Artificial intelligence – The rise of the machines (and the regulator?)
Algorithms and their use in supply chains are becoming increasingly prevalent. Artificial intelligence, which utilises advanced techniques to recognise patterns and correlations among data, can advance supply chain management practices and apply to areas such as forecasting and demand planning, inventory management, and purchasing. The increasing sophistication of machine learning algorithms is also raising regulatory concerns, consider for example the recent Google antitrust ruling. Machines can coordinate collusive behaviour in ways that have not yet been foreseen, even eliminating competition. Hence algorithms have to be carefully designed.