Forrester: Robots will eliminate 6% of all US jobs by 2021

This is not the first time Forrester has made an attention-grabbing prediction about technology leading to the disappearance of jobs. It also said that the same would happen in the business-to-business sales arena, and that current virtual assistant technology spelled the beginning of the end of those jobs as well. How should the retail industry feel about all this? Retail has been pretty progressive thus far in testing artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies in both virtual assistant form and physical robot form. While there may be some concern about what happens as these technologies are perfected and become affordable enough to be deployed throughout the retail ecosystem, the retail industry for now seems fairly enthused about the ways in which these technologies can help to better serve customers and make stores and operations more efficient.