Name: Harman CEO: Digital Innovation Can Have a Positive Impact on Society
Uploaded: 2018-09-14
Duration: 4 min 59 s
Description: Leaders can't compromise moral values, especially when it comes to autonomous driving, says Harman CEO Dinesh Paliwal.

Harman CEO: Digital Innovation Can Have a Positive Impact on Society

Leaders can't compromise moral values, especially when it comes to autonomous driving, says Harman CEO Dinesh Paliwal.

Oh, how do you think about Harmon's mission? How do you define it? And how do you make sure that all of your employees understand it and really feel like they're a part of that mission? We are in sound and digital system transformation in the car. We do complete digital cockpit, so best user experience. So I like to see Harmon doing what I would like to have in my life. How do you think that the role of the CEO has changed over time? Do you feel like your job is different than that of your predecessors? And if you do, what do you think are the factors that are changing it? 20 years ago, CEOs did not have to deal with so many digital technologies and media and keeping keep in touch. Every second something is happening, which has implications for your business. So being on top second, I believe, is customers a lot more demanding. They want to be kept up to date, and third. I think social responsibility has always been part of CEO, but never before. It is so important now that we have to be socially responsible, not just as a cliche, but What do you do for society? You are operating. We do it in our simple way. We do invest in music education. We think music is a very good way of keeping people saying and thinking straight, Uh, we invest heavily in stem education worldwide, and we're also spending a lot of our profit dollars in women's education worldwide. One of the hot issues in the social responsibility area right now is we're seeing more companies that are responding to sometimes controversial political events that are happening or topics. Do you feel as CEO that, you know, there are times when you should take a stance on those types of issues? And if so, how do you decide which ones you know, if you ask me heart and mind game here CEOs are people and they live in the society. I think they should have venue to express their views. At the same time, you only appoint people those who are about those things, that they have fewer hidden biases. All of us have biases, hidden biases as long as started politically oriented, as long as not profit driven. I think it's okay to express the views and do you consider. I guess moral leadership to be part of the CEO role has to be. If you're compromising your moral values, you cannot sustain for too long, you need to feel free. You do not feel congestion and something you're holding back because you cannot talk about it. Uh, I feel like that with my team, I should be able to speak any issue as long as I'm respectful and I'm listening everybody's point of view and not forcing my point of view onto others. So I know that autonomous driving is a big part of the future for Hermit. And I am wondering how you think about some of the ethical and societal issues that are involved. Um, in that technology, really coming online. First of all, safety is the most important here. Uh, and and that's something we're trying to solve Autonomous for the sake of technology doesn't mean anything. In the United States, we lose 37,000 lives every year in road accidents, and half of those are due to human error. Imagine if we could reduce that by half or hopefully eliminate all of that. This is something we take it very seriously and safety means using a lot of flawless sensors. Second, I talked about productivity in big cities like Boston, Taipei, Shanghai, Los Angeles. On an average, we spend three hours a day in sitting in the car. Some very solid statistics, uh, concluded that we can add 1% of GDP by taking all that unproductive hours to productivity GDP. You mentioned social and moral aspects of, uh, autonomous driving. The laurel Learning has to happen because human mind is far superior than any computer ever developed, in my view. So right now, what's happening in MIT Labs and many other corporations, including US supercomputers, are being taught how human instincts work. How will we reflect on a four way sign? If someone said, we generally rank, you go fast, I go second. How do you learn those things? So if you ask me, the true autonomous or semi autonomous will start to happen in late 2028 2030. Until then, we'll see a lot of incremental improvement which will improve. I call it a dark, advanced driver assistance, so you and I will have lots of safety features assisting us to drive and freeing of some time to be more productive. There's a journey which we are investing heavily and learning