Riiid Labs CIO: Cars will become mini schools, teaching about the world speeding past

By Tony Hicks

Imagine the long, tedious family trip, when the kids’ phones run dry and they start moaning about whether everyone is there yet.

What if your car answered for you … then captured the children’s’ wandering attention by turning the experience into a win-win by converting the complaining into fascination?  

What if kids actually learned something in the car not packaged, pixelated, and propelled out the bright end of a phone?

Reality. What a trip …

Cars of the future will be mini schools on wheels, said Rob Barrett, the chief innovation officer of AI startup Riiid Labs. Imagine vehicles as integrated lessons in history, science, engineering … virtually any subject having to do with the world rolling by outside the window, or even the car itself.

Cars will be more than just a transportation tool. They’ll become entertaining, educational experiences.

“As the car becomes more and more autonomous, and we have time stuck in cars, and we have more time to spend with media,” said Barrett. “A natural progression will be having more of a learning environment. We’re already seeing how the current education system is antiquated. There is no reason learning needs to be structured from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

“The car is perfect for a child to learn and engage with the real world, literally, as it’s going by right outside. It’s the best classroom on Earth. Oh wait … it is the Earth.”

Barrett wants to combine AI with augmented reality. A car could have screens or a window overlay spitting out details about an area’s history, its architecture, what famous people lived there, or how it was depicted in movies and television.

It could identify plants and animals, fish in nearby rivers, birds in the sky … local stores and what’s inside them, places with the best views or, as one teenage daughter of a Riiid Labs employee suggested … “cool stuff.”

“Like … blue outlines on the window, around trees, telling me what kind of tree it is,” she said.

Totally.

“I see that the people in the car can be the benefactor of the most immersive daily learning experience we have ever known,” said Barrett. “Can you imagine, instead of already just reading about things in life, instead of just having math spit at you, you saw it? You lived it?”

Even the vehicle itself would become more interesting.

“The car itself is a marvel of modern mankind, imagine when it’s autonomous,” Barrett said. “That’s math on wheels. That’s physics. That’s language, communication, safety; It’s everything in the car, and then it’s interacting with its environment.”

And, unlike most teachers, a vehicle won’t mind revealing its most intimate secrets, like how it runs.

It could even play tour guide.

“The car can be directing you on your journey to things that are important to you, a scenic tour of what you’re learning about,” Barrett said. “What if it just learns things you like, and can make sure you interact with them? You can discover where the home of Elvis is on your vacation, all from your life and education being one experience and not divided up into these odd little pieces during a day.”

“Most kids have gotten extremely good at tuning out from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. There’s no reason they can’t learn from what they love.” 

Barrett’s ideas have progressed to the demo stage, though he’s understandably tight-lipped about details and companies with which he’s discussed the idea.

“Rest assured, you’ve heard of them,” he said.

With COVID-19 changing education rapidly in 2020, vehicles equipped with education tech make sense. Teachers could even integrate their own lessons into the information conveyed in a vehicle.

Barrett said Riiid Labs’ founder, YJ Jang, is fiercely dedicated to personalizing education for as many people as possible. 

“YJ has a mission of how to adapt AI so that all students get the benefit,” Barrett said. “That is a moral play, not a technology play. He is using his abilities with his cutting-edge AI team to solve those problems. I see how we adapt that vision and product to the new mediums, and one of those is in cars.”

Where, thankfully, kids will have maps telling them exactly when they’ll get there.

Tony Hicks is a freelance writer who works for Riiid Labs, among others