Should retailers fear AI or is it now essential?

For a long time, I have talked about artificial intelligence as an enabling tool that should help to improve the customer experience. It's a technology that helps customer service advisors and retail associates do their job better, rather than a tool that removes the need for them to even be part of the customer relationship. But AI has taken on something of a mythical quality. Leading executives such as Elon Musk of Tesla warn that systems may eventually run out of control and become more intelligent than humans. These warnings have also been echoed by scientists, such as the physicist Stephen Hawking, who once claimed that AI could be the end of mankind as we know it.