The artificial intelligence era is already upon coach and bus as it is for every other sector, capturing areas from schedule creation to reporting and communications. It no doubt can and will deliver much else.
Some operators will adopt it faster than others; a further cohort may seek to avoid it. Two experts in AI with bus backgrounds make clear that it is here, and going nowhere. One of them is Graham Moore, who for seven years was Stagecoach Group Chief Information Officer and is now CEO at Mind the AI Gap.
He and former Optibus man Dave Joshua compare the arrival of AI to the coming of the internet three decades ago. The internet revolutionised business, and AI will do the same, they believe. Far-fetched that line of thought may first sound, but closer consideration makes it seem more believable.
Who can imagine an operator that lacks a website, or does not communicate via email and use the internet for a multitude of tasks? Will AI really wash through businesses in the same way that the internet has in anchoring so many systems and processes?
Pretty clear is that while AI has an administrative use in the sector, it also carries growing commercial importance. Identifying operational issues, bringing them into a coherent list and suggesting solutions is highlighted by the gurus of artificial intelligence in coach and bus as one such area. Identify what you want such a tool to do before deploying it, they advise.
And yet, when speaking at the ALBUM conference on 12 May, Dave and Graham made some salient points that urge caution. The first relates to a business’s AI policy. Not a 60-page monster, but something condensed and practical that sets out the dos and do-nots.
Avoiding free artificial intelligence tools is something to have on such a document, they say. A ‘free’ large language model is likely to scrape inputs to train itself. Who wants confidential internal information and data in that theatre? Go with the professional version instead.
Care around sharing sensitive documents is another box to tick, as is realising that the best place to start with AI is through simple and straightforward tasks until confidence is gained.
Crunching safety-critical tasks through a new artificial intelligence tool is not recommended, while operators active in tendered markets should be aware that AI detectors can wheedle out submissions that are machine-written and presented verbatim.
Nevertheless, other delegates at ALBUM’s conference suggest that AI could be a leveller for the smaller operator. It may allow them to undertake tasks that would have been impossible before by closing the capability gap with larger operators and opening competitiveness in new workstreams.
Listening to Dave and Graham gives a strong idea that AI will play a major part in the future of coach and bus. It will never define such a business’s reason for existence, but it will allow ‘messy’ work such as complaints, reports and communications to be dealt with efficiently.
Many parts of the sector have long prided themselves on the human touch that enables the job to be done properly. Not all existing uses of AI can be said to have delivered as expected. There have been some obvious unintended consequences. But as a simple tool to do grunt work, it may well be the next ‘internet moment’ after all.
