Gus Wilson was the main character and master mechanic of Model Garage, a Popular Science magazine series that began in 1925 and ran for 44 years. Gus was presented as a thoughtful, honest man, respected in his town and who was never without his common sense. He was then, and remains now, a fantastic character representing integrity, fair dealing, tolerance, and respect while upholding his devotion to the standards and the dignity of the mechanic’s profession. The character, Gus Wilson, didn’t have any superpowers. He was remarkable simply because he understood the nature of cars in his small town and could use his sound judgment and honesty to benefit his neighbors.

Real mechanics, as good as they are, can’t live up to Gus’s idealistic standards simply because vehicles today are incredibly diverse and are used across America in different ways by different people in wildly different environments. Gus’s insights worked because he dealt directly with a few cars in a small area of use and worked with those same vehicles over their serviceable lifetime. Expecting a mechanic to have that knowledge in today’s highly complex environment of more vehicle makes, models, subsystems, and vehicle complexity is unrealistic. An ideal mechanic must have direct experience with every vehicle type throughout their entire service life, so the perfect mechanic must be superhuman.

While Gus will always remain a charming character from the past, his lessons remain critically important, especially in what it takes to be an ideal mechanic. An ideal machinic would need to have a superhuman experience with every vehicle through time and would be able to consider the nature as well as limitations of each. An ideal mechanic must have direct experience with every vehicle type throughout their entire service life, so the perfect mechanic must be superhuman.

With Gus Wilson as an ideal and recognizing the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Raise a Hood has gathered several pioneers in the fields of artificial intelligence and machine learning to build GUS™AI (Generative Uniform Syntactics Artificial Intelligence) or just “GUS” for short, a new class of generative artificial intelligence capable of unifying our understanding of mechanical systems. The GUS system harvests and learns from the vast information we generate daily across the country, learning about each and applying that knowledge to individual repairs.

While it still sounds a little like science fiction, most of us are aware that AI is rapidly becoming a present part of our daily lives. Many people are surprised that AI already knows how to diagnose certain diseases by simply looking into people’s eyes. This superhuman ability is in final testing and will change how certain diseases are diagnosed. This ability is an example of what AI can do and an example of what the tech wizards building GUS have most recently achieved.

GUS artificial intelligence works by combining large sets of vehicle repair data with intelligent, iterative processing algorithms to learn from specific vehicles, problems, and environmental patterns of data. GUS allows owners of a given vehicle to benefit from the entire history of analysis and diagnosis of their exact vehicle across the country, over time, environments, history, and vehicle use patterns. For example, we may ask GUS to analyze various symptoms in diverse parts of the country. Rather than offering divergent solutions, GUS can recognize that a common problem presents itself in different ways depending on the location and history of the car. By learning directly from vehicle owners and repair facilities, GUS functions as the best, most knowledgeable data source for specific vehicles, problems, and environments and empowers everyone with its knowledge.

GUS artificial intelligence was never intended to (and never will) replace mechanics; it simply allows every mechanic and customer to know how best to repair your vehicle. That’s an important statement; GUS allows everyone to understand what repairs are needed, eliminating the dreaded games of upsells and the typical customer anxiety that comes from not knowing what work is necessary. Hence, no one ever needs to question if the repairs or pricing at a given shop are fair. GUS represents a common national standard of vehicle repair allowing everyone to benefit from the very best skill, integrity, and fair dealing of the mechanic’s profession, just like Gus Wilson.