While online shopping has taken great strides in recent years, the brick-and-mortar retail hasn't managed to keep pace. Artificial intelligence now permeates every aspect of ecommerce platforms, especially where customer interactions are involved. Smart product suggestions, AI-powered search, cognitive customer service agents are just some of the innovations that have helped make online shopping more personalized and enjoyable for the customer--and more profitable for the retailer of course. Meanwhile, AI advances in brick-and-mortar retail have mostly remained in inventory management and back store operations. The few innovations that have happened in the customer-facing aspects of in-person retail have little or no AI involved, and have failed to make tangible positive impact in the shopping experience and gain wide adoption.

As chatbots become more and more sophisticated, brands are increasingly relying on them as an easy (and inexpensive) way to provide customer assistance. Likewise, plenty of consumers are happy to skip the help line and get straight to the answer. But does that mean chatbots will totally replace live agents? "No doubt many of the simple and repetitive questions can easily be handled by'digital employees,' but consumers still prefer talking to a live person when customer service complexity comes calling," said Tim Dryer, senior director of public and analyst relations at Aspect Software, which recently conducted a poll of agents and consumers to gauge their feelings about the chatbot revolution. "The key take-away is that chatbots could usher in the elevation in importance of the customer service agent as we know them: higher skilled, greater company loyalty, higher job satisfaction. For marketers, this equates to a higher caliber brand ambassador pool."

Robot developers say they are close to a breakthrough--getting a machine to pick up a toy and put it in a box. It is a simple task for a child, but for retailers it has been a big hurdle to automating one of the most labor-intensive aspects of e-commerce: grabbing items off shelves and packing them for shipping. HBC -1.08% and Chinese online-retail giant JD.com Inc., JD 0.37% have recently begun testing robotic "pickers" in their distribution centers. Some robotics companies say their machines can move gadgets, toys and consumer products 50% faster than human workers. Retailers and logistics companies are counting on the new advances to help them keep pace with explosive growth in online sales and pressure to ship faster.

Robot developers say they are close to a breakthrough--getting a machine to pick up a toy and put it in a box. It is a simple task for a child, but for retailers it has been a big hurdle to automating one of the most labor-intensive aspects of e-commerce: grabbing items off shelves and packing them for shipping. HBC -1.08% and Chinese online-retail giant JD.com Inc., JD 0.37% have recently begun testing robotic "pickers" in their distribution centers. Some robotics companies say their machines can move gadgets, toys and consumer products 50% faster than human workers. Retailers and logistics companies are counting on the new advances to help them keep pace with explosive growth in online sales and pressure to ship faster.

This article is part of a series exploring the skills leaders must learn to make the most of rapid change in an increasingly disruptive world. The first article in the series, "How the Most Successful Leaders Will Thrive in an Exponential World," broadly outlines four critical leadership skills--futurist, technologist, innovator, and humanitarian--and how they work together. Today's post, part five in the series, takes a more detailed look at leaders as technologists. Be sure to check out part two of the series, "How Leaders Dream Boldly to Bring New Futures to Life," part three of the series, "How All Leaders Can Make the World a Better Place," and part four of the series, "How Leaders Can Make Innovation Everyone's Day Job". In the 1990s, Tower Records was the place to get new music.

Walmart is developing a facial recognition system to monitor customers at its checkouts for signs of anger and dissatisfation. The technology uses video cameras at store checkout lines that monitor customers' facial expressions and movements to try and identify varying levels of dissatisfaction, according to a patent filing. If the system detects an unhappy customer, it will alert employees and order them to report to the register. The technology uses video cameras at store checkout lines that monitor customers' facial expressions and movements to try and identify varying levels of dissatisfaction. If the system detects an unhappy customer, it will alert employees and order them to report to the register.

Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. The author is a Forbes contributor. The opinions expressed are those of the writer. As fewer shoppers choose to frequent stores, retailers are looking for new ways to rejuvenate the shopping experience, whether through a wholesale reinvention of the retail space or by doubling down on efforts to send consumers targeted ads. To that end, retailers are increasingly turning to technologies such as artificial intelligence algorithms, messenger bots, and even robots, to gather data and improve the in-store experience for shoppers.

Artificial intelligence is not just a casual interest of the tech industry. "In ten years, every company will have to be an artificial intelligence company or they won't be competitive," Loup Ventures Managing Partner Doug Clinton wrote in a Thursday note. "Every company," he emphasized, noting disruptions span energy and transportation, food and finance, retail and health. Some firms are already anticipating AI standards of their industries and investing in relevant technologies and strategies. Their efforts, Clinton said, position them to profit.

Amazon is having a rough week. The e-commerce powerhouse has celebrated a string of victories this year. Its stock price broke above $1,000 for the first time; it is presiding over an unprecedented retrenchment within the retail space as more than 8,000 brick-and-mortar stores are expected to close in the US this year, and the company announced plans to acquire yuppie favorite Whole Foods Market, promising to transform the company's stores into laboratories for automation and AI where advanced sensors will perform tasks previously reserved for human cashiers. It also revealed that its "Prime Day" sale was the "Biggest Global Shopping Event in Amazon History", surpassing Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales. But the string of good news came to an abrupt halt last week when Reuters reported that the top Democrat on the House antitrust subcommittee, David Civilline, has voiced concerns about Amazon's $13.7 billion plan to buy Whole Foods Market and requested in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee a hearing to examine the deal's potential impact on consumers – the first stirrings of what could metastasize into an anti-trust probe.

The video, which appears to have been recorded using a drone, gives a sweeping look of the enormous facility's exterior before zooming in on Bezos himself, who is sat on the building's roof. Propped nonchalantly in a camping chair and wearing aviator shades, the multi-billionaire, 53, holds a sign in one hand that reads: 'Rocket factory coming soon'. In his first ever Instagram video, billionaire Jeff Bezos showed off a manufacturing facility to be used by his space private rocket firm Blue Origin. According to the video's tag, the plant is set to build Blue Origin's heavy-lift New Glenn'megarocket', which will be used to launch space satellites. The New Glenn booster is designed to fly itself back to Earth so it can be recovered and re-flown, slashing launch costs.