Robotics firms like Starship, which is headquartered in the United States, say they are creating new jobs and electric bots are greener than car or van drop-offs. But couriers' unions fear they bring a looming risk of job losses and worsening conditions for delivery riders and drivers.

But Starship says robots can bring benefits to society as they can take over some of the menial, poorly-paid tasks currently done by gig workers - and create new jobs for the humans who manage them.

Considering how many videos I've seen of people abusing those things en roue I doubt it'll replace actual workers, the cost is too high. Either that or skynet 🤷🏻‍♂️.

That's true. I also read an article on Vice last month about how one of these drove through a crime scene!

Are these bots actually active anywhere? I've seemed them trialled for years, but never rolled out anywhere except maybe on campuses.

Didn’t Amazon bail on these? Or is that just due to the recessionary environment in the USA?

I wanted to try one so I looked them up last month and it was, like you say, very limited.

lol don't be fearful. those robots can only survive the nice neighborhoods

The following submission statement was provided by /u/el_gee:

Robotics firms like Starship, which is headquartered in the United States, say they are creating new jobs and electric bots are greener than car or van drop-offs. But couriers' unions fear they bring a looming risk of job losses and worsening conditions for delivery riders and drivers.

But Starship says robots can bring benefits to society as they can take over some of the menial, poorly-paid tasks currently done by gig workers - and create new jobs for the humans who manage them.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/y2xhe6/rise_of_delivery_robots_leaves_drivers_fearful_of/is5axnr/

The truth is that the food delivery businesses mostly operate at a loss and hope they outlast the competition to then increase the prices. That’s at least the Uber Eats model and to be honest, these gig jobs are an incredibly miserable job because the corporations themselves want to make the most amount of money and the truth is that the job is inherently bad and unsustainable.

Not happy to see people lose their jobs but some of these jobs gotta go. Like when child chimney sweepers stopped being a thing, or town criers, or knockeruppers, or breaker boys, or rat catchers, you get the idea.

They are used constantly on the college campus I work on. For short distances they seem to work really well. I don't think you'd be able to do city wide deliveries though these kind of small bots.

Not disagreeing that change has to come, but gig jobs seem to be one of the areas where a lot of new hiring is coming. So if those are the jobs that go away, won't that have a really bad impact? Though as other people point out, it's unlikely to happen very soon, so there's still time to figure out where people will land, I guess...

Professor William I Robinson's research on The Global Police State states that by 2030 half of humanity will be considered surplus labor. By 2 decades 90% of the labor forces will not be needed. What will the ruling class to do us.

I'm super curious about these things, but have never seen one in person. I'd worry about accidentally hitting one if they were in my neighborhood. I also think half the dogs here would try and eat them lol

The thing is that these jobs have so little return that the corporations exploit the workers so much to get their money back a lot of the time and it becomes a very toxic and demeaning job. I cant see the future so idk what other jobs in the future could pop up that would help these people migrate from one gig job to another but from what I understand, ultimately this model is not economically sustainable for businesses without making it more expensive which then would make dinners cost more than double. Already you pay like more than 50% of the cost sometimes

It would work in Japan. Not in America though

They stop at crosswalks, sense when people or obstacles and can stop avoid them or call out. Some have accents. Ha. We had maybe 2 in the 4 years they've been here get hit by a car or destroyed. Haven't heard of any being vandalized.

That's true. There was a really good post I read on here that was by a Deliveroo rider in London, and you can see over the years how the experience changed and became a lot worse.

And that's when VC funding is still propping things up and hiding a lot of problems with business models. It can only get worse over time.

Honestly, while I'm not thrilled about the jobs aspect, this is so cool too. Hopefully they do some trials in London so I can see one in person someday!

I hope they choose a UBI instead of a more deadly pandemic.

You can see them rolling around West Hollywood.

Global war will bring about the New World Order based on The Project For The New American Century.

Did anyone else see the article about Philadelphians doing a great job collectively stomping spotted lantern flys? Maybe we can take note from them and just agree to keep beating the shit out of these robots when we see them

Don’t worry delivery drivers until they teach that robot to throw packages from the driveway to the front porch your job is safe.

