The TechMobility Podcast
Welcome to The TechMobility Podcast, your ultimate source for authentic insights, news, and perspectives at the nexus of mobility and technology. We're all about REAL FACTS, REAL OPINIONS, and REAL TALK! From personal privacy to space hotels, if it moves or moves you, we're discussing it! Our weekly episodes venture beyond the conventional, offering a unique, unfiltered take on the topics that matter. We're not afraid to color outside the lines, and we believe you'll appreciate our bold approach!
The TechMobility Podcast
Silverado EV's Exceptional Mileage; 2025 Volvo EX90 review; Shale Oil's Rocky Future; The Robotic Economy
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Electric vehicles are surpassing expectations and redefining what's possible on America's roads. Imagine a pickup truck traveling over 1,000 miles on a single charge - that's precisely what Chevrolet achieved with their Silverado EV work truck during an impressive week-long test. Even when driving at just 25 mph without air conditioning, this demonstrates how driving habits and vehicle modifications can significantly extend EV range beyond EPA ratings.
The automotive revolution continues with Volvo's stunning EX 90, a vehicle so advanced that you'll need to relearn everything you thought you knew about driving. This American-made luxury electric SUV not only represents the future of transportation, but also signifies a fundamentally new relationship between car and driver. Equipped with an AI system built on NVIDIA's drive platform and enhanced with Qualcomm technologies, the EX 90 actually improves over time via over-the-air updates. Unlike traditional vehicles that gradually lose value and capabilities, the EX 90 can gain features years after purchase, upending conventional ideas of vehicle ownership.
Meanwhile, America's energy landscape is undergoing its own transformation as shale oil producers face geologic limitations, infrastructure challenges, and international competition. With extraction costs nearly 27 times higher than those of some OPEC producers, domestic companies must vertically integrate and adopt technological innovations to survive. This shift in energy mirrors an even more profound change in the workforce, as AI and robotics threaten to automate jobs across sectors within the next two decades. Unlike the optimistic predictions of the 1970s that technology would create more leisure time while maintaining employment, history shows that businesses tend to use advances to cut headcount rather than work hours - a pattern already seen with AI in broadcasting and retail.
Join us as we explore these interconnected revolutions in transportation, energy, and labor that are reshaping our world in unexpected ways. Have thoughts or questions about these developments? Call or text our TechMobility hotline at 872-222-9793 - we'd love to hear your perspective on where this technological journey is taking us.
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Speaker 2:I'm Ken Chester On the docket my impressions and review of the all-new 2025 Volvo EX90 EV SUV, shale oil's rocky future and the robotic economy. To join the conversation, be it by asking a question, sharing an opinion or even suggesting an idea for a future episode, feel free to call or text the Tech Mobility online that number, 872-222-9793. Number 872-222-9793. Or you can email the show directly if you wish. Talk at techmobilityshow From the Tech Mobility News Desk.
Speaker 2:Okay, you guys, you pick up owners that own big V8s or diesels with internal combustion engines. Question for you what is the range in your vehicle? Can you get over a thousand miles from the tanks you've got? And if you're even close to that, you're probably running what? Two tanks, maybe 50, 60 gallons, and you're probably running what A three quarter ton or one ton, probably a diesel. What if I told you that a half ton Chevy, half ton Chevy Silverado got a record 1,059 miles on a single charge. It's an EV on one charge. Let's start, let's put this in perspective. That is double what the EPA said. The thing will get Actually more than double.
Speaker 2:Now, to be honest and to be fair, they did some things that in normal life you wouldn't do Like. For example, they did this in July. Guess what? They didn't turn the air conditioning on. Okay, wouldn't do that, but okay, some else guess what? They weren't driving highway speeds. Let's just put it all on the table. Okay, let me put it all on the table. 25 miles an hour. Okay, let me put it all on the table, 25 miles an hour.
Speaker 2:But the point was not, you know, finding out what it would do. They wanted to find out how they could manipulate mileage. What things could you do to extend mileage in an EV easily? And that is what this was all about. They did it. Over seven days this past July, a rotating crew of GM workers drove a Chevy Silverado EV work truck. And this wasn't so. This wasn't even the fancy, smancy EV. This is the work truck version for 1,059.2 miles on a single charge. It's not a gimmick. They really did that.
