The last few months have seen many dire predictions about the future shape of the labor market.  A recent study suggests such a future is particularly dire in the retail sector.  It argues that a combination of intense pressure from labor-lite online retailers and the growth of robotics and AI is likely to result in significant pressure on the workforce.

“In a face-to-face environment, people may still prefer to interact with another human,” the author says. “In a virtual environment or a non-face-to-face context, people could not care less about who or what is on the other end of the line or responding to online queries.”

Super-targeting

The author suggests that one of the advantages of machines over humans in retail is their ability to target customers to an extreme level, effectively creating a ‘segment of one’ due to their deep knowledge of each customer.

“That will enable customizing the product and personalizing the service to the individual customer,” they say. “As robots gain more intelligence and have access to vast amounts of customers’ data, they can process the data much faster than humans and will be able to serve every single shopper in a personalized way. Humans may become replaceable.”

Thankfully, the author does not believe that all retail salespeople will vanish, and certainly not overnight, but he does nonetheless believe that such a shift is almost inevitable over the long-term.

“In the beginning, both can supplement and complement one another,” he says. “As AI gets more advanced and achieves super intelligence, humans will become redundant.”

Sales staff will only thrive if they focus on things that machines find difficult to mimic, such as an endearing personality, creativity and wit.

The paper joins a growing cohort of pessimistic prognoses about our future employment prospects.  Time will tell how realistic they prove to be.