Supply chains need AI, but AI needs humans

The press is full of articles on why businesses need AI because it is expected to make a tremendous impact. The McKinsey Global Institute estimates that by 2030, the additional annual global economic impact will be $13 trillion, a figure that equals about 62 percent of the total current U.S. GDP. Gartner estimates that by the end of 2024, 75 percent of organizations will have moved from merely piloting AI to making it operational, and AI made their list of the Gartner Top 8 Supply Chain Technology Trends for 2020. AI has made explosive progress since 2012 when a grad student from the University of Toronto won the ImageNet Challenge by a huge margin using deep learning, at the time considered a fringe method. Ever since, deep learning has taken Silicon Valley by storm, and AI has spread into all sectors, including supply chain, to address vexing problems previously considered unattainable.