Current Events #3

The self driving car used in the experiment

     Self-driving cars are an emerging technology in the auto industry. Automotive companies are increasingly researching and developing cars that don't need the input of a human driver behind the wheel. Many companies say it self driving cars will move past the experimental stage and into the markets within the next decade. But as of right now these cars are still being developed and recently Ford and Domino's teamed up to test the application of self driving cars in delivering pizza. The goal of the experiment was to see how customers respond to the concept of pizza delivery by driverless car. Observations included if the customers the customers preferred a certain place for the car to pull up (driveway or curb), if the customers would come out of their homes to get their pizza under certain weather conditions (snow, rain, etc.), if the customers would unintentionally damage the equipment of the self driving car such as the cameras, and if the customer would know how to get the their item from the car. Speaking of getting your pizza from a self driving car, the way this experiment worked was an engineer was in the driver's seat, not driving or interacting with the customer since the windows were blacked out, while the car was pulling up to customer's homes and the customers would type a code into a keypad which would allow them to retrieve their order from the back window. Customers were asked to participate at random.
     The president of Domino's says they deliver 1 billions pizzas a year so it is important the company is one step ahead of the trends. There are 100000 drivers that work for Domino's and the president sees these employees taking different positions in the company if driverless cars become mainstream. Ford Motor Co. says it needs to understand how companies would use this technology and that they are not just developing for technology but for learning practical things. Ford hopes to develop a fully driverless car by 2021 and while the experiment the first in its kind for Ford other companies have been doing similar experiments before Ford.
     My personal reflection is that this article is more evidence humans are slowly becoming an automatized and technologically dependent society. While it will be a few more years until this technology becomes mainstream it will become reality eventually. As it is already we are more technologically advanced than we have ever been. We use technology to perform tasks that used to be done by humans better than a human could ever do. A simple example is a calculator that replaces humans counting by hand, paper, or even by abacus. Another example is robots in automobile factories producing more cars at a more efficient rate than the humans of the past in the same spots. Now with this development society will continue to be more automatized than ever. It also comes into question what happens to the people who no longer need to work the jobs technology does for them. From an optimistic viewpoint it means human need not have to labor as hard over small tasks and a burden has been lifted from their shoulders. While true in many ways we must also think about what do they do if they are not needed for their job anymore. The president of Domino's said that the drivers could take another role in the company but that may not apply to other companies. There will be an influx of the unemployed because humans need not apply. There will be less need for humans for small jobs and it will be harder to find jobs since humans are competing with a better robot worker that needs no wages, vacations, and other things humans need. While we should look forward to technology lifting many tedious burdens from our shoulders we should be cautious of the negative implications automation brings with it, such as unemployment.

Works cited:

Durbin, Dee-Ann "Delivery without drivers: Domino's, Ford team up for test" 08 Sep 2017. Web 29 Sep 2018.

<https://newsela.com/read/elem-driverless-pizza-delivery/id/34573/>