How Coronavirus and Protests Broke Artificial Intelligence And Why It's A Good Thing

YANGZHOU, CHINA – APRIL 28, 2020 – Visitors visit Jiangdu digital economy Exhibition Center, Yangzhou City, Jiangsu Province, China, April 28, 2020. The 2020 China Yangzhou (Jiangdu) digital economy development conference opens. Until February 2020, Amazon thought that the algorithms that controlled everything from their shelf space to their promoted products were practically unbreakable. For years they had used simple and effective artificial intelligence (AI) to predict buying patterns, and planned their stock levels, marketing, and much more based on a simple question: who usually buys what? Yet as COVID-19 swept the globe they found that the technology that they relied on was much more shakable than they had thought.