Robotic self-driving vehicles a threat to gig-economy food delivery work

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Robotic self-driving vehicles a threat to gig-economy food delivery work

9 October 2025

Robocart, a US company, has been developing self-driving vehicles that have the capacity to deliver ten different customer orders in a single run. The service, which the company plans to launch in Austin, Texas, later this year, will see customers pay just three-dollars per delivery, pricing many people will find attractive.

But Chicago based cybersecurity and network infrastructure expert Nick Espinosa warns that such a service stands to eliminate the roles of many food delivery drivers (YouTube link), working on behalf of companies such as Uber Eats and Door Dash.

Earlier this year, I was hearing stories about Australian web and app developers taking on food delivery work, as AI apps are doing the work they used to, for a fraction of the cost. While many of these people will be able to re-skill and eventually find new work, what will they do in the meantime, if casual work begins drying up?

Are fears of AI caused mass job losses founded or exaggerated?

22 August 2025

California based cybersecurity professional Daniel Miessler is concerned AI technologies might result in large scale job losses:

These are people who’ve been making over $100-200K in tech or tech-adjacent for over a decade. And they can’t find work. I mean they can barely get interviews. And when I say a ton, I mean multiple dozen that I either know or I’m one degree separated from. And again, these are not low-skill people. They’re legit professionals that have never in their life had trouble finding or maintaining work.

What Miessler reports is based on anecdotal evidence, but I’ve heard similar stories — likewise anecdata — locally (NSW, Australia).

On the flip side, Sheryl Estrada, writing for Yahoo Finance, citing recent MIT research, says only a handful of companies have been able to effectively integrate AI technologies into their operations:

But for 95% of companies in the dataset, generative AI implementation is falling short. The core issue? Not the quality of the AI models, but the “learning gap” for both tools and organizations. While executives often blame regulation or model performance, MIT’s research points to flawed enterprise integration. Generic tools like ChatGPT excel for individuals because of their flexibility, but they stall in enterprise use since they don’t learn from or adapt to workflows […].

Meanwhile Meta (owner of Facebook and Instagram) has paused recruiting for its super intelligence division. This after offering one new hire a one and a half billion dollar salary (over four years).

This might not of course mean anything other than perhaps Meta coming to the realisation it is spending money it doesn’t have. As to the wider question of the threat posed to jobs by AI, I think the jury is still out. No one is, as yet, exactly sure what the impact will be.

The work of dredger boat operators is safe from AI technologies

12 August 2025

Writers, authors, proof readers, news analysts, reporters, journalists, and editors, are among occupations Microsoft sees as being vulnerable to AI technologies. A blogger, by the way, is each and every of those roles.

But that’s not all. Web designers, interpreters, historians, and political scientists, are in danger. Mathematicians even. The threat isn’t restricted to what might be called desk-bound occupations either. The roles of customer service reps, hosts, models, and telemarketers, are also on the line.

But there are some professions safe from AI (for now). These include hospital orderlies, motorboat operators, floor sanders, water treatment plant workers, and dredge operators.

Dredger boats often trawl through the waters of the lakes near where we stay on the NSW Central Coast. I was watching one such vessel earlier this year, and, ironically, speculated how the work could be carried out by an AI agent of some sort.

A sophisticated under water camera and sonar array, was part of what came to mind. Instead, it looks like the dredger boat crews will be with us for some time to come.

HR departments relying more on AI tools to screen job applicants

5 July 2025

Danielle Abril, writing for MSN:

Increasingly, job candidates are running into virtual recruiters for screenings. The conversational agents, built on large language models, help recruiting firms and hiring companies respond to every applicant, conduct interviews around-the-clock and find the best candidate in increasingly large talent pools. People who have experienced AI interviews have mixed reviews: surprisingly good or cold and confusing.

Pity the HR departments. It’s hard work having to draw up policies about procedures, and procedures about policies. All of that work leaves no time for their core function: recruiting staff, and managing human resources. By the way, I the find the use of the word resource a particularly odious HR practice. People are people, not resources. Instead of saying “we need to bring in a resource”, try saying “we need to hire a person for this role.”

Anyway, to reduce workloads, and ostensibly speed-up the recruiting process, some HR departments are using AI tools to screen “first-round” candidates for a role. I assume once a “second-round” list (or should that be pool?) of candidates is arrived at, an HR person becomes involved in the process.

No doubt there are large numbers of applicants for advertised roles, and some sort of screening is necessary to shortlist suitable candidates. To ease the burden though, HR staff could use AI tools to write up policies and procedures instead, so they can focus on the human side of the equation.

They could even take advantage of AI note taking apps, further reducing pressure on their time.

AI note takers standing in for online meeting attendees

5 July 2025

Lisa Bonos and Danielle Abril, writing for The Washington Post:

Clifton Sellers attended a Zoom meeting last month where robots outnumbered humans. He counted six people on the call including himself, Sellers recounted in an interview. The 10 others attending were note-taking apps powered by artificial intelligence that had joined to record, transcribe and summarize the meeting.

