Buying a car in an AI driven world
Meet John, a creative designer for a leading fashion brand. His home is driven by IoT, with all major functional aspects monitored and managed through a personal assistant, Eli residing on his smartphone and smartwatch. With accurate data on John’s movements and habits, Eli’s AI algorithms are working behind the scene to automate an ever increasing list of daily decisions and activities performed by John.
For instance, based on John’s movements tracked through sensors in his smart watch, Eli knows John’s normal morning routine. Eli knows that the first thing John does after waking up is to brush his teeth, followed by exercise, shower and finally food preparation. Eli can accurately predict when John will step out of his home for work and times the booking of an Uber so that it is waiting for him when he reaches the roadside curb.
Now John decides that he needs to buy a car to use on weekends and asks Eli what options he has. After John tells Eli to refine the options based on his preferences, Eli books the test drive for the selected models as per his availability. Once, he takes a car for a test drive, Eli can sense that he likes a particular model based on changes in his body vitals like blood pressure, heart beat, etc. Eli then calculates how much loan would John require and starts negotiation with multiple financial institutions represented by their smart-bots respectively and arrives at the best offers suited to John within milliseconds. As soon as John completes the test drive, the option to buy the car is presented on the screen of his smartwatch, followed by a prompt to choose among the financing offers shortlisted by Eli. Few-taps on his smartwatch and the new car is delivered to John’s doorstep.
In the background, ABC bank’s bot, Sam received a request for an auto loan from Eli with all the relevant details of John. Sam calculates the risk profile of John and provides a competitive offer to Eli and once John accepts the offer, a smart contract is created between John, ABC bank, the car dealer and the bank managing the salary account of John. Since, the ownership of the car is governed by the smart contract, physical hypothecation is not relevant anymore. A portion of John’s salary is automatically blocked for repayments towards the car loan as soon as it is credited to the salary account. To handle situations resulting in financial hardship, the smart contract already provides for a suitable mechanism to provide options for John to seek a repayment holiday and arrange funds. Any irresponsible behavior or deliberate actions to avoid the repayments would automatically lead to transfer of ownership of the car to ABC bank and penalty details & default alert broadcasted to all accounts linked with John to recover the loss incurred by ABC bank.