That's like every tech company model

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It may indeed be fearful at first, but a point I rarely see in these debates is how AIs are "just" replicants of real human behaviour. (the following is just a thought, not a prediction)

1. If they're replicant, AI will never fully match humans expectations as long as humans keep evolving, which is a constant. So they need to be constantly trained by humans.
2. What does that mean in this debate : If AIs are expected to be better than human, it means they need to be perfect, all the time. Which sends back to point 1, then to next point :
3. AIs will always need specialized humans to be trained in any field aimed to "replace" said people. So nowadays human jobs wouldn't be killed, they could simply evolve into AIs trainers (in data science the job is called annotators). Now for the final point, let's focus on article topic, delivery :
4. You can't train a delivery AI without delivering yourself as a human. Well you can, but it's suboptimal, and more importantly it's dangerous as the final AI model would rely on artificial inputs.

Following that reasoning, and it's just a subjective guess at this point, delivery jobs will still continue to contain humans. The difference is the human will not take the driver seat, but the passenger one (metaphorically).

That said, switching humans control to a more passive, tutoring role can indeed be worrisome for certain fields. But that's a whole other debate.

They were in Modesto, California a few years ago. I think they shut it down, though.

Delivering food was never a real job until recently! Doesn’t take much skill! Find another delivery job!

We have these at the university and it was popular for awhile but in the end food would arrive cold, shakes arrived melted, and simple orders would take hours to fulfill. Most just opt to walk to the food rather than wait.

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If a job can be replaced with a robot a person shouldn't be doing it. We need to get over the idea that everyone needs to work forty hours to live.

I agree, and same with drones. I think drones and/or bots should just be another tool in the kit, you know? If you can use drones to deliver out into the suburbs for 75% of your deliveries, great; saves the trucks and delivery personnel for the city where drones and bots aren't practical.

What I’ve seen from amazons drone warehouse opening up is that they’ll hire flight techs to go out and retrieve some that need help, so jobs will always be there

The robots are a good thing. Gig economies need to be shut down.

Every time I walk by one it’s either moving awkwardly slow, or just completely stopped. I would say they’re way too slow for me to order from.

I can understand being against the idea of delivery bots in general, but I think suggesting people destroy them is childish (and, you know, illegal).

They are also active in Estonia:D

An AI can learn to do things without a human trainer. It's called a genetic algorithm.

It’s amazing we live in a world where automation is a threat to livelihoods rather than an instrument to allow people to pursue more important callings.

True, which can be sufficient for certain fields, not for others :) Artificial (or synthetic) data is recognized to have some problems in the community

Wow that... Does not sound as sci-fi and cool as the articles make it seem like.

Thus replacing one shitty job with another shitty job.

I saw one in Hollywood/Los Angeles last week

I've seen some in testing in London already, and that was many years ago (before 2016). I even took a photo. No roll-out afaik however.

I missed it by a few years :) I read another article about these some time ago and considered making a trip to Milton Keynes to order a pizza someday.

I have them at my college campus. Believe me they are very limited with their abilities and will be a while before they take over the entire delivery workforce. They have limited distance, often get stuck on objects on the sidewalk, get stuck trying to cross the street. I’ve had to save many of the little guys who drove into bushes. One even drove into me as I was going past on a skateboard and knocked me off. They’re fun and cute but not the most effective thing ever.

Also the college students, myself included, always try to ride them around by sitting on the back.

People don't like to hear it, but this is how and why we live in a dystopia. A boring cyberpunk dystopia. Jobs are being automated away without any kind of a safety net or replacement for lost income, which displaces people and families. Which creates more homeless. Which will eventually create either mass deaths, or civil war.

I been hearing about robots that will flip your burgers for a very long time now. These jobs arnt going anywhere because implementing it cost alot of money and time. Not to mention people would for sure steal from these robots and vandalize them.

I figure now that most minimum wage jobs have demanded $15 an hour, that most of them will be replaced by automation since the higher labor prices make it cost effective to buy something to replace them.

On the plus side, that will create jobs in the making robots sector.... at least until they are made with robots. Hopefully this isn't the start of Skynet.

