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“I had a front-row seat to how quickly it was disrupted” || Chris Piche, Founder and CEO, Smarter AI

·25 min·1 clip

Chris Piche says he had a front-row seat to how quickly BlackBerry was disrupted after Apple found iPhone product-market fit.

1. Dealer News Today episodes 14 of season five centers on Chris Piche and Smarter AI, with Derek D introducing an automotive-technology conversation. 2. Chris Piche is the founder and CEO of Smarter AI, and Derek D frames him as a computer scientist and tech entrepreneur with work at AT&T, DirecTV, and BlackBerry. 3. The episode asks how camera software can do for vehicles what iOS and Android did for smartphones. 4. Chris says he spent years in audio and video technologies before working on AT&T TV and DirecTV’s phone-based service. 5. He says he was part of the BlackBerry smartphone team and sold technology that became the voice and video calling feature. 6. Chris says he saw how quickly Apple took market share after finding product-market fit for the iPhone. 7. He says that BlackBerry experience made him look for a similar disruption in the camera market four and a half years ago. 8. Chris says most cameras either store video on a disc or play it on a screen, and valuable information in that video is usually not looked at. 9. He says Smarter AI is a software platform for AI cameras that can understand what is happening instead of waiting for a person to watch the footage. 10. He says the platform can alert users when there is something interesting, which is the product vision behind the company. 11. On vehicle applications, Chris says the cameras support driver assistance by looking outside the car and detecting pedestrians, cut-ins, hard braking, and lane drift. 12. He says the company also has driver monitoring features that can notice texting, falling asleep, or attention shifting away from the road. 13. Chris says the notification can be a chime or one of several voices, and customers can configure how the reminder sounds. 14. He says the software also supports sensor fusion, which combines speed, acceleration, location, and video data. 15. Chris says sensor fusion is one of the foundational pieces of self-driving technology. 16. He says license-plate recognition is aimed more at smart-city applications, police, first responders, and government departments than at ordinary private drivers. 17. Derek and Chris keep the interview conversational, with Derek using examples like Tesla screens, a 95 Mustang, and Siri to test how the system works. 18. Chris sounds technical but plainspoken, moving from product architecture to practical road-safety examples without heavy jargon. 19. Listeners interested in fleet safety, ADAS, and automotive AI will get the most from this episode. 20. Listeners wanting a celebrity-style car story or deep policy debate may skip it.

As heard by us

A clear, practical look at vehicle camera technology and the supplier relationships behind it.

Smarter AI's automotive focus comes through in a practical conversation about aftermarket cameras, OEMs, and the work of bringing advanced systems into vehicles.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You get a dealer-minded conversation about Smarter AI, vehicle cameras, aftermarket installs, OEM suppliers, and the features making modern cars more technology-heavy.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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