Large companies have had access to artificial intelligence (AI) for quite some time and have been using it to enhance their customer relationships and automate aspects of the business. The democratization of AI means that this technology is also becoming accessible to smaller enterprises. But they have catching up to do. Some have yet to truly realize AI's value for building meaningful communications through democratizing AI with their target audiences. The current challenge is getting small businesses to thoroughly learn just how powerful AI is and how adopting it can help improve productivity, automate processes, predict customers' behaviors, and track their needs.

Perched on the edge of a curb, squinting down the length of Market Street in the US city of San Francisco, I find myself twitchily tapping my phone, only to wince as the time ticks away. And up the Market Street rail line rumbles my deliverance: a 1928 wood-panelled tram in green-and-white trim. Oh, the irony: I'm headed to test out one of the city's newest transportation options while creaking down the road on one of its oldest. San Francisco has long been a hub for transportation innovation. It was here that the first cable car system was put into use.

In 2013, Jeff Bezos announced Amazon was developing a drone delivery service. He estimated at the time that air-dropped packages were "four, five years" away. Nearly a decade later, the service is promised to begin by the end of this year – albeit in only two locations in the US. According to David Carbon, an Australian expat and vice-president of the firm's drone delivery division, Amazon wants to deliver 500m packages annually by drone from 2030. Carbon told AAP earlier this month that the firm was planning a wider rollout for air deliveries in the US and potentially Australia.

The increase in IoT adoption and Smart technology is revolutionizing logistics and warehouse management. "The United States Smart Warehousing Market size was estimated at USD 3,481.58 million in 2020 and expected to reach USD 9,400.10 million by 2027, at a CAGR of 15.24%" – Research & Markets report. With ever-increasing consumer demand, the load on logistics and transportation has only increased and given rise to many innovations in the logistics industry. Logistics companies are striving to increase efficiency and provide better transparency. This has led to some serious innovation and investment in the IoT space. With IoT becoming ever-popular, forecasters predict that by 2025, the IoT industry will hit between $1 trillion and $3 trillion in revenue.

Learn more about what comes next. Helm.ai, a startup creating software for autonomous vehicles, today announced that it raised $26 million in series B financing led by Amplo, JMPartners, Base Capital Funding, and Freeman Group with participation from ACVC, One Way Ventures, Binnacle Partners, and individual investors. According to CEO Vlad Voroninski, the funding will help Helm "better serve its customer base" while supporting product expansion. Self-driving technologies have captured the attention of investors during the pandemic, particularly as strains on the supply chain -- exacerbated by a driver shortage -- make apparent the usefulness of automated delivery trucks. For example, earlier this year, self-driving software startup Embark announced plans to go public in a deal that would value the company at more than $5 billion.

Amazon is reportedly using artificial intelligence (AI) to determine how much its delivery drivers should be paid by and their employment status. According to The Information, which first reported the news, the AI-powered surveillance cameras in delivery trucks are monitoring the driver's behavior and scoring them on safety infractions like tailgating, speeding or illegal U-turns. The news outlet says it obtained confidential documents that reveal cameras inside vans count the number of potentially dangerous actions – most equal one point, but others like running a stop sign are worth 10 points. The documents also states that contracted drives receive a report card each week, showing their performance that ranges from'fantastic' to'poor' that shows how many infractions occurred for every 100 trips. Those with five or fewer violations per 100 trips usually receive a'fantastic' score, according to The Information. The Amazon documents also states that the firm will remove some infractions to balance to account for'edge cases' where the cameras' AI software misidentifies violations.

At the warehouses of British online grocery company Ocado Technology, robots, guided by AI, whizz around on rails at speeds of up to four metres per second, picking a 50-item order in minutes. The journeys then taken by Ocado's delivery trucks are optimised by a neural network that makes more than 14 million last-mile routing calculations per second, and adjusts delivery routes each time a customer places a new order or adds extra items to their shopping lists. But Ocado's most ambitious automation efforts involve packing robots. At the time of writing the company has five robotic picking arms powered by computer vision, and other machine-learning systems that can identify the products that need to be packed and use suction power to grab them. Further advances, undertaken in conjunction with two European academic-led projects, are in the pipeline. "From a human's perspective, it is a fairly simple task to pick and pack, and it doesn't require an awful lot of training," says Alex Harvey, chief of advanced technology at Ocado Technology. "For a computer and for a robot, the dexterous manipulation involved is far beyond the state of the art today to be able to pick and pack the full range of items that we do."

The U.S. Postal Service will finally get new high-tech mail delivery trucks. The agency said Tuesday that it awarded a 10-year multi-billion dollar contract to Wisconsin-based Oshkosh Defense to replace it's aging fleet of vehicles. The new fleet will replace and expand the existing more than 230,000 vehicles – among them approximately 190,000 delivery trucks – including many that have been in service for 30 years. The deal calls for the postal service to order between 50,000 to 165,000 new delivery trucks featuring 360-degree cameras, advanced braking, with front- and rear-collision avoidance system that includes visual, audio warning and automatic braking. What car was Tiger Woods driving in accident?:Golf

The pandemic has sent shockwaves through global supply chains, forcing business leaders to reexamine and recalibrate their procurement and outsourcing strategies. Manufacturing and logistics will likely be disrupted for many months to come. And in the long term, there will almost certainly be a greater emphasis on supply chain resilience to better withstand future crises. Businesses will be looking to technology, and 5G in particular, to provide some of the answers. One of the trends emerging out of the pandemic is that supply chains will become shorter and more regional, with less demand for suppliers based in hubs like China.

Around the world, an industry has emerged around automating food service through robotics, raising questions about job security and mass unemployment while also prompting praise for streamlining and innovation. In the epicenter of Silicon Valley, where innovation is exalted beyond all else, this industry has played out in various forms, from cafes, burger shops and pizza delivery to odd vending machines. Man cannot survive on bread alone, the saying goes, but in the Bay Area, a woman could conceivably sustain herself on a varied menu of foodstuffs that had not passed the hand of man in preparation at all that day. And that woman is me. I began my day with a coffee at CafeX, where I met Francisco, the dancing and spinning robotic arm.