Toyota's Advanced R&D Puts Humans First

Creating technologies that amplify human experience and endeavor to help solve society's biggest challenges is the mission of the Toyota Research Institute.

Gill Pratt has a gift for explaining complex topics in simple terms. And as Toyota Motor Co.'s chief scientist and CEO of the Toyota Research Institute (TRI), he also speaks frankly about the promises and potential pitfalls of new technologies. Addressing a rare group of visitors - tech reporters and analysts, including SAE Media - recently at TRI's Silicon Valley headquarters, Pratt noted the heightened public discourse around artificial intelligence, a core area of focus for many of TRI's 200 scientists and engineers.

“Everybody is worried ChatGPT is going to be writing term papers for college students,” Pratt said half-jokingly about the controversial “chat bot” introduced in late 2022 by OpenAI. “But even our humor reflects the anxiety we have about this technology and its dual nature of good and evil.” Society, he observed, has become “much less naive about technology, and much more skeptical.” Much of that comes from the AI industry's early hype about self-driving vehicles, which TRI did not share.