Over the past two years, I have held a class on service for Taipei taxi drivers once every three months. For my most recent talk, I decided to change the focus and explore how artificial intelligence could affect the drivers’ lives.

The growing maturity of artificial intelligence has experts and car manufacturers predicting that driverless cars will formally hit city roads as soon as 10 years (or 20 years) from now. But that’s just the beginning.

As high performance computing, internet-connected sensors, map positioning, and smart transportation conditions gradually advance, AI technology will compel drivers to cede control of steering wheels. Among them, taxi drivers are probably first in line to be supplanted by driverless cars.  

Driverless Taxis at the Olympics

In 2016, Japanese services provider DeNA and Japanese robotics developer ZMP teamed up on the joint venture “Robot Taxi” to bring self-driving technology and applications to the taxi industry. It started by offering passenger services on a trial basis in remote, underserved areas, catering primarily to the elderly to help them get around.

Though ZMP and DeNA later ended their partnership in early 2017, ZMP is carrying on with the Robot Taxi concept. It plans to complete testing of the technology and roll out a commercial services model in time for the 2020 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo. ZMP also set up a partnership with a taxi operator in Tokyo in 2017 to use self-driving technology to manage manned and driverless cars.

Generally speaking, the Japanese government has targeted the launch of autonomous taxi services for before the 2020 Tokyo Games to start the event with a bang and boost the country’s competitiveness.

But beyond satisfying the expected increase in demand during the Olympics, the initiative’s longer-term goal is to help Japan cope with a driver shortage as its population continues to age. 

Singapore Aiming for 2018 Launch

Singapore is another Asian country in hot pursuit of autonomous vehicle technology. In 2016, the company responsible for developing the city-state’s driverless taxis, nuTonomy, collaborated with Singapore’s government to start trial passenger runs of the self-driving taxis confined to the one-north business and residential district.  

Singapore’s government is hoping to launch commercial operations of the service by the end of 2018, bringing closer a future in which residents of the city-state can hail a self-driving taxi through a smartphone app. 

That may be difficult to achieve. Even if the driverless taxis are introduced on schedule, they will likely still be manned by a driver or a technician to monitor performance. Ultimately, however, the goal is for a future of completely self-driving vehicles.

Are Human Drivers Still Needed?

So as AI technology further evolves, will taxi drivers lose their jobs and disappear? I told the taxi drivers in my most class that they won’t, that transportation jobs will not disappear. But the nature of those jobs will change from the regular act of driving a vehicle, or “surface acting,” to providing random services, or “deep acting.”

Surface acting and deep acting are both types of “emotional labor.” Surface acting refers to a service provider simply doing as the organization requires when interacting with customers, including adopting the facial expression, tone and stance mandated by the company. The service provider offers only the same standard service to customers, and may even feel annoyed by the customers they serve, in effect, just expressing certain emotions without feeling them.

Deep acting refers to service providers being able to change their emotional states when interacting with customers, such as seeing things from a customer’s perspective or showing empathy and expressing sympathy and concern.   

If service providers are replaced with robots and service following standard procedures that has been programmed and developed through large-scale AI computing, which type of service will robots offer? When customers hail a driverless taxi, do you think it will be capable of extending “deep acting” service?

Prospects for ‘Taxi Drivers+’

In Taiwan, innovations have started to pop up that afford taxi drivers the opportunity to provide “deep-acting” service. One of them, the “To Get Here” e-commerce car-booking platform, offers everything from in-depth half-day guided tours to multi-day itineraries around Taiwan from taxi drivers doubling as tour guides.

Its innovative feature has been to train taxi drivers to obtain tour guide certification, encouraging them to delve into the tourism industry and provide professional chartered tour services. Such services, which combine the advantages of a taxi’s high degree of mobility and a driver’s experiences, turn drivers into storytellers as they take tourists to lesser known jewels around Taiwan and help them experience local specialties and culture.     

The car-booking platform told the story of one driver, Mr. Wan.

“He once served a family where the daughter was taking her stroke-stricken father on a trip. The father figured he would only be able to sit in the car, but Mr. Wan was willing take the father out in his wheelchair or carry him around on his back to see Taroko Gorge. Mr. Wan even brought him to the entry of “Water Curtain Cave” (水濂洞) on one of the gorge’s trails, giving the family the joy of traveling together. This was all because Mr. Wan himself has a daughter who suffered a serious injury and needs a wheelchair to get around,” according to the site.

Taroko National Park. (Image: Pixabay)

This model has transformed the traditional point-to-point taxi into a master guide offering an in-depth travel experience, a scenario in which the taxi driver’s role would not be supplanted by AI even if self-driven taxi technology appeared. The only change would be for routine duties such as maneuvering the steering wheel and braking to evolve into storytelling and showing tourists around.

New, Irreplaceable ‘Assistant’

Finally, before finishing up my talk on the future of taxis, I asked the taxi drivers one question: “Are you worried that you will be replaced by driverless cars in 10 or 20 years?” Most of the drivers smiled uneasily, the uncertainty in their eyes belying their “surface acting.” I used “deep acting” to try to comfort them: “Don’t worry. Even if driverless cars appear, we’ve shown that AI technology or autonomous vehicles can only go as far as “surface acting”; only real people can provide service emblematic of “deep acting,” I told them.

My own sense is that once innovation reengineers how work is done and new services are designed, drivers’ jobs will involve attentive service filled with creativity, warmth and value. It could be helping children who work a long distance away take their parents to the hospital and pick up their medicine; or helping busy parents take their children to school or to a cram school or bring them home. It might be helping a company take an overseas visitor on a short spin around the city, offering attentive service befitting a business class traveler, or helping a busy business owner deliver gifts, run errands or handle logistics, creating an innovative type of “assistant.”

In the future world of driverless cars, AI will not be battling drivers for their jobs. Quite the contrary, drivers and AI will be competing on the services they can provide.

Translated by Luke Sabatier

Additional Reading

♦ Taiwan is Well Positioned to Develop Smart Cities
♦ Should We Worry About Fights Between AI?
♦ Should People Fear Robots?

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About the Author

Hou Sheng-tsung is a professor in Feng Chia University’s Graduate Institute of Public Affairs and Social Innovation. He heads the school’s Center for Service Innovation and Mobility Design and “B Academy” and also teaches part-time at National Cheng Chi University’s Graduate Institute of Technology, Innovation & Intellectual Property Management.

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This article presents the opinion or perspective of the original author / organization, which does not represent the standpoint of CommonWealth magazine.