Speaker 2:No, they did not get it into the Guinness Book of World Records. That was not their goal. They wanted to see what they could do to extend the mileage on an EV truck. Now, to be honest, that's higher than the Guinness World Record for the longest distance driven by an EV on one charge. Bet you can't guess who got that one, and even theirs is about 25,. Well, no, actually it's 50% higher than their rated one and it was set earlier in the same month by a Lucid Air Grand Touring. Bear in mind that the Lucid Air comes in at EPA certified 520 miles. The Chevy Silverado EV work truck comes in at roughly 450-ish miles, which is 50 miles higher than the engineers originally thought they could do. But EPA measured it and certified it at 450. And they've been increasing that since then and I've reported on it A couple of years in and I'm looking at the numbers and right now. Actually, actually when it came out a couple years ago, it was $450. This last one, $493 on the Silverado EV. That's EPA certified $493 for a half ton EV pickup. And you know those batteries are heavy but they get in these kind of range. One charge, one charge.
Speaker 2:Now I alluded to some of the things that they had to do that most customers would not do, like not using the air conditioning during the summer heat and driving at speeds of just 25 miles an hour. But they wanted to prove a point. They wanted to address the issue of range anxiety, which has become a common concern for EV drivers and potential EV customers, who fear getting stranded with a dead battery far from a charging site, and I can tell you, as a person who reviews vehicles every single week, I am very sensitive to that. I'm looking at mileage, I'm looking at where I'm going because, honestly, you get off the interstate here in Iowa. The chances of you finding a level 3 charger off the interstate very low. So if you're not going to be driving interstate 80, you're not going to be driving interstate 35, and even then you need to do your homework. But if you're not going to do that, then you best be paying attention to the mileage.
Speaker 2:Automakers and engineers continue to make battery developments, improve EV range, but how many miles you get out of a charge also depends on a whole bunch of other factors, like the weather, weight in the vehicle, whether you're driving uphill, whether you're using air conditioning, and even your driving style, like if you're accelerating quickly or slamming on the brakes. They left one thing out the quickest thing that will kill EV range is running the heater. I learned that the hard way. I've turned a heater on and watched 50, 60 miles literally evaporate from the range like that. So it's interesting they chose the summertime, which also would put the pressure on the EV battery because you're looking at extremes in temperature. Now, to be honest, gm engineers knew they would have to control for all those variables.
Speaker 2:They didn't make any changes to the software, the battery for this test, the battery management system. They did not change. But they did do a few hardware changes, but again, nothing dramatic. Um, they lowered the position of the windshield wiper to reduce drag. They inflated the tires to the highest acceptable pressure to lower rolling resistance and they removed the spare tire to make the vehicle lighter All things you could do. Engineers also optimized the truck's wheel alignment, put a tonneau cover over the truck bed and turned off the climate control inside the vehicle. Sonoma cover over the truck bed and turned off the climate control inside the vehicle.
Speaker 2:They chose to do the test during a warmer time of the year because EV batteries can struggle in the cold. The one thing I haven't figured out that I know they need to fix it is why they can't precondition the batteries in a winter time. They've got all the things they need. They've got all the things they need. Why not just build a system that reads the outside temperature and, depending on the demand, preconditions the batteries to minimize power loss? Apparently, they must not have made it economically feasible yet, but that seems to be a common-sense approach to me. They also yeah, I talked about that.
Speaker 2:Workers who got behind the wheel took careful considerations around their driving behavior too, mapping out routes that traveled on slower roads rather than highways, and driving just 20 miles an hour to 25 miles per hour quote were safe to do so. Yeah, now there's a note this is a Fast Company article and there's a note. This is an automotive, this is a fast company article and there's a note here. Before july 2025, the guinness world record for the longest journey by electric car in a single charge was 649 miles, also set by lucid and chevy did not involve guinness world records, guinness World Records in this project. So, bottom line, they said, the experiment shows just how many factors people can control to try to get more out of their EVs and what important role driving behavior plays.
