Robot Chefs

Over on Bluesky this appeared:

This same concept will apply to your merchandising efforts.

• You were able to replace your warehouse workers.
• You were able to eliminate most of your call/contact center.
• You will be able to replace most of your marketers.
• You will be able to replace most of your copywriters.
• You will be able to replace most of your accountants.

You will not be able to easily get rid of your merchants.

Oh, some of you will be able to do it. If you sell third-party products, you don't need a buyer to work through the Nike assortment ... you'll just need a lawyer to negotiate your arrangement.

But if your sell proprietary merchandise ... sure, somebody else can knock it off and copy it ... but if you sell proprietary merchandise, it is going to be much harder for AI to replace you ... it could "help" you, yes.

In terms of your career, you either become a manager of AI, or you perform work that AI doesn't want to perform. AI doesn't want to do things that cannot easily be optimized. And by "AI", I of course mean the small number of humans who will control AI, eliminating many jobs in the process.

P.S.:  In case you were wondering, AI represents a transfer of your business budget ... from humans who used to do work to vendors who have AI. We've watched this happen during the e-commerce era ... a catalog list manager (used to be a really big job) became a vendor-centric job at a co-op, and then became a vendor-centric job at a search/social agency. Regardless, you had a budget and you paid human beings who worked for your brand ... those dollars were transferred from your employees to vendor employees. More (much more) of that is coming. Happy New Year!