We know that, for a variety of reasons, more and more people are living alone. As of 2018, single-person households represented about 28% of all households in the US. This is up from 13.1% in 1960.

Here in Canada, single-person households became the predominant household type in 2016 (we're also at 28%) for the first time in Canada's 150+ year history. And the numbers are even higher for some European countries. In Finland, Germany, and Norway, more than 4 in 10 households are single-person.

Part of this has to do with people living longer. In Canada, 42% of people aged 85 or older (and living in a private household) live alone. But part of this is also cultural. Japan has one of the oldest populations in the world, but it doesn't have the highest percentage of single-person households. Although, the number is relatively high and increasing. It's nearly 40%.

Whatever the case may be, you could argue that there appears to be some sort of global trend line toward more people living alone. But here's an important question: Is this a good thing?

Albert Wenger recently argued in this blog post that, actually, we need new forms of living together. Whether it's multigenerational living or coliving with like-minded friends, there are clear benefits to living with other people. You get to share resources. You get elders that can look after kids. And you get company.

There's also an opportunity to curate your environment. As Phil Levin puts it on his coliving blog Supernuclear: "If your home is filled with motivated people, you will be more motivated. [And] if your home is filled with funny people, you will laugh more."

Albert posits that office conversions (which are obviously in vogue right now) could serve as an opportunity to rethink our built environment around coliving. And while this is certainly true, I'm not sure we need it to happen. There are ways we can live together today, within our existing environment, if we want to.

The question is: do we?

One of Alphabet's moonshot projects is an autonomous delivery drone service called Wing. As far as I can tell, they're only company offering this kind of service to the general public in North America -- though they are only operating in a few test locations in Virginia, Finland, and Australia.

Specifically:

• Canberra, Australia

• Logan, Australia

• Helsinki, Finland

• Christiansburg, United States

Not surprisingly, demand for Wing deliveries has surged during this pandemic. According to the Verge, the company made over 1,000 deliveries in the past two weeks, which represents a doubling of deliveries in the US and Australia. The most popular items seem to be essentials like toilet paper and coffee.

This is perhaps a good example of the argument that COVID-19 isn't going to change things per se, it will simply accelerate the adoption of things that were already in the process of happening. I was and am of the opinion that drones will become an integral part of delivery logistics. (Full disclosure: I own a bit of Alphabet and Drone Delivery Canada stock.)

There is still a lot that will need to happen. Alphabet/Wing is also working on an autonomous traffic management platform, because you obviously need something robust if you're going to scale this up. How you make this work in dense urban environments is also a whole other kettle of fish, though already people are starting to reconsider how rooftops are used.

For more on Wing, click here.

Image: Wing

One of the challenges that self-driving vehicles present is not about technology per se, it is about ethics. The typical example scenario is this one: If a pedestrian were to step out in front of an autonomous vehicle illegally, should the car be programmed to hit the pedestrian or veer off the road at the risk of potentially harming its passengers?

I believe that self-driving vehicles will ultimately result in fewer accidents. Statistically they will be safer. But self-driving vehicles, particularly early on, are going to get a lot of attention when they do get into accidents, even if they are still safer as a whole. And that’s because they will make for good headlines.

Safety and statistics aside, in turns out that the answer to the above moral question could depend on where you’re from. Nature recently published what they are calling the largest ever survey of “machine ethics.” And out of this survey they discovered some pretty distinct regional variations across the 130 different countries that responded.

The responses were able to be grouped into 3 main buckets: Western, Eastern, and Southern. Here is the moral compass that was published in Nature:

And here are a few examples. In North America and in some European countries where Christianity has historically dominated, there was a preference to sacrifice older lives for younger ones. So that would guide how one might program the car for the case in which a pedestrian steps out in front.

In countries with strong government institutions, such as Japan and Finland, people were more likely to say that the pedestrian – who, remember, stepped out onto the road illegally – should be hit. Whereas countries with a high level of income inequality, often chose to kill poorer people in order to save richer people. Colombia, for example, responded this way.

Also interesting is the ethical paradox that this discussion raises. Throughout the survey, many people responded by saying that, in our example here, the pedestrian should be saved at the expense of the passengers. But they also responded by saying that they would never ever buy a car that would do this. Their safety comes first in the buying decision. And I can see that.

There’s an argument that these are fairly low probability scenarios. I mean, the last time you swerved your car, you probably weren’t driving on the edge of a cliff where any deviation from the path meant you would tumble to your death. But I still think that these are infinitely interesting questions that will need to be answered. And perhaps the answer will depend on which city you’re in.