Speaker 2:If you want to get better range out of your vehicle and you're willing to sacrifice some of your commute time, it maybe makes sense to take a local highway instead of an interstate and go 45 to 50 instead of 70, 75 miles an hour. So there's a lot of things, contrary to public belief, that you can't do to extend range. You're not necessarily held to range the rated range. If you know what to do and you're willing to take a few steps, it's like dieting. No moderation, that's the thing. Moderation that will get you every time and Chevy did it over a thousand miles in a pickup truck. A thousand miles, that is a lot. Yep, yep. One thousand fifty nine point two miles. Forget everything you know about Volvos and driving the EX90. Just rewrote the book. You are listening to the Tech Mobility Show.
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Speaker 2:Social media is the main place to be these days, and we are no exception. I'm Ken Chester of the Tech Mobility Show. If you enjoy my program, then you will also enjoy my weekly Facebook videos, from my latest vehicle reviews to timely commentary of a variety of mobility and technology-related topics. These short features are designed to inform and delight you. Be sure to watch, like and follow us on Facebook. You can find us by typing the Tech Mobility Show in the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to our Facebook page. Social media is the place to be these days, and we're no exception. I'm Ken Chester of the Tech Mobility Show. If you enjoy my program, then you will also enjoy my weekly Instagram videos, from the latest vehicle reviews to timely commentary on a variety of mobility and technology-related topics. These short features are designed to inform and delight you. Be sure to watch, like and follow us on Instagram. You can find us by typing the Tech Mobility Show in the search bar.
Speaker 2:For those of you that listen to podcasts, we have just the one for you. Hi, I'm Ken Chester. Tech Mobility Topics is a podcast where I upload topic-specific videos each week, shorter than a full show. These bite-sized programs are just the thing, particularly if you're interested in a particular topic covered on the weekly radio show. From Apple Podcasts to iHeartRadio and many podcast platforms in between, we got you covered Just enter Tech Mobility Topics in the search bar.
Speaker 3:Wherever you listen to podcasts 3, 2, 1, 0. All engines running. It takes power to explore new worlds and confidence in your equipment to get you there. Introducing the new 311 horsepower seven passenger Volvo XC90 V8. The only SUV with the added power of legendary Volvo safety.
Speaker 2:It was the 1990s and Volvo was in the midst of making a pivot. Up till then, volvos were known pretty much as boring but brutally safe cars. They weren't really known much for performance and excitement and stuff, and Volvo was trying to infuse some of that without giving up its safety bona fides, and the 850 was one of those vehicles that tried to break the mold. And, of course, we know what's happened since then till now. Let me introduce you to their latest invention. The all-new Volvo EX90 is a domestically produced, battery, electric, full-size luxury crossover SUV produced by Volvo since May of last year, manufactured at its Ridgeville South Carolina manufacturing plant and yes, folks, that's in the United States of America. It is considered by the automaker to be its flagship full-size SUV, taking the mantle from the XC90. The EX90 is such a tour de force that you will need to relearn everything you know about driving, and I mean everything. The EX90 has reimagined the entire automotive experience and it's unlike anything else, and I've had the opportunity to drive this impressive whip at the Midwest Automotive Media Association's 2025 Spring Rally, located on the grounds of Road America in Elkhart Lake, wisconsin. The model I drove was the Twin Motor Performance Electric Ultra, the more powerful of the two configurations offered.
Speaker 2:The EX90 is a vehicle of many firsts for the automaker. The EX90 represents a paradigm shift for the company as the first Volvo car powered by a system. The in-car AI computer is built on the NVIDIA drive platform. This core system, plus a Snapdragon cockpit platform from Qualcomm Technologies and in-house developed software by Volvo Cars. Engineers work seamlessly together to run the key functions inside the car, from safety and infotainment to battery management. The result is a more responsive and convenient car experience. I say amen. Born smart and connected with Google. Built-in. The EX90 is equipped with a range of sensors, including radars, camera and LiDAR, supplied by Luminar for enhanced safety. The data collection from the sensors, coupled with an always-on 5G connection and regular over-the-air software updates, allows the company to continuously improve the car's features and grow its functionality over time. This is the part I want you to hear. In other words, the EX90 is designed to grow and develop together with you.
