National

Axios What's Next

Autonomous trucks could one day replace more than 90% of all highway trucking, which could have a profound impact on as many as 500,000 long-haul truckers, a new study found. 

Why it matters: Automation, and its potential impact on human labor, is a widespread concern for workers in many industries. While labor markets continually evolve, it often takes time for displaced workers to adapt to new jobs requiring different skills.

The big picture: Long-haul trucking is a grueling job, with a high turnover rate. Last year, the industry faced a record shortage of 80,000 drivers. 

Driving the news: The study by researchers at the University of Michigan and Carnegie Mellon University assessed the impact of autonomous trucking on operator-hours, depending on how the technology — now being tested in Sun Belt states — is deployed.

They looked at operator-hours, not jobs, because many truckers are independently employed. 

Using federal data about trucking shipments, and the operator-hours used to fulfill those shipments, they explored various deployment scenarios and how those might evolve over time.

What they found: The impacts of automation might not happen all at once. 

“If automation is restricted to Sun Belt states (including Florida, Texas and Arizona) — because the technology may not initially work well in rough weather — about 10% of the operator hours will be affected,” said study co-author Parth Vaishnav, assistant professor of sustainable systems at the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability.

If automated trucks were deployed across the U.S., in all types of weather, then up to 94% of operator hours would be affected — the equivalent of 500,000 truck driver jobs, their research found.

The findings are consistent with a sprawling 2020 MIT study, which concluded that technological advances in AI and automation will have an enormous impact on the workforce, but it may take decades for those effects to be fully felt.

How it would work: Many automated trucking developers envision the use of transfer hubs, where cargo trailers would be handed off between humans and robots. 

Autonomous trucks would carry freight on the highway, between the hubs. 

Human drivers in conventional trucks would then take over on local streets to the final destination.

What they're saying: Drivers displaced by autonomous trucks could find work closer to home on short-haul routes, or even in newly created logistics jobs at transfer hubs, AT developers say. 

But the U-M study found that those jobs would not be sufficient to fully replace long-haul truckers' earnings.

Short-haul jobs typically pay less than long-haul jobs, the study noted.

Editor's note: This story originally published on March 28. 

Automation could send long-haul truckers driving into the sunset

Study finds self-driving trucks could eventually affect up to 500,000 drivers

Image of an Aurora self-driving truck on the highway

Aurora-powered PACCAR trucks are autonomously hauling freight for FedEx in pilot testing in Texas. Photo: Aurora

Trucks

Transportation

Automation and AI

After a record economic expansion, the coronavirus pandemic sent the U.S. economy into a recession as unemployment soared to staggering heights. The country now faces urgent questions about how much stimulus is needed for reeling consumers and businesses, and what a recovery might look like.

Economy & Business

From the Valley to D.C., Big Tech players like Facebook, Google and Amazon are under more scrutiny than ever as new technology develops and privacy and antitrust concerns grow in lockstep with companies’ ambitions.

Technology

Customer service chatbots are becoming kinder, smarter and even more helpful, thanks to huge leaps in artificial intelligence.

Why it matters: Chatbots can be aggravating if their formulaic responses don't provide the help you're searching for — what customer service experts refer to as "the spiral of misery," per the New York Times. 

More capable AI promises to make those encounters less robotic with personas that employ "soft skills" like empathy to read between the lines and defuse tension. 

That could make customers happier and allow companies to spend less time answering questions on the website and more time focused on other things.

What's happening: Chatbots, computer programs intended to replicate human conversation, have been around for decades. Now, however, they are becoming far more ubiquitous — and personable. 

New machine learning techniques have made them much better at carrying on their end of the conversation, via both text and voice. 

Improvements in natural language processing mean bots are better at understanding and producing language.

They can even interpret the intent of a customer's inquiry and analyze what's transpiring during a chat session, explains Bern Elliot, a technology analyst at Gartner.

For example: "It sounds like you need to make a deposit, and you need to locate an ATM — is that correct?" he tells Axios.

Some of the most successful chatbots even have human personas like Nanci (GM Financial), Sydney (health insurance company Anthem) and Erica (Bank of America).

State of play: "This is fundamentally a tech-enabled surge in interest," Elliot says. "That doesn't mean they can't go wrong. They can and they do. Design is really important, and picking the right use cases is really important."

Chatbots serve as a successor to the automated phone trees still widely used by many organizations. ("If you want X, press 1... If you'd like to speak to a customer service representative, press zero.")

Chatbots interpret users' questions and reply from a library of pre-programmed answers.

Yes, but: Conversations can be stilted, and bots are only as good as the data on the back end.

Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa, for example, can search the entire internet to answer questions. But most chatbots are mining their company's own limited databases for answers to customer inquiries.

The more data they're trained on, the better they are at providing relevant answers. 

What to watch: New user-friendly AI products make it easy for non-techies to create custom chatbots without writing any lines of computer code themselves.

How it works: Recruiters at the University of Illinois used startup Juji's "no-code" software to create a custom AI chatbot to manage mounting inquiries about its fast-growing online MBA program.

They started by loading commonly asked questions and answers into a spreadsheet that Juji turned into a friendly chatbot. 

"In the beginning, it was a little bit slower," Myranda Crist, the university's assistant director of recruitment and admissions, tells Axios. "But we didn't have as much information on the back end. We couldn't possibly anticipate all the questions. As there were more questions, it's gotten more conversational."

The intrigue: Juji's software uses machine learning to infer a user's unique characteristics — are they an extrovert or an introvert, for example — in order to personalize each interaction, founder Michelle Zhou tells Axios. 

The bots are designed to be empathetic, and maybe even tell a joke if they detect unease, she said. "We want to make the person feel like, 'I've been heard'."

Our thought bubble: An efficient chatbot can be a blessing, but it's never going to be easy for customers to feel truly "heard" by a piece of code, even one shaped by AI. And cracking jokes trips up actual humans all the time. 

Chatbots are getting smarter — and nicer, too

Advances in AI are helping the programs read customers' mental states and interact with a little empat

Illustration of a friendly robot bearing flowers and an ice cream cone. 

Bots

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt hit Capitol Hill this week to urge lawmakers to create a digital service academy that would train Americans in artificial intelligence and cybersecurity in exchange for government service.

Why it matters: The looming threat of cyberattacks from U.S. adversaries such as Russia underscores the need for tech-savvy employees through the federal workforce.

Driving the news: Schmidt envisions a four-year, digital training academy for civilians who would then work for the federal government for five years.

Schmidt told Axios in an interview that getting AI and cyber talent into the government is "crucial":  "The systems that are coming are so complicated that the government, who's well-meaning, will not be able to manage them. You're going to need better talent."

Initially, the program could be an approved curriculum at universities before becoming a separate academy.

The big picture: The federal government faces a severe shortage of workers skilled in artificial intelligence and cybersecurity, according to a Government Accountability Office report from November.

There are more than 38,000 open, public-sector cybersecurity positions according to a job-tracking database. 

The Biden administration is trying to accelerate efforts to fill cybersecurity positions and speed hiring for technical roles within the government.

The intrigue: Schmidt told Axios he met with members of the For Country Caucus, a bipartisan group of military veterans in Congress, to push them on including the idea as part of the National Defense Authorization Act, an annual must-pass defense spending bill.

Flashback: A digital service academy is a recommendation from the final report of the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, which Schmidt led.

The report calls for both a U.S. Digital Service Academy to train current and future employees, and a civilian National Digital Reserve Corps for technically-skilled Americans to work 38 days a year for the government.

Yes, but: It's unclear if the measure will gain traction with lawmakers.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) called for a Cyber Academy in an op-ed in December, and secured provisions in last year's spending bill she said lays the groundwork for such a facility.

Editor's note: This story has been corrected to remove references to "crypto" and "cryptocurrency" in Schmidt's description of the academy's focus. Schmidt tells Axios he misspoke and meant "cyber." 

Ex-Google CEO promotes digital West Point

The looming threat of cyberattacks underscores the need for tech-savvy federal employees.

Illustration of a group of computers featuring chalkboards with equations on them

Congress

Data privacy

A self-driving forklift may be the next wave of warehouse and factory innovations, saving companies on labor and, ideally, making industrial settings safer for everyone. 

Why it matters: Demand for logistics help is soaring, but forklift operators and other skilled workers are in short supply. Robotic vehicles are one way that manufacturers and logistics companies can address labor shortages while running their operations more safely and efficiently. 

Notably: While autonomous vehicles aren't yet ready for deployment on U.S. roadways, they're already being employed in factories and other industrial settings.

Driving the news: OTTO Motors, whose autonomous mobile robots are widely used in automotive plants, says its new self-driving forklift can pick up and carry up to 2,640 pounds and navigate crowded factory floors using many of the same sensors and software being developed for self-driving cars.

The forklift's software makes real-time decisions about where it's going and what it's picking up, and can steer around people and other obstacles.  

It can also help avoid accidents linked to poorly trained forklift operators who speed, make sharp turns or drive with elevated loads, causing tipovers.

Forklifts were the source of 78 work-related deaths and 7,290 nonfatal injuries resulting in days away from work in 2020, according to the National Safety Council. 

