This post is co-written by Arte Merritt, co-founder and CEO of Dashbot. In their own words, "Dashbot is an analytics platform for chatbots and voice skills that enables enterprises to increase engagement, satisfaction, and conversions through actionable insights and tools." After you have deployed a bot, it is critical to analyze bot interactions, learn from this analysis, and use these learnings to improve the end-user experience. Conversational interfaces are easier to analyze than websites and mobile applications. You can infer user behavior directly from conversations instead of guessing what your users want by stitching together page views and choosing events.

National Retail Federation's annual Big Show and Expo in New York – have announced several retail technology deals, indicating that innovation is the key to improve customer experience. Total e-commerce revenue in 2020 will reach $3.52 trillion, an explosion that will force retailers to find faster and more convenient modes to reach the final mile and yard, according to tech market advisory firm, ABI Research. There is increasing convergence of online and in-store businesses, with brick and mortar positioned as hubs closer to the customer, as well as e-commerce sites directing package delivery to retail outlets. Additive investment will grow in Buy Online Pay in Store (BOPIS) options. Alibaba and JD.com have focus on growth through lower-tier cities, chasing fast growing, third place Pinduoduo's rural playbook to reach the next 600 million people.

We're officially a month into 2020 and the new decade is well underway. So much so, it is worth reflecting back as it jolted our eyes open and set the stage for what's to come. To sum it up in a word, data. Data, data everywhere – how to get it, how to use it, how to see it. Everywhere you looked there were analytics dashboards.

At a Stop & Shop supermarket near Hartford, Connecticut, one of the nation's first micro-fulfillment centers (MFCs for short) opened at the end of last year. Ahold Delhaize, Stop & Shop's Dutch-Belgian parent, carved out 12,000 square feet from the store during a recent remodel to make room for the MFC, which is operated by the retailer and with support from Takeoff Technologies. Through a glass window in a corner of the store, curious shoppers can get a glimpse at the automated mini-warehouse, where robots whoosh around grabbing cereal and soup. The system can handle up to 3,500 orders a week, although it's nowhere near that level yet. Stop & Shop's not alone: Walmart, Albertsons and others are also testing MFCs.

In recent times, organizations have been competing with one another to implement chatbots for various reasons, including enhancing customer experience, streamlining processes, and fueling the demand for digital and innovative technologies. Cognitive technologies such as chatbots have become an apt candidate for end-use application as they have high automation feasibility, high potential of accuracy, low complexity and low execution time. Raising the bar through intelligence, virtual assistants have been propelled by advancements of mobile technology. Technology giants are putting their weight on a platform designed to answer ad-hoc queries in real-time and fuel sales as chatbots can remember customer preference and use order history to learn from customer responses to the product advertisements, suggest products, and cross-sell aptly. For instance, if a customer asks for a pizza recommendation with a chatbot, it can remember which pizza the customer ordered and follow up with it when offering a recommendation for another pizza or a restaurant.

Consider the grocery clerks at two Safeway stores in the San Francisco Bay Area. A few weeks ago, over 200 workers who are members of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 5 (UFCW5) union picketed a Safeway store in San Jose, Calif. to voice concerns about a push by parent company Albertsons to add more A.I to its operations. Albertsons recently partnered with the startup Takeoff Technologies to create mini warehouses where computer vision technology automatically sorts items that shoppers order online. Using A.I. reduces the need for Safeway staff to manually locate and grab items for delivery--workers now just retrieve the finalized orders from a conveyor belt and sign off on them for eventual delivery. Several grocery store chains are investing heavily in micro-fulfillment centers after Amazon helped to popularize as-fast-as-you-can deliveries, said Andrew Lipsman, a principal analyst at research firm eMarketer.

This special issue of Media-N gathers perspectives on artistic labor in an increasingly automated global economy, focusing on the impact of artificial intelligence and the role of Amazon.com, Inc. in reshaping how work is defined, valued, and performed. Our contributors are artists, curators, scholars, and critics interested in labor value, emerging forms of exploitation and alienation, as well as new possibilities for collective resistance, solidarity, and critique.

Over the last decade, technology has changed the way businesses operate and consumers buy. The field of fashion has been plugged into this changing scenario from the very start. Physical retail stores are now being replaced by e-commerce websites. Online and offline retailers today are using artificial intelligence (AI) to understand their customers tastes and preferences better. Using data science, fashion stylists and designers are able to identify trends and match the expectations of their end consumers. Simply put, data science is technology's ability to aggregate a large set of data, analyse it, and accordingly produce insights that determine future business decisions.

Over the last decade, technology has changed the way businesses operate and consumers buy. The field of fashion has been plugged into this changing scenario from the very start. Physical retail stores are now being replaced by e-commerce websites. Online and offline retailers today are using artificial intelligence (AI) to understand their customers tastes and preferences better. Using data science, fashion stylists and designers are able to identify trends and match the expectations of their end consumers. Simply put, data science is technology's ability to aggregate a large set of data, analyse it, and accordingly produce insights that determine future business decisions.

An unmanned convenience store began operations Monday at a recently opened station on Tokyo's Yamanote loop line, using artificial intelligence not just to allow speedy self-checkouts but to also prevent shoplifting. The store is a key feature at the Takanawa Gateway Station, which opened on March 14 as the first new stop on the line in nearly 50 years. About 50 cameras installed inside the roughly 60-square-meter store identify every item customers pick up. The store's exit gates open once the customer makes a payment. The AI used at the shop has been trained to recognize customer behavior, including how items are carried, and it almost fully prevents shoplifting by accurately recognizing when merchandise is taken from shelves, according to its developer Touch To Go Co. Attempts in a demonstration to hide merchandise under clothes or avoid being seen on the cameras while stashing it in a bag were all detected.