Speaker 2:Quoting Jim Rowan, who is CEO, he said the Volvo EX90 embodies our future as a fully electric car maker, with cars that continuously get better over time compared to core computing and software updates. It's a testament to our global engineering capabilities and reaffirms our position as a leader in the ongoing technology shift in the car industry. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Cars that continuously get better over time Let that sink in a minute. See, what you don't realize and I'm stopping this right here is that EV's superpower is the over-the-air update that you can buy a car in 2025, keep it for 15 years, trade it in and it will be as up-to-date 15 years from now more so, in fact, than when it was new. May actually have more capabilities than when the thing rolled out of the assembly plant originally because of software updates. As the automaker gets better at what they're doing come out, new stuff gives you options to either buy it or update it automatically. Up till now, your internal combustion engine vehicle could only improve if you had hardware updates, meaning you spent money to put a wrench on it, and even then you were limited. These are not.
Speaker 2:The EX90 is powered by two electric motors combined with a 111 kilowatt hour battery pack that generates 510 horsepower and 671 foot-pounds of torque. This should be race car numbers. All-wheel drive is standard. The driving range is approximately 310 miles, which works out to be about 2.79 miles per kilowatt hour. Using a level 3 fast charger, volvo estimates a recharging time from 10% to 80% of charge in about 30 minutes. Zero to 60 takes 4.7 seconds. Cargo capacity is 73.5 cubic feet. With the second and third row seats folded flat, the cargo bin in front of the EX90 adds 1.6 cubic feet of storage space.
Speaker 2:Here's what I liked about the EX90. How do I best express this? Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. No matter what you've driven, no matter how long you've been driving, no matter where you've been, you will not experience the driving adventure of the Volvo EX90. Because, for all the drama it puts you through to basically relearn the configuration and operation of the vehicle's reimagined displays, controls and switchgear, the actual drive will reward you richly.
Speaker 2:On-road, off-road, the EX90 is agnostic about what service it travels. It's been engineered to deliver an above-average driving experience, no matter where it's driven. The positive attributes are what you expect from Volvo Bank vault, solid construction, super smooth at speed and effortlessly fast. And I mean smooth like buttered glass. A head-up display keeps important information at eye level in front of the driver. Vehicle height can be adjusted from the cargo area to facilitate loading. Each seat in a passenger cabin is very comfortable for the long haul Third row seats have a power fold button to facilitate vehicle versatility, while the second row seating has a fore-aft adjustment to optimize legroom for both the second and third row.
Speaker 2:Real quick, here's what I didn't like about the XC90. The Volvo flagship is shod with 22-inch tires which are not run flats. Nor does the vehicle come equipped with a spare tire. It's doubtful that your local tire vendor would have this one in stock if you get into trouble, much less if you damage a rim. And despite a large center infotainment system, the display in front of the driver is very small by comparison. Controls are quirky and will definitely take time to get used to. And finally, there's no start button. The FOB you're carrying has no buttons either, but you need it for the vehicle to recognize you. Just put your foot on the brake, shift into gear and you can drive away. What could possibly go wrong? Manufacturers suggest a retail price for the 2025 Volvo EX90 starts from $81,290 for the Plus, $85,640 for the Ultra Choosing. The Twin Motor Performance powertrain adds $5,000, and destination charges are $1,295. You owe yourself the opportunity of a lifetime Drive an EX90. Take one for a spin, you will thank me. It's an amazing vehicle, really, really is. If this is where Volvo is going in the future, I'm all in. I just got to get used to relearning everything, because that is the price the EX90 makes you pay, is you have to basically relearn everything you know about displays, controls and switchgear? The American shareholder fields are about to enter a period of transformation.