Works beautifully in MK, UK. My aunt uses them often as she lives by her self.

I think I saw an article the other day that Amazon are ditching these things as they're slower than humans?

You know what I like about these robots? they won't ask for a tip and get pissy if you don't tip enough.

They are active in LA but they are for short trips. Less than 2 miles. They also have to pay workers to drive them remotely.

They are in high use on college campuses and during COVID, they deployed them to cities to deliver food and groceries. https://youtu.be/OcwJvciaJ_E

I live in Baltimore, it’s quite frequent where the delivery driver will steal your food. Deliver just partial amount of your meal and go “nah man they ain’t gave me no drank” and I’ll see my cup sitting in their car. Or they’ll mark the meal “delivered” and it actually wasn’t. Once I ordered groceries from Amazon and the driver calls and says my address doesn’t exist and he had to continue going. With my 300$ of groceries. I got it refunded by Amazon but still, human error is far too annoying I’d rather they lose their jobs.

The boundless supply of third world immigrants who overstay their visas in developed countries may yet keep labor costs low enough to keep these so-called tech companies going. People are cheap and ripe for exploitation - even if these workers remit more money home than they would’ve warned otherwise. Take away this labor supply and I’d wager that the delivery tech companies would either have to jack up prices or go out of business.

And yet, people freely choose to use those expensive services and people choose to work for them; sometimes they are the last barrier before panhandling.

Would you like to have that option removed from their lives because you don't like it?

Whenever I see stuff about delivery robots all I think of is this:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HitchBOT

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I saw a video that matches the story your read. The robot waited for a policeman to raise the caution tape, then continued down the sidewalk. The crime had not been committed on the sidewalk. The caution tape only crossed the sidewalk because the police needed something to hang the caution tape on.

There were a bunch of cops standing there, watching the robot cooler drive by.
Most of the comments on the video were geared towards the question, "What if the robot was transporting a bomb to kill the cops?" The cops would most certainly be dead, as they just stood there, curiously watching the robot drive around them.

In regards to robots taking our jobs, I personally look forward to it. I used to be a delivery driver for a sandwich shop. I put a lot of wear and tear on my vehicle for minimum wage and didn't get compensated for the gas, either. The company charged customers a $2 delivery fee on each order, but didn't pay me anything extra per delivery. Also, 100% of delivery orders paid by card because our company had a no cash delivery policy, and there was no mention of tipping on their receipt, so nobody thought to tip me. All of the delivery customers assumed that the whole $2 fee went to me, but it didn't.

As for the robot vandals... I'm pretty sure those robots are covered in cameras and I can't think of a reason why those recordings couldn't be used in a court of law.

Also, are these robots autonomous or remote controlled? They might have an autopilot feature, but I'm fairly certain there's a human taking over every time the bot encounters an obstruction, such as the police crime scene tape.

I'm willing to bet it's like self checkout vs cashiers. There's still an employee supervising the self checkout kiosks, but one employee can manage several kiosks vs one cashier required plus an optional bagger and sometimes a supervisor at each register.

You might have one robot operator working from home for a whole fleet of semi-autonomous robots vs a whole fleet of delivery drivers. My local dominos, for instance, has the tiniest parking lot, which is typically mostly occupied by dominos delivery vehicles. There's another pizza restaurant downtown with no parking at all, and their delivery cars are usually blocking the road, sidewalk, fire hydrant, etc...

Likewise, app based delivery drivers have a nasty habit of stopping in the middle of the road instead of finding a nearby parking spot. They park as close to the double yellow line as possible, open their driver side door into the oncoming traffic lane, and leave the door wide open while they waddle up to the door step, ring the bell, and carry on a conversation with their customer, obviously hoping for a better tip.

So, I'm completely pro-robot laborers and am wondering how much Yeti rover operators make...

We should be charging a fee for the use of the sidewalks. At least the local municipality will get something back.

The jobs lost at once we have truly reliable self driving cars will be staggering.

Do these robots eat half your fries on the way to your flat?

That's a really interesting perspective that hasn't come up from others, thanks for sharing that. Although, I do wonder about whether the final experience gets worse as fewer people are involved. Someone else commented about how their fries would be cold and their shakes warm by the time they arrived. And going by the self checkout example, I still go to the manned tills unless I have just a couple of items.

