Artificial Intelligence has largely taken over a huge aspect of not only current but future humanity. There are a lot of rising ideas that haven’t been implemented but are very close to being released. Recently there was a release of what they call autonomous delivery robots deployed by Starship company in certain countries such as the UK and USA. The future of delivery services lies in the hands of delivery robots, which are created to take over food, grocery, package, or even hospital delivery and render essential services in restaurants or hotels. This project is likely to be the future of Amazon, FedEx, and other huge companies. However are robots able to replace such human activities? Will the future of delivery truly be effective? What impact will this have on humanity?
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Starship autonomous robots have proven that bots can render delivery services efficiently. According to their CEO, Alastair Westgarth the robots traveled a total of 3.6 million kilometers to make 2 million deliveries, which is pretty impressive. According to Bernard Marr, the CEO stated that “if the robot encounters something unusual, it will stop and send an alert to our remote operations” thus emphasizing the safety of the bots and surroundings. According to research, the robots were able to get through various weather climates, portraying their capability. However, I doubt these robots are as efficient as human beings. Upon the successes, there are a lot of failures that can also occur, which portrays humans as the more compatible for the job. Robots are often likely to encounter an error in their system, which will lead to customers not receiving their goods or services in time or at all. This is not the only problem that the machine is likely to encounter. The robot may also experience damage caused by people, who may try to smash or damage the robot in order to access what is inside. The machine is also prone to get hit by careless drivers, therefore also leading to its damage. These are issues that can easily be avoided by humans, illustrating the fact that people should not be replaced by robots in such services.
During the outbreak of COVID-19, AI robots would have been the best solution for delivery services, as people would be able to adhere to covid protocols such as social distancing, by avoiding interaction with other humans. However, now that covid is no more rapid, companies can employ people instead of robots to carry out the distribution. I’m guessing that if delivery robots take a large aspect of employment, there will no longer be space for human employment. It may serve as an advantage to certain companies, as they would be cutting off salary payments, therefore increasing their revenue. But are delivery robots not expensive? According to the logistic, the average price of a delivery robot is $2,500-$10,000, which is much more expensive than employing a human being. However, if it is a one-time investment it may pay off more than paying an employee annually since everything is paid all once.
Specialists, such as Elad Inbar claim that the introduction of autonomous delivery robots will serve more as an increase than a fall in employment and solve the shortage in employment. Westgarth claims that it would provide employment, as such robots require care and jobs in programming software or developing. ” Employment will change, but we believe it will go up,” says Westgarth. This is however questionable, for they claim that there is a shortage in employment, but a lot of people still seek jobs, which are taken away by robots and which also take away their opportunity to earn wages and salary to take care of their various expenses. Furthermore, Westgarth claims that its autonomous delivery robots will provide employment, however, this would be granted only to skilled labor. What will happen to unskilled labor? A lot of people seek unskilled labor as they may not be able to secure skilled labor due to one reason or another. If robots take over unskilled labor, what will be left for such people? Also, students who are still in school, yet desire to work will not have that opportunity to engage in skilled labor, as they are not done with education or do not wish to go down the technological path. They therefore very often choose unskilled labor as their temporary work. Accessing all these points and questions, “The battle for our delivery future is on”
Sources/References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delivery_robot
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2021/11/05/the-future-of-delivery-robots/?sh=3ac964bb7337
In my opinion, robots will never fully take over the exercise and delivery market, due to technological limitations, on the one hand they worked well during the pandemic, but in normal times there are too many factors that will cause stagnation in the development of this technology. The simplest example is the conditions of local drugs, this technology can develop only in highly developed countries where there are no local obstacles in the way of robots such as holes in the sidewalks or lack of pavement>