I, for one, can't wait to fill my plate up with some stuffing. Also, whether you're ready for it or not, the holiday shopping season is almost upon us. In honor of Black Friday this week, let's take a look at why shoppers choose the stores they do. The world of retail is fast-paced and constantly changing, and it can be a real struggle for companies to feel that they're succeeding in this environment. While the key to attracting and retaining customers can change from retailer to retailer, there are some fundamental drivers of customer satisfaction – and dissatisfaction – that hold true for most companies.

Nintendo is offering a number of major Black Friday bargains this holiday season that have consumers preparing to brave chaotic scenes at their local retailer. This summer, Nintendo announced the re-release of its 1985 classic, the NES, with 30 pre-installed games for only $60. Following its Nov. 11 release date, it was an immediate hit. Now shoppers are wondering where they will be able to find the system ahead of the holidays. Major retailers such as Walmart, Best Buy and Amazon are likely to restock ahead of Black Friday and shoppers should expect to face long lines and large crowds to find Nintendo's hottest deal of the year.

Artificial Intelligence is the buzzword of the year with immense anticipation and excitement attached to it, but also often a fear of the unknown. So much so, that tech behemoths Facebook, IBM, Google's parent company Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft recently announced a partnership to discuss AI best practices. While there are the science fiction-driven angles of AI, like robots, self-driving cars, Internet of Things, and augmented reality, there are also more practical applications that affect business owners every day, especially those working in the virtual customer service world of online retail. Gartner predicts that by 2020, 85% of interaction between customers and retailers will be through artificial intelligence customer service programs. Brands are rushing to build out their customer service approaches leveraging AI to create accurate product catalogs, fine-tuned search capabilities, and truly personalized online experiences.

With wit, vision, and scholarship, Domingos describes how these scientists are creating programs that allow a computer to teach itself.

This post was featured in Information Age and can be read here. Artificial Intelligence, intelligence as exhibited by machines, is not something that is new to this world. Nearly twenty years ago IBM's supercomputer Deep Blue beat world chess champion Gary Kasparov. The win was symbolically significant and a sign that Artificial Intelligence was catching up with human intelligence. Fast forward twenty years and the application of AI technologies is something we encounter on a regular basis.

Populism is sweeping the nation, but it's likely just getting started. Donald Trump's win is a wake-up call that voters are angry with a system that's made middle-class jobs tougher to come by, and increased inequality. As pronounced as the trend already is, it's only just the beginning, experts say. Looming technological advances will wipe out more jobs, broadening the base of disenfranchised, unemployable and frustrated citizens. Meanwhile, elites with the skills to flourish in the digital economy will get richer.

Artificial intelligence can be an important tool for collecting as well as interpreting business related data. Currently around 45 companies specialize in AI for functions such as recommendations, search, multichannel marketing, merchandising, and conversational commerce. Nothing works better for accumulating and making sense of all the data than machine learning, or AI. When automating aspects of a retail business, AI is able to provide an intelligent as well as a speedy solution, including self-adapting algorithms which can show a company's patterns of behavior which would otherwise be hidden from humans reading the data on their own. From there you have a starting point for predicting patterns of behavior and interaction which drive the most customer interaction, or purchasing.

Artificial intelligence, intelligence as exhibited by machines, is not something that is new to this world. Nearly twenty years ago IBM's supercomputer Deep Blue beat world chess champion Gary Kasparov. The win was symbolically significant and a sign that artificial intelligence was catching up with human intelligence. Fast forward 20 years and the application of AI technologies is something we encounter on a regular basis. For example, manufacturing and the use of robots in assembly and packaging has revolutionised how our favourite products are made.

One of the biggest challenges, and perhaps least "sexy"problems of retail is managing inventory. Traditionally the retail "sale" was a way to manage over-stock of inventory while clearing the sales floor for the next season - making way for winter from fall, spring from winter, etc. It was definitely conventional wisdom when I was growing up to wait for the end of season to get the best deals, which, of course, meant that by the time winter rolled around again, I had forgotten about the cool sweater I purchased the year before. With today's finicky customer and even tighter margins, retailers can't afford to blithely follow these long-seated expectations. Today's brand has to practically engage in some sort of pseudo-fortune telling to predict what moderately affluent, 16 year-old girls living in suburban Atlanta will want to wear come November if it is raining more than usual.

Amazon is getting a jump on the holiday shopping craze with an all-Alexa weekend. The online retailer just announced its first "voice shopping weekend." Prime members can use an Amazon Echo, Echo Dot, Amazon Tap, Amazon Fire HD tablet, or Amazon Fire TV to ask, "Alexa, what are your deals?" Alexa will then tell you about Amazon's deals for that day. If you like what you hear, you can then tell Alexa to order the item.