Our Future of Fully Automated Transportation Systems

I've already wrote a lot about self-driven passenger cars rolling out from every single international car manufacturer in the world on or near the year 2020.  This is still on track and with so many billions of dollars invested by these monster companies, nothing short of a World War would stop them from deploying according to plan now.

In parallel of course, many of these same manufacturers are helping transportation companies automate as well.  But also, in the non-passenger transportation industries, there are other major firms that have plans of their own to deploy self-driven vehicles designed to ferry goods from point A to point B, and yes, some of them directly to consumers.

In the past few months, I've become aware of a couple of entrants in the self-driving space that have made decisive moves, such as Boeing and Airbus.   Both are in the air scene and do both passengers and cargo.  Now they are making big acquisitions and investments to automate their fleets of vehicles.

Ford and Dominos have decided to pair up to make the Dominos franchise one of the first big fast food franchises to deliver pizzas from oven to dining room without personnel being involved.

Mercedes is doing trials with Matternet in Switzerland now to become a big player in the self-driving delivery scene by combining both cars and drone technologies.

Deutsche Post DHL is developing its own fleet of self-driven delivery trucks to service it's clients in the 220 countries it has presence in. 

We're also seeing some testing (that have been going on for years) in self-driven freight trains too, like this example in the Australian outback.

The UK government is trialing platooning self-delivery trucks on its territory to reduce self-driven and transportation congestion on roads and make transportation of goods more cost effective to boot.

And let's not forget the startups that are still pumping out ideas to push it even further in the hopes to becoming dominant themselves in this very exciting area, or to be acquired by larger firms (like Being, Airbus, DHL and so on):

• Passenger Flying Drone is giving it a go in competing with Chinese Ehang and Volocopter to enter the scene.
• And DelivAir is developing ways to deliver packages directly to the individual smart device that made the order, in the hands of the holder, one would presume, using a specialized drone capable of dropping items from an air tether.

The point is, when we see major, major companies making these acquisitions and trials, we can't have any more doubt our world of transportation is about to change.  What kind of changes should we anticipate?

I discuss this further in my video below:

You can guarantee that first major players will network their self-driven vehicles as most of them will use deep learning AI to operate (or something better) and learn from road conditions.  This will allow individual vehicles to learn from every other vehicle in the network.  A bit later on, one would hope that the software and protocols in these network will converge to a certain type of information that can be also shared with other networks out there. i.e. DHL's fleet of autonomous delivery trucks learning from one another but then also sharing what they learn with the Mercedes delivery truck fleets and vice versa.  

This concept of connectivity is very powerful and important for security and safety reasons because these are all machines working at machine speeds.  They do take time to "absorb" new information from another source, as they are self-learning AI, but they can do it way faster than any human being could.

Can a human learn how to navigate crowds in a vehicle from literally millions of different situations and conditions internationally all at the same time and make sense of the information?  Impossible.  But machines can.

We're heading into a world where human beings can definitively focus on what they enjoy doing without worries on how we will move from A to B or how goods are moved from A to B.  Where this is heading is a networked transportation system that operates through the Internet and some secure networks that talk with each other that communicates all the information needed to ensure humans always have a safe way to go from place to place efficiently and where goods are always minutes away from where it is needed... all at the touch of a button, or a voice command.

This is all structuring itself thanks to the excitement there is around AI these days, and our readiness as a population to embrace such things to make our lives easier, safer and more enjoyable.

I can't wait!

Artificial Intelligence replacing the worker

Will you be replaced at your work one day soon by artificially intelligent applications and automated devices?

This is not as easy a question as one would think.  In fact, it is the wrong question for the coming few years altogether.

What we should ask ourselves is:  "How will my basic needs be met (food, home etc...)?"  and "What should I occupy my time with in order to feel like I'm contributing to society? "

Here's the truth.  We're in a technological transition currently where most jobs in the transportation and commercial sectors (most jobs have been already replaced in the manufacturing sectors and it's not done yet) will be replaced now by A.I. and automated systems.

We're talking pretty much any service job from waiters to reception desk people, to clerks, to cashiers etc....  Cabbies, bus drivers, cam or subway operators, truck drivers of all kinds will also be replaced by robots guided by artificial intelligence.

The first major visible part of the transition will be massive with the worldwide self-driving car roll-out that is planned by all international car manufacturers by 2020.  This will be the first time the people will actually see this transition.

Here is my short video talk about it all:

It will only accelerate after people start panicking.

They will panic because some people will realize that if cars can drive themselves on the street safely, why can't people get served by intelligent assistants such as more advanced versions of Google Assistant, Amazon's Alexa, Microsoft's Cortana, Apple's Siri or IBM's Watson.

On top of the self-driving cars soon, several companies including Amazon, Just Eat, Drone Deliveries Canada and others were automating deliveries from distribution center to individual homes experimentally in 2016.  No more pizza delivery boy to your door!

Since 70% of all jobs fall into the commercial and transportation buckets these days, how can the economy support all the people.  People need to eat, drink, and stay somewhere after all... and it is our salaries that allow us to pay for stuff produced by the A.I. in the first place.

It is a catch 22.  A.I. replaces workers to make goods & services.  Workers don't get paid so can't buy goods & services.  A.I. goes out of work????

This path leads to a paradigm shift where we'll need to figure out a way where everyone needn't worry about feeding themselves or where they will sleep and at the same time have a way to acquire or make whatever widget they need to do anything.

Now I know what most of you are thinking:  we've been at this juncture before.   New tech always creates new jobs for people to do so the economy is fine the way it is.

Well, not this time for a very simple reason:  the technology, A.I., in itself is designed to be a replacement for work.  We're not creating robots to replace workers at the car manufacturing plant here (which incidentally created lots of jobs in the computers, robotics and automation fields back then).  Heck, the A.I. we'll create will eventually be better than us at creating the next generation of A.I. and so on.

In a world where A.I. and robots do most of the work, humans would be free to do whatever they choose to create value for themselves in the world since money changes in meaning.  Artificial intelligence will be able to run the world and keep us doing what we do best and prefer:  follow our passions, whatever that may be.

I'm leaving the ramifications of all that for my upcoming book but in a nutshell, you can check out the concept of Paradism to think more about it all.

Right now, we have multiple A.I. that are even able to do art and of course the sex industry, looking for more money in the robotics and A.I. space, are making a go at it as well.  We even have done great work with A.I. in order to ensure computers of tomorrow will understand emotions.

Be ready to choose your new occupation soon 'cause it won't be a job.  When?  Well, as soon as most basic infrastructure for food and housing will be automated, it'll be fairly easy then to transition from worker to Human.  The technology to do exactly that is here TODAY.  It's only a question of time for the systems to be put in place in enough businesses for it all to be felt.

Give it a few years.....