CTA's Shapiro Warns of Tech Backlash as CES Kicks Off; Seeks Consensus
LAS VEGAS -- CES formally kicked off Tuesday with a keynote by CTA President Gary Shapiro reassuring attendees that the “roaring 2020s” will be huge for tech. Shapiro repeated the theme (see 2001060028) that the IoT now means the “intelligence of things.” Every company “has to be a tech company,” Shapiro said.
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“It’s a new decade with undreamed of innovations ahead,” Shapiro said. “The pace of change is unlike anything we’ve ever experienced and it is unsettling for people.” Easy access to information and technology by “both the good guys and the bad guys has reshaped policies, politics and even politicians.” Every innovation “has the potential for misuse,” he said: “It’s understandable that some policymakers and … loud voices want to slam the brakes on innovation.”
In an era of political division, Shapiro urged consensus, including on privacy. “We must engage and actually listen to each other,” he said: “We have to reach across industries. We have to reach across political parties and we have to reach across international borders.” Don’t be “paralyzed by fear,” Shapiro advised.
Shapiro urged the Senate to approve what he called the “new NAFTA,” the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which cleared the House 385-41 in December. “We also still believe in trade,” he said. “We pushed so hard for the new NAFTA. … We hope the Senate will quickly pass this agreement.”
Meanwhile, 5G is “a critical ingredient and platform technology,” said Karen Chupka, CTA's executive vice president of CES: “It’s the ability to deliver access and information anywhere, anytime” and “will really help drive innovation.” The IoT and 5G will be key to smart cities, she said. Those subjects have been a theme of the show (including 2001070002). Artificial intelligence is “the star” of this CES, Chupka said. “You’re going to see AI innovation across the entire show floor, be it in smart cities, vehicles, digital health, robotics.” The event has become a top auto show, she said.
Data is “more valuable than oil” when enhanced with artificial intelligence and machine learning, said Marcus Welz, CEO of Siemens Mobility Intelligent Traffic Systems, North America. Early projects have shown autonomous driving works, Welz said Monday.
March 2018 brought “disturbing news” of the first pedestrian fatality involving a self-driving car, in Tempe, Arizona, Welz said. Only connected-vehicle infrastructure could have prevented that death, he said. “We can predict accidents and prevent collisions.”
About 250 people die yearly on Los Angeles streets, about half pedestrians, said Seleta Reynolds, general manager of the city's Department of Transportation. Autonomous vehicles won’t solve safety problems “if they can’t do simple things like anticipate and brake for a person crossing the street,” she said. “There are a lot of things to pick apart around this utopian vision that autonomous vehicles will really make a big difference.”
A big topic here has been how government will use data. Municipalities do “basic things” like planning and building infrastructure and regulating how it’s used, Reynolds said. “Up until now, that’s sort of been enough,” she said. “Now we have a huge, sort of unprecedented amount of investment in mobility coming through private companies.” Cities should be clear about what problems they’re trying to solve, she said.
“Continue to build physical infrastructure, but we also want to build digital infrastructure that helps manage peoples’ mobility,” Reynolds said. It helps make Los Angeles a better place to work, she said. The city has counted cars, Reynolds said: It now wants to count people biking and walking, using machine learning.
Elected officials are “in the service business” and care about how data helps people, said Hardik Bhatt, Amazon leader-digital government and ex-Chicago chief information officer. “The person who is trying to go from point A to point B, or the package,” he said: “How can we make it easiest, fastest, smoother?” We need to start “connecting the dots” to get seamless mobility, Bhatt said. “You have multiple players generating multiple types of data, you need to make sure that you’re connecting that.”