Why this driverless car CEO is cautious about letting AI take the wheel

Caption language: en · Fetched: 2026-09-27

driverless cars, drones, and robots. AI's next big win in China may come not from chatboards, but from machines working in the physical world. Well, CNA's Tanui is at the Future China Global Conference in Singapore, where physical AI is top on the agenda. Nui, where is China headed on this front? China has become exceptionally good at developing artificial intelligence. But can its companies now export it and earn the trust needed to put machines in charge of critical machines in charge of critical work around the world safely? I talked to the founder of Hong Kong listed Chinese autonomous driving company UIC Technology Wanga. He wants to put 1 million AI drivers on the road. And I started by asking him if there's one situation he would not trust an AI to drive. >> We trust AI to drive. But this kind of trust takes years to build.

I think over the last 10 years, the first seven years we work on technology approach 100% incrementally. But in the last 3 years, we strive to build the trust with our customers. You know, it's it's not the engineering problem anymore. It's a psychology problem. Right. >> Yeah. Personally actually, is there any situation where you just would not make an AI drive? Well, today for example in busy uh you know city traffic situation I would uh be very cautious >> to use the assisted even you know FSD like >> assisted driving technology.

I will be very cautious because you know the responsibility is on our side right I I always said you know today AI can hallucinate and they can apologize for the mistakes they make but in physical words if something bad happens it cannot be reverted right humans life are sacrificed so again we call FSD like technology level two plus because the responsibility is at the driver's side so we or I as a driver I have to be very cautious for traffic situations where AI is not 100% safe. >> So you would not put AI onto the open busy roads at this point? >> Well, I would use AI but I will be very cautious and prepare to take over the control at any time. >> So there must be a human at the wheel. >> Yes. So in these scenarios, AI needs human supervision. You talk about trust as a Chinese company.

Do you find it, you know, any particular challenge in earning the trust of customers overseas? >> Well, that's a different problem and I think that's an international problem because every country has big concerns on data security, data compliance, and some talk about national security. But I think autonomous driving is rather a civil infrastructure not a military technology. Right? So it's really about the data security and the data compliance. >> How much of an autonomous driving system that's developed in China can simply be exported unchanged. >> You know the future of globalization is localization. You have to take care of all the local innovation requirements that is based on local needs. Right?

So we want to export or we want to share our technology foundation with local ecosystem partners in every country in the region and we work with them build the local products >> in Southeast Asia and other parts of Asia. Driving is the livelihood of millions and millions of people. >> Is autonomous driving good equally good for all economies? Well, we take a approach where you know you have to start with the areas where the working environment is very bad, the working hours is long and uh you know our customers they have challenges hiring human drivers. We don't want to you know you know uh go directly into areas where you know uh millions of uh human workers are hired. So for for example in airport it's a really challenge to find a human driver that is qualified for the airport driving work.

It has to be a special driving license and uh the AI driver needs to be trained for many months before he or she starts to work and the working condition is really really bad. You know in summer the temperature on the April is like 70° C and in winter [music] you know when driving this kind of tractors because they don't have window they don't have door and you know it's and and even and the the engine of the aircraft brings noise and that can hurt the hearing capability of human workers. So this is where we start to deploy our technology. AI improving tough jobs, removing painful ones altogether, but starting in places where those jobs are hard to fill. That was Mr. Ugsha, CEO of Chinese autonomous driving company UIC. I'll have more later on the tough questions AI is raising for the region. >> Well, thank you very much for that.

There was Sanui.