Event Recap: The Social Impacts of Bringing Fleets of Autonomous Vehicles to the World
Earlier this month, we hosted our first meetup on “The Future of Mobility: The Social Impacts of Bringing Fleets of Autonomous Vehicles to the World” at our rideOS HQ. Held on our terrace at the tail end of a rare, SF heat wave, the warm weather worked in our favor as over 70 guests enjoyed refreshing drinks and snacks coupled with an engaging conversation on the ethics of self-driving cars, and their larger impact on society. We brought together Justin Ho (our CEO), Mike Vernal (Sequoia Capital), and Renata Quintini (Lux Capital) for a panel discussion around some of the more hard-hitting, nuanced questions related to mobility and social good, specifically focusing on how autonomous mobility services can bring positive change to a variety of communities.
The conversation focused first on predictions for when exactly we would see autonomous vehicle (AV) fleets come to market, and the challenges that exist around bringing this technology to the world at scale. Across the board, our panelists agreed that while many timelines have been shifted to the right, there’s continued investment pouring into the industry and significant progress being made by a number of key players in the space. While the technology is still catching up, it’s clear that interest in bringing autonomy to the world is still high.
This was the perfect segue to our core theme: the social effects of autonomous vehicles, specifically how fleets of AVs at scale can benefit specific social groups. The cross-section between forms of cutting-edge technology and social justice can be fascinating to explore. In general, we build technology to make our lives easier: automation means that we are able to reduce or eliminate human overhead, but oftentimes there are unforeseen impacts of technology that are difficult to predict.
An example that was brought up in our panel was Facebook, and some of the data privacy issues that have come up in recent years. With autonomous vehicles, it’s our responsibility to focus and build this tech to build up communities rather than tear them down, and there’s surprisingly huge potential for AV tech to reduce inequality in communities. Access to reliable transportation is often a huge barrier to lifting families and entire communities out of poverty. In fact, in a study of upward mobility based at Harvard, commuting time appeared as the single greatest factor in the odds of emerging out of poverty. With fleets of autonomous vehicles at scale, we have the potential to make transportation extremely affordable and ubiquitous, as well as eliminate the human bias that oftentimes goes into city and transportation planning.
Self-driving cars also have the ability to provide unparalleled mobility and access to the elderly and people living with disabilities. Current transportation and mobility initiatives oftentimes ignore these underrepresented communities, but this can change dramatically with autonomous vehicles. Suddenly, we no longer need to retrofit cars to be wheelchair accessible — we have the potential to build technology that inherently accommodates for these needs. Autonomous shuttle services in retirement communities can be an affordable and easy way to grant mobility to the elderly. This isn’t even taking into account the potential for autonomous and electric vehicles at scale to combat the effects of climate change. These two new forms of transport working in harmony with each other — along with city infrastructure that supports them — could completely revolutionize the way we move. This is without mentioning the potential for autonomous vehicles to reduce congestion in cities and greatly reduce traffic and commuting times for people everywhere, benefits which have wide-reaching consequences and can drastically improve our quality of life.
Of course, there’s a long way to go before we see these benefits come to light, but technology that is focused on social good (like what rideOS is building), is key to making this future a reality. There will be unintended consequences as with all technologies such as the loss of jobs as drivers become obsolete. But as a society, we have to figure out ways to combat these issues, while optimizing for benefiting the most number of people, in as many communities as possible. At rideOS, we believe that the safe, global rollout of self-driving vehicles has the ability to bring a tremendous amount of good to the world, and we’re excited to drive forward this future.
Thank you to everyone who attended our first successful meetup. The questions, discussions, and general interest from all the attendees was awesome to see. We will definitely be hosting more events in the future, please follow us on social media for updates!
