GM CEO Mary Barra: How AI Will Redefine Driving by 2028

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0:45Eligible students get a year of Microsoft 365 Premium and a year of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate with a custom color Xbox wireless controller. Learn more at windows.com slash student offer. While supplies last, ends June 30th. Terms at aka.ms slash college PC. We're hoping for 28, right? Yeah, no, I mean, that's what the team is working for. Imagine being able to take your eyes and hands off the wheel, go through your work emails, watch your favorite TV show, maybe grab lunch. Gemini coming out next year, right? So you will be able to talk to your vehicle. It's going to be able to even alert you before something happens so you can take care of it.

1:20This is Mary Barra, the CEO of General Motors, one of the most powerful people in the automotive world and the woman leading the transformation of how humanity moves. This is becoming a robot and eventually you can see a world where it's acting on your behalf fully autonomously. AI is changing everything. It's no longer just a car. It's an assistant that might know you better than anyone. So the real question is, are we ready for it? Mary, thank you so much for doing this. I'm so excited to host you on Silicon Valley Girl. I'm really excited to be on Silicon Valley Girl and have a chance to talk to you and tell you what's going on at General Motors.

1:58Oh, yeah. I'm a proud owner of Cadillac Escalade. It was one of the first with the Super Cruise. I was dying to get it, so we had to go to L.A. because Bay Area was sold out until I got it. And we've been driving it since. It's such a good investment, especially when you have technology mixed with quality, right? Because you still want to feel good in your car. Today, you presented a lot of new updates. let's imagine 2030, I'm in my new Escalade. What is the experience like? Well, I think one of the things is it's still going to be very personalized. And we think we can continue to advance the vehicle.

2:34We talked about adding the Google Assistant. We'll follow up with our own assistant that's much more integrated into the vehicle, leveraging vehicle data, and get to know you, know the vehicle, so that it can even be a more customized experience. And then when you think about what we can do from an autonomy perspective, we shared that We'll start with highway autonomy where you can literally take your eyes off the road. And then we'll continue to expand that into urban locations. And, you know, by 2030, I'm kind of done making predictions as it relates to autonomy because I think it is one of the hardest challenges from a technological perspective.

3:07But I think we're going to make advancements like we do today with Super Cruise. And we'll make those advancements once we have eyes off from a highway perspective. And so in 2030, I think people are going to see that their vehicle allows them to lead a much more integrated life, that the vehicle makes their life easier, makes them more efficient, gives them back some time.

3:32All right. Welcome to the new Cadillac Escalade. That's the driving experience of 2028, when you don't have to look out and watch the cars. You don't have to put your hands on the wheel. You just go, have your TV screen here, catch up on your emails. Ah, this is what I'm waiting for. And also like, because I always have my kids in the back, right? I could just pass things, I could talk to them, and the car will be driving by itself. Oh my goodness. I love the screen situation. I love that now we have like a full scale TV section here. There's a screen for the passenger. The seats are almost identical to what I have now with the sound system here.

4:14They have the purse section right here so you can put your bag. It's big. The charger, everything is electric. The steering wheel is again very similar to what I have. This is the technology. I think this is where they track your eyes and your hands. I cannot wait till 2028 to start driving this vehicle. I love how the Cadillac is this mix of technology and luxury because we have you know very smart vehicles in the market but they don't feel like luxury. This feels beyond luxury. The blue stitches like all the details. It feels like it's a car from the future because of the design, but also they maintain the classic design, adding all the details.

5:08Another fascinating use case that I got from the presentation is that imagine something's wrong with the vehicle and you need to take it to service. Now, ideally in 2028, your vehicle detects the problem by itself because it's AI powered. Second, it knows when you need the car. So in the time when you don't need the car, it will just take itself to the service center. Get serviced, come back to your house for you to be ready to move. How do you look at competition? Because there are already companies that are doing full autonomy. What do you think about that, like about this gap? I think if you look at who's doing full autonomy, you know, you have it's in the robo taxi arena.

5:49Yeah. And so that's a very – and generally in a very concise ODD, even if it's in different cities, it's operating – an operating area. Oh, got it. So it's like – Yeah. Right. And so I think when you look at – we're talking about something much more broad on highways at speed and then moving into urban. So I think when we look at it from a personal autonomous, we think we'll be among the leaders in doing that and doing that safely. Understand what the robo-taxis are doing, but it is different than when you get into personal autonomy and you have to integrate back and forth between I'm driving the vehicle and I'm responsible to the vehicle is taking control.

