Human + Machine: a people-centric approach to AI application in the freight industry

Anxiety in the era of AI

We're at a major inflection point when it comes to AI. Over the last year or two, the technology has hit a point where it's finally truly fit for purpose, and a wide-scale roll-out is in progress across almost every industry. AI has the potential to make our lives infinitely easier, but its efficacy brings with it a certain amount of anxiety, particularly around job security. In the freight and logistics industry, many people are facing an uncomfortable question: will AI steal my job?

AI in freight and logistics

The anxiety around AI's impact on jobs is not entirely misplaced. There are approximately 450 million people working in global supply chains, and according to McKinsey, up to 65% of the jobs in the logistics industry can be done by machines.

AI is infinitely better at a number of key job functions in the supply chain, especially in the realms of demand forecasting, inventory management, complex orchestration and big data analysis. It's also excellent at repetitive, time- and resource-intensive tasks. It's already being rolled out to automate major portions of the supply chain, from fully robotic warehouses, to predictive maintenance, to transportation route optimization.

It's been predicted that, with the correct AI solutions, 90% of freight can be scheduled months, even years, in advance. The implications of this are astounding. AI is projected to improve productivity in the freight and logistics industry by over 40% by 2035, and add more than $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg as regards the true potential of this transformative technology. The reality is that achieving a truly smart, interoperable and, most importantly, sustainable supply chain is not possible without AI.

But does this have to come at the expense of peoples' livelihoods? Not necessarily.

Despite the doomsday headlines, it's estimated that AI will actually create close to 100 million jobs by 2025.

Human + machine = 10X performance

AI is often positioned in opposition to people, as something that stands as a kind of existential threat. But there's a different way to look at this.

As someone who has developed an AI-powered platform, I would argue that AI is most useful when approached as a tool. AI can help humans excel at their jobs by automating time-consuming, repetitive tasks and freeing them up to spend more time on meaningful work. It helps minimize human error. It can see things we can't see. It can crunch enormous data volumes, and visibilize key business intelligence insights that help make companies more profitable and spur growth, so that they can hire more staff members, and compensate them at higher rates.

Our AI-powered Stargo platform, for example, was never intended to replace human workers, but rather to help them excel at their work by automating repetitive, time-consuming tasks and minimizing the potential for human error. The goal was always to develop a cutting-edge tool that addressed key pain points in the freight and logistics industry, so that freight forwarders, carriers, brokers and other freight and logistics organizations could streamline their operations, gain margin, and increase their productivity, and I believe we've managed to meet and even exceed that goal.

Humans were always at the center of the Stargo story, and I believe that what makes our platform so successful -- so infinitely useful -- is that it was designed to augment human capabilities, not replace human workers. It frees humans up to focus on things like strategy, relationship-building, teamwork and self-development -- the things machines aren't as good at.

We're only just beginning to understand what AI can do. But I'm certain that the use cases in which AI will really shine will be those where it's deployed with human-centricity in mind. Will we have to adapt, upskill, re-skill to accommodate it? Of course. But that's nothing new.

After all, I remember a time before cell phones, and my job didn't even exist five years ago.