Anyone who’s seen season 3 of HBO’s Westworld is surely familiar with Rehoboam, a quantum computer system tasked in part with predicting the future through data analysis.
Somebody high up the food chain at BMW must have watched the series, because the German carmaker has just entered into a new strategic collaboration with Amazon Web Services (AWS), where one of the goals is to have AI and machine learning systems predict consumer demand for BMW vehicles.
We can relax though, because there’s no ominous threat here. BMW will employ these methods simply so that it can speed up various processes such as ordering the right parts from suppliers, complying with regulations across various markets and automatically check requirements needed to design new models, reports Reuters.
Read Also: BMW iX3 Already Getting A Facelift, Could Be Joined By A New M Sport Package
“We want to switch from gut-driven decisions to data-driven decisions,” said Kai Demtroder, VP of data transformation at BMW. “We have a few hundred data scientists at BMW, but the aim is to make the data accessible to everyone.”
Still, it will be interesting to see what the data shows regarding demand for various models and equipment options. It may be just a matter of time before a computer makes all logistical decisions when it comes to global demand.
Demtroder added that BMW’s cloud data hub already proved its value last spring when the COVID-19 pandemic began affecting the automotive industry. Data from Amazon Web Services (AWS) helped the German carmaker see which supplier plants had problems.
“This was a clear case where we had all the data and we could use it immediately to respond to the crisis,” he added.
BMW has been working together with AWS since 2015, and the two have spent the last year and a half jointly developing the carmaker’s data hub – up to 5,000 BMW employees will be trained to use AWS technologies.
