Category: General

I believe that for the foreseeable future, human machine collaboration, which will lead to a new type of collective intelligence will be a requirement. Today, we are seeing many advances in the ability of machines to make high confidence predictions; in narrow use cases. This will certainly lead to significant shifts in tasks within job roles. However, where I think machines will lack for some time is in judgement. Judgement being the ability to consider multiple predictions, and come to sensible conclusions in context. This is where humans will need to remain in the loop, playing a key role in judgement. This human machine partnership will lead to a collective intelligence that will results in even higher confidence outcomes, than either could realize individually. However, this prescribed union could quickly find the machine taking more and more of the judgement role as well. Just consider Google’s search results; at this point, how many of us ever get to the second page of results. What’s happening here is that we are trusting Google algorithm’s judgement. We could debate the consequences of this for search results; as we endeavor to use AI in medicine, autonomous cars, and other decisioning based on potentially biased data, we will need to take a more deliberate approach to the policies and practices around final judgement.

"I would be shocked if Amazon implemented this tech as described. I do think they would implement the tech to monitor in-store web traffic to gain insights to make the overall shopping experience better. I would recommend other retailers do the same; many are still struggling to make sense of the data they have." ~ Shawn Harris

"As we work to optimize business by reducing the influence of our humanity, I believe we will soon realize that our humanity is our greatest asset." ~Shawn Harris

"If Amazon can nail comfort (size, style, support), as price and convenience will be a given, they could absolutely make a dent in this space. I think that department and specialty store chains should take this seriously. Here comes a lingerie category price war…" ~ Shawn Harris

Is this Everyday Low Price (EDLP) spun as a membership program?  Will the elimination 0f the 20% Coupon's "scarcity," remove BBBY's greatest customer activation trigger, or will the $29 annual fee create the "shop here first" behavior that Amazon enjoys with its Prime Members? The Amazon Prime comparisons always gets me as none of these membership programs come with all of the other value-adds that Prime does, (i.e.video streaming, cheap unlimited music). To truly compete, I think more complementary partnerships are required to enhance the value of these initiatives (e.g. discounted Uber/Lyft rides, Care.com services, etc [requested through the BBBY app] ), plus the extension of this membership's benefits to the other BBBY subsidiaries. All in all, I do like BBBY's willingness to test bold initiatives like this.