6:30It's actually a much more complex system to solve. Gemini coming out next year, right? So you will be able to talk to your vehicle. You'll be able to ask, like, where's the nearest whatever. We don't need gas stations, but the nearest service, et cetera. What is the most compelling use case that you've seen with Gemini? Like, what makes it stand out? I think when you look at AI and the fact that, you know, you can, it's not just, you know, play the latest Taylor Swift song, which I'm a Swifty, so love, but it can be much more of, hey, I'm headed here. Can you route me on the way? I'd like to stop and get, you know, a coffee at my favorite coffee shop or, hey, I'm kind of hungry.

7:12I'm not familiar with this area. Where's the best place for me to get a turkey sandwich? You know, kind of thing. I mean, you can just ask it like my or my favorite food is X and it can help integrate that and make sure you're going to the best restaurant. So it's going to take all that information. It's going to be able to do that as we get further along. It's going to be able to even integrate more and know how the systems in the vehicle are working and alert you before something happens so you can take care of it. So I think it's going to be a journey, you know, from what we have today to what we'll have with Google.

7:44and then the further integration with General Motors will even be able to pull more information from the vehicle to make it even more personalized. When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a$75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply.

8:18Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. I see you. Avatar Fire and Ash is now streaming on Disney+. It's the film critics are calling the best Avatar yet. A true epic and completely jaw-dropping. This is the only purest thing in this world. Return to Pandora on Disney+. It will be an adventure for the whole family. And watch the Oscar-winning phenomenon at home. This is sick! Avatar Fire and Ash, now streaming on Disney+. Rated PG-13. I'm excited about AI in vehicles, so you're going to integrate with Gemini. And I have a question from the user standpoint. Is it the same Gemini I have in my phone?

9:02Like, I mean, does it have information about me? or is it a specific Gemini for the vehicle that is not connected to me as a person? Okay, good question. So today we talked about almost like two timelines actually. One is going to be, you might already heard this from Google as well, which we are closely partnering with. Google Assistant is going to evolve and become Google Gemini in the vehicles. So therefore that's going to be where the journey starts. So that's going to be the first upgrade. The second thing is, in addition, in parallel, we're working on developing our own assistant that is for GM by GM.

9:41We will use, of course, providers who are already providing large language models. We're not going to be in the business of developing a frontier model or a foundation model. We will build on top of technologies, but we're not ready yet to disclose what backend we're going to be using. But our goal with that GM assistant is to build something that is deeply contextually aware. Because I think we all know this. Contextual AI is where the magic is going to unlock. Now, we can get nerdy. We're talking about Silicon Valley here. We will design a system where our assistant, our agent, will be able to talk to other agents.

10:18Because the world you're describing is exactly that, right? Because you are going to have this graceful handoffs. You're going to say, hey, I'm in New York. look at the next three flights available, the AI should learn you prefer to fly, let's say, with United. It should talk to the United agent and say, here's the three flights that you might want to. So that's the goal. We want to create an Uber agent, an Uber assistant that is the GM assistant that can broker those type of interactions. Love it. Let's imagine 2050. Okay. What driving looks like with AI? Let's be super futuristic. Because you're building this, right?

10:56You probably are thinking about those days. Okay, what is your wildest? 2050, when is that? So it's 25 years from now on. So like we talked about earlier today, the level of autonomy, I think, is going to continue to increase. I think Mary even alluded to it in her presentation today where we will reach a world where the car would be doing things even without you in the car, where it could run errands on your behalf, where it could take itself to be car washed and serviced and change the tires. So I think 25 years is a long time, and I reserve to be wrong, and thank God it's such a long time. Well, would we get this earlier?

11:37Something you described. It's already, it feels like it's a possibility now. Again, it's possible. I think it's, now we can actually, again, get a little bit nerdy around, like the diffusion of innovation, right? It's not equally distributed, right? We are experiencing that today. However, maybe the economics are not there yet for it to be mass scale, right? They're in pockets, right? The Robotex experience. Those are expensive cars to build with those sensor sets. But in 25 years, one could imagine the sensors get cheaper, the AI models we use get smarter. So therefore, the world where we're seeing the car truly, fully autonomously behaving on your behalf, I think will be real in 25 years.

12:19The actual robot that we're going to have in our household, right? Correct, exactly. It's one of the robots, right? I think Sterling said this way, this is a purpose-specific robot that provides you mobility. We are going to have purpose-specific robots, right? We are going to have probably humanoids in our house helping with home chores. We will have, quote-unquote, robots maybe helping with education. And yes, this is becoming a robot. and eventually you can see a world where it's acting on your behalf fully autonomously. Wow. Okay, flying cars? Why not? And when it comes to technology, so I asked one of my friends who's also working on self-driving, I'm like, when will be the year when I can just put my kids in the car and the car will take them to school?

