A tug of war is shaping up over who will own and benefit from real-world data generated by vehicles and our interaction with them, said Michael Hainsworth, futurist and keynote at the 2020 CADA Summit. Hainsworth said that drivers will soon recognize that every action in their vehicle will be monitored and their data will be captured, including their driving habits, interactions with the vehicle and its infotainment system.
“These types of things are the 21st century’s oil,” said Michael Hainsworth in an interview with Canadian auto dealer. “That kind of valuable commodity is something that’s worth fighting for.”
Hainsworth is a futurist, and spent 18 years at BNN as a senior anchor, and co-created the world’s first weekly television show dedicated to mobile technology and its impact on society.
Hainsworth said that at the dealership level, big data will inform artificial intelligence algorithms about the entire network of customers and how all of them are operating.
Big data will even exist on an individual vehicle basis based on an individual’s driving habits, and how that impacts things like the need for vehicle maintenance and service. “Being able to use artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to predict failure before it happens is going to be something not just on a fleet basis, or a broad scale basis, but on an individual basis as well,” he said.
“The first time I ignore a warning from my dealership that it’s time to get the car in for maintenance, even if it’s not at a prescribed maintenance level, and it bites me in the butt, I’ll be thankful these machine learning algorithms are working,” said Hainsworth.
Hainsworth predicts a tug of war between dealers and their OEMs over access to real-world consumer and vehicle data.
Hainsworth said he had a conversation with one of the world’s leading experts on artificial intelligence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) about data.
Hainsworth said he told him his daughter was considering becoming a doctor. The expert said his daughter should instead become a data scientist, or better yet a data rights lawyer. “We are going to need a lot of those people in the next fifty years, “ said Hainsworth. “Data is going to be the next frontier.”
He also predicts big technology changes coming to the industry. “We can’t look at technology in isolation, and we can’t look at the impact of that technology in isolation,” said Hainsworth.
“Technology doesn’t change in a vacuum. With technology, it’s not usually one big breakthrough that’s led to massive change. It’s a collection of smaller technologies that have come together to create that next big thing.”
Hainsworth says, for example, that experts from Intel now estimate that when autonomous vehicles are on our roadways, a single vehicle will consume six terabytes of data each via 5G wireless technology. So, a host of technologies that will enable autonomous vehicles wouldn’t be possible without faster technology and communication networks.
Hainsworth is the Executive Producer and Editor-in-Chief of Futurithmic, a documentary series and publication about the impact technology today will have on society in the future.
Other speakers at this year’s event include Frank McKenna, Deputy Chair of TD Bank Group, former Canadian ambassador to the United States and the Premier of New Brunswick; Michael Hainsworth, Former Senior Anchor at Business News Network (BNN); and Christian Bourque, Executive Vice-President and Senior Partner at Leger.
The event is sponsored by TD Auto Finance and will take place at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre in Ontario on February 12, 2020. Visit www.cada.ca to register.
