Digital Freight Brokers Tried AI and Learned a Costly Lesson
Removing humans from the loop failed. Artificial intelligence will be a helpful tool for workers, not a substitute.
AI takes you only so far.
Photographer: Allison Zaucha/Bloomberg
For those fearful that artificial intelligence and robots are going to eventually replace everyone’s job, the logistics industry offers a case study in how the pure version of the technology — taking humans fully out of the loop — didn’t pan out.
The freight brokerage industry, which was still transitioning from fax to email only a few years ago, was ripe for technology-driven change. The startup business plans that persuaded venture capital investors to jump on board pitched the ability to deploy AI-powered software to automate the transaction between the shippers that need to move goods and the carriers with the trucks to move them. The automated technology was made possible by the advent of the smartphone, which truckers had already adopted, and an innovative tracking-and-transaction system whose groundwork was laid by Uber Technologies Inc.