AI Guardian: How UPS is Combatting Package Theft with Artificial Intelligence

0:00It seems as though barely a day goes by without the reports of package theft or porch piracy as a lot of people are calling it. This is a trend that is, you know, really viral recently. If you've seen on YouTube, I believe there's a video every year where they pretty much prank porch pirates by putting things on the porch that are like exploding glitter bombs or all sorts of things. So the, you know, the porch pirate goes and they think they're stealing like a new speaker or a new set of headphones. And when they grab it and run back to their apartment and open it up, in reality, it's a giant exploding glitter bomb that sprays bad smells and makes police siren noises and has phones that are recording them and collects their, you know, their location.

0:42So this is obviously a problem. It's definitely gone viral, you know, 50 million views on a lot of these kind of porch pirate prank videos. But in any case, I think it underlines definitely a much bigger problem, which is that people across the United States right now, there is a surge of theft where people are going, stealing brand new iPads and brand new laptops, all sorts of electronics, other things from people's porches. There were thousands of dollars, and this is an issue. So despite the typical stolen package costing around$50, which was highlighted in a 2022 study from security.org, I think the sheer volume of package theft is what's really alarming.

1:18SafeWise, which is a home security consultancy, notes a jump from$210 million to$260 million in stolen delivered packages in just the last year. So astonishingly, around 79 % of Americans reportedly have been, you know, fell prey to porch pirates just last year. So I think big logistics players have kind of entered the space right now with technological advancements aimed at curbing this theft spree that we're seeing. So UPS specifically unveiled its latest weapon in June, which is a delivery defense. And it's touted as an AI powered tool. It leverages historical data and machine learning to allocate a delivery confidence score on a scale of 1000 for each delivery location.

2:05This is so interesting. Mark Robinson, who's the president of UPS Capital, said, quote, if we have a score of 1000 to an address, that signals our high confidence in the package reaching its recipient. Conversely, a score closer to 100 suggests a potential delivery issue at that point. This initiative will inform recipients of possible theft risks, allowing them to opt for safer delivery methods such as in-store collection or UPS pickup points. Okay, this is really interesting. I think what's happening here is the fact that right now we're using AI and I'm seen this kind of as a trend that's coming up right now as a predictive tool um we're seeing this in a lot of different areas right i talked recently to um some people at square that are saying they're using ai to predict when a customer is going to churn and then preemptively they will go in and have a whole kind of campaign to keep the customer um then i've also spoken recently about um you know the big acquisition of splunk that is happening splunk is a security firm and one of the things that they are doing is um predicting security vulnerabilities so that you can preemptively measure them.

3:12And now we have UPS who is preemptively predicting package theft. And then they're, you know, if it's, it's like, it's not even just being like, oh, it's like a neighborhood that has a lower median income or something like that. They have a whole bunch of things that use machine learning. They're looking at like how often packages have been reported, missing or stolen. They have all of this data and use machine learning. And they just automatically tell you, look, you don't have a very good odd of, you know, collecting your package. Here's your alternatives, go pick it up, or, you know, other things.

3:40So this is really interesting. And I think using AI in this predictive manner is really, really powerful. I think this innovative solution was initially integrated with existing retail software systems through an API with Costco wholesale in Colorado being one of the first testers are testing over there in Colorado. However, both UPS and Costco remain really tight lipped on the specifics of this partnership, They're not really sharing a lot about it or how it works per se. So Robinson believes that delivery defense provides merchants an enhanced decision-making tool when shipping packages with small to medium-sized businesses in mind.

4:16UPS is set to roll out a web-based version of the system in October aligned with, of course, the holiday season. This is right before Black Friday and then Christmas. So this might be just in time to save us all from, you know, getting all of our package is stolen. So I think the final call on leveraging this technology is still going to come down to the individual merchants. So this is going to allow them to determine how they address potential delivery risks, right? This isn't going to be just automatic. UPS is saying, sorry, you have to come into the office. I think it's going to come down to the actual individual merchants themselves and the delivery people deciding what they're going to do.

4:52And then also this comes from, you know, there's a lot of implications, right? So there's potential delivery risks? Should packages be insured, right? Should they say like, you're sending this package to an area that is highly likely to be robbed, maybe get insurance on this, routing them to different pickup locations. There's all sorts of different options, but it's going to come down to the individual merchants. So the big question I have after kind of reading and researching a little bit about this is like, okay, very cool, but like how are UPS's competitors addressing this? Awesome. UPS is doing it, but you don't always get to pick how your packages are delivered.

5:26So I think DHL FedEx and Amazon's countermeasures that they've been rolling out are kind of interesting. DHL employs a signature first approach where delivery staff need a signature to hand over a package. This is, of course, maybe the best way to prevent this, right? You don't need AI when you just get a signature. However, it's also one of the most annoying if you're not at your home and then they just leave that little slip, that dreaded slip at your door that says come into our office because you weren't here. So there definitely are a few different ways to do this, but I really do think that this kind of AI predictive analysis that UPS is doing is very forward thinking.

6:01I'll be very interested to see the adoption and how this has continued as it is rolled out.