From the global partnerships powering AI to how it's hitting the road across our region, the same technology driving data centers and connectivity is now helping NASCAR and trucking companies move faster and safer.

"Carolina Impact"'s Chris Clark explains.

- [Chris] Most people still hear artificial intelligence and think of something off in the distance, but in Charlotte, it is already moving through real places: the NASCAR garage, utility trucks, and the roads people travel every day.

- You're not driving next to just a truck; you're driving next to a truck with a co-pilot on board, and that co-pilot happens to be an AI engine that can react very quickly should something happen.

- [Chris] Strip away the buzz, and this story gets simpler.

It's about pressure: more information than people can sort through on their own, less time than ever to sort through it.

- We just have so much data in NASCAR.

So just the menial tasks, AI has really helped us speed up.

- [Chris] For NASCAR engineers, the volume can be overwhelming.

- We're able to run a data system that lets us collect hundreds of different measurements multiple times per second throughout a whole lap.

You know, you multiply by 36 or 40 cars over 500 laps at Martinsville, for instance, and you end up with a tremendous amount of data each and every weekend.

- [Chris] So one of the first gains was not dramatic; it was practical.

- We take thousands of pictures on track every weekend.

It could take our engineers hours sometimes just to find our car out of those mess of pictures.

Integrating a machine learning model that was able to just sort pictures car by car saved us a ton of time.

- [Chris] And once the clutter starts to clear, the real decisions come into focus.

- Heights are a big thing.

You wanna make sure that the car going on track is where you think it is and where you want it to be.

And then during the race, damage.

So you're looking at pictures to see, okay, the driver said he hit the wall, is it bad enough that he needs to come in right now or can we leave him out there?

- [Chris] But even here, no one is pretending the machine gets the final word.

- You have to look at it fairly cautiously like you would any tool as you're building confidence in it, right?

You always have to verify it every step and make sure that you're not getting led astray.

- [Chris] Outside racing, that same kind of technology is already built into commercial fleets.

Samsara uses cameras, sensors, routing tools, and live vehicle data to help companies see more, react faster, and coach drivers in real time.

- Our customers are the utilities that help keep your lights on or logistics companies that deliver packages.

Our hardware and software makes it possible for them to have real-time insights into their vehicles, their equipment, their workers, and the sites that they operate at.

- [Chris] Pike Electric turned to Samsara after a problem kept getting worse.

- We continued to see accidents increase, and we learned about Samsara, and we began using them in 2018, 2019, forward-facing and inward-facing cameras, and have seen dramatic results.

Our Samsara cameras right up here.

- [Chris] Samsara watches from more than one angle and listens to more than one stream.

- We also have devices that plug into the vehicle and get a live feed of all the data that the vehicle is generating as you drive, things like, you know, your fuel level, for example, tire pressure, seatbelt status.

- [Chris] It also helps shape the trip before trouble arrives.

- You're not just looking at traffic or weather.

There are many other considerations like weight limits on the roads, bridge heights, can the truck go underneath that bridge, and truck-legal routes, all of those are built into the platform.

- [Chris] For Pike crews, that matters most when the weather is not a forecast but a destination.

- When we have ice storms, when we've got hurricanes, we usually are heading in the directions of those storms, or we're already there when the storms hit.

And sometimes, rather than going to a local news app to find out what the weather looks like, we can just go to our live cameras to determine what it looks like.

- [Chris] For drivers, technology is not abstract.

It speaks up.

(device beeping) - If you're speeding, it's going to alert you.

If you don't put your seatbelt on, it will remind you.

If it detects you're picking up a cell phone, it will give you a verbal cue.

- [Chris] Pike says the change showed up in the numbers.

- Our seatbelt usage has increased by 50%.

Mobile phone usage has decreased by 75%.

Crashes have decreased by close to 25%.

That's just the tip of the iceberg.

- [Chris] And after a wreck, it can answer the question that matters most.

- The videos are never watched; it's just the AI watching what's happening on the road just to keep the drive safe.

And there can be an accident in which the driver is not at all at fault, and the camera system can instantly exonerate them.

The driver can show the officers what happened.

- [Chris] And that changed the way people looked at it.

- There was some trepidation, but within weeks we were able to use videos to exonerate our employees from wrongdoing that they were accused of.

- [Chris] And that trust has grown into something bigger than the company itself.

- Every time that our driver has been trained and avoids an incident, that's an incident with a member of the public that could have been injured or killed.

And so we feel like that partnership is helping not just Pike but the community we live in.

- [Chris] At RFK Racing, the prize is performance.

On Charlotte's roads, it could be something more basic than that: fewer mistakes, fewer close calls, and more people making it home safely, less time buried in the noise and more time for the human being to make the call.

For "Carolina Impact," I'm Chris Clark.