70% of all industrial accidents are caused by operator error, per the NSC.

Where it stands: Automated guided vehicles (AGVs) are fairly common in today's industrial settings, but they're not as useful or cost-effective as autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) like the OTTO Lifter. 

AGVs carry materials on a fixed route and are guided by wires, magnetic strips or sensors embedded in the floor, which can be expensive to install and update. 

AMRs are now being put to work in many factories because they're better at navigating dynamic environments.

Leading players, besides OTTO, include MiR, Fetch, Omron, Balyo, Seegrid and Geek+.

Driverless forklifts may be "poised for a breakthrough," as factories look to supplement — or replace — human forklift operators, reports DC Velocity, a supply chain publication.

By 2025, more than 2.5% of all industrial trucks will be automated forklifts, predicts Ash Sharma, a London-based analyst with Interact Analysis. 

Self-driving forklifts aim to make factories safer

Driverless forklifts help address the labor shortage and can move supplies around factories more safely.

OTTO Motors' autonomous forklift in a factory setting

OTTO Motors' autonomous forklift. Photo courtesy of OTTO

Robots

Grabbing a cold beverage at your local retailer is turning into a high-tech digital odyssey, with ordinary cooler doors coming alive to offer up product information, deals and — yes — advertisements. 

Why it matters: The imposing digital screens, which play full-motion video, aim to meld the experience of online shopping with brick-and-mortar stores. But they also transfer one of the biggest annoyances of the internet — pop-up ads — to the physical world. And not everyone loves that, as CNN reported.

What's happening: The dynamic displays are the brainchild of a Chicago startup called Cooler Screens, which has put them in more than 700 stores in 31 cities, including some Walgreens, Kroger and CVS locations.

From a distance, they look like big electronic billboards with sprawling ads featuring a sparkling Coke, for example, or a mouthwatering scoop of chocolate ice cream.

When you approach, those advertising images turn into digital representations of the products inside the cases, including what's out of stock. 

 Sale items get promoted with special graphics to draw shoppers' attention, as do nutritional details about select products.

They're not the only game in town: Real Digital Media's Primasee Freezer Cooler is a "translucent digital display showcasing high-definition, full-motion video embedded within a freezer or cooler door's glass panel," the company says.

The company boasts that it "increases shopper engagement" and "supports touch capabilities for interactive promotions and product messaging." 

How it works: Cooler Screens' high-tech coolers are outfitted with laser sensors that can detect the presence of a customer within 8 feet, triggering the switch in the display screens. 

There are no cameras on the outside of the coolers, so no images are captured that can identify individuals. 

Inside the coolers, cameras are used to track product inventory and positioning, which also helps short-staffed retailers replenish shelves when necessary.

The technology is designed to help brands capitalize on the critical 3-5 seconds when consumers are deciding what to buy. 

For marketers, the displays provide useful data about how many people interacted with the technology, how long they dwelled in front of the screen, and how often they opened the door.

Context: Cooler Screens co-founder and CEO Arsen Avakian, whose previous company sold Argo Tea beverages, tells Axios he was often frustrated by sloppy store displays and limited marketing opportunities to influence consumer choices at the point of sale.

"Why couldn't this be all digital, just as it is on the internet, to make this information more dynamic and more relevant for consumers?" he wondered.

He co-founded Cooler Screens in 2017 along with three others, including the former CEO of Walgreens Boots Alliance, Greg Wasson. 

The company has raised more than $80 million, according to Crunchbase.

Cooler Screens says it reaches more than 90 million consumers per month across 10,000 screens in 700 locations.

More than 180 consumer product brands are marketing on the platform, including Anheuser-Busch InBev, Nestle, PepsiCo, Tyson, Unilever and Red Bull.  

What they're saying: Digital screens can confuse customers and add a physical barrier to the simple process of reaching into a glass cooler, University of Georgia associate professor Julio Sevilla, a consumer behavior expert, told CNN.

"People really appreciate their routines. They're not always seeking excitement," he said.

The other side: Cooler Screens' Avakian tells Axios it has hired third-party researchers to track customer feedback and that "more than 90% of customers no longer prefer traditional glass cooler doors." 

A Walgreens spokesperson said by email that the retailer continues to evaluate the technology's impact on customers and its business. 

"With this collaboration with Cooler Screens, we can offer simplified access to the latest and most relevant product information to make more informed in-store decisions that best fit customers' budgets, tastes and preferences," the spokesperson said.

Pop-up digital ads are taking over the freezer aisle

New technology aims to bring the online shopping experience of online shopping with brick-and-mortar stores.

