I’m happy to introduce Justin Fox, a graduate from the University of Kent, who is my next guest blogger. Casting an eye to the future, Justin has identified automation as one of the primary issues set to dominate international affairs, , as human workers are made increasingly obsolete. He is currently looking to raise awareness of this issue, so as to encourage a debate about the future direction our workforce as a whole may take.

In all fields of employment, automation has fundamentally changed the nature of how business is done. Tasks that once took hours now take seconds, objects that required teams of people assembling them can be done by robotic arms and now, smart self-driving trucks have been labelled as the future of logistics and heavy goods vehicle (HGV) travel.

In theory such an intelligent programme would be revolutionary for truck fleets around the world, and it comes as no surprise that research funding for such development has not been hard to come by. In Singapore for example in a major piece of trucking news, it was announced that due to concerns about a shortage of drivers, the city-state’s transport authority has turned to the Swedish firm Scania to provide a fleet of self-driving trucks to facilitate the movement of shipping containers within the local ports.

Yet whilst they would arguably make for an efficient form of delivery service, this is only in theory. Smart trucks may be more superficially intelligent than human drivers at reading conditions, but they lack a real person’s ability to improvise to unforeseen circumstances. Much of motorway driving in particular revolves around keeping an eye on the vehicles around you, so whilst the trucks may not cause an issue, how well can they instantly react to someone else’s mistake?

Furthermore, what happens in the event of a technical malfunction? Whilst it’s guaranteed that the quality of each truck will undoubtedly be high and that they will be regularly maintained, no software works perfectly 100% of the time-especially on such a large scale as this.

Other concerns have also been expressed over the threat of hacking, by those who would want to take control of a truck and its contents. The motivations for this range from mischievous to sinister, and could present a very real security risk. Research undertaken by IT consultants found that 1 in 10 people within England and Wales have already been the attempted targets of cybercrime, which is rapidly growing as a major threat thanks to the increasing interconnectivity provided by modern technology.

Therefore as things currently stand there are still many issues which would make smart trucks unfit for replacing human drivers. Not only is there the economic aspect to consider which would put millions out of work, but the potential risks are greater than those posed by a real person in control. Whilst humans are more prone to errors and causing crashes, once they’ve come to a halt that tends to be the end of the incident. In contrast, an automated truck may mistakenly try to push onto its destination, unaware of the tremendous danger it is putting other road users in. Being exclusively controlled via data opens up a door to all manner of rogue threats, and the sheer volume of trucks on the roads would make guarding all of them 24/7 a colossal task.

Do others agree?