The Future Now

Sunday, November 05, 2023

This morning, I’ve been using AI to explore the future of retail environments. AI informs me that the future will continue supporting retail stores, but they will be staffed by combinations of humans and robots.

A future walk-in customer already will have accessed the internet and done the homework of evaluating and selecting products (as customers now do). On entering a retail store, they will be greeted by humans with computers who will instruct robots as to items needed for pulling and delivering to an in-store customer.

That future will have robots handling mundane tasks while humans attend to the customers. Combining robotic technology and human skills will provide advantages, like increasing inventory accuracies, reducing opportunities for thievery, and adding to business profitability.

All that’s good. Still, powerful technologies bring new questions. Start by considering the world’s increasingly massive populations and how future wealth might be distributed. Questions associated with an AI-predicted future are, what might formal education start looking like; who could find work, and who couldn’t; who could afford to buy, and who couldn’t?

Those are just the beginnings. What if medical technologies do start keeping some or all of the elderly alive for the now-predicted 120 years?

Dear Friends: Indulging in mental challenges on this wintery but balmy Sunday. Diana