Who are these people who want to talk to their car to make it do everything? Who are they, where are they, and what the hell is their problem? And, perhaps more importantly, why is one of these woefully misguided people in charge of Rivian’s software and human-machine experience? And why are they so eager to deeply integrate AI “agentic” bullshit into cars?
I’m asking these questions because of an interview done on The Verge’s podcast Decoder that featured Wassym Bensaid, Rivian’s Chief Software Officer, the same man who once said that physical buttons for car controls are an “anomaly.” Oy. I can already tell I’m going to be cranky about all of this. Bensaid also has stated that “I think the car is actually a fantastic environment for AI,” and that “The final north star I have is having voice [controls] become the primary means of interaction with the vehicle.” So, it’s pretty clear where Bensaid stands: he wants a car without physical buttons, and an AI that you talk to controlling everything.
To me, such a car sounds like a technological triumph that I would be more than happy to roll off a cliff.
It’s also worth remembering that Rivian is one of those companies that makes you control where your HVAC vents are blowing by swiping at a touch screen with a little picture of a dashboard on it, inches from the actual dashboard vents. You know, like how an idiot would choose to control where air blows.
But let’s get back to this AI agent business that Bensaid is so hot on. This is part of why Rivian is so against integrating Apple CarPlay or Android Auto into their cars, even though so many people seem to want that, with many buyers considering it a requirement for any new car they may buy. From Rivian’s point of view, phone mirroring systems like CarPlay or Android Auto are bad because, according to Bensaid,
“The challenge with screen mirroring solutions is that they take over every single pixel in the car, and that’s not the way we see ourselves interacting with our users.”
… which is just a PR-massaged way of saying they don’t want to give up their screen real estate to a company they don’t control. Instead, Rivian –like a number of other automakers – would much rather you only use their own in-house UX for your interactions with the car, and in Rivian’s case, it looks like this will soon become far more voice-focused. As Bensaid says in the podcast,
“I think we are on the cusp of something really big. When you think about it, you’re in a car, you’re driving, you’re focused on the road. So, in theory, the primary interface with which you should be interacting with the car is actually voice. The only reason that drivers and consumers do not interact with the car through voice is that, to put it really bluntly, the technology has been broken. That’s really the beauty of what we have now with the technology disruption coming with foundational models.”
See, I’d have to disagree here. Even if you’re focused on the road, that doesn’t mean voice should be the “primary interface” with which you should be interacting with your car. Driving is a physical task; the primary interface is, and has always been, and should always be physical. Steering, braking, using muscle memory to move your hand to controls automatically – a good interface between a human and car means the car becomes almost a prosthetic. You don’t need that extra whole layer of cognition to put your desired actions into words at all.
Bensaid doesn’t seem to get this concept at all, and I think makes my argument for me when he describes a voice-controlled trunk-opening process:
The foundational models are providing us this wonderful opportunity to truly have a conversational experience where drivers can interact with the car in human language. I don’t need to tell the car, “Open the frunk.” I can say, “Open the front trunk.” Actually, I can say, “I have a bag in front of the car,” and it will actually open the frunk. I think that completely changes the way you interact with the car.
I agree, it does completely change the way you interact with the car. It makes it worse.
Just think about this for a second. Why would you want a “conversational experience” when it comes to getting your stuff out of the trunk, front or rear? Just think about how you normally get your bag out of a trunk now, in your average modern-ish car. You park, you get out of the car, you walk to the trunk at whatever end of the car your bag is in, and you open the trunk. That’s it. You don’t have to tell the car shit.
The car detects your key in your pocket, you push a little button or latch to open the lid, and you’re done. Telling the car “I have a bag in the front of the car” is just adding a useless step. Will the bag levitate out on its own? No. I mean, for most of us lacking telekinesis skills, no. So you still have to go and physically touch the trunk. What the hell is the point of telling the car you have a bag in the trunk? How much extra computing hardware is needed to process and execute that command? For what? Letting the car know you have a bag? So the AI can send that information to advertisers and you’ll see AI-enhanced duffel bag ads for the next three days? Fuck that.
