Mystery pizza deliveries foretells future of self-driving cars.
A recent news report indicates that a man has been receiving pizza deliveries for nearly a decade.
That might not seem like earth-shattering news, except for the fact that the pizzas were not ordered by the man and he says that he has no idea why the pizzas are coming to him.
Now that’s a mouthful.
And a stumper.
At first, he apparently relished those free pizzas and was not especially bothered by the underlying mystery of why they were being sent to him. He initially was dutifully concerned that the wrong address was being used, or that the pizzas were being delivered to the wrong house and therefore attempted to rebuff the deliveries.
But it seems that the pizzas were indeed aiming to arrive at his doorstep.
After a while, the matter became more of an irritant and an unwelcome guest.
Proof, perhaps, that even the allure and attraction of mouthwatering pizza can be at times too much of a good thing.
In fact, he indicates that when he gets wind of a pizza heading to his home, he begins to tense up and actually dreads the arrival.
One could certainly understand his angst and imagine that something like this could cause you to have heartburn when even thinking about pizza, no matter how sizzling it is and despite being topped with all the works.
He is baffled by the very notion that someone has opted to send him these unwanted and unordered pizzas.
Sure, it could happen maybe once or twice, yet to continue to take place over many years is eerie.
Is there some dastardly evildoer that believes that free pizza deliveries for life are a means to ruin another person’s existence?
Could a ghost of a prior pizza life be playing haunting tricks on him?
Or, maybe he irked someone that figured the best revenge was to be served on a hot plate (or, is that supposed to be a cold plate) and came up with a crazy vengeance tactic of sending him pizzas?
If we put on our Sherlock Holmes cap, or perhaps more applicably Inspector Clouseau’s trench coat, one has to ask relatively straightforward questions that would presumably clear-up this anchovy filled conundrum.
Who is paying for those pizza deliveries?
One would assume that if you follow the money, the trail has got to inevitably lead to the culprit that has the pizza retribution cahoots going on.
There might be two ways in which money is entering into the picture, namely via paying for the pizza maker to make the pizzas and/or via paying the pizza deliverer to deliver the pizzas.
It could be that the pizza maker takes the order and will automatically arrange for the delivery, thus, the money only shows-up upon the act of ordering the pizzas. Or, it could be that the pizza maker gets the dough for making the pizza (yes, that was an intended pun), and a separate delivery service is used and as a result, the second handover of money happens.
In either case, knowing who is paying for this charade would seem to get this mystery one step closer to being solved.
Plus, maybe there’s a bizarre twist, which always seems to happen in detective stories and in the midst of solving a great mystery, which is maybe the butler did it, or in this case, perhaps the man receiving the pizzas is secretly sending the pizzas to himself, all as part of a plot to create a buzz.
If that twist doesn’t seem palatable, suppose he has a beloved pet dog that has been ordering the pizzas, either for the dog to eat (be careful, do not let your dog eat pizza unwatched and unmanaged since pizza ingredients can be harmful to the pooch) or maybe as a loving tribute to his adored human owner.
Endless possibilities abound.
Apparently, the mystery includes that the pizzas do not always come from the same pizza maker and nor via the same pizza delivery service.
That does make things a bit more challenging in terms of trying to stop the onslaught since otherwise, you could just tell the one pizza maker or the mainstay pizza delivery service to cease and desist their actions.
Of course, the problem with that spurning option is that if the man ever really wanted to get a pizza, it would require some quite hearty convincing with the pizza maker and pizza deliverer, presumably they would be highly resistant to any pizza orders culminating in his address. Though that seems like a worthwhile trade-off in the battle to halt the endless procession of unwanted pizzas.
I’m sure that you might be thinking that he should give up trying to thwart the arrival of the pizzas and possibly do something else with the pizzas that he doesn’t wish to himself consume.
Maybe start donating the pizzas to a charity.
Another idea would be to find out who else in his neighborhood likes pizza, and once those steaming pies arrive at his place, he could do a quick look-up on a list of which neighbor is next in line to get one. Just call them up and tell them their pizza has arrived, and voila, he would seemingly become the hero of his community (becoming acclaimed as the pizza man, because he can).
One downside for those getting these freebies is that they might get a sordid bunch of pizza toppings that they disfavor, possibly a heaping of acrid eye-watering onions or stomach-churning over-spicy meat-lovers sausage.
Currently, the pizzas are being delivered by human deliverers, but perhaps in the future, the deliveries will be via non-human hands.
How so?
We will gradually and inextricably be experiencing self-driving cars making deliveries to our homes, including for pizzas, plus food of all kinds, and for things like everyday groceries from the local store, and just about anything else that can reasonably be home-delivered (various pilot efforts are already underway, see my indication at this link here and at this link here).
