NRF 2018: How Retailers Can Use AI to Solve Problems and Increase Sales

Artificial intelligence isn't coming to terminate traditional retailers -- just like in "Terminator 2: Judgment Day," it's actually here to help. That was a key takeaway from a panel on robotics and AI held at NRF 2018: Retail's Big Show in New York City on Jan. 14. Instead of seeing AI as a threat that eliminates jobs through automation, retailers should embrace the technology as a tool that can solve their business problems, retail AI experts said. Michelle Bacharach, co-founder and CEO of FindMine, a company that uses supervised machine learning techniques to create complete outfits around each product an apparel retailer sells, said on the panel that AI should not be an end in itself. "If you start there, you've already failed," she advised retailers.