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Think of AI as less Terminator robots and more as an Excel spreadsheet with ambitions to change the world’


AI technology will transform the business world soon, says Tim Gordon, partner at consultancy, Best Practice AI, who was speaking at the Retra Conference.


Artificial Intelligence (AI) will have a huge impact on businesses in the next 10 years, according to Tim Gordon, partner at consultancy, Best Practice AI.


Speaking at this year’s Retra Conference he commented on


how there is a lot of talk about AI being a massively overhyped tool and pointed out how that could be the case, but he stressed that technology that exists now is going to transform business in the coming decade. “Think of AI as less Terminator robots and more as an Excel


spreadsheet with ambitions to change the world,” said Mr Gordon. “AI is a new way to write software. Machine learning takes data and a bunch of answers, and then it goes away and it works out what the rules might be.” He added: “We’re moving to a world where text – whether


Tim Gordon ‘


spoken or written – can be used an interface for anything, such as images, audio, video, motion, design functionality, music, marketing and software coding. It will begin to change the entire way in which we interact with computers.” Mr Gordon said AI will provide a huge opportunity to transform customer service, adding: “AI is like having 1,000 interns working for you or a co-pilot. It’s a superpower – if you’ve got someone who is really good at what they do, AI can vastly scale that up – it can take smart people and massively extend their ability to do things.”


AI will take away a lot of the boring stuff and enable your retail staff to be focused on interacting with customers’


Tim Gordon, partner at Best Practice AI, tells Sean Hannam how AI could transform retail and manufacturing in the future.


Sean Hannam: What effect do you think AI will have on retail? Where are the opportunities? Tim Gordon: I think there are a few things – one of those is in terms of getting customers in the first place. The way that marketing works is going to change – now Google controls everything – but we will have a new way of discovery and of accessing information. The second thing will be the way in which we interact with


retail sites online – you will have different ways of accessing content. You may have someone talk to your website.


SH: So, the customer journey will change, and retailers will be able to learn a lot more about what consumers want… TG: Yes – it will change. A lot of marketing is increasingly telling stories or generating content – AI could produce that on a far greater scale. It will be cheaper to create content – the cost of it is going to go down massively and that means you can create far more of it and make it more personalised. How that gets deployed as part of the retail journey will be a powerful change.


It will also change how you offer customer service to people – you could point your phone at a malfunctioning machine and it will help you back.


26 Retra Conference Review


SH: AI will also enable chatbots to become more advanced, won’t it? TG: Yes, and they will become multi-modal – you’ll able to use them with pictures as well as text, and in any language. It will also speed up and become more natural. Now, chatbots are quite stilted and try to drive you down a specific path – they have no flexibility.


SG: How will AI affect the backend operations for retailers and brands? TG: Products will be produced to more personal specifications. Manufacturing, like designing a machine, for example, will be far more bespoke. There will also be stuff around distribution networks – making


sure the supply chain works better, and predicting when people want things and what they want. That should shorten the time needed to go from production to delivery.


SG: It’s about AI working alongside humans, isn’t? We’re not going to replace retail staff with robots, are we? TG: No – hopefully it will strengthen the retail experience. For example, how you check for shoplifting. You also hope it will take away a lot of the boring stuff, like stocktaking, and enable your retail staff to be focused on interacting with customers. The more time they can spend on that rather than doing admin and the backend stuff is a real win.


Retra Conference Review


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