Human + AI = The Ultimate Power Couple

A lot has been made of the potential for Artificial Intelligence (AI) in our society – some transformational, some a little worrisome, and some downright apocalyptic (do you remember Terminator!). As AI becomes more prevalent in our lives, I think what we are seeing is a coalescence of AI as a tool, not as a rogue robot out to kill us (at least not yet!). We all know AI can process data and see patterns faster than any human mind can, but it cannot think, feel, or understand. That is why AI will empower and enhance our workforce, not replace it. AI will become (in fact it already is) the ultimate decision-support tool to help each of us focus our efforts on what only we can do – bring the human to the process.

Workforce Augmentation

As our roadways become smarter, we can't simply hire our way to faster insights. There are trillions of data points coming from our roadways and trillions more being added seemingly daily. The human mind simply cannot ingest, process, and pull insights from that amount of raw data in a timely manner. But AI can. AI is already helping our transportation workforce by both automating repetitive tasks (such as collecting traffic analytics and traffic movement) and is providing our transportation workers with real-time insights they wouldn't otherwise have access to or be able to process fast enough. These insights allow for quicker, more informed decisions and give the workforce the space and mental capacity to focus on reacting to the insights provided and addressing high-priority challenges.

Human + AI in Action

In fact, we are already seeing ways in which AI decision-support is empowering the team at the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority (Mobility Authority). The Mobility Authority is an independent government agency operating several of the major toll roads in the rapidly growing Austin metro and surrounding region. They are also a leading innovator in using AI to support their mission, to develop, deliver, operate, and maintain high-quality roadways and related transportation solutions.

While the primary focus of a recent implementation of an AI-driven solution was for its incident detection capabilities, the Mobility Authority quickly saw significant process efficiencies for their workforce. The first was the ability to quickly notify the public of what was happening on the roadways so that travelers could make more informed decisions. Additionally, because the platform was collecting and processing various data points all in one place, the team could collaborate seamlessly, ensuring everyone had the most recent information and reducing the time spent on each incident. Furthermore, the analytics capabilities enabled the team to assess the performance of the roadways, quickly identifying hot spots or areas of concern, and enabling deeper discussions about areas that might need operational improvement or other interventions to improve safety. Lastly, the managers were now able to easily see the performance of the team and, where required, retrain quickly, upskilling everyone, including operators that may be new to transportation management. In each of these situations, the team was able to focus on the analysis and decision-making not the data collection.

Conclusion

Al tools can and will provide insights and efficiencies that our human workforce will use these to make the informed, empathetic, and strategic decisions that only humans can. As a thought leader in the Al-based roadway intelligence space, Rekor's mission is to design the Al solutions that empower human workers, enabling individual workers and transportation agencies to achieve more by focusing their time and effort on adding the unique skills and insights that make them human.