LeBron James and Intel want to convince you autonomous cars are safe

LeBron James isn't scared of the formidable Golden State Warriors, but like most of us, he probably has a healthy distrust of fully autonomous vehicles. In a new Intel advertisement, however, the innovative microchip company wants us to believe that the NBA's top player isn't daunted by self-driving cars.

Intel hopes to ease the masses into accepting autonomous vehicles, because the company is betting on a self-driving future. Intel has banded with Waymo (formerly known as Google's autonomous car project) to make self-driving hybrid minivans, and recently acquired the autonomous driving tech company MobileEye. 

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Intel isn't producing the actual cars. But it is making the AI chip components that make the cars autonomous, so it has a deep interest in promoting the safety of these vehicles. 

In the ad (shown above), an initially hesitant LeBron James is quickly convinced that a driverless car is safe. The "fearless" James is told that the vehicle "sees like 80 times better than you do." James then goes for a ride in the backseat of a futurist sedan, and exclaims, "Hey y'all, I'm keepin' this!"

The future of driverless cars, according to Intel, isn't just about a vehicle that perceives the road and potential hazards better than our humble human eyes. It's about artificially intelligent cars that can learn from one another, and with a great "cloud" mind of accumulated data, become profoundly safer. 

According to the National Highway Safety Administration, human error is "the critical reason for 93% of crashes,” and Intel uses the stat as the foundational reason for its support of autonomous vehicles. 

"Self-driving technology can help prevent these errors by giving autonomous vehicles the capacity to learn from the collective experience of millions of cars – avoiding the mistakes of others and creating a safer driving environment," wrote Intel CEO Brian Krzanich in a company blog last month.

LeBron James doesn't come cheap, so Intel must think these safety campaigns are essential: The company is confident that automakers will abandon human-operated cars in the future, so it better ensure that people are comfortable buying autonomous machines.

"Given the pace at which autonomous driving is coming to life, I fully expect my children’s children will never have to drive a car," wrote Krzanich.

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