Team Thoughts
Poor infrastructure, expanding populations, urbanization, and rising income in certain countries contribute to increased vehicle traffic, freight quantities, and pollution in emerging markets. Artificial intelligence provides innovative answers to these difficulties by facilitating market entrance and allowing nations to reach neglected groups, establishing markets and private sector investment possibilities.
Artificial intelligence, or AI, significantly influences how we interact with our surroundings. AI has important applications in various industries since it is a potent set of technologies that may assist people in solving everyday difficulties. One such industry is transportation, where AI technologies are already changing how people and products are transported.
AI offers opportunities to make transportation safer, more dependable, efficient, and greener, from analyzing traffic patterns to avoid road accidents to optimizing sailing routes to cut emissions. There are several uses of AI in both established and emerging economies that demonstrate the benefits these expanding technologies may make to economies, however, the problems the technology offers must be carefully addressed.
Although autonomous vehicles (AVs) receive a lot of attention in the media, AI applications in transportation go beyond self-driving cars and are already having an impact. On a far larger scale, AI can aid in resolving a wide range of transportation issues, including safety, dependability, and predictability, in addition to sustainability and efficiency.
Efficiency: Developing nations frequently rank poorly on the Logistic Performance Index because logistics expenses as a proportion of GDP are typically greater, partly due to inefficiencies caused by limited infrastructure and bad customs processes. While wealthy nations typically spend 6 to 8% of GDP on logistics, expenditures in underdeveloped countries might range from 15% to 25%. AI can assist in optimizing motions to enhance efficiency. For instance, the discipline of e-logistics, which applies Internet-related technology to the supply and demand chain, uses AI in various ways, such as connecting shippers with delivery service providers.
Reliability: As a means of moving people and things, transportation relies on constant performance and the ability to estimate arrival and departure times. In public transportation, providing timely and accurate transit journey time information may enhance ridership and satisfaction. Unstable and inefficient infrastructure, as well as traffic, influence reliability and predictability. Urban mobility solution providers, such as Uber and Lyft, employ AI in a variety of ways to ensure consistent pickup and drop-off timings for their routes, and such technology may be used to improve the quality of public transportation internationally.
Road safety: Road safety is a serious public health concern for both drivers and pedestrians. While bad infrastructure, particularly poor roads and automobiles without current safety equipment, contributes to the high death toll, human error is also a factor. Researchers think that AVs might cut road deaths by up to 90% in certain wealthy nations by 2050. When self-driving systems were triggered in Tesla’s initial effort at an AV, accident rates were lowered by 40%. While AVs may not be ready for broad deployment in emerging nations in the near future, some optimistic projections predict that by 2020, there will be 10 million AVs on the road, with one out of every four automobiles being driverless by 2030.
Sustainability: Environmentally, the transportation industry accounts for 23% of total energy-related CO2 emissions globally. Emissions from the sector might treble by 2050 if no long-term mitigation initiatives are implemented. Artificial intelligence technology that optimizes routes to minimize the number of unproductive journeys at sea and on the road can enhance fuel economy and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Truck platooning is an eco-friendly AI technology that links many vehicles wirelessly to a lead truck, allowing them to operate substantially closer to each other securely and efficiently.
AI has the possibility of drastically enhancing production and efficiency in a variety of industries, including transportation, and these improvements are taking place right now. AI is already assisting in making transportation safer, more dependable, efficient, and environmentally friendly. With significant promise for increased efficiency and sustainability, among other benefits, comes a slew of socioeconomic, institutional, and political issues that must be addressed if nations and their inhabitants are to harness the power of AI for economic development and shared prosperity.