Intel has recruited basketball superstar LeBron James to help promote fully-autonomous vehicles.
The chipmaker is in the midst of an aggressive venture into the world of self-driving technologies and already working with a slew of automakers and technology companies to provide them with the chips needed to power the cars of the future.
With that in mind, Intel is now looking to inform the public about its technology in a broadcast and digital ad campaign featuring one of the world’s biggest sporting heroes.
In a statement, Intel’s vice president and general manager of automated driving Kathy Winter said it is remarkable that the general public has so little faith in autonomous cars.
“Society’s fear of driverless cars is somewhat baffling to me. Given that car crashes attributable to human error cause more than 1 million vehicle deaths every year, it’s those human-driven cars people should be afraid of. Yet all of us today get behind the wheel and simply trust that the cars coming toward them in the opposite lane will stay where they’re supposed to. From my point of view, unless those are self-driving cars, we should all be terrified.”
Only time will tell if the ad campaign has an impact on public perception of self-driving vehicles.