Speaker 2:This is the Tech Mobility Show. Do you listen to podcasts? Seems that most people do. Hi, I'm Ken Chester, host of the Tech Mobility Show. If you've missed any of our weekly episodes on the radio, our podcast is a great way to listen. You can find the Tech Mobility Podcast just about anywhere. You can enjoy podcasts. Be sure to follow us from Apple Podcasts, iheart Radio and many platforms in between. We are there. Just enter the Tech Mobility podcast in the search bar. Wherever you listen to podcasts, social media, it's the place to be. We no exception. Hi, I'm ken chester, host the tech mobility show. Several times a week, I post to tiktok several of the topics that I cover on my weekly radio show. It's another way to keep up on mobility, technology news and information. I've built quite a library of short videos for your viewing pleasure, so be sure to watch, like and subscribe. That's the tech mobilityility Show on TikTok Check it out.
Speaker 2:America's shale oil fields are a major reason that the United States is the leading producer of crude oil in the world, but the industry is about to go under a major transformation. After years of rapid growth and a sharp focus on cash, the industry's boldest chapter may be unfolding, defined by unprecedented scale, geologic uncertainty, macro volatility and exhilarating innovation. Big words this is Topic B, shale oil. You've heard of fracking. You've heard everything that goes with fracking and that happens to go with getting oil from shale of the ground, along with a lot of new technologies designed to look and get oil in ways that didn't exist even 15 years ago. Right now we're looking at a whole bunch of different things, and this McKinsey Company report kind of took a look at what shale oil refineries well, not refiners, but exploration and development companies would have to do in order to remain competitive in a world where there's a lot of different things coming at them. So let's start with some of the easy stuff.
Speaker 2:Right now, opec OPEC is turning on the spigots full. Why they want to break the players in our oil patch. Why? Because if they can drive them out of business, then you end up being beholden to foreign oil again and because the cost of pulling 55 gallons of crude oil out of the ground in Saudi Arabia is way less than what they call tier one wells here in the United States. Average tier one well in the United States really has a extraction price of just under $40 a barrel. My understanding in Saudi Arabia that price is $1.50. And what that means is that they can turn the spigot on relatively cheaply and drive the price of oil down and still be relatively profitable at prices below what it costs us to pull it out of the ground. They've done it before and you can argue this either way. You can say well, saudi Arabia's crude oil is a way to keep the industry in check by keeping supply and demand somewhat in balance. In recent years, saudi Arabia has used it not so much as a balancing or safety valve but as a way to reclaim market dominance by chasing out the undercapitalized players who can't survive at the lower prices.
Speaker 2:At the lower prices, the McKinsey report talks about how existing players in the oil patch will have to get bigger and look at vertically integrating, not just at the exploration and development end of the business, but all the way up to, and sometimes maybe including the end user, and there are a lot of different parts, excuse me. There are a lot of different parts in that, but why does it matter to you? Well, one of the big problems that they're having right now. They call it 1970, they had a term for it and it looks like we're approaching that again. It's called peak oil.
Speaker 2:What that means is that, regardless of what you believe that oil deposits, the existence of oil is finite. And while there might be billions upon billions upon billions of barrels, it's not endless. And at a point when you're taking millions, if not billions, of barrels or gallons of oil out the ground each and every day, at some point you're going to start to see diminishing returns. Diminishing returns start to cost money as the wells become less productive. Over time, their pressure drops because there's not that much oil left anymore and at some future time it becomes uneconomical to continue the well.
Speaker 2:The shale oil fields are starting to have that experience, but, like everything else and like the excessive growth they've had in the last 15 years, there's other technologies that might balance that. And what they're looking at is that and you probably didn't know this there are three levels of oil wells that they mark. And the tier one is the ones that are economically feasible, generating a lot of revenue, and they're fine. There's tier two and tier three. They're less effective, cost more money to run, and usually those are the ones that probably get plugged when you know it becomes too expensive to run them. You know it becomes too expensive to run them. What they're looking at now is technologies that may take some of those tier twos and get the production up to the point of a tier one where their production runway they call it is longer because they're getting more useful life, more economically useful life, out of these existing wells. Now again, why does it matter to you? Well, if it's domestic production, it means that it's available.
