This was part of a larger initiative to “strengthen the Postal Service” by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who joined the USPS in June after 35 years as an executive at a large supply-chain logistics company. DeJoy is a noted ally of President Donald Trump, who has been attempting to discredit the USPS ahead of the November election. Trump admitted on August 13th that his recent rhetoric against the USPS was designed to curtail the country’s mail-in voting process.

When DeJoy took over the USPS in June, he implemented hiring freezes and organizational rules that caused delays in the delivery of some prescriptions and mid-summer primary ballots across the US. Alongside the forced retirement of mail-sorting machines, DeJoy instituted rules that limited the amount of overtime employees could earn, and banned extra trips that would ensure on-time deliveries.

Today in a statement, DeJoy said, “To avoid even the appearance of any impact on election mail, I am suspending these initiatives until after the election is concluded. I want to assure all Americans of the following: Retail hours at Post Offices will not change. Mail processing equipment and blue collection boxes will remain where they are. No mail processing facilities will be closed. And we reassert that overtime has, and will continue to be, approved as needed.”

DeJoy’s statement, which says nothing about remedying the damage he’s already done and asserts @USPS is ready for an influx of election mail despite all evidence to the contrary, cannot be taken in good faith. House Dems will do our job and pass leg. protecting @USPS on Saturday. https://t.co/hRlig3BgQM

— Rep. Nadler (@RepJerryNadler) August 18, 2020

Democrats — and some Republicans — have been railing against attacks on the Postal Service for weeks, and on August 12th, Postal Service Inspector General Tammy Whitcomb launched an investigation into DeJoy’s new policies. DeJoy will testify before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Friday, and he’ll appear before the House Oversight Committee the following Monday. House Democrats plan to pass a funding bill aimed at the USPS on Saturday, August 22nd.

While today’s promise from DeJoy halts ongoing efforts to handicap the USPS, it doesn’t address any damage that’s already been done — notably, it doesn’t reinstate the mail-sorting machines that have already been taken offline. Democratic lawmakers have pledged to include reparative measures in the Saturday bill.

For months, engineering teams from USPS and NVIDIA have been developing the AI models, which will help USPS read address labels more quickly and effectively. The system starts with high-performance servers powered by NVIDIA V100 Tensor Core GPUs and deep learning software, which train multiple algorithms. The trained models are then deployed to NVIDIA EGX edge computing systems at nearly 200 USPS facilities.

Delivery and testing of the system will begin this year, and the AI is expected to be fully operational in spring of 2020. While USPS will get an efficiency boost, this is a big win for NVIDIA too. It shows that AI processes are finding more practical uses.

USPS is experimenting with self-driving mail trucks as well. This spring, it signed a contract with San Diego self-driving truck company TuSimple for a two-week pilot. That involved the company’s trucks hauling USPS trailers on five round trips between the postal service’s Phoenix, Arizona and Dallas, Texas distribution centers. USPS is also developing a drone ‘airline’ to deliver medical samples in the US.