Image of Cooler Screens' digital representation of the products in a store's refrigerated section

A store's cooler section is turned into a series of digital smart screens. Photo courtesy of Cooler Screens

Retail

The job of an airplane pilot may one day involve “flying” multiple aircraft at once without ever leaving the ground, according to the Aerospace Industries Association. 

Why it matters: Aviation is about to undergo a huge transformation. Over the next decade or two, autonomous aircraft will become ubiquitous, taking on industrial jobs that are too difficult for humans and shuttling cargo among logistics hubs. 

Depending on public acceptance, these "roboplanes" could also be ferrying passengers across cities. 

What's happening: The market for self-flying aircraft is expected to grow 25% per year to a total of $325 billion between now and 2040, according to new research by AIA and Avascent, an aviation consultancy.

That includes everything from vertical takeoff and landing aircraft (VTOLs) — which rise like a helicopter and fly like a plane — to small turboprops and regional jets, all the way up to larger cargo and passenger planes.

Dozens of startups have raised money — amounting to about $7 billion so far — via private investors or public SPAC deals to advance their autonomous flight endeavors. 

Players include Boeing-backed Wisk Aero, Xwing, Reliable Robotics and Kitty Hawk. 

Electric VTOL manufacturers like Joby Aviation, Archer and Lilium initially plan to launch air taxi services with human pilots — but one day plan to remove the pilots.

Yes, but: "When we say fully autonomous, it's not as if these planes will have no humans involved," Avascent's Jay Carmel, a co-author of the report, tells Axios. 

"It's important to remember that it's really a shift in how humans are interacting with the plane," he says. "The human is going to be much more of an observer, in a management state."

"There's nothing 'unmanned' about autonomous flight," adds co-author Josh Pavluk.

He projects that as many as 100,000 jobs will be created to support autonomous aviation by 2040, in fields like engineering, software, operations and logistics.

Here's how it's likely to play out: At first, autonomous aircraft will be used for industrial jobs that AIA calls "dull, dirty and dangerous" — fighting forest fires, inspecting infrastructure, surveying crops or providing Wi-Fi hot spots in disaster zones.

Cargo applications — like delivering goods to warehouses and stores — will come next. Small aircraft might carry up to 3,000 pounds, with the potential for larger planes hauling much heavier payloads.

Passenger air taxis will come later, "most likely not arriving at scale until at least well into the next decade," says AIA.

"Public acceptance will play a huge role in this," says Carmel. "Even if the tech will be ready, will the public be comfortable with it?"

Where it stands: Today's aircraft are already heavily automated. As they  perform mundane flying tasks, the pilot is always supervising and retains critical decision-making responsibility.

Over time, pilots are expected to delegate more tasks and decisions to the aircraft, eventually moving from the cockpit to the ground to fly by remote control — first one plane at a time, and then multiple aircraft simultaneously.

The catch: Manufacturers must demonstrate that their automated systems meet the FAA's current safety standards. 

The agency is already thinking about where VTOL air taxis and cargo shuttles might land, though, issuing engineering guidance earlier this month for the design of so-called vertiports.

"It's more of a regulatory issue than a technical issue," says aviation specialist Sergio Cecutta, a partner at SMG Consulting. "We can fly autonomously right now."

The next generation of aircraft will leave pilots on the ground

Pilots will be able to control multiple planes from the ground

Illustration of a pilot uniform standing with no pilot inside it.

Aviation

Axios Login

Facebook parent company Meta on Wednesday detailed several research efforts that it insists are key to its project of building a metaverse.

The big picture: While some of the work, like a new type of haptic gloves, is closely tied to virtual reality, a number of the efforts Meta talked about on Wednesday predate the company's metaverse push and have wide use beyond it.

Of note: Meta touted self-supervised machine learning as a key technology to helping create and make sense of a future with many digital worlds.

Unlike other approaches, AI systems of this type learn the rules of the realm they are trying to understand through observation, rather than based on human classification.

What they're saying: "The road to the metaverse goes through AI," Meta AI research managing director Antoine Bordes told Axios. 

Bordes also said that computer vision systems based on self-supervised AI have the potential to be less biased, since humans aren't adding their own labels to the data.

Among the projects that Facebook touted was a language translation system capable of converting texts directly among 100 languages in real-time without needing to use English as an intermediary step. 

That means being able to solve for 10,000 language-to-language pairings and allowing the technology to go "beyond the populations that have been well served with technology," Bordes said — something that wasn't possible two years ago.

Overall, Meta says that currently more than 20% of the world's population uses a language not covered by commercial language translation systems. "We don't have to wait for the metaverse to happen to have impact," Bordes said.