Speaker 2:And one thing that I want to capitalize on that the McKinley report made a point and I always knew this to be true, and you may not have realized it. I'm going to read it, and it says this Oil and gas production in the United States has outpaced the infrastructure needed to get products to market, increasing the premium for those who control these flows. Nobody wants a pipeline in their backyard, nobody wants a refinery in their backyard. The problem is that in the United States of America, getting it from delivery point where all the pipelines come together in Cushing, oklahoma, to maybe the Northeast or the Southeast or the UP in Michigan don't work. You've got limited ways of getting it there where it makes it economically feasible and as a result, we've got a kind of a gerrymandered way of satisfying oil demand in the United States. We've got a lot of oil, we've got a lot of gas, but we can't deliver it, particularly natural gas, and natural gas is very sensitive to price swings. And here's the part that's weird. When you drill for oil, you get a lot of methane and something else that you didn't realize. You get a lot of water, so you got water issues and up till recently they looked at water removal as an expense. But they're rethinking that, particularly in places where water is very precious and it may be a profit center.
Speaker 2:But the key right now in the third transformation of the shale oil industry is vertical integration. Take on more than, instead of just being the supplier, you want to be part of the delivery system. You want to be part of the product system. You want to control more of the product system. You want to control more of the output, more of the supply chain, and only the ones that are able to do that. The ones that are able to do that are the ones that will survive. Because if you're just depending on exploration and development, which is a boom-bust cycle anyway, you are subject to every whim and that's dangerous for natural supply, it's dangerous for natural security, but the flip side of that also means that you're going to have fewer players in the supply chain who can then manipulate price. So it's kind of a balancing act and right now they're just trying to survive.
Speaker 2:Technology will help them. Technology will help them to keep on. But they got to look at what they got to do in order to get further life out of the shale oil fields. Much the same way they got them out of the original oil fields when they took those over with increased technology Oil fields that the majors that gave up. On that. The independents came in with new technology and actually got 40, 50, 60 more years out of that field economically feasible. Shale oil is now in that same boat. They're looking at the latest, newest technologies to get more oil out of marginal wells and a person who can do that, the person who can do it at scale at a price, will control the industry. A San Francisco think tank concludes that the world's about to get more robotic, transforming the global labor market. What does this mean for mankind?
Speaker 2:To learn more about the Tech Mobility Show, start by visiting our website. Hi, I'm Ken Chester, host of the Tech Mobility Show. The website is a treasure trove of information about me and the show, as well as where to find it on the radio across the country. Keep up with the happenings of the Tech Mobility Show by visiting techmobilityshow. That's techmobilityshow. That's techmobilityshow. You can also drop us a line at talk at techmobilityshow. Did you know that TechMobility has a YouTube channel? Hi, I'm Ken Chester, host of the TechMobility show. Each week, I upload a few short videos of some of the hot topics that I cover during my weekly radio program. I've designed these videos to be informative and entertaining. It's another way to keep up on current mobility and technology news and information. Be sure to watch, like and subscribe to my channel. That's the Tech Mobility Show on YouTube. Check it out.
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Speaker 2:Social media is the place to be these days, and we're no exception. I'm Ken Chester of the Tech Mobility Show. If you enjoy my program, then you will also enjoy my weekly Instagram videos, from the latest vehicle reviews to timely commentary on a variety of mobility and technology-related topics. These short features are designed to inform and delight you. Be sure to watch, like and follow us on Instagram. You can find us by typing the Tech Mobility Show in the search bar Mobility Show in the search bar. Ai, humanoid robots, technological advances and more. Mankind is in the midst of a world-changing upheaval, and the timeline may be shockingly short when it comes to when robots could replace pretty much everyone's jobs, and this is topic C. We've talked about robots in the past. We've talked about AI in the past, but let's talk about quality of life. Let's talk about future. Let's talk about the fact that, on average, do Americans want to work in factories? No, do Americans want to work in the very hard labor, intensive and backbreaking agricultural industry? No.
Speaker 2:Now what are we going to do? I remember being in high school in the mid-1970s and our teacher gave us I'll never forget it, it was an orange paperback called Future World, and in reading Future World they talked about what the future would look like. And the big recurring theme both in the late 1960s and throughout most of the 70s was that they acknowledged that technology would speed up. They acknowledged that technology would free human beings from a lot of the drudgery of certain work and in fact their argument at that time was that humans would have so much more free time that you know you wouldn't work a 40-hour week, you wouldn't have to, you'd have leisure time to do all kinds of fun and novel stuff that we'd have to rethink the whole thing. Let me introduce you to the rule of unintended consequences. That was the 1970s.
