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.

According to internal documents obtained by Vice’s technology site Motherboard, close to 15 percent of the organization’s machines will be taken out of service. That’s a total of 502 machines around the country, and USPS workers Motherboard spoke with said the move would “slow their ability to sort mail.” An earlier report by CNN noted that the agency had begun removing these machines in June, and that it had initially intended to retire 671 machines instead of 502.

Motherboard added that the USPS presentation it obtained described this as an “equipment reduction,” rather than “mov[ing] equipment around its network” as a spokesperson had earlier said.

As part of the restructuring announced earlier this month, DeJoy said that mail processing operations will report to a newly created Logistics and Processing Operations organization that’s separate from area and district reporting structures. This change was made “to allow for improved focus and clear communication channels,” he wrote. The move has faced public criticism, with Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) calling it “sabotage” on Twitter. Connolly chairs the House subcommittee for government operations, which oversees the postal service.

More recently, DeJoy reportedly admitted in an internal memo that CNN obtained that the restructuring has led to “unintended consequences that impacted our overall service levels,” but reiterated that the changes were “necessary.”

Before the pandemic, the USPS had been delivering an estimated 146 billion pieces of mail a year, including 6 billion packages. But with the election looming and people stuck at home, voting by mail has become a topic of national debate and is expected to lead to a surge in volume. President Trump has questioned the post office’s ability to manage the anticipated influx, saying “how can the post office be expected to handle [this]?” He added, “That’s a tremendous strain on the post office. The post office loses a fortune, it has been for many many years, for decades. So now on top of it it has this.” To be clear, the USPS is not a for-profit business. It’s an independent agency of the federal government’s executive branch that serves the public.

DeJoy said in his opening remarks for the USPS board of governors “while I certainly have a good relationship with the President of the United States, the notion that I would ever make decisions concerning the Postal Service at the direction of the President, or anyone else in the Administration, is wholly off-base.” He added that “the Postal Service and I are fully committed to fulfilling our role in the electoral process.”

“If public policy makers choose to utilize the mail as a part of their election system, we will do everything we can to deliver Election Mail in a timely manner consistent with our operational standards,” he wrote. DeJoy also asked for election officials and voters to “be mindful of the time that it takes for us to deliver ballots.”

As the USPS continues to assess its operations to find ways to serve the public, removing mail sorting machines may lead to increased burdens on postal workers who might have to take on the previously automated task. It’s not clear if these machines might be replaced with newer models, or if the leftover machines are capable of picking up the slack. It’s clear the agency needs financial support to continue running without overworking its employees, especially with an election coming up.

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.