I don't know what the right answer is honestly, but there's a part of me that also just likes the idea of delivery droids - and maybe the future is indeed going to be about rover operators. That would be very cool.

They were active in Toronto for like a week until they got banned because people don't want them taking up the already limited sidewalk space. We either need to massively increase the width of sidewalks or make them go in bike lanes and have double width bike lanes everywhere in their service area. If these are going to be a thing, it requires reclaiming road space from cars.

i live in philadelphia. we are internationally known for destroying harmless robots. i don’t see this panning out by any scope of imagination.

first, cities are extremely densely populated and delivery is practically a daily thing for many residents. there would be more delivery robots than people on the streets to service demand.

second, EVERYONE is going to want to fuck with them. like, everyone.

it won’t work in suburban or rural areas either because of the distance from store to home.

i would’ve loved to sit in on the boardroom pitch for this pie in the sky idea.

The fear of automation and machinery is nothing new. The first fire engine in one of the US eastern cities was destroyed by the fire brigade because they didn't want their jobs replaced by a machine.

Similar thing happened in many factories during the industrial revolution.

Contrary to what many say, automation is stupid expensive and ridiculously complex. People are still needed to service these machines, maintain them and make sure they're actually doing their job. It may replace the quantity of workers needed to do the job, but the quality of worker required to keep these thing running goes way up.

Not with how often robots get robbed or knocked over. I like the videos where people just push them over. Try employing humans.

I'm sure it would take more energy and add more weight, but perhaps the delivery bots should have 2-4 temperature controlled compartments. refrigerate one compartment and warm another. Freeze one and bake another... That last idea is probably bad... People can't even receive coffee through a window without suing for millions. I wouldn't want the liability of having customers retrieving their food straight out of a roving oven.

So, 2 compartments it is... Cooling and warming. Could even be passive rather than powered, using ice packs and hot stones, or something. Although, an argument could be made that saving weight is more energy efficient. I'd love to see comparative research on this.

I overheard a [boomer] coworker bragging about telling off a grocery store employee for directing them to the self checkout kiosk. His response was, "No, honey, I'm not going to do your job for you. I don't work here." Then he complained that the employee rolled her eyes at him AND he complained about how they no longer have a cashier AND a bagger, and the cashier bagged his bread and eggs on the bottom and put heavy stuff on top!

I interrupted, "You do realize that if everyone used the self checkout kiosk, your products would be bagged exactly how you like it, and there could be more employees in the isles helping you find stuff or less employees total making everything cheaper, right?"

They argued about buying produce without barcodes or products with damaged barcodes or security devices. I explained that for every group of self checkout kiosks, there is an employee to assist with those types of items, but most transactions are simple enough that it's faster to just do it yourself than deal with an underpaid cashier who has had all of the joy sucked out of their life by a bunch of Karens arguing about the validity of their coupons.

So, in summation. I'm pro-automation all the way from the farm to the table. I use self service whenever possible so humans can be free to do things other than slave over menial tasks for minimum wage.

The only difference between minimum wage and slave labor is the beatings. Minimum wage means 100% of your paycheck goes towards rent and food and other living expenses. Nothing left over for retirement savings, vacations, etc... Slaves were provided with housing and food.

I say we give those shit jobs to the robots and create better jobs for humans, like designing, operating, and maintaining the robots. Art, entertainment, sports, etc...

That being said, I'm extremely against bots in advertising. I trust a seller with 1 good review more than I trust a seller with a million, these days. I find myself exclusively reading the negative reviews to differentiate between actual customers who had a bad experience versus trolls ranting about things completely unrelated to their purchase.

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I think it’s both. The headlines just pick the dystopian narrative instead of the optimistic one.

one of the problems is those robots require the customer to retrieve item from them rather than being able to put it at doorstep, let alone being able to open up an unlocked gate. that actually makes it less convenient in many cases.

and also capacity is definately an issue as well. most of those bots are quite small

Everyone has to work for food and shelter. If you try and build a society where only some people work for their food and shelter, but they have to also pay for someone else's food and shelter, that will breed resentment.

