When Your Self-Driving Car Wants to Be Your Friend, Too

Thirty-five years ago the TV series Knight Rider envisioned an artificially intelligent car that could develop a friendly rapport with its driver. That 1982 Pontiac Trans Am--also known as the Knight Industries Two Thousand (KITT)--dutifully served as Michael Knight's crime-fighting partner, monitored his health through sensors in the seat and even used voice analysis to respond to the sarcasm in Knight's cornball quips. Your next car won't reach KITT's level of awareness, wit or empathy--but Honda, Toyota and several other companies really are planning to make AI standard in all the vehicles they produce. Honda unveiled one of the more ambitious--and fanciful--visions for AI in the cockpit at last week's U.S. Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Its New Electric Urban Vehicle (NeuV) is a self-driving concept car that uses Honda's talking Automated Network Assistant, or HANA, to analyze and respond to data the vehicle collects about driver and passenger preferences and behavior.