Speaker 2:By the early 1980s, as efficiency started to take hold, american businesses had another tack. They used technology to reduce work counts not to reduce hours, but actually reduce head counts and it worked. The folks who still had a job even harder. They were eliminating whole levels of management. They were closing assembly plants right and left. It wasn't a matter of having more leisure time, because the future folks thought that it would be applied fairly and across the board. You just work fewer hours. Everybody still have a job, whatever it was you were doing, but instead of working 40 hours, maybe you worked 15, 20, 25 hours and had this additional leisure time. So everybody had a level of standard of living in the book, but would not be working like their parents and grandparents did. That's not what happened. American business said, uh-uh, we can get rid of the whole thing. And they did. We won't even talk about pensions and 401ks and stuff like that. That's another story for another time. We're seeing now, particularly in the radio industry, and I warned you this a few years back, and I warned you this a few years back. I said that when Radio GPT gets implemented by one of these larger radio chains, that they are not going to free up talent like this one chain said they were going to. They're going to put them out of work completely. And that's exactly what's happening. They're taking AI and using a host likeness, cadence style and getting rid of them. Don't need them. We just replicated everything through AI. Why do we need you? It don't need no break, no vacation, we don't have to pay overtime, we don't have to worry about it hurting itself or training it. Once we set it up, it's good to go. We done According to this futurist let me get his name here.
Speaker 2:I think it's Adam Doerr. Adam Doerr believes that robots will be the future in 20 years or less. The future in 20 years or less. I say that with the rise of AI, large language models, deep machine learning and all of this, I think it'll be less time. It's already happening. We've reported on it. But the thing that he does not address is automation versus augmentation. Will you be automated or will you be orchestrated? You can orchestrate AI and there will always be a need for folks to orchestrate, but like so many other technological advances that we've seen over the last since the start of the industrial revolution in 1750, you need less people to do it.
Speaker 2:At one time, in the steam era of railroads, it employed over 2 million people and a lot of those folks got hurt severely. It was a very, very, very dangerous business, very, very, very dangerous business. But technology came in. Diesel electrics came in. The steam engines cost too much to run. They cost 22 cents a mile to run. The diesel electrics cost 9.5 cents to run. Guess what happened? Steam locomotives went away and all those jobs went with it. By the end of the 1970s, railroads also made a deal to eliminate the caboose. They didn't need a five-person crew. Right now the average train crew is two people and they're looking to cut that in half.
Speaker 2:If you were in upper Midwest around 1980, 85, you would probably think about meat packers. Meat packers were some of the best paid folk on the line. Then came a company called IBP Iowa Beef Processors, and what they did is they automated the line like an assembly plant. So those high paying master craft jobs went away and IBP itself would end up getting bought by Tyson Foods. It doesn't matter.
Speaker 2:What AI does right now is it has the ability to take large sums of data and manipulate it in ways that are faster, better, more consistent. Generally, most of the time it really depends on what it's fed. So you're still going to have curators to make sure that the models are developed in such a way with right information and with those folks who have AI ethics installed. And with those folks who have AI ethics installed, you will need some sort of monitors to make sure that it doesn't hallucinate in unpredictable ways. But here's the thing that Adam Doerr does not address and that this whole piece does not address? It does not address the unintended consequences of all this automation.
Speaker 2:What happens if you get a grocery store situation that's completely automated, from growing the food to canning the food, to bringing it to the store, to delivering it to your home? It's all automated. You don't need anybody in the process, or very few. In the upper Midwest, here, a major grocery store chain that's based in Iowa employs 93,000 people in eight states. With the rise of robots and AI, will they employ that many people in 15 years? I kind of doubt it, because here's a dirty little secret Most of those people that work for that chain are part-time. Very few are full-time of that 93,000. Maybe 15,000, 20,000 are Tops. Is there room for AI? They're implementing it now, cross the board and they're ordering you.
