Porsche uses artificial intelligence (AI) in vehicle development to make drive systems even more efficient and sustainable and to further optimize development processes. AI gives computers the ability to analyze problems and solve them automatically--much like a human being. This potential is being exploited in powertrain development, both in the field of e-mobility and in the internal combustion engine as a traditional domain of mechanical engineering. In the development of traditional combustion engines, for example, AI solves the problem of predicting the gas content in the engine oil. Since high gas content leads to oil foaming and thus to reduced lubricity, the oil system must be designed for the lowest possible gas content.

"I don't think Homo sapiens-type people will exist in 10 or 20 years' time," Getnet Assefa, 31, speculates as he gazes into the reconstructed eye sockets of Lucy, one of the oldest and most famous hominid skeletons known, at the National Museum of Ethiopia. "Slowly the biological species will disappear and then we will become a fully synthetic species," Assefa says. "Perception, memory, emotion, intelligence, dreams--everything that we value now--will not be there," he adds. Assefa is a computer scientist, a futurist, and a utopian--but a pragmatic one at that. He is founder and chief executive of iCog, the first artificial intelligence (AI) lab in Ethiopia, and a stone's throw from the home of Lucy. Their desks are cluttered with electronic components and dismembered robot body parts, from a soccer-playing bot called Abebe to a miniature robo-Einstein.