AI Report: Stores of the Future
The "store of the future," AmazonGo, is open for business-- beyond the lack of cashiers, TechCrunch reports on the abundance of surveillance cameras.Alphabet debuts Chronicle to detect cyber threats -- and don't miss Business Insider's AI analysis (below).How AI will reshape the logistics and transportation industry [Business Insider]AI’s ability to streamline so many supply chain and logistics functions is already delivering a competitive advantage for early adopters by cutting shipping times and costs. A cross-industry study on AI adoption conducted in early 2017 by McKinsey found that early adopters with a proactive AI strategy in the transportation and logistics sector enjoyed profit margins greater than 5%. Meanwhile, respondents in the sector that had not adopted AI were in the red.
Inside Amazon’s surveillance-powered, no-checkout convenience store [TechCrunch]
Amazon’s approach wasn’t as complex as I expected, or rather not in the way I expected. Mainly the system is made up of dozens and dozens of camera units mounted to the ceiling, covering and recovering every square inch of the store from multiple angles.
Facebook’s LeCun to be chief AI scientist, ex-Watson exec will lead AI efforts—updated [Fast Company]The Post suggested the move was part of a reshuffling of Facebook’s AI organization amid questions over whether the company’s AI efforts have kept up with the industry. Those questions have taken on greater urgency in the wake of the tech giant’s role in enabling the spread of election-related fake news, as well as its impact on users’ mental health, the Post wrote.Google’s Vision for Mainstreaming Machine Learning [The Next Platform]While Google has offered pre-trained machine learning models via APIs that perform specific tasks, there’s still a long road ahead if we want to bring AI to everyone. To close this gap, and to make AI accessible to every business, we’re introducing Cloud AutoML. Cloud AutoML helps businesses with limited ML expertise start building their own high-quality custom models by using advanced techniques like learning2learn and transfer learning from Google. We believe Cloud AutoML will make AI experts even more productive, advance new fields in AI and help less-skilled engineers build powerful AI systems they previously only dreamed of.”Alphabet unveils Chronicle, a security company that uses big data to detect vulnerabilities [VentureBeat]The new unit, dubbed Chronicle, is betting on the premise that machine learning software, a type of artificial intelligence, can sift and analyze massive stores of data to detect cyber threats more quickly and precisely than is possible with traditional methods.Machine Learning Can Help B2B Firms Learn More About Their Customers [Harvard Business Review]B2B companies need to know, for example, how many companies exist in a given market space. How can they identify and access all those firms that fall into the market pertaining to their product or service? And which specific buyers should they target in those firms? By creating a micro-categorization scheme and applying guided AI to various sectors of the web, EverString can produce thousands of customer insights in a short period for its B2B customers. The company has created an intelligent system to augment customer data in the B2B space.Supermarket operator uses AI to boost pricing and promotions [Chain Store Age]In a move to make the circulars more relevant for shoppers, Harps Food Stores is using an artificial intelligence-based platform from Daisy Intelligence Corp. The platform analyzes years of collected transactional information, and delivers insights into customer buying behavior. This analysis also uncovers specific, actionable product and marketing recommendations, and reveals which products should be featured in its weekly circulars, according to the company.Artificial Intelligence Isn't Killing Jobs; It's Killing Business Models [Forbes]While a majority of organizations in the survey, 66 percent, start off using AI to automate routine or inefficient processes, it becomes a factor in innovation and differentiation as time goes on and experience is gained. Business leaders are optimistic that AI technologies will ultimately create more opportunity for employees than they will eliminate, with C-level executives widely agreeing that AI technologies will have a positive effect on their workforce (70%) and equally benefit customers (45 percent) and employees (43 percent). And more...
Tradeshift Frontiers innovation lab hopes to drive blockchain adoption in the global supply chain [TechCrunch]
Twitter is using machine learning to crop photos to the most interesting part [The Verge]
Machine Learning for the masses [ZDNet]
The Grammys Are Bringing IBM Watson’s Artificial Intelligence to the Red Carpet [Adweek]
