I guess our car is not our private space anymore, and we are not given a choice when buying a car from Volkswagen.

  •  Thalestr   ( @Thalestr@beehaw.org ) 
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    334 months ago

    I don’t know if this is hilarious or pathetically sad. AI has become the current “must have” craze in the tech world and it’s baffling watching every company try and find a way to shoehorn some form of it into their products and then try and justify its existence.

    Cerence Chat Pro from technology partner Cerence Inc. is the foundation of the new function, which offers a uniquely intelligent, *automotive-grade *ChatGPT integration.

    Why the hell would I want this?

    • AI has become the current “must have” craze

      Specifically LLM chatbots. AI was already in vogue, with companies calling simple hand-made decision trees about as complex as a phone answering menu AI.

      Why the hell would I want this?

      You don’t, investors do. This is SEO for investors. They are looking to invest into LLMs, and as such, news with a company name and AI or LLM in the title will tick off trading bots to buy the stock of the company in question. The “economy” is mostly bots at this stage.

  • So let me get this straight. VW’s US sales (EVs in particular) have failed to meet expectations because people don’t like their overdependence on buggy, outsourced software.

    …and VW’s response is to outsource even more software while incorporating a technology base known for being unreliable.

    • Well yes, if management isn’t seeing the success they planed to see with a C level’s brilliant strategy, the only possible reason is that they failed to implement it hard enough after all./s

    • They have a knack for building cars that people want, are usually late to new developments, but then blow the competition out of the water in terms of sales, because their cars (prior to the infotainment debacles and cost-cutting measures of recent years) tend to be extremely polished, are comfortable, economical and handle very well. The Golf GTI in particular is perhaps the perfect embodiment of the company’s capabilities.

      Personally, I think some of their past clout, especially in regards to quality, has been overstated though. We’ve considered new VWs long before recent quality problems, but they left a worse impression than comparable French cars and in absolutely every way. Still, they have been very consistent for a long time and appealed to buyers with a “no experiments” kind of mindset, who just want a predictable rolling appliance.

      • Yeah I knew someone was going to respond to my rhetorical “I have no idea” and explain it like I actually care. It’s like saying I have no idea why people buy Microsoft or use Twitter despite them being despicable. Obviously there are lot of things about them that a lot of people like. Obviously not everyone knows about all the despicable things these companies have done and continue to do. Obviously not everyone would care enough to stop using them even if they did know.

        But it still frustrates me. I wish the world was a place where companies like VW couldn’t possibly exist because their own employees would never let them do the things they did, much less their customers or the regulators who are supposed to protect us despite ourselves. But, alas, we do not. And I have no idea why. (<— Rhetorical! Nobody has to try to explain why.)

  • I have an ID.4, and their software is pretty trash. I can’t imaging adding GPT will help with anything at all. Good news is that Android Auto works really well on their vehicles. The only reason I have to use the VW is climate.

  • I have been spending a ton of time with Chat GPT 4 and really losing faith in what it can do reliably. Like I guess it could be fine if it is used like Google Assistant but I wouldn’t trust it about anything important. Been doing math refreshers and the AI just made up a solution that was totally wrong. After I called it out it just added another number randomly into the equation and wouldn’t acknowledged it lol. The point I am making man it is getting rushed into everything when it can’t be relied on.