Has Bensaid never been in a car with a friend, in mid-conversation, continuing as you leave the car and get your shit out of the trunk? Of course he has. We all have. Have you ever wanted to pause mid-conversation and tell your car where your bags are? No. Fuck no.
Part of what seems to be going on here is the mistaken notion that somehow your car needs to be doing the same things you already have a phone for. Listen to this bullshit from Bensaid:
“On top of that, we now have the opportunity with all the agentic framework to truly give people their time back in the car. I hope you tried our Google Calendar agentic integration. You can imagine how the experience will be in the future where you’re driving and can perform operations on your calendar. You should be able to perform operations on your email. In the future with the agent-to-agent integration, you can actually interact with many more apps from your own digital ecosystem.”
Calendar integration? “Perform operations on your email?” Why the fuck would you want your car to be part of that? That’s already what your damn phone is for? And these “agent-to-agent” integrations, that just means that some AI bullshit built into your car is talking to the AI bullshit built into your phone so in the end, what is the AI agent in your car doing other than passing along messages to the phone that’s right fucking there with you and if they just let you have the damn Android Auto or CarPlay you could talk right to it? Or just talk to it as it sits on the seat next to you? What’s the point of all this?
You car doesn’t need to uselessly duplicate all the features of your phone. It’s the wrong tool for that job. Your phone is a good personal assistant tool because it’s the size and shape of a well-worn bar of soap and you can slide it in your pocket, not a 4,000 pound hunk of metal and plastic with wheels. Nobody wants their phone to sprout spindly wheels to you can drive it to work, just as we don’t need to use our cars to answer fucking emails.
Here he is again talking about the car replicating phone jobs:
“You can imagine that in the future, instead of having that mono access to every single app on your car — or honestly, even on your smartphone — you can start aggregating and connecting many of those apps through the agentic framework and have them present a unified user experience.”
Yeah, you can imagine that in the future, Wassym, leave me out of it. Who decided we needed a “unified user experience” via phone and car? Let phone do the phone shit, and let your car do the car shit. Phone mirroring is great: all the phone things: reminders, music playlists, calendar stuff, navigation, whatever are available through your car, but using the same interface you’ve been using all day, all the data and settings and preferences still there like you like them, just accessible on your dashboard. It’s fine. Let the phone have that. The car doesn’t need it.
Bensaid describes another situation that he thinks reinforces Rivian’s decision to duplicate the jobs of your phone, but really does the opposite:
“This is how we’re able to connect the navigation to Google Calendar, for example. I can go to the assistant now and say, “I want to plan a trip from San Francisco to San Diego, and I want to have two charging stops. I want them to be close to an Italian restaurant. I love Italian food.” The assistant would go and play that, and then I’ll say, “Okay, print the summary, add it to my calendar, and then send it as a text to my wife.”
Again, why is the car’s AI doing this? If this was all just handled on your phone, it could be done before you’re even in the car. The car doesn’t need to be in this loop at all.
This, I think, is the root of the problem. Car software people want the data and eyeball-access that phones have, and unless you clumsily try to force it to happen with this redundant and inane car-AI-as-middleman approach, it won’t happen. And that’s fine. Really, all of the AI in the car – if there must be any – should be behind the scenes. Like, why would you want a command to change drive modes? The car can sense your inputs, and if you’re stomping the throttle and brake hard, switch to a sportier mode. If you’re being gentle, go to eco. Just adapt based on the driver’s inputs, seamlessly. That level of machine learning seems fine.
But who the fuck wants an LLM to talk to when you’re driving? I don’t need some untrustworthy AI making decisions for me about what music I want to listen to or opening the damn trunk or adjusting the HVAC. No one wants this, no one needs this. Just stop.
