Discover Different World Views While Driving with Ford

Introduction

In the future, people will spend more time chasing their busy daily lives and become more dependent on cars. On the other hand, meaningless time in the car would increase in a mundane routine, but there would be not enough time to reflect. We believe that AI can intervene the mundane routine in the car and help the drivers to spend more meaningful time while driving.

In this exhibition page, we will try to give you an impression on our concept: Discovering Different World Views While Driving with Ford. Let us guide you through the questions: what, how and why, which summarizes our process and finalization of the concept.

What

The concept involves an interaction that facilitates a way for drivers to reflect on themselves in different levels of intensity, while driving. During their daily commute, they will come across visual experiences that they can choose to engage with.

As AI shows different subjective truths at increasing levels of ?intensity?, the drivers collect different ?impressions? which leads to different world views.

• A sample user scenario

  

  1. While driving on their mundane commute, particularly in slow traffic, the user can decide to reflect on their personal bubble a bit.

  2. The user chooses the intensity of ?impressions? depending on how much they want to be confronted by the AI.

     

  3. The driver notices ?gem? icons lighting up on the front window which are integrated to their road view. The gem gets brighter while the car gets closer to the icon. The driver can choose to get immersed in this new world view brought by the gem icon, by squeezing the steering wheel. They don?t know the content until this interaction with the steering wheel.

  4. The driver experiences a mixed reality scene on their front window depending on the intensity level they chose.

  5. The user has the opportunity to ask the car why they are seeing this and how is this view derived by the AI through simply asking a question out loud.

  6. As they pass by the specific location of the gem, the front view turns back to normal.

  7. More of these gem icons would be located on the roads and the drivers can choose to be immersed in different world views.

• What these world views can be?

  • Eyesight of a color blind person (low intensity)

  • Possible future views of specific locations (medium intensity)
    • How the global warming is going to effect a specific place
    • A dystopian future scenario
    • A new architecture style for the city

  • Labelings on the people around,

  • generated according to the user?s data

How

While driving, AI will suggest these generated impressions which are different for each level, using a different dataset.

Different levels

• First level: uses general data to generate simple, non-personal mixed reality scenes.

• Second level: a future scene based on some predetermined locations are shaped by AI, using data from your community and area, but nothing personal.

• Third level: Your personal data will be used and interpreted by AI to show you how AI thinks you would interpret the scene in front of you, simply annotating the environment in the form of text.

Why

We are all surrounded by our personal bubbles that constantly reinforce the already existing world view we have. Currently, AI is further supporting this biases by showing us the content that we already agree and familiar with. However, we believe that AI could serve for a bigger purpose by slightly confronting people with what they already believe.

We show three different levels not necessarily because we aim to have this in our concept, but to see how people will respond to them, and how they would use them.

• Meaning for the society

  In a future context, we see a greater divide in biases, shaped by our increasingly manipulated subjective truth exaggerated by AI. This brings an unnatural and unnecessary division in society that will have impact on our daily lives.

  In the context of moving through a physical space, and a constant change in scenery and stimuli, the car can provide a unique opportunity for users to change their worldview in a very literal way.

  In this exhibition we aim to show our current vision: a vehicle that affords breaking the users? bubble.

• Meaning for the users

  Drivers spend a huge time in the car especially when commuting to/from work in the heavy traffic. We believe this time could be used more meaningfully where the driver discovers and makes reflection on different world views. This reflection would connect them better with the society and the environment that they live in.

• Meaning for Ford

  We propose a way for Ford to reevaluate the car?s position in the future.

  In the future, we see the car as a meaningful, personal space for someone, not just a vehicle to get from point A to point B. In this project we explore how AI can support this goal, and what "trustworthy AI" can mean in this context.

  This interaction will take place in slow traffic, every day, mundane commutes. Our explorations revealed that people like to use this time to reflect on themselves, and their familiar surroundings.

  Where we take a provocative approach is the intensity of reflection: we believe that in a future context, there will be an increasing need for challenging our own beliefs. Ford provides a way to do that through self reflection.

For further information on how we ended up with this concept, check the process behind !

Terminology

1. What does ?Meaningful route? mean?
   1. The route that can break the bubbles?

2. impressions(what, something drivers can perceive) ? gems(how)

3. (What, Cause) worldviews: Each person?s thoughts, values, beliefs and vision on life
   1. People are in the same world with different perspectives, and these thoughts lead to different worldviews.

4. (metaphorical impact) breaking bubbles: discovering new perspectives surrounded by the drivers

5. (Actual impact of the prototype) reflecting on yourself:

6. intensity: ??