13:05When do you think this is coming? And is it available right now from the technology perspective? Because you said from technology perspective, we can do it now. It's just a regulation. Well, I think right now we do have a patchwork of regulation. We're hoping for one federal regulation because I think that will unlock autonomous technology. I think a lot of it, being a mother myself, although my children are adults now, is looking at, you know, when is the right time to do that. So I think, you know, from a technology perspective, we'll get there. And then it's going to have to be a judgment piece of how old is your child, where are they going, all of that.

13:38And so, you know, we're on our way to get there. and I think that we'll get to a point. I think we need to get to full, as we start with L4 Highway, obviously you're still in the urban areas going to need to take responsibility for driving. So I think that'll happen over time. So when we're driving right now, the vehicle is watching us and it's seeing like my eye movements and everything. Is it like civilians? Like, does it read my conversation? Like what happens if the government wants to take my data? Like the privacy? Well, and this is where, you know, we have a new, over a year now, a privacy officer that is working across the organization, helping people understand.

14:19We want to make sure we're following all the privacy requirements. And, you know, a lot of the information we feel is the customer. So the customer has to give the company permission, even if we're going to use it from an anonymized perspective. So everything we do will be with a focus on privacy and security and then also cybersecurity. So we have dedicated people in the company that focus on making sure we understand the laws and that we're following all of them. And, you know, even more so doing what we think consumers would want us to do. The next step is taking your eyes off the road. Right.

14:54And that is what we, you know, we are going to be delivering in the 28 timeframe with, again, with first from a highway perspective. So that will happen and then we'll keep advancing that and get to urban, et cetera. So, you know, that's coming in the not too distant future. It's really right around the corner. We're hoping for 28, right? Yeah, no, I mean, that's what the team is working toward. And, you know, when I look at what we've been able to build with all of the resources we have from a software perspective, and then what we had from the team that's done Super Cruise, along with the cruise resources, bringing them all together, then they're doing it right now.

15:28So that's what makes me really excited. What we announced today is an eyes off autonomy capability. Nothing of that sort exists in the market today. And when you think about that, you're basically asking the driver to take your eyes off, not pay attention at all on the road. That's a very, very high bar. And for us to safely maneuver different conditions that we spoke about here in the demo, we need sensor redundancies to be built in so that the car can handle very complex scenarios in all weather conditions without requiring human intervention. Human intervention cannot be a backup. That cannot be a safety valve, and we are not going to use it.

16:11So even if something's going on, there won't be a situation where the car just flashes around, like takeover, takeover, takeover? So are you excluding that? So we will have situations where when the car is exiting its operational domain. So the product right now will launch with highways only. So you'll only be able to use this product when you're on the highway. When you're off the highway, this product will not be available. And so when you're on the highway, you can use it. But as you are going to come to an exit, we will ask you to take over the control. You have three different systems, right?

16:46You have LiDAR, you have cameras, and you have a radar. Can you talk to me about the difference between the three systems? Yeah. So what we wanted to share here is that how the different sensors come together to provide 360-degree continuous information to our driving system so that it enables it to make splits or even fraction of a second decisions. It can see further, react faster than a human would ever can, and can work in all weather conditions. When do you think the full autonomy is coming? You know, I think we're going to keep approaching that, and as Sterling talked about, Sterling Anderson, who was our chief product officer, we're going to keep working and making sure we do that safely.

17:27So it'll be, you'll see incrementally that we'll keep adding, adding from, you know, the area in which you can do it to the complexity of the environment. So I learned, I first started making predictions about autonomy back in 2016. So as I look now, we're going to put it into the vehicle as soon as it's ready and it can be deployed safely. And that's what will be the gating factor. So safety is the main concern right now. Safety is something, you know, General Motors has a rich history of having that relationship of trust with our consumer that they know we put a lot of thought into our systems being safe.

18:02And so we want to put that same level of prioritizing safety that we have done in Super Cruise into as we get to, you know, L4 Highway. And then we'll expand from there. And Super Cruise, you mentioned 700 million miles. Yes. No accidents. Correct. Correct. That is fascinating. Yeah, well, and again, we know vehicles and we've really looked to make sure that the technology is well validated. So we're very proud of our safety record and we work to continue to get better every day and give more features like trailering and integration with Google Maps. So there's new features and new roads being added to Super Cruise all the time.

18:44So we talked about AI transforming the driving experience. How is it transforming the production? Well, I think we're leveraging. I mean, I think it's such an interesting time right now when you look at the power of artificial intelligence. And we're focusing on the main areas in the business of how do we use it to improve manufacturing. Sterling Anderson talked about one of the things that General Motors has that is unique is all of this information and data of how things are manufactured. And I think when you look at that and the power of data to really help advance AI, we're in a unique position to make our manufacturing processes more efficient, serve our operators better.

