Google has “no master plan” to harvest the mass of data that will be generated by its self-driving cars arm.
The assurance from John Krafcik, the chief executive of Waymo, comes in the wake of the Facebook scandal, where millions of users’ details were shared with other businesses.
Mr Krafcik said access to the information generated by those travelling in cars using Waymo’s autonomous driving technology was not a priority for the company, which is owned by Google parent, Alphabet.
“Our aim is moving people around the world and that is very hard,” he said, speaking at the New York Auto Show the day after the company revealed a partnership with Jaguar to use tens of thousands of the British company’s I-Pace electric cars.
“To the core of my body, I swear on my father’s grave, it’s not a priority,“ Mr Krafcik said. “ I’m not saying it won’t be a workstream in the future but at the moment it is not in our workspace.”
Pressed for assurances that the company was not working on gathering data from its driverless car programme, the former Ford and Hyundai executive said the amount of work on data gathering was “zero, a big zero”.
By: Alan Tovey (The Telegraph, UK).
Photo: Auto Week.
Review: Emerging Market Formulations & Research Unit, Flagship Records.