I also don't hold out much hope that if we remove all the bottom end jobs it will free people up to "persue more important callings". Your local DoorDash driver is probably never going to be an airline pilot or a computer programmer. And even if they wanted to and had the ability, there won't be enough positions open anyway.

Big cities are about the only viable places they can work. If it requires an actual road for delivery forget it.

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Good. Delivery workers have started becoming extremely entitled

Instead of "reclaiming road space from cars", just make them big enough for passengers and there you have your self-driving taxi.

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I think another factor that could quickly see bot deliveries surpass "gig" food delivery like Door Dash or Uber Eats is that there are many people that distrust such services.

I don't use services like this whereas I will use delivery service by a restaurant-employed driver. There's a difference in the level of trust between the pizza driver that works for the actual pizza place and 3rd party person/service.

Wait till they deploy the GTA bots.

I don't think people want to ride a taxi that only goes at a walking speed.

Sounds like you have identified the one problem which needs fixing. Around 15 mph should be fine.

It wasn't that long ago from the 1950s onward humanity created video clips of what they envisioned the future to look like. One where there is more leisure time and less time spent on work as more work was automated.

What happened to that reality? We are being crushed and progress is moving in the inverse direction.

Its dystopian because society does not have the rules, regulations or systems in place to make this news optimistic.

Gig jobs were always only temporary usery of people. You think those folks who give a gig job give a flying f*ck about anyone...LOL

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Damn, that's disappointing. I won't have anymore truck drivers cut me off

Makes a nice book-end for the Amazon cancels delivery robot program story. The reality is these things aren't ready for prime time and marketing won't change that and with investor money drying up, a lot of these speculative start-ups are going to fold.

We do live in a robot filled world (though they mostly don't move, they just stay put and do what they do), but some things are still a few years (at least) away.

"self cleaning toilets leaving janitors up in arms!". Similar vibe..

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Idk that more automation means people actually get better jobs. sitting in front of a computer managing a fleet of robots sounds about as soul crushing as being a delivery person or cashier. People have unhealthy amounts of screentime without it being their full time job. It would be slightly cooler to design and fix the robots but where are minimum wage workers gonna get the money to get that kind of education. The reason people are scared of automation taking their jobs is cuz it doesn't come with equal employment opportunities to the job that the company no longer needs to pay them for. The world's gonna just keep changing tho that's life idfk

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There's currently more jobs than employees want. Employers need automation to solve the "employment crisis". Consumers need automation to slow inflation. Employees need automation to meet unrealistic performance measures.

I dunno how old you are, but I recall playing paperboy on Nintendo being more fun than actually delivering papers.

That's what I imagine operating delivery bots would be like. Playing a video game. You'd get points for efficiency and avoiding vandals...

I'd play that game, especially if it paid me to play!

When your job lacks any skill/education then be scared.

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That’s actually an economic fallacy. It’s called the “Luddite fallacy” after the people who resisted the Industrial Revolution. Disruptive technologies do obviously create winners and losers and the adjustments can be painful and, if painful enough, cause political instability. But people eventually find new and more productive (often thanks to new technology) jobs and society as a whole almost always ends up better off.

Not to minimize the pain of the adjustments. If I lose my career because of some new technology, I’m gonna be pissed. But it’s happened throughout human history and we haven’t run out of jobs to do yet.

One good hack and I’m sure they’ll be banned immediately, can’t hack a human driver as easily

How is that a shitty job?

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Those may work fine in metropolitan cities which have fantastic snow clearing. But wheeled delivery robots aren't going to work across much of the Northern Hemisphere.

> It’s amazing we live in a world where automation is a threat to livelihoods rather than an instrument to allow people to pursue more important callings.

Retraining isn't an option for many people today due to the cost of a secondary education and absolute need to find replacement work ASAP to keep the wolves at bay. Job losses in this sector will hit the poor hard, and not many of them have the credit to borrow enough to go back to school full time and cover living expenses.

Deliver of goods should not be anyone's full time job.

You can get education from top schools completely free today. Absolutely no excuse not to get new skills.

The problem is that those who do that job are usually unable to find a better job.