2023-05-24 18:50:02
News JVTech “There is no more work for humans” China has already replaced delivery people and this is only the beginning…
In the future many professions will be replaced by technology and this is starting to cause serious concern. We often talk about artificial intelligence, but robotization is now so mature that jobs are disappearing.
Delivery is over for humans in China
Welcome to a world where drones are already beginning to replace delivery people. It is no longer a distant future, but the present. In China it is a real revolution which has been operating since 2017 with food delivery company Meituan. It firmly believes in a future where drones and robots will do all the delivery tasks.
However, Chinese society has recruited more than 6 million new delivery people in 2022. This is a figure that on the scale of France makes no sense, because it represents almost 10% of the population in France. And yet for a year and a half, Meituan has been investing heavily in the development of drones in the city of Shenzhen. It is indeed one of the most high-tech cities in the world and a nerve center of global technology.
Except that what has always limited the development of drone delivery is not necessarily the technology itself. It’s mostly regulations in the name of safety. Indeed seeing a drone falling from the sky in a densely populated area is clearly not a good idea. Yet the idea is not new, because in 2002, Australia was already testing this method. But this seems logical given that the country is largely a desert and the population density is very low. But in Shenzhen we are talking about a city of nearly 13 million inhabitants.
In an MIT paper,
one of our colleagues did the test by ordering a drink. On the application, he chooses the place of delivery and waits patiently for his order to arrive. 30 minutes later, a yellow drone appears above his head between the buildings before landing in a kiosk. Its roof opens to let the device enter and deposit the cargo. All you have to do is get your soda. The precision is such that the margin of error is only two seconds.
If currently it is only a matter of simple deliveries, in the future the company intends to make more complex deliveries. But especially for now, humans are needed. They allow you to enter non-standard objects (the product to be delivered) in standard boxes that the drone will be able to transport. You also need an operator who monitors 10 drones simultaneously.
The only job for humans is to put the non-standardized food and drink into a standardized packaging box, then there is no more work for humans
But suddenly it’s for tomorrow delivery by drone? It’s a little less secure. Because it requires infrastructures for the place of sending, but especially for the reception. One can easily imagine a suitable building that would allow drones to land on each floor. But it is the entire urban infrastructure that needs to be reviewed. Except that China has just taken a giant step and this should extend to other cities.
1684965657
#work #humans #China #replaced #delivery #people #beginning