cars are standing shorter on the lot,
they are better equipped, and the customers are more satisfied.
But then, of course, when it comes to product the most ambitious task
is to make cars autonomous.
And this is impossible without artificial intelligence.
Why is it impossible?
What is AI doing that makes autonomous driving possible?
I mean, you cannot have an autonomous car which works rule-based,
where you just say: well, when there are yellow lines like here,
that’s a pedestrian way, so you have to stop.
And when nobody is crossing the line,
then after 3.5 seconds you start again.
The world is far to differentiated,
too flexible that you could do all of that based on specific rules.
So, you must develop a car, based on AI,
which is capable of learning itself – within certain guidelines,
trained by humans, exposed to situations where it can learn.
Perhaps artificial intelligence is not really the best word.
Probably machine learning is a better expression.
Will we have it so that the car will recognize the facial expression
and maybe the emotion of another driver?
That is certainly a very tough one.
First of all, cars can communicate.
– There will be Internet of Things. – With each other!
And they already realize that the next car is
preparing to start before you can see it.
But still in the face you can see the planned intention,
and that might be even before the car shows any technical action.
We are certainly making progress on that field as well to be
as good as a human being in interpreting faces and what they express.
We have quite some way to go,
but we are moving in this direction as well.
What happens when there’s snow on the camera?
What happens? You know, like a real practical thing.
Of course, all our cameras are heated.
And, of course, where the situation is such that you need a wiper,
we have a wiper. So, we have to make sure, of course,
that these cameras work in all conditions.
Sure, the first autonomous cars will not be operated
in Denver in the middle of winter at night,
but step by step we have to work with all conditions.
In this perfect world where cars are connected,
and they are autonomous, and they’re shared and electric,
how do you view the design of cities and homes changing?
I mean, the most obvious change is that these autonomous cars
don’t have to hang around and wait for their driver to come back.
They have a higher use rate.
In this time, they don’t stand around anyway.
And if they’re not needed they can go places
where they don’t bother anybody.
And therefore, you don’t have to look for parking space
in the design of a city. A significant change.
On top of that of course, the traffic flow can be much more constant.
The cars will interact with the infrastructure.
They know that the signal will turn red in a minute from now
and they adjust their speed accordingly.
They know where there is a congestion where they better take a way around,
much better than your navigation system can tell you today.
So, there are many areas where with a smaller amount of cars
you can transport a higher amount of people with less use of space and time.
When our founders invented the car, this was really a revolution.
And it gave people the freedom of movement. They became independent.
– Right. – Now we’re extending that to almost everybody.
Whether you’re young, whether you’re old,
whether you’re in some form or the other disabled,
or whether even you wanna drink alcohol…
God forbid, yeah!
This doesn’t constraint or reduce your mobility by using autonomous cars.
And therefore, this is another step of independence for even
more people than cars can give today.
So, I don’t know about you, Dieter, but let’s get something to eat!
I didn’t have breakfast, so I’m certainly hungry.
I guess we’re asking Mercedes where to take us for a good breakfast.
I don’t need AI for that. I can show you a great place!
So, we take human intelligence and experience? We take human intelligence.
That’s a good idea!
I’s “A Guy”, not AI!
I posted on LinkedIn that I would be meeting with you in Hong Kong
and one of the most common questions was the moral issue.
Like: People think you have to train AI
to decide who to hit if you’re gonna hit somebody.
Or how does this work? What’s the morality of artificial intelligence?
You don’t teach the robot to pick one to collide with.
The car will do everything possible to avoid the collision,
but if it’s inevitable it does not pick “I better go right”
or “I better go left”. But ultimately it will
hit something without making a choice.
Ok.
So of course, in general, it’s not just about cars.
In general, the interaction between robots and humans
we as society have to deal with and discuss
if and where there are ethical questions and how to answer them.
I was also asked kind of the opposite question.
Let’s say you’re in an AMG. And it’s a 100 km/h speed limit.
AI is telling you 100 km/h. But you wanna stand on it.
What happens? What does AI do?
Well, as long as you don’t talk about a robo-taxi,
where the people sitting in are really the passengers
and not driving the car, in any other car which has autonomous capabilities
the human is always in ultimate control.
So, if you decide to violate the law, it’s up to you.
But you have to live with the consequences.
Yeah. Related to that question,
people around you could do something stupid, right?
And AI would react faster than a human to that, right?
That is absolutely right.
It has all these sensors and it has reaction times which are fractions
of the reaction of humans. Still physics apply!
So, when you have a certain speed and a certain mass,
it takes some distance to come to a stop.
And if that distance is not given, then AI can’t help.
But up to this limit you can do much more than any human could do.
Do you wanna turn a hundred years old? You have to buy ginger!
That’s not like buying an apple!
No no no! You can’t eat it right now.
8 dollar.
8 dollar?
Yah.
Ok. Thank you. Thank you! It’s good! It’s yours!
Thank you!
Now you have to take care of that stuff.
I will treasure this forever.
Look, that’s a shower head. D’oh!
That must be! Ssssh!
What is it?
Not exactly Austin, Texas.
No, no! Slightly different.
But fortunately, the world is not homogeneous…
Yah!
– That would be boring. – This is “South by Southeast” here.
Yeah!
For this future world of autonomous, electric… you know,
all the good stuff… if somebody said:
Dieter, you can have anything you want to make this happen faster,
what would you want?
I would say the biggest hurdle we’re having is connectivity.
I mean we’re talking about the Internet of Things,
but this requires an internet.
And these are mobile devices, so: we neeeed, we need a network!
Go for it and let us connect these vehicles,
as we can’t use the capabilities of these cars.
And therefore… that can’t be our task.
These are very, very smart vehicles.
They can talk with each other if somebody puts up a line.
Clearly, you’re an optimist about the technology…
what’s gonna happen with cars, so… do you see any real limits?
Well, hardly any.
Our people are so smart and with AI we can accomplish so much, so:
hard to imagine a nut they couldn’t crack, but…
Well, here might be one: Hey Mercedes!
How can I help you?
Couldn’t you tell us a joke?
Sorry, my engineers were German!
You see?