Between the lines: Facebook tried to paint its work as a contribution to the broader field of artificial intelligence. The company pledged to be transparent about its research as well as to share some of the code through open source releases.

Meta plans AI-driven universal translator

Self-supervised machine learning is a key to building future digital worlds, Facebook's parent company says.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, speaking at an online event Wednesday. Screenshot: Axios

Artificial intelligence

Big Tech

A nightmare scenario: A cutting-edge, life-changing device embedded in your body fails and the company behind it is all but gone.

It happened to more than 350 people who are blind around the world who received artificial eyes only to be abandoned by the company that invented them, Second Sight Medical Products, the technology journal IEEE Spectrum writes.

Why it matters: Entrepreneurs are rushing to cash in on recent advances in brain technology with such hopes as reversing depression, treating Alzheimer's disease or restoring mobility. 

But not all companies will succeed and the risk for early adopters is that their high-tech implants turn into just another obsolete gadget.

The fallout of Second Sight's saga is a reminder of the perils of relying on private companies for essential health devices. 

Details: Second Sight ran into financial trouble in early 2020 and abandoned its retinal implant technology as it struggled to avoid bankruptcy.

Now it's merging with an early-stage biopharmaceutical company, Nano Precision Medical, that is developing a new implant for drug delivery.  

What they're saying: "It is fantastic technology and a lousy company," patient Ross Doerr says of Second Sight, per IEEE Spectrum.

"As long as nothing goes wrong, I'm fine," added another, Terry Byland, a double-implant recipient. "But if something does go wrong with it, well, I'm screwed. Because there's no way of getting it fixed."

Bionic eye recipients left in the dark with obsolete tech

Early adopters of cutting-edge implants could end up like Second Sight's patients

 Illustrated collage of an outstretched hand, eyes, pulse rates and an ear.

Neuroscience

The U.S. faces a range of health care flashpoints — unaffordable drugs, opioids, vaping — as we debate whether to adopt universal care. For now, the Affordable Care Act is the law of the land, but Republicans want to issue it a final death blow.

Health

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Tuesday that Tesla is recalling and updating the software for 53,822 of its cars using the Full Self-Driving (FSD) beta program because it may allow some models to conduct "rolling stops" at intersections, posing a safety risk.

Driving the news: The company said the update would disable the controversial feature, which allowed some cars to roll through intersections with stop signs instead of braking completely.

Federal law requires automakers to submit a recall when they issue an "over-the-air" software update that mitigates a defect that poses an unreasonable risk to drivers.

What they're saying: Tesla said in its safety recall report that it was not aware of any warranty claims, field reports, crashes, injuries or fatalities related to the software bug as of Jan. 27.

The big picture: Tesla's FSD allows owners to choose among three driving profiles — Chill, Average or Assertive — that dictate how the car will behave in different scenarios, with the Assertive profile allowing the car to perform rolling stops, follow other cars more closely and swap lanes more frequently, Axios' Joann Muller reports.

The software recall covers some 2016–2022 Model S and Model X, 2017–2022 Model 3 and 2020–2022 Model Y vehicles.

Tesla said last week that around 60,000 of its vehicles are currently beta testing its FSD.

Go deeper: Tesla delays Cybertruck until 2023

Editor's note: This story has been updated with additional details. 

Tesla agrees to fix "rolling stop" software feature over safety fears

The recall and update will affect more than 50,000 cars.

Tesla cars charging at a charging station in Irvine, California, on Jan. 28.

Tesla cars at a charging station in Irvine, Calif. Photo: Paul Bersebach/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register via Getty Images

Tesla

The Automated Ball-Strike system (ABS), the tech powering what's colloquially known as robo-umps, is inching ever closer to the big leagues.

Driving the news: The independent Atlantic League — which has partnered with MLB since 2019 — last week announced it was doing away with robo-umps after testing them for the past season-and-a-half.

Yes, but: That wasn't because the experiment failed; on the contrary, the league explained that its own assessment of ABS was complete and that an MLB affiliate league would continue testing it.

Simple sleuthing all but confirms that ABS is coming to Triple-A in 2022: this job posting is recruiting ABS techs in 11 Triple-A markets.

How it works: Though the informal term calls to mind a dystopian future ruled by robot overlords, ABS still requires a human umpire to stand behind the plate all game.

Technology from Danish golf startup TrackMan determines if each pitch is a ball or strike. ABS then feeds its call to the ump via an earpiece, and he relays the call to the players.

Robot umpires inch closer to calling MLB games

Simple sleuthing all but confirms that ABS is coming to Triple-A in 2022.

Sections

Axios Local

Axios gets you smarter, faster with news & information that matters.

About

Subscribe

All Automation and AI stories