AI can drive, but will it survive Delhi?

In traffic and in life, intelligence is often local, lived and contextual

On what should have been a seven-minute ride to the India AI Summit, Delhi’s traffic snarl had settled into its familiar state of acquiescence. My cab driver watched the long river of red brake lights ahead and asked with curiosity, “Is there some big AI event today? Everyone is talking about it.”

He had questions, and the logjam gave us time. “What exactly is AI?” he asked. “Can it drive a car? I’ve heard it can – in China. And can it talk to passengers? Because people like to talk.” His tone wasn’t sceptical; it was matter-of-fact. We crawled forward, paused and then moved again. The navigation voice insisted this was the fastest route. He arched an eyebrow at the screen, the way someone might humour an unfailingly confident, but occasionally mistaken, friend.

To him, technology was welcome when it worked and a story to recount when it didn’t. He liked that payments were easy now and he liked that maps helped. But he also trusted what he had learned from years on the road, like which turn behaves differently after 6 pm, which shortcut is not really one, and which signal negotiates with time. Just before I got down, he said, “If AI is going to take my job, let me see it fix my road and traffic first.”

It felt like a perfectly reasonable ask.

For most people, questions about AI are rarely abstract musings about superintelligence or sentience. It is in the practical - will it make everyday life smoother? We celebrate AI for speed and accuracy. But the qualities people notice and want most are simpler. They want relevance and usefulness that meets the situation they are actually in.

We have encountered this everywhere. A system is always on, available 24 x 365, and can respond promptly, but does it really answer your question? AI is on the phone when you’re just trying to reach customer service and can be efficient, but does it understand context? Anyone who has tried to resolve a billing error, book an air ticket during peak travel days, or navigate a complicated website knows the difference. The gap between correct and useful can be vast. 

That is because intelligence, in everyday life, is rarely just about merely processing data alone. It is often in the collective, lived and human. It resides in the bus conductor, who knows which stop is less crowded at dusk. It lives in the resident welfare volunteer who knows whom to call when a street light fails. It lives in the neighbour who knows which office will respond today. These forms of knowledge are practical, situated, and deeply human. They are shaped by experience, relationships, and context.

As AI becomes more visible around us, people are not only asking what it can do. They are quietly asking how it will fit into this web of lived intelligence. Will it adapt to real life, with all its unpredictability? That cab ride was not a debate about the future. It was a glimpse of how regular people are meeting it. If intelligence is going to surround us, the hope is simple: Let it be a bit kinder and a bit more useful. 

And if it can untangle traffic snarls, even better.