Honestly, based on the rate of change of technology compared to the lifespan of cars, why would you want to be locked into some complex car UX or LLM, anyway? Sure, you can update software, but the hardware isn’t going to get better over time. The average age of a car in America is over 12 years old. Who is using a 12-year old smartphone? All this crap should be modular and easily swappable.
Bensaid noted that for a lot of these interactions, the computing hardware will be local to the car, in addition to using cloud-based resources. Honestly, either way has drawbacks: local hardware will eventually be unable to run more modern software, and cloud-based solutions are dependent on connectivity and the health/desires of the company. They could shut features down at will, or discontinue them, or make them into subscription services. Why are we okay with any of that?
I guess I should note that there seem to be plenty of people in China that like talking to their cars and AI in general. I guess this is just one of those cases where 500 million plus people are wrong and I’m right. It happens, it’s okay.
We’re going down a bad path. I’m sure Mr.Bensaid is a wonderful man, a smart man and probably a very tender, generous lover, but I think he is woefully misguided when it comes to how people – real, actual people, not AI-deluded dillholes – want to actually interact with their cars.
I’m going to go out on a limb here, but I still think that people want to drive their cars, not have tedious conversations with them. That’s what friends are for, after all.
(top images: YouTube/The Verge, Rivian)
so rivian’s vision for motoring is to essentially have a voicemail tree in the car…
user: “turn up the heat”
car: “there’s sleet? say ‘yes’ to turn on rain mode”
user: “no! make it warmer”
car: “say ‘yes’ to to signal a turn at he next corner”
user: “no! it’s cold, make it warmer”
car: “say ‘yes’ to adjust suspension to make ride firmer”
user: “i’m cold, please turn up heat”
car: “ok, scheduling a service appointment. you have 16 new emails, say yes to have to read them out loud to you”.
user: “WTF!?!! no!!!”
car: “email account deleted”
hard nope. you’re right jason, he doesn’t get it, has been smelling his own farts.
>Has Bensaid never been in a car with a friend, in mid-conversation, continuing as you leave the car and get your shit out of the trunk? Of course he has. We all have. Have you ever wanted to pause mid-conversation and tell your car where your bags are? No. Fuck no.
This is a problem already, if I want to tell my vehicle “Navigate to Intercourse Pennsylvania” or “Play Yoko Ono’s Greatest Hits” I have to get my passengers to stop talking over me, which isn’t always easy.
Tech bros need to stay the f**k out of car design. Jeebus they have ruined everything good about cars. Touch screens. Automated s**t all over the place. Wildly complex networks of computers and crap where one hiccup can sideline a whole vehicle.
Just to shoot additional holes. AI voice recognition is terrible at recognition for other languages, for people with speech or hearing disabilities, and must overcome those hurdles without fail before it should even touch normal peoples hands.
No, screw him and his crap. Just no.
I think if companies want to institute this crap, go for it – but on startup the car has to display a message saying “Hi There! Just a reminder, we are trying really hard to monetise your data because we have no idea otherwise how to generate revenue! Thanks again!”.
I don’t use CarPlay over built in because I like it better ( I do, but that’s a different issue) . I use it because I’ve already curated everything on my phone and I’m unwilling to redo all that for any other device.
I drive different cars more often than I change phones. I buy cars more often than I change phone vendors.
Today, if I rent a car with CarPlay support I can navigate to an address while playing a playlist that were both created 10 years ago and are on my current phone because I have continuity with my first smartphone through restoring backups.
This! I have carplay in our Ford Maverick, our Ioniq 6 and even in the double-din replacement stereo in our 91 Miata.
Same interface, same apps, same favorites.
I really like the Rivians I’ve sat in. Very premium but no way in hell I’d buy one, or Tesla, or the latest GMs. No CarPlay.. No Sale.
It depends on what AI we get.
Maybe News Scary AI will become reality. If so, who the hell is going to have a job to go to?