19:22When we think about designing the vehicle, looking at the areas that right now people are doing, how do we make it more efficient and allow our engineers to really focus on optimizing technology, safety? It allows us to do more validation. There's so much from that perspective. And then from how we go to market, imagine leveraging artificial intelligence to really understand the customer better and reach that customer in a more focused way so they get the information they want. There's been so much advancement in that space as well. And then lastly, what I would say is also putting the tools in the hands of our employees.

20:00One of the things I've encouraged everyone at the company to do is become familiar with it because it's easy to kind of be a little bit wary of it if you don't understand it. Once you use it, I think it really, and I make sure I'm constantly using it, even in my daily life, unrelated to work, to just see the power of it. Because once you use it, use it for this. And you're like, oh, I can use it for this. It's, you know, one of the things my daughter does that I think is so interesting. She's going to college to get her master's degree. And she'll be like, I'd like a shopping list with, I'm gluten-free, with, I needed to be healthy.

20:34I wanted to be this level of calories. And I don't want it to have too many different things that I have to buy. So give me the recipes for a week. Yeah. And boom. And she's like, mom, it's really good. And it really works. What's your favorite use case? I just the other day, I've been having some shoulder pain. And so I got the test results. And of course, I get it now on the portal before you, you know, you have anything from back from your doctor. I put it into this time I used GPT. and it came back and it's like, yeah, you've got a tendon that's inflamed. And of course, it's my mother who passed away many years ago, but she always used to tell me to sit up straight.

21:10And some of it is for some of my soreness is because of posture. I'm like, okay, my mom, I've got to listen to you. I've got to sit up straight. But I mean, I think I never before I would have waited, you know, to hear from the doctor and I was able to go in and understand what it is and understand what I need to do to alleviate it. So, I mean, just a couple of years ago, you know, you would I had to wait for the doctor. So, and then, you know, there's the easy one of I look in the fridge, what do we have? Okay. Give me something interesting to make. Yeah. Oh yeah. That's a really good point. Take a picture even more.

21:39So then saying I have this, this, and this. Yeah. I'll do that. Yeah. I do that all the time. What about work processes? What have you optimized with AI for you personally? For me, I think it's, it's how do I, you know, write much more quickly when I'm writing an email or how do I get information if I want to learn something about a new technology, just asking the question. So boom, I get the information, I can read it as opposed to having to send it to someone else, say, hey, can you give me a summary of this? So I mean, just so much more information is digestible, or is given back to you in a very digestible format.

22:12I'm using it several times a day. And then also, again, how I do my work. Let's get back to factories and workers. If somebody wants to, someone who was inspired by your journey when you started working for GM when you were 18, and now you're the CEO. If somebody wants the same journey and they're thinking, you know what, entry-level jobs being replaced with AI, and how do I repeat this journey in the current environment? What would be your advice? Well, first of all, if you want to be in the auto industry, I mean, I would make sure that you get into the core of the business. Joining to work as a manufacturing person in our company.

22:50I started as an engineer working in a plant, knowing how, and from when I started over 40 years ago to now, there's so much has advanced in the plants, but understanding what it takes to put a car on the road with high quality, to do it efficiently with an engaged workforce, I think that's so important. So I still, I always encourage people, whatever industry you're excited about, make sure you're in the core of it. You're in how we design vehicles, all the software, how we make vehicles, how we go to market. In an industry you're excited about, go in and join a company and really immerse yourself in where they are today.

23:27So many people who are graduating from college or coming in with certificates, they have so much knowledge already from the way technology, they leveraged it to go through their schooling at whatever level they are. You bring all that And you can immediately say, hey, here's how I can make it better. I was talking a couple of years ago of an employee who joined the company and it was in our finance area. And he got a job and he said, yeah, I was able to use these tools I used from college and able to take what was usually going to take three days and I could do it in three hours. I mean, I think so I think what somebody who's starting their career, they have to realize, you know, they really have a lot of knowledge in the way they learn to do work that they can bring into the workplace.

24:10And that's what we're trying to do right now across many functions of, for instance, in human resources. How do we take some of the things that a human resource professional needs to do that is, you know, getting the data in the right place and getting that information, getting that done more effectively with AI so that person can have more of a high touch with the people that are in the area that he or she is supporting? Those are things I think we can do that the human connection is going to become more important and the quality of it because the person isn't spending all the time doing some of the more routine things that they can really understand that person better, understand the process better, work for higher quality.

24:49I think it's really going to advance. What are the personal traits that you're looking for? I think you have to have someone who is passionate about what they do. I also would say, you know, a high quality person, integrity, work hard. I like that. High quality person. Yeah, yes. Somebody who, you know, is willing to come in and work hard and wants to learn and, you know, understands. One of the things I talk about at GM, we're going to do the right thing even when it's hard. And integrity is such an important piece of it. We talk at General Motors winning with integrity because if you win without it, you really haven't won.