• From Quartz:
"At the Walmart Supercenter in Secaucus, New Jersey, some 750 employees have been interacting with artificial intelligence on a daily basis for the past few years. Retail workers use an AI and augmented-reality app to quickly and remotely gauge what needs restocking, reducing trips between the store aisles and the backroom. It helps cut the time it takes workers to manage the backroom inventory by a third, according to the company."
According to the story, "AI also suggests optimal product placements on shelves, while a new feature under development will soon prioritize workers’ tasks according to urgency."
Quartz says that "the technology can be directly useful to shoppers, too. If a customer asks where the orange juice is located, workers, using voice or text, can query an app that is powered by natural language processing, a subfield of AI that enables the app to understand questions like humans. Walmart says its employees ask the app a total of more than 600,000 questions each week, on average.
"In the next five years or so, about 65% of Walmart’s stores will be serviced by automation, according to the company, which has invested billions into making its stores and supply chains more efficient."