AI note takers attend online meetings so you don’t have to. They will record the entire meeting, and prepare a summary afterwards. Sounds convenient. Some people though have raised concerns about meeting participants not really participating in meetings, and there they might have a point.

Others are worried that note taking apps are recording the entire conversation. But if it’s a work meeting, and not a private conversation about, say, a highly sensitive matter, is that a major concern? Surely online meeting apps also record, and store, the entire contents of a meeting, even if all participants are fully present? There’s also the point such apps might spill the tea elsewhere.

It’s been a while since I was in a workplace-based situation, but I would’ve relished the opportunity to have an AI note taker stand in for me at meetings. That way I could — you know — do some actual work instead. This sounds like one to AI, I say.

The infinite workday: more work hours and less employee privacy

19 June 2025

Microsoft is calling it the infinite workday.

Based on telemetry data, gleaned from apps including Microsoft 365, the American tech company has found the workday has been gradually becoming longer, and work-related activities are increasingly seeping into the weekend. This for people supposedly working Monday to Friday, between nine o’clock in the morning, until five o’clock in the afternoon.

According to some of Microsoft’s findings, workers are reading emails as early as six in the morning during the week. The same workers may still be on deck well into the evening, attending online meetings, called to cater for colleagues spread across multiple timezones. In addition, workers are more frequently checking email messages during the weekend.

So much for work-life balance, which I’ve always seen as a theoretical construct. Not for real. Bullshit. My workday looks tame by comparison. But the accumulation of the telemetry data used to compile Microsoft’s report is also concerning. Not only are people working longer hours, they are also being surveilled. Some degree — who knows how much precisely — of information about their use of various Microsoft software, is being gathered.

The case for adopting something like LibreOffice, an open source variation of Microsoft products such as Word and Excel, becomes all the stronger. This won’t rectify the problem of working extended hours and weekends, but at least workers won’t have large tech companies keeping tabs on them.

Australian productivity falls, despite record long hours being worked

30 May 2025

Bronwyn Herbert, writing for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC):

Australians have been working record-long hours, which contributed to the productivity slump, the Productivity Commission report found. Those additional hours performed by workers have not been matched by business investment in systems and technologies that would allow them to work efficiently, according to the report.

In some sectors the apparent decline in workplace productivity can be attributed to a lack of investment in new technologies, including AI. But that’s only part of the problem, and workers also need to be upskilled, if productivity rates are to rise.

I imagine it will be of comfort to some people that upskilling workers is being suggested, by employer advocates no less. This as opposed to the idea that much greater use of AI be made to somehow pickup the shortfall in productivity.

AI will take the work it wants to do, leave the rest for people

28 May 2025

Is AI going to take work away from people? It’s a question on the minds of many. Dror Poleg argues AI bots will only be interested in certain “high level” tasks, leaving plenty of work for us:

One might argue that even if we have superhuman software, older software or weaker AI models could still perform trivial tasks cheaply. But this misses the crucial point of opportunity cost: any marginal unit of energy that could tip the scales in finance or warfare would always be too valuable to waste on trivial tasks. As long as energy and computing resources determine competitive outcomes, there will always be something better to do with them than waste them on tasks humans can handle.

The question here though, what sort of work will be left for people? Tasks we want to do, or are forced to do, as we’ll have no choice?

Cafes in the United States seek to discourage remote workers staying all day

22 May 2025

Some coffee shops in the United States have begun cracking down on people who use their place for hours, maybe even all day, as an office. Some store owners are imposing time limits on remote workers, switching off WI-FI, or blocking access to powerpoints.

Fair enough too. Australian cafe operators are acutely aware of the challenges of running a profitable business, and having someone hogging a table all day, only makes matters worse.

Some owners hope a table will generate perhaps forty dollars an hour, on the expectation several parties occupy that table over the course of an hour. It seems doubtful to me that a remote worker, sitting at a table for, say, eight hours, would even spend forty dollars all day.

Is artificial intelligence taking work away from freelance designers, developers?

14 May 2025

Serbia based SEO consultant Nenad offers a grim assessment of the industry:

The number of available jobs is dwindling. Companies are tightening their budgets and relying more on AI to handle basic tasks. Why hire a freelancer for graphic design when you can get an AI to whip up something decent in seconds? Decent? Yesterday I tested a new Ai service called Readdy, and I got a landing page in 5 minutes that looks like a $1,000 job (5 years ago).

I’ve been hearing anecdotal reports locally (NSW), in recent months, of freelance design and development professionals taking on gig-economy work, point-to-point driving, and food delivery, to help make ends meet. There’s people saying AI will bring about new work opportunities in time, but it seems like there will be a fair few job losses before that happens.

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