The Prince of Wales has joked about AI taking over jobs in motor racing as he got into the driving seat of Jaguar's Formula E race car. Prince William, 43, quipped that 'AI drivers' might eventually be 'much quicker' as he was treated to a full tour of Jaguar TCS Racing's headquarters in Kidlington, Oxfordshire.
The 6ft 3 heir to the throne, who towers over the typical race car driver, sat with his head above 'the halo' in Jaguar's I-TYPE 7 model on Thursday, also his youngest son's birthday. He said during the visit that his three children, Prince George, 12, Princess Charlotte, 10, and Prince Louis, who turned eight today, were 'so excited' about their father's tour of Jaguar racing HQ, adding that they 'love' the sport.
But speaking with graduates and interns working in the Oxfordshire complex, William warned that we 'are probably not far off' the moment that drivers could get replaced by technology one day. He said: 'I was joking with the team that with all the advancements in technology and everything, at what point does the driver become a weak link? Imagine you turn around and just say 'let's just get rid of the driver, we'll put in an AI person and it'll do it itself much quicker'. We're probably not far off that moment are we - not that we should be going down that route obviously. But you guys are fractions of seconds, a tiny little gauge you're trying to gain and get everything, it's incredible.'
He added: 'It is incredible what you're doing, it really is. It's really exciting. And I'm so glad the sport's moved from those few years when it started trying to work out what it's going to do, to where it is now. It's a hell of a leap you guys have made and I can't wait to see what you're going to do in the next 10 years.'
As part of his tour, William was shown the team's cutting edge technology to see how they are competing with other teams in Formula E. While on the engineering floor, he also quizzed the team about the company's trailblazing sustainability concepts and processes and how these 'trickle down to the road' with Jaguar's all-electric consumer car offerings.
Formula E is the fastest-growing motorsport series on the planet and is the first sport to be certified with a net zero carbon footprint since its inception. So far, Jaguar TCS Racing has taken more race victories than any other team, with 25 wins and a further 33 podium positions.
While sitting in their development race car on the engineering floor, the Prince chatted with Jaguar driver António Félix da Costa, the 2020 Formula E World Champion, about the specific controls and components. He also spent time in the race strategy simulation room, wearing headphones to listen in while team orders were given to the drivers, after which he joked: 'There's a lot of attacking going on'.
While in discussions with Jack Lambert, the head of technical integration at Jaguar TCS Racing, William asked: 'What does the future look like? Obviously you keep breaking these new boundaries and this new ground, what's four years, eight years away in electrification?'
Lambert, who toured the Prince around, told him their focus was on going into their GEN4 car and 'opening up the boundaries and conditions for the regulations for the next generation'. 'You guys can race in quite close proximity to cities can't you because the noise levels are low, which is quite a unique feature,' William added.
Speaking to Phoebe Russell, 22, who is on the company's graduate scheme, he asked whether it was 'easy for you to find your way' into the male-dominated field, to which she responded that her father is passionate about it. He said the graduate programme is 'crucial' because it is not a sport that 'women naturally get [pushed] into'.
Speaking after William's visit, Lambert said: 'He was asking us about the future…where do we as engineers want this to go and that's a really interesting question to ask because we don't really know.' Discussing the threat of technological development and AI drivers, he explained: 'It's a possibility now, but you have to ask yourself the question of whether it's the right thing to do for racing. The reason people love racing is competition, and competition comes when you stick a squidgy driver in the middle that has his own brain and thinks and reacts and has emotions, that's where racing comes alive. I think if you start to go down the path of AI racing, which is being done, it shows the ultimate performance of a piece of hardware and some software. Amazing demonstration of technology, but at the core of racing is the emotion and the sport that comes from having drivers.'
He added that Prince William was 'very knowledgeable about the electrification of the automotive industry, and how Formula E can be part of that'.
