Amazon's drone delivery program is the joke it always sounded like.
news.yahoo.com
Only one item can be delivered at a time. It can’t weigh more than 5 pounds. It can’t be too big. It can’t be something breakable, since the drone drops it from 12 feet. The drones can’t fly when it is too hot or too windy or too rainy.
You need to be home to put out the landing target and to make sure that a porch pirate doesn’t make off with your item or that it doesn’t roll into the street (which happened once to Lord and Silverman). But your car can’t be in the driveway. Letting the drone land in the backyard would avoid some of these problems, but not if there are trees.
Amazon has also warned customers that drone delivery is unavailable during periods of high demand for drone delivery.
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Aerial drones are a particularly stupid method of delivery. Delivery trucks, combined with terrestrial delivery robots are a much more versatile approach.
Delivery trucks require a human to drive. And despite the insistence otherwise, we are a long long way from any sort of automated driving system. They also operate on a 2-dimensional plane and have to navigate around a variety of structures.
Conversely, aerial automation is significantly easier since it is 3-dimensional and there are not obstacles to navigate. This also means it's much easier to automate.
Companies like Zipline have been operating these services for many years now with great success.
Ok... and? How is that a problem that needs solving?
Humans are expensive and error-prone.
Weird, they seem to have done just fine delivering things for centuries now...
Define "just fine"? Needless deaths and property damage are caused by human drivers all the time. I mean we could deliver things "just fine" on foot but everyone would be waiting a lot longer...
All the time? I'd like to see the statistics on deaths caused by delivery drivers.
And I'm not sure why you think similar things wouldn't happen with drones.
According to The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety:
How many of those were package delivery drivers?
You asked for a statistic on deaths caused by delivery drivers because you know it probably doesn’t exist. Your mind is clearly already made up, so why even bother posting?
I know it? What else do I know?
You’re really making a lot of friends in these comments lol
I'm not really expecting someone who tells me what I think instead of asks me to be a friend.
...why would they? Even in the rare occurrence that it were to fall out of the sky there's very little chance it would hit anyone. And even in the exceptionally rare occurrence that it were to hit someone, they're incredibly light and unlikely to cause serious damage, much less kill anyone.
...unless it's in a city.
...unless it's a large drone carrying a heavy package.
If we're going to replace delivery drivers with drones, they have to be able to carry more than a single five-pound item.
Even harder in a city since it would have to nosedive between buildings.
One of many reasons they have weight limits.
They'll likely never replace them entirely.
You know there are places in cities with tons of pedestrians, right? And sometimes things from high up fall on them and kill them, right?
Also, if they have weight limits, we won't be replacing drivers with them. There will still be drivers. So I'm not sure how this saves lives.
And they did just fine plowing up fields by hand.
Replacing the hand plow with the horse plow didn't needlessly cost anyone their job.
How did you determine this? Also why are you assuming a job is in itself a good thing instead of what the job does being a good thing?
Because the same farmer was plowing the same field.
And a job is better than no job in the Western world if you want to eat and have a roof over your head.
Omg seriously? Do you have any freaken idea how developing world farming works? This is freaken sad. Ok fine. In the real world it wasn't a farmer it was a farming family. Children as young as 3 would work the land. Being able to use an animal to plow unleashed abundant food and freed up multiple members of the family.
Yes having a job is better than not but that doesn't mean you are entailed to a make work job because you refuse to use your brains.
When Amazon fires all of the delivery people for to save money, what are all of those delivery people supposed to do to buy things so that they can survive? People seem to think 'just get another job' is a viable answer to thousands of people out of work.
I don't think your hypothetical is very likely especially in anything resembling the short term. These drones can lift a can of soup, not exactly a couch.
However if drones gradually replace drivers the drivers will get new jobs. The reason why this is being suggested to you repeatedly is because it is the solution to the problem. The cure for automation isn't to stick your head in the dirt and demand your degrading jobs back the cure is training.
UPS delivery drivers fought for and won a $170,000 salary. Ask them how degrading they feel their job is.
That seems extremely unlikely to me.
Waste of resources. A human can do other things besides drive a van around all day. We spend all this money educating people. So they can do a job a person with a 3rd grade education can do?
Been in automation a long time. Have personally witnessed the primary task of a worker being replaced by a bin.
We should encourage anything that gets rid of mindless tasks and dehumanizes workers
And they should do what instead to put food on the table?
Find other work? I apologize the rest of the human race doesn't want to subsidize your lifestyle of thinking as little as possible.
What other work? Do jobs just appear out of the ether for people with delivery experience on their resume?
Truck driver? You know the most common job in the US. Do the people who you are advocating for know you have so little respect for their intelligence that you think they literally can do nothing else except drive a van around? I would be pretty insulted if someone was saying that my limitations were my current job.
You need a different license to drive a big rig truck than you do a package delivery truck. They would have to be retrained. Amazon sure won't pay for that. Who will?
And do you think trucking wouldn't also get automated?
Yeah so you will need to to take a class for a few days. So so burdensome. You can get an employer to sponsor the few hundred dollars or put it on credit. It isn't a lot of money you are talking about here.
Trucking could be automated one day but not tomorrow.
Just a fyi, people like it when you answer questions they ask instead of whining. I asked you a question and I noticed you didn't answer it. You will observe that I have answered all of your questions.
It takes more than a few days to get trained to get a CDL license. What a silly thing to say.
I also must have missed your question, but since you've insulted me by saying I'm "whining," I'm certainly not inclined to answer it now.
Don't worry we are done.
Why? Have you run out of insults?
UBI comes to mind.
Maybe we should implement that first and fire all the delivery people second? But as long as Amazon saves money, that's the important thing.