Would you eat a pizza delivered by a robot? Customers in New Zealand already can... How will this affect you?

Robots are sneaking their way into our workplaces and our lives.

Robots will soon begin to deliver your mail, pizza, and other parcels within the next few years. Plans are being developed around the globe to test, then roll out automated delivery systems for everything from packages, to mail to pizza. The rising demand for delivered goods is fueling the trend.

LOS ANGELES, CA (California Network) - Robots drones will soon begin delivering piping hot pizzas, mail and items purchased on line to people in selected test environments. Prototypes have already been constructed and developers are working out how the initial tests will work. Within the next few years, such deliveries will become increasingly available around the world. They represent a trend to replace human workers with robots, a trend that is expected to accelerate in the next decade.

In Germany, a robot will soon accompany postal workers who are tasked with delivering more bulky and heavy items. While people are mailing fewer letters, deliveries are rising which means more boxes and heavier loads. To take some of the burden off postal workers, the Deutsche Post is going to test robot drones that will serve as moving tables and will carry the packages to the door for the workers.

Robots are already being used within Deutsche Post's offices to aid workers on a trial basis. Deutsche Post is also looking to employ robots to pick up mail from customers and to work as mobile drop off points.

In New Zealand, a pizza delivery robot is undergoing trials. This robots is also a box on wheels that can deliver pizza within a six-mile range. The robot made its first delivery on March 8.  The customer is given a code to open the compartment which contains their piping hot pie.

And in England, plans are underway for a similar robot to begin testing. In this case, it will deliver retail goods to customers, often on the same day of their order. If all goes well in those tests, the technology will be deployed in 2017 on a permanent basis.

Such developments are being announced around the world as developers compete for a place in a brand-new emerging market. The robot drones safe, secure, courteous, and efficient and may even reduce the high costs of shipping that discourages many customers.

In Palo Alto, California, robot security guards are already on patrol in malls and offices, part of an expanded pilot program for the Knightscope K5 security robot. While these robots are mostly passive monitors that rove about, it will be a small step to equip them with technology that will allow them to intervene in some circumstances, such as stopping a fleeing shoplifter.

People have mixed feelings about robots which will replace human labor and cost jobs. In fact, automation since the early 1980s has been responsible for an overall net loss of jobs and the flat wages of the past three decades. Automation increases profits, while suppressing costs for employers.

In 2014, a study found that only a half of one percent of workers have taken jobs that did not exist in 2000. The statistic is startling, even frightening. What is suggests is that the robot revolution is not creating nearly as many jobs as it is costing.

Within the next few decades, the development of "deep learning" is expected to produce robots that are actually smarter than humans. Once artificial intelligence becomes smarter, there will be no need to prefer human labor over automation. Such robots may even be able to create art or philosophize, endeavors which have been uniquely reserved to conscious humans up to this point.

It may seem inconceivable, but many great advancements are inconceivable until they arrive. The automobile, the airplane, the computer and the smartphone were all inconceivable right up to the moment they emerged in the lab. In the 1970s, people still manufactured mechanical calculators.

The one thing to bear in mind is that human advancement is exponential, in line with Moore's Law that computing power doubles every 18 months. In fairness, this pace of advancement is expected to slow, but that's because we have almost reached the smallest possible transistor size, which is a single electron. Once we reach this limit, virtually anything is possible including full emulation of the human brain.

In plain English, we can expect to go from where we are today to robot laborers replacing humans within a very short time. AI and robots will take every possible job soon after that, and within decades human work will become a thing of the past. This however, may be a terrible thing as many speculate.

The bottom line it this: it's important we begin grappling with this reality now because we have less time than we think to prepare.

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