Major League Baseball stepped into the future with its recent announcement that “robotic umpires” will be introduced next season. Under MLB’s new Automated Ball-Strike challenge system, teams will have the opportunity to contest pitches they believe were called incorrectly, with an artificial intelligence system determining the outcome.
This is a positive development for baseball. After all, if we have the technology to improve accuracy and reduce errors, why wouldn’t we want games to be called more fairly? Simply, MLB is implementing this technology because it will make the game run more efficiently, not the opposite.
This anecdote offers a valuable lesson for considering the future of transportation and shipping in the United States. While baseball is gradually reducing the role of umpires to minimize — and eventually eliminate — the potential for human error, major labor unions have pushed to effectively mandate human error as a necessary cost of doing business. Although shipping industries — from trucking to rail — have made tremendous investments in automation and AI to reduce accidents, ensure faster and more reliable deliveries, and enhance safety checks for better maintenance, the adoption of these innovations faces serious obstacles from labor leaders intent on blocking progress at the expense of safety.
Nowhere was this more apparent than in the AFL-CIO’s recent commemoration of “Rail Safety Week,” where it urged lawmakers to mandate additional in-person track inspections rather than expand the use of Automated Track Inspection technology — a proven system that, as experts note, employs sensors and cameras “to detect track defects at full speed and significantly outperforms traditional visual inspections.”
The AFL-CIO and its allies in Congress also touted a rule that mandated rail crew sizes — essentially denying businesses the flexibility to reduce or repurpose jobs as they become unnecessary due to available technology. None of this improves safety or makes shipping more reliable.
There will undoubtedly be more efforts to curtail the adoption of automated technologies in rail and trucking as they are implemented. Unions view such life-enhancing progress as a threat to their power, and politicians often miss “the beauty around the bend,” in that this progress changes the way we work — enabling the creation of future opportunities even more closely aligned with our unique talents and interests.
That’s why it’s essential that the administration not heed calls from those wishing to lock the United States in its “transportation past.” President Trump crafted his executive order “Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence,” which made clear that deploying AI is among the highest priorities for his administration.
Unfortunately, on the transportation side of the equation, progress in removing these barriers from the Federal Railroad Administration has been stubbornly slow. No doubt, the president could change this with one phone call. In fact, the administration has the perfect opportunity right now to expand the use of ATI by approving a waiver requested by the collective rail industry. It would send a clear signal that it prioritizes safety and innovation and will not bow to the pressures of Big Labor.
As well he should. A future of faster, more efficient, and safer transportation is at our fingertips. Let’s unlock this future — it’s a home run for everyone.