I have an irrational hatred for Ai. Maybe because its going to put a lot of us who spent decades making creative for companies are all going to lose our jobs due to it. But more so because I’ve spent decades living in and around tech here in the Bay Area and its the same bullshit: New sexy tech comes out, everyone jumps in to suck up as much money as possible ( And that ALWAYS means the billionaires whom own and control the boards and companies ) and in the case of this Rivian guy, just spouting about it with the hope that there will be enough suckers who will throw their money at his company- just because he said ” Ai”. Of course its bullshit. It would be like if some other automaker came out in 1996 and proclaimed you could send email from your car to let the gas stations know you were comin’ or some crap
“How much extra computing hardware is needed to process and execute that command? For what? Letting the car know you have a bag? So the AI can send that information to advertisers and you’ll see AI-enhanced duffel bag ads for the next three days? Fuck that.”
This is exactly why. Advertisements, more control, and more ways to make money.
Why is GM discontinuing CarPlay and Android Auto support? Because they want to control the UI integration and eventually make it subscription-based and incur a cost to use. Other automakers will follow suit, I’m sure. Look at BMW’s attempted heated seats fiasco, or Toyota and Mazda’s remote start stuff.
This is similar, I think.
I am far from a Luddite in that I do enjoy some new tech and such, at least to a personal extent. Being a millennial (age 36), it’s something I’ve always grown up with. Changing tech has shaped my life. But some things I can see as just unnecessary, and this is one of them. I barely like talking to other people most days – much less my damn car.
I have a very goods friend who is in sales for large tech company selling entire systems, now including AI. He goes on about how AI will save so much money and go straight to the bottom-line, leaving any company that does not institute AI in the financial dust. My take is that, having already encountered AI both on the job and in my personal work, it should not be allowed anywhere near the point of contact between a comp nay and its customers, as it will drive them to a company that may cost more but provide better hands on service and products in the long run. he could not grasp what I was saying, changing it to me taking a moral position about all the people who will lose their jobs. Funny part is he is the people person, always makes friends easily, this is why is is a great salesperson. I’m an accountant who happens to look beyond the bottom line.
Funny how “all the people that will lose their jobs” is a moral position when anyone that passed Business 101 sees that as shrinking your potential customer pool. No job. No income. No $ to purchase your goods or services.
Hear, hear!
AI sucks. We don’t need it.
Knobs, buttons, switches, all that good stuff works perfectly. We don’t need it to become more complicated, expensive, subscription-based or any of that crap.
Hopefully this BS will be a bubble that crashes spectacularly and sends all the AI cheerleaders to the poorhouse.
I hope Mr. Bensaid reads this article.
And Mr. Bensaid, you are ruining any possibility of Rivian becoming a successful automaker.
And by the way, Mr. Bensaid, Eff You!!
Some of these AI guys have really jumped the shark. “rewrite email with AI”… dude, email is like talking. If you can’t do that, just go home and watch tv.
Zawinski’s Law
“Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can.”
As much as anything, he may be talking to investors, who all really, really want to hear that companies have an AI strategy. My company is dealing with the same issue. With little fanfare, AI and machine learning have been baked into various products since before the current craze began, but now the street sees us as vulnerable because we don’t have some grand, encompassing statement to offer. The C-suite is now scrambling to retrofit one.
More and more I’m coming to the conclusion that major automakers are going to have to have 2 variants of each car model: the China variant, with every trendy electronic bell and whistle they can think of, and the Western variant, a minimalist-by-comparison sibling that is intended for people who actually want to drive. The China vehicles will be rolling smartphones, loaded with all the fads but quick to go obsolete, with little regard to performance and handling, while the Western vehicles will have physical controls for all significant functions, a modest infotainment screen with Carplay and Android Auto.
