Skip to main content Skip to secondary navigation

On-demand Transportation

Main content start

[go to the annotated version]

On-demand transportation services such as Uber and Lyft have emerged as another pivotal application of sensing, connectivity, and AI,[58] with algorithms for matching drivers to passengers by location and suitability (reputation modeling).[59] [60]

Through dynamic pricing, these services ration access by willingness-to-pay, with dynamic pricing also encouraging an increase in the supply of drivers, and have become a popular method for transportation in cities. With their rapid advance have come multiple policy and legal issues, such as competition with existing taxi services and concerns about lack of regulation and safety. On-demand transportation services seem likely to be a major force towards self-driving cars.

Carpooling and ridesharing, more generally, have long been seen as a promising approach to decrease traffic congestion and better utilize personal transportation resources. Services such as Zimride and Nuride bring together people sharing similar routes for a joint trip. But this approach to carpooling has failed to gain traction on a large scale.

 


[58] Jared Meyer, "Uber and Lyft are changing the way Americans move about their country," National Review, June 7, 2016, accessed August 1, 2016, http://www.nationalreview.com/article/436263/uber-lyft-ride-sharing-services-sharing-economy-are-future.

[59] Alexander Howard, "How Digital Platforms Like LinkedIn, Uber And TaskRabbit Are Changing The On-Demand Economy," The Huffington Post, July 14, 2015, accessed August 1, 2016, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/online-talent-platforms_us_55a03545e4b0b8145f72ccf6.

[60] "Announcing UberPool," Uber Newsroom, August 5, 2014, accessed August 1, 2016, https://newsroom.uber.com/announcing-uberpool/.

Cite This Report

Peter Stone, Rodney Brooks, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ryan Calo, Oren Etzioni, Greg Hager, Julia Hirschberg, Shivaram Kalyanakrishnan, Ece Kamar, Sarit Kraus, Kevin Leyton-Brown, David Parkes, William Press, AnnaLee Saxenian, Julie Shah, Milind Tambe, and Astro Teller.  "Artificial Intelligence and Life in 2030." One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence: Report of the 2015-2016 Study Panel, Stanford University, Stanford, CA,  September 2016. Doc: http://ai100.stanford.edu/2016-report. Accessed:  September 6, 2016.

Report Authors

AI100 Standing Committee and Study Panel 

Copyright

© 2016 by Stanford University. Artificial Intelligence and Life in 2030 is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 License (International): https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/.