AI is rapidly transforming logistics, paving the way for significantly more efficient supply chains. But just as AI-powered logistics will help logistics, transport and supply chain actors work faster and better it will also make some tasks redundant. These were some of the messages from Northern LEAD Day 2025, which highlighted the opportunities and implications of AI’s accelerating reshaping of the field.
"We are facing the next step in the revolution of road freight, the beginning of a transition where AI is absolutely necessary."
This was stated by Linnéa Van Lokhorst at Einride, the key note speaker who opened the 2025 edition of Northern LEAD Day which focused on the role of AI in logistics. A number of challenges are changing the face of supply chains, such as geopolitical tensions, labor shortages, climate change, demand volatility and global logistics bottlenecks. In recent years, AI has created many opportunities to address these challenges.
For Einride – which designs digital, electric and autonomous solutions for road freight – AI is also fundamental to managing the increasing amount of information that comes with the new technologies.
"Electrification and autonomous vehicles come with another level of complexity. Information needs to be handled at many different levels, all the way from strategic to operational level: shipment data, vehicle data, charge planning, route optimization, transport demand APIs… There is an enormous amount of information to manage", says Linnéa Van Lokhorst.
She points out that machine learning Oops – object-oriented programming – are needed to handle fundamental challenges in road freight.
"The industry has high emissions, very low utilization and the market is fragmented. AI is needed, among other things, to achieve more accurate energy consumption and optimized asset usage."
New competences and lost tasks
In his presentation, Tarun Agrawal, Chalmers, highlighted the human side of AI in supply chains. He pointed out that the development in AI has been going at breakneck speed and is now something that everyone must deal with.
"In the last 2-3 years, the use of AI has increased exponentially. Today, all major companies are using or implementing AI-tools. AI has gone from an area solely for people with special technical skills, to something that affects everyone", he says.
AI can aid in decision making, detect early risk signals and be an efficient tool to support and manage activities. But, Tarun Agrawal emphasizes, AI automation requires understanding and - above all - the use of AI needs to be supported by special human skills such as critical thinking.
In the age of AI, he believes that new competencies will emerge, and some tasks will be lost. Humans will play more strategic roles, as operational roles will shift towards monitoring roles.
"Low end costumer interaction tasks will be automated. Humans will become monitors and improvers, and technology will increase human creativity and focus on innovation", he says.
But there are also risks to be aware of, he adds, such as too much dependency on technology, various forms of misuse of the technology or poorly built algorithms. In addition, the support that AI provides could in some cases affect our human abilities.
"This is called the "Black box syndrome", and means that AI can affect human critical thinking and problem-solving abilities", he says.
Everybody can become programmers
Miroslaw Staron, University of Gothenburg, also emphasized that AI is no longer an area reserved for technical experts and pointed out that it can help actors become faster and better at what they do. In his presentation, he discussed how AI will affect jobs, and began with a quote from Jensen Huang, CEO of NVidia: “AI is not going to take your job, the person who uses AI is going to take your job.”
"I believe AI will take us by storm, but not in the way we thought in 2020. The AI tools of five years ago gave a correct answer to your question. The AI tools of today take your prompt, analyze all the possibilities, sort out the problem and can execute and explain the solution", he says.
This means new opportunities for truck drivers, says Miroslaw Staron, who can suddenly act as python programmers and create their own API:s for their trucks.
"Today you don't need to be able to program, you can ask chat GPT and get answers on how to design APIs for your needs", he says.
For example, the truck driver who has available cargo space in his vehicle and is looking for new business opportunities on the route can search for answers to the question: "Given my current position and the destination, find me the list of all logistics companies that I can call to get new business."
"The need for operators will decrease, when truck drivers can obtain all sorts information themselves", he says.
During the day, three additional researchers presented their AI-related projects. Ivan Cardenas, Chalmers and Oscar Ivarsson, Chalmers Industriteknik, spoke about "Data-driven applications for freight transport: the use of GPS data", while Jiaming Wu, Chalmers spoke about combined goods and passenger transport with modular and autonomous vehicles.
At the end of the day, it was also announced that Ivan Sanchez will hand over the role of co-director of Northern LEAD to Patricia van Loon, who is Associate Professor at the Division of Supply and Operations Management at Chalmers.
Text: Ulrika Ernström
Photo: Daniel Karlsson
About Northern LEAD
Northern LEAD is a logistics competence centre formed by Chalmers University of Technology and the University of Gothenburg. The centre works as an organizer, facilitator and disseminator of high-quality logistics research.
- Associate Professor, Supply and Operations Management, Technology Management and Economics
- Associate Professor, Supply and Operations Management, Technology Management and Economics
- Senior Lecturer, Supply and Operations Management, Technology Management and Economics