This brings up today’s interesting question: Could AI-based true self-driving cars end-up delivering to someone’s house an order even if the person had nothing to do with the order?
Let’s unpack the matter and see.
First, it will be useful to clarify what it means to refer to AI-based true self-driving cars.
The Role of AI-Based Self-Driving Cars
True self-driving cars are ones that the AI drives the car entirely on its own and there isn’t any human assistance during the driving task.
These driverless vehicles are considered a Level 4 and Level 5, while a car that requires a human driver to co-share the driving effort is usually considered at a Level 2 or Level 3. The cars that co-share the driving task are described as being semi-autonomous, and typically contain a variety of automated add-on’s that are referred to as ADAS (Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems).
There is not yet a true self-driving car at Level 5, which we don’t yet even know if this will be possible to achieve, and nor how long it will take to get there.
Meanwhile, the Level 4 efforts are gradually trying to get some traction by undergoing very narrow and selective public roadway trials, though there is controversy over whether this testing should be allowed per se (we are all life-or-death guinea pigs in an experiment taking place on our highways and byways, some point out).
Since semi-autonomous cars require a human driver, the adoption of those types of cars won’t be markedly different than driving conventional vehicles, so there’s not much new per se to cover about them on this topic (though, as you’ll see in a moment, the points next made are generally applicable).
For semi-autonomous cars, it is important that the public needs to be forewarned about a disturbing aspect that’s been arising lately, namely that in spite of those human drivers that keep posting videos of themselves falling asleep at the wheel of a Level 2 or Level 3 car, we all need to avoid being misled into believing that the driver can take away their attention from the driving task while driving a semi-autonomous car.
You are the responsible party for the driving actions of the vehicle, regardless of how much automation might be tossed into a Level 2 or Level 3.
Self-Driving Cars And Home Deliveries
For Level 4 and Level 5 true self-driving vehicles, there won’t be a human driver involved in the driving task.
All occupants will be passengers.
The AI is doing the driving.
Pundits anticipate that the use of true self-driving cars will further spur the ongoing home-delivery spark that has already grabbed hold in recent times.
Why so?
The use of self-driving cars is predicted to lower the cost of home delivery, partially due to excising the labor cost involved in hiring a human driver, and thus spike or fuel (one might say) home delivery efforts.
There is one looming problem which entails the so-called “last mile” problem or more pointedly the final fifty feet or so when making a home delivery.
When a self-driving car arrives to deliver you something, right now the vehicle pulls up to the curb and you need to come out to get the items being delivered. For those that don’t prefer going outside to get things while wearing their pajamas, or for those that cannot physically accommodate going out to the curb, the last fifty feet is an unbearable barrier that for them is unfulfilled by a self-driving car.
Solutions to this issue are being crafted and tested.
For example, the self-driving car could be carrying a smaller self-driving vehicle that is launched from the self-driving car, and this mini-me rolls up to the door of the home. Another approach involves a crawling robot, typically a four-legged contraption, and it crawls out of the self-driving car and makes the final delivery.
There are also two-legged robots that look somewhat human-like in appearance, and those might get out of the self-driving car and walk up to your door (see my explanation at this link here).
Nobody yet knows whether the general public will be accepting of these robot-based delivery methods.
The little rolling robots are already doing pretty well as being generally accepted, perhaps because they seem harmless looking and remind us of the sci-fi portrayals of pleasing robots, while the robots that crawl or walk might seem scary or imposing, so we’ll need to see if people will get used to those kinds of mechanical creatures among us.
Do not though assume that all home delivery will be bereft of a human deliverer.
It could be that the self-driving car has a human riding along, doing so to deal with that final fifty feet of getting any carried goods from the parked vehicle to the door of the consumer. Note that the human deliverer does not need to have a driver’s license and has no involvement in the driving of the vehicle, which, as such, can possibly aid in reducing the cost of home delivery (somewhat) versus when the home deliverer is also the driver and needs to have a license to drive.
If the home delivery also includes assembling a piece of furniture or offering in-home value-added services, the odds then are that a human would in fact need to come along, either accompanying the delivery of the good itself or arriving at some other point in time.
In short, we ought to anticipate that home delivery is going to be amped by the advent of self-driving cars and that human hands might still be involved (though not for driving purposes).
Pizza Delivery Mystery If Self-Driving Cars Involved
We can now revisit the story of the mysterious pizza deliveries.
A self-driving car comes up to your domicile and proclaims to you that your pizza has arrived.
Could it ever be that the pizza is not intended for your place?
Sure, absolutely, there is certainly a possibility of a “mistaken” delivery.
Suppose the order when placed had stated the wrong address.
The AI driving system would obediently deliver the order to the incorrect address (incorrect as stated by the order) since the AI would not have any reason to believe that the address is somehow a mistake (unless the address was non-existent or had some other look-up problem as not a valid address).
Also, it could be that perhaps a buddy or the like has opted to wish you a happy birthday by sending you a pizza, unannounced, or maybe you have won the latest Reader’s Digest sweepstakes and got a pizza delivered to your home, all of which intentionally specified your address, and the AI delivered to where it was informed to do so.
My point is that for those that somehow believe AI will be all-knowing (see my coverage of Tesla’s Elon Musk views on “super-human” AI at this link here), please put that notion aside for now, and realize that the AI will likely take the same kinds of actions that any human driver and pizza deliverer would aim to do, consisting of dutifully delivering that pizza to the stated address.
As an aside, some believe that AI will ultimately become sentient, arriving in a moment characterized as the singularity and that this sentience will be a form of full or complete AI, sometimes referred to as having Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), plus the AI might evolve further via an “intelligence explosion” and become Artificial Super-Intelligence (ASI), for more on these topics see my explanation at the link here and here too.
Would a sentient AI that perhaps has evolved into ASI be a pizza deliverer?
It seems a bit less fulfilling as a suitable use of such intelligence, but, hey, everyone and presumably everything has to make a living.
Anyway, we have established that the AI-based true self-driving car could deliver pizzas to someone that did not necessarily order the pies.
Would we be able to use our Sherlock and Clouseau gumshoe skills to figure out who sent the pizzas?
In essence, we seemingly should be able to identify who placed the order with the pizza maker and/or with the self-driving car service that delivered the pizza.
One supposes so, though it could be further wrapped in a cloak, such as if the purchaser was using a Bitcoin-like cryptocurrency and perhaps overtly attempting to hide their identity (for more on this topic, see my discussion at this link here).
A small twist in this too is that there are some pizza makers that will no longer be making pizzas by human hands and instead be made by a robot.
Plus, there are even some indications that a self-driving vehicle might embody the pizza-making capability and thus double as both pizza maker and pizza delivery platform.
Two for the price of one.
If timed properly by the AI driving system, the pizza could be cooking while on the way to your home, arriving just as the freshly-baked pizza reaches its peak of culinary perfection, rather than having sat around in a stuffy cardboard box during the journey to your place.
In terms of the unwanted pizza deliveries, perhaps with a self-driving car that at least the AI could alert the intended receiver of the pizza that the pie is on its way, making use of V2X technology (there will be V2V for vehicle-to-vehicle electronic communications, and V2P for vehicle-to-pedestrian, along with other targeted communiques which are generally referred to as the “X” in V2X). In that case, the receiver might be able to prevent the delivery by responding accordingly to the V2X communications.
Also, it is anticipated that self-driving cars might likely be owned in large fleets, whereby a big company such as a major automaker or a rental car firm or a ride-sharing business would own massive sized fleets of self-driving cars. In that case, the person that is getting the uninvited pizzas could contact the fleet owner and ask that the entire fleet be warned to not bring pizzas to a particular address.
Where there is a will, there is a way.
Conclusion
You can easily envision that if a self-driving car was involved in delivering these mystery pizzas, it would have generated worldwide headlines, including the press clamoring to the rooftops that an AI system has gone berserk and mindlessly and robotically is delivering unsolicited pizzas.
Nope, right now, it is in the hands of humans.
A lesson to be learned from this otherwise unorthodox matter of the pizza deliveries is that when replacing a human-performed task with an AI-performed task, we cannot assume that the AI will necessarily do a “better” job, and nor can we assume that the AI will do a lesser or worse job.
I bring this up because we are rapidly heading toward a tsunami of AI systems that will surround and be involved in most things that we do.
When things happen to go awry, the likely first finger pointing will be at the AI.
I’m not suggesting that the AI will be innocent in the matter, and in fact, I have repeatedly exhorted that we need to be on our guard that AI systems are not as yet able to embody common sense and we ought to not anthropomorphize them (see my indications at this link here), yet we also should not ascribe faults to AI that are potentially unmerited or misdirected (there are more aspects to these responsibilities, see the discussion at this link here).
Say, that brings up a curious final point, do you think there’s a chance that an AI system is the one sending all of those pizzas to that man that doesn’t want them?
Perhaps the AI is toying with us, already on the verge of super-intelligence, and figured that it would subtly show its AI mastermind hand, as it were, by repeatedly sending unsought pizzas.
Are we smart enough to make sense of the breadcrumb clues that the AI is leaving for us?
Think carefully about this, especially the next time you consume a mindful slice of a savory delivery-style pizza.