This is 100% what I want. IMHO, my F15 BMW X5 is close to the perfect amount of physical buttons to screen. The only things I want are: A physical dipstick, and Apple Carplay. I can solve #2 with enough effort, but I can’t solve #1. I love the fact that there’s actually zero touchscreens. It’s all buttons.
You want to interact with your vehicle through conversation and do office work while in route? There is already a vehicle for that.
NEXT TIME WHY NOT TAKE THE BUS?
Bus is for poors who don’t have a luxury SUV and a dozen AI agents replacing their basic mental faculties
Buses don’t exist in Bumshart, Nebrahoma where Brynnleigh and McKayleigh have to get to soccer practice.
Rivian makes some really great vehicles with more on the way that I will never buy as long as I can’t use my phone projection.
Maybe I’m not their target market, but I won’t own a vehicle that I can’t run my trusted apps through. I do like when the car is smart enough to do things like lanekeeping automatically, but when it comes to my media, messaging, phone calls, and the like I want my phone and just my phone to be the window to it. Go ahead and make the rest of the car as smart as you want as long as I can use buttons and knobs for the important things (like wipers, climate control, and windows). And if your own navigation engine is good enough I’ll use it in place of Apple Maps – or I’ll look up where I want to go on my phone first and then let it sync to your system.
I don’t even need CarPlay Ultra. Regular CarPlay is fine. But after having it in my last two vehicles that I’ve had since 2018, I will never buy another car without it. No GM, no Tesla, no Rivian. I’m really interested in the Scout vehicles, but that’ll be a dealbreaker if they take the Rivian approach instead of the VW approach.
Same. My daily driver is a paid-for 2016 Mazda. Have had it since it was new in late 2015. Its infotainment system is slow as molasses and hopelessly outdated now. But guess what? It doesn’t matter, because it has Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. My phone, which I replace every few years anyway (although less often now that I’m older and poorer/wiser with my money), just connects and does what I need it to do instead.
I swear to God, the amount of would-be designers who don’t think to check if the job of the product they’re designing could just be done by an app. It’s been TWO DECADES! How is this not the first question you ask about any idea you have?
“Who are these people who want to talk to their car to make it do everything? Who are they, where are they, and what the hell is their problem?”
Obviously he grew up in a home where there was no remote for the TV and the only way for Dad to change the channel, change the volume, wriggle the antenna or give the side of the TV a good smack was to yell his commands at the closest kid.
Perhaps you hit one the main points when you talked about old hardware. These companies don’t want or care about the 12 year old car. The are selling these things to tech bros who will move on after a couple of years. The software industry thrives on this, M$ Windows 11 update requirements are case in point.
FFS. I really like RIvians for the most part and hope that they survive. Excited to see the R2 in person and the R3 when it finally comes out. But the hubris of this douchebucket and all of the double speak is f*cking insulting. And while Henry Ford famously said ““Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.”… he eventually offered cars in colors other than f*cking black.
Listen to what the people want, don’t tell them what they want.
Earlier Ts were offered in colors. Black-only was a later change.
I did not know that!
The world has over 7,000 living languages. How many does Rivian speak?
And accents can also make words sound very different.
They’ll only need English because they make huge stupid expensive trucks which won’t be competive in other anglo markets because of chinese competition and not in Asian and south american markets because of price and size. A miner here in aus bought in a bunch then got rid of them and currently the BYD shark PHEV pickup is closing in on the hilux and ranger for the wannabes who for some reason like owning a vehicle that doesn’t fit lengthways into the woolies carpark.
Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
And kick Mr. Bensaid out of the ship.
Are there people out there that use Android Auto / Carplay for anything OTHER than music / nav? I get responding to texts, which I do from time to time but what do I need to TALK to an AI agent for? The music and map come up themselves when AA starts!
They can’t sell your data if they don’t get your data. The drive to have your every utterance and eyeball movement monitored isn’t for your safety or convenience. It’s so they can pimp you out to anyone with a fraction of a penny.
Just like your phone.