What the Terminators Taught Us


Q1 2022

15th January | 4 mins

James Cameron’s “The Terminator” might have instilled our fears about out-of-control intelligent machines. In the film Skynet, the artificial intelligence, leads an army of machines to destroy humanity. But instead of doomsday scenarios with humans cowering at the feet of their robot overlords or millions replaced by highly skilled androids, A.I. has emerged as one of the most significant forces behind both the digital transformation story and helping to keep us safe.

Losing jobs to machines has been happening for centuries; the spinning jenny replaced weavers, buttons replaced lift operators, while the internet drove the Yellow Pages out of business. However, many believe that A.I. has the capacity to positively impact our daily lives, not as a replacement technology, but as a collaborative one.

A.I. has actually been around since the 1950’s, when Alan Turing, now regarded as the “Father of A.I.”, created the “Turing Test” to determine whether a computer is “able to think”. Fast forward 70 years and A.I. is entrenched in almost every walk of life; communities; health care; buildings and utilities; farming and business; saving time, money, lives, and offering individuals a safer future.

However, it’s the emergence of autonomous driving which is one of the hottest topics.
At the 1939 World Fair in New York, GM shocked folks with its idea called “Futurama”, depicting what a city and its transport could look like in 20 years’ time.1

It wasn’t until this millennium that autonomous driving would be spoken about as a modern-day technology. Companies are now taking giant strides in the field of A.I. to make semi-autonomous and autonomous driving capabilities a reality; scrambling to gain market share, with investments in autonomous vehicles reaching $120 bn between March 2017 and March 20192. In just a decade, autonomous driving has become a melting pot of R&D initiatives from Silicon Valley giants, with the likes of Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft entering the race to develop this technology.

The Software behind A.I.

Aside from the hardware element, there’s also the software that will tie it all together — namely, cloud computing and 5G.

The cloud allows engineers to dump a lot of the data processing off the vehicles themselves and onto more capable and updated servers — meaning that these autonomous systems remain constantly state of the art.

The 5G network could enable a lot of key features within these systems; having a more robust, faster, higher-bandwidth wireless data system will significantly boost the vehicle network’s capabilities.

Elsewhere cities could optimize traffic patterns, so cars will know ahead of time what the traffic signals will be at every junction, and vehicles will communicate with each other to ease everything from lane changes to optimising routes based on congestion.

How can the robots help?

A study by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) found that human error accounts for between 94% to 96% of all auto accidents 4. Despite this, a recent survey revealed that around 88%3 of American drivers consider themselves to be “above average” at driving. Here autonomous vehicles should enable a safer future. Tesla, one of the first to deliver an “autopilot” publishes its own quarterly safety data. Interestingly, on average, nearly 10 times more miles are driven on Tesla Autopilot before an accident occurs than are driven by the average American driver before an accident occurs. Overall, one accident every 4.41 million miles is a marked improvement on one accident every 479,000 miles5 (see chart below).


Tesla's Autopilot.png
One tangible area where A.I. is already taking giant strides (and supplementing a skills & labour shortage) is in Cybersecurity.

Pre-2019, only 20% of cybersecurity providers were employing A.I., by the end of 2020 that number jumped to 63%6.

Some of the big players here (CrowdStrike, Darktrace, FireEye) have already well-established practises. Because of its inherent self-learning approach A.I. can stay one step ahead of adversaries and it’s ideally suited to combatting cyber threats.

Where before the industry was reliant on historical data to spot threats, companies were failing to catch the malware that criminals were launching.

A.I. has shifted the industry paradigm.

Rather than relying on pre-defined data to spot future cyber hacks, A.I. is being utilised to understand the organizations it protects—learning normal and abnormal behaviour. A.I. can detect and stop new attacks, including insider threats, much like a human immune system but with “digital antibodies”.

As the complexity of cyber threats evolve, one study from the International Information System Security Certification Consortium (ISC) suggests there are only enough cybersecurity professionals to fill around 60%7 of cybersecurity roles globally, allowing A.I. to fill that gap in the interim, thus helping to keep us safe.

What about cyber-attacks on vehicles?

As vehicle technology becomes increasingly advanced and reliant on A.I., it becomes more dependent on an assortment of electronics, sensors, and computer systems. Each computer becomes a potential doorway or invitation for hackers.

The cybersecurity threat for autonomous vehicles in particular is increasing. They require robust cybersecurity to ensure these systems work as planned and are built to mitigate cyber risks. We are certain to be facing more automotive cybersecurity challenges in the near future. It is essential that the automotive industry takes cybersecurity seriously, so that we may all be safer on the roads.

There’s no question A.I. has the potential to completely change the world as we know it. We believe that Terminator’s sequel (with Schwarzenegger as humanity’s saviour) remains a more realistic outcome, with A.I. instead clearly having a positive coexistence with humans helping to enhance our way of life.

An article by Harvard Business Review8 argues that A.I. should augment human intelligence, not replace it. We agree.
"MAJOR DISTURBANCES AND UNUSUAL OCCURANCES" ON US GRID
2000 to 2021

Latest thinking

Turning our latest rigorous research into
insights and advice.

×

Sign up to our mailing list

Keep up to date on the latest news and